Guild Wars 2

You are ignoring the fact that deathshroud, a form of effective healing, is regenerated as a percentage of your total, and increases with vitality. Thus, taking carrion gives you not only better offensive pressure, but also more effective health (when you account for DS generation). This is why carrion is more effective on necros.

DS generation is one of those cases where more vitality = more healing, and that changes your numbers.

Also, carrion, as mentioned before, has better offensive pressure as necros have little need to crit since dhuumfire was changed.

Also, just saying “math shows X” is insufficient for anyone scientifically inclined. Show your numbers so others can see if you made a mistake, or follow the logic of your model. Any good engineer knows that your numbers are only as good as your model.

Lopez.7369:

Carrion is not better offensive pressure. Barbed Precision alone is more of a damage gain than what a necromancer’s scepter, which has a terrible power coefficient, gets from power. The advantage of rabid is even more pronounced when considering that critical hits benefit direct damage, too.

This is not true, Carrion has about 50 more dps on scepter autoattacks on average than Rabid. That being said i agree that Rabid is almost always better than Carrion.
Calculations have all been done before btw: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/MATHS-Which-Amulet-to-use-on-condi-Necro/first#post4167242

for me the biggest thing is Rabid giving you a respectable amount of crit chance, and most condi specs will have some form of “on crit” condition.

warrior has Precise Strikes
engi has Incendiary Powder and Sharpshooter
necro has Barbed Precision and Withering Precision
mesmer has Sharper Images
ranger has Sharpened Edges

you can also use Earth Sigil to add even more bleed.

none of these will work effectively with a carrion build.

You have to consider relativity. The difference in effective HP between the two armor sets is 0.28%, or a little more than one quarter of one percent. 1/4th of 1% is nigh invisible, so the difference in effective health effectively doesn’t exist.

This is only for direct damage, BTW. Against other condis, rabid provides absolutely no defense. Now, you can argue that a necro handles condis quite well, but I can also argue that condis can still swamp and overload a necro if enough of them are present. You can say that extra heal efficiency can compensate for a weakness in condi damage, but I can also say that heals aren’t guaranteed, as they can be interrupted or burst past.

This might be a novel concept, but consider this: both sets have different strengths and weaknesses. And depending on context, one can be better than the other.

This thread again…

Everything’s relative, things are not set in stone in every situation…
Rabid should be naturally better vs spike enemies, while carrion should fare better vs condis.

leman.7682:

This thread again…

Everything’s relative, things are not set in stone in every situation…
Rabid should be naturally better vs spike enemies, while carrion should fare better vs condis.

this PERIOD

You know, back in the days before forums, when pointless arguments happened on Usenet, there was 1 topic that was sure to recur once every few months on rec.books.tolkien and spawn virulent flame wars: whether Balrogs have wings.

This topic is far less interesting and occurs even more often! :p

Necro isn’t so different from other classes that this comparison isn’t just the same old ubiquitous MMORPG dilemma of health vs armor. If you need to worry about raw damage, you stack armor. If you need to worry about armor ignoring damage, you stack health. Try to find some balance should you have to deal with both.

That said, I will say that Necromancer has a respectable amount of base health as well as a number of viable tools to deal with conditions(Consume Conditions, Deathly Swarm, Putrid Mark, etc.) In addition, Barbed Precision is one of the best bleed procs available in the game so there is a clear reason to consider critical chance to bolster your damage.

However, seeing that Death Shroud is such an integral part of Necro play, you might also want Life Blast to hit a bit harder. You can use something like Carrion for a boost in power and still trait Deathly Perception for a decent critical chance on top of condition damage.

I’d probably opt for something like Celestial to get a better balance but it’s anyone ’s prerogative here. Weigh the pros and cons and decide for yourself.

Lopez.7369:

Right. The context here is effective healing and the fact that necromancers fear burst builds, like thieves, mesmers, and elementalists, much more than they’ll ever fear condition builds.

Either way, you seem to have the right mentality. I’ve seen a lot of people on the PvP and necromancer forum say that carrion is somehow better against burst. It’s really strange.

Carrion is better against burst, b/c you don’t beat burst with better defense. Carrion has better up-front pressure with its combo of power and condition damage. Sustained pressure may or may not be as-strong, but the amount of “burst” damage you can do, that pressures your opponent off you, is higher with carrion. Rabid takes longer to “get going” so to speak.

IMO carrion is viable and rabids isn’t. The gap is pretty big imo.

Also, your math doesn’t seem to account for critical hits at all, and the armor values are too high. Both are big oversights in favor of carrion.

critical hits are included and armor values are the armor values you will actuall have ingame with a 06404 build.

In this meta alot of classes are condition hybrids… Celestial Warriors, Celestial Staff and D/D eles, Celestial Engineers, Celestial Rangers… These classes put out decent condi pressure, Carrion is more effective vs these classes.
Deathshroud is better in Carrion. I will also add that good players dont eat bursts……. Thus rabid may be better if you stand there wanting to get 100-0ed? But the reality is as a necro you should be in a position where you may take some damage from range pressure and/or a thief, but you should not be getting bursted. Carrion is better at sustained fights.. Which as a necro you should be getting…
I will also point out that Necro has a lot of access to weakness and protection and therefore has decent damage mitigation without toughness.

in fact carrion is worse in sustain fights than rabid, it is only better in very short fights with no healing involved. Also carrion is not better vs condi pressure, it is just better at facetanking condis but does not provide any sustain in this fights.

Mike.4830:

In this meta alot of classes are condition hybrids… Celestial Warriors, Celestial Staff and D/D eles, Celestial Engineers, Celestial Rangers… These classes put out decent condi pressure, Carrion is more effective vs these classes.
Deathshroud is better in Carrion. I will also add that good players dont eat bursts……. Thus rabid may be better if you stand there wanting to get 100-0ed? But the reality is as a necro you should be in a position where you may take some damage from range pressure and/or a thief, but you should not be getting bursted. Carrion is better at sustained fights.. Which as a necro you should be getting…
I will also point out that Necro has a lot of access to weakness and protection and therefore has decent damage mitigation without toughness.

This is why carrions is viable and rabids isn’t imo. In a nut shell. Most specs have condi damage which is high. Such as the ele burning, pin down, impale, celestial rifle engi specs. So the extra HP is just very good in the current meta.

manveruppd.7601:

You know, back in the days before forums, when pointless arguments happened on Usenet, there was 1 topic that was sure to recur once every few months on rec.books.tolkien and spawn virulent flame wars: whether Balrogs have wings.

This topic is far less interesting and occurs even more often! :p

Had wings in the movies, it must be true. /thread.

Also I’ll solve this thread for all of you. kitten you all, I’ll equip whatever the hell I want, and you know where to shove your “math” and your “facts”. Now everyone hug and kiss and go back to trash talking each other in the PvP lobby.

Lopez.7369:

People keep saying that Death Shroud is better in Carrion, but there isn’t any math to back that up. It deteriorates and generates as a percent of max health. So it works no differently with toughness and vitality than effective health does.

Well the idea is because your max lifeforce is 120% of your health pool, vitality gives you a much bigger total effective health total than rabid. Plus, now that we get bonus toughness while in DS you’re already fairly tanky against direct damage, so more health to help against all the burning and torment flying around these days makes for better protection.
Plus, Carrion actually makes life blast do decent damage, even with the lower crit chance.

Also, while I agree that in a drawn-out fight more toughness is better to have than more vitality due to healing, in reality most fights in pvp almost NEVER go over 2 recharge cycles of your healing skill! Not unless you’re a proper bunker, which neither rabid nor carrion allows you to be. Realistically, if you can’t kill him within a minute, and neither of you gets reinforced, one of you will disengage.

I’m starting to think there’s just not that much thinking behind choosing carrion over rabid. The choice seems to be based on a lot of flimsy beliefs.

I prefer to think it’s more personal playstyle. Maybe some people are better at lining up Deathly Swarms to send back condis, other people are better at dodging big damage skills. Hence, rabid or carrion feel better to them, but they can’t articulate why because they don’t realise their weaknesses. I personally feel tankier in Carrion, even though there’s so many zerker thieves and mesmers, and eles running around with 20 stacks of Might. I suspect that, all else being equal, there probably IS an objective answer to which is better, but it’ll depend more on the enemy team’s composition (and to a lesser extent your own team’s) rather than being an absolute choice of one over the other.