Guild Wars 2

I’m not a theorycrafter and have never posted a build before, but I was playing around with something and thought I’d post it. Forgive me if it’s common and has been beaten to death already; I don’t recall seeing it before though.

Also, I’m only 60, so I’m only working with 50 points right now.

Traits:

25 Spite, 25 Curses

In Spite, I selected Signet Mastery and Signet Power.

In Curses: Weakening Shroud and Hemophilia (chosen for lack of anything better, frankly).

Weapons: Scepter and Knife, and of course Staff.

Slot Skills: Well of Blood, Signet of Spite, Well of Suffering, Well of Corruption, Summon Flesh Golem.

So the idea here is to be able to dump an obscene amount of hurt on a single target. First, you activate Signet of Spite, which attaches six conditions, plus whatever you manage with the scepter/Knife and Staff.

Target the Weak grants 2% extra damage for each condition on a Foe. Signet of Power grants three stacks of might for activating the signet.

Then, for extra measure, you have the option of popping the two wells. Meanwhile, the Flesh Golem is doing it’s thing.

Theoretically, this should allow a necro to knock down even a tough foe fairly quickly.

There are some significant drawbacks though: I feel this is a one trick pony, glass cannon kind of build. I used to like running with a beefed up Death Shroud, so I feel like I’m without my safety net now. However, maybe this can be alleviated over the next levels by putting points into Blood or Soul Reaping. I could also take five points out of Spite and put it elsewhere; don’t know how effective Siphoned Power is, so maybe those five points would be better spent somewhere else.

While it will do a lovely bit of damage, it can for a large part be reduced with a single condition wipe. If you want to spread a bit of mayhem you can always replace WoC with Epidemic.

Now there’s an interesting question. Do conditions applied through Epidemic count toward the 2%-per-condition bonus of Target the Weak?

^ Why wouldn’t they?

Yes.

Why wouldn’t they? I think the question of why certain things do and do not work with necros has been a common theme around here… lol

signet of power imo is waste on this build. yes, six conditions… but all with crap damage.
conditions themselves don’t drop your foe, damage does.
BiP +scepter auto and dagger5 are going to be your best bet for “stacking a lot of hurt” on one foe. Problem is, everyone has condition removal in pvp/wvw so suck on eggs.

go power built, your utility bar will feel more flexible. 4k auto dmg on dagger1. have fun! 6 seconds later… kill

edit: btw all those pretty numbers you see from conditions aren’t good for real bursting because usually it takes about 30s to completely bleed/burn through them. Sooo… have fun kiting with everything on CD for 20 seconds after you /chain.

I wouldn’t call this burst, maybe heavy damage ramping or something like that. I have a few recommendations actually. Firstly, Signet of Spite is one of those skills that looks awesome on paper, but in practice is pretty weak. The conditions only last for 5 seconds, are single target, and then you have to wait 90 seconds to use it again. I’d recommend another utility, maybe blood is power or something.

Also, as far as I know, Target the Weak’s bonus damage only applies to direct damage, and neither the scepter nor the staff are well equipped to do direct damage. If you want to take full advantage of that trait, I’d recommend carrying an axe or mainhand dagger. Otherwise, don’t count on it for significant damage.

Mackster.9726:

Firstly, Signet of Spite is one of those skills that looks awesome on paper, but in practice is pretty weak. The conditions only last for 5 seconds, are single target, and then you have to wait 90 seconds to use it again.

Well, the idea isn’t so much as to rely on the conditions themselves to do the damage. According to the various Wikis, the 2% damage increase of Target the Weak is direct damage, not condition. So I selected Signet of Spite because it adds six conditions. At 2% per condition, that’s an instant 12% jump in direct damage right there. Plus the three stacks of might from Signet Power.

If its true that an Epidemic spread also counts toward the 2%, then passing those six conditions to just one other target means you’re now up 24% in direct damage.

Playing around with this today, I was knocking Veterans down to 25% health or less in a few seconds. I couldn’t get them all the way dead before the conditions wore off, but still.

Like I said though: its kind of a one-shot and then done build. Not sure I’ll keep it, but it seems to have some promise. Honestly, with all their problems, a Minion Master build is still pretty powerful for PVE, which is mainly what I do, so I may switch.