Guild Wars 2

Due to the lack of gear with the stats. “Precision/Condition Damage” and having no jewelry for that, the necromancer lacks in alot of the power he was meant to have, if more gear showed up with these stats, then the necromancer’s true power would probably shine.

Based on your post, it seems like you’re running a condition build. I read that Precision has not effect on Condition Damage — whereas Power does contribte to some (specifically Wells). I’m not too clear myself, hopefully someone w more knowledge can chime in.

I’m currently running a Power/Vit/Condition Dmg — but also read that this is a “glass cannon” build. I’m trying to see if I should be stacking up on Toughness/Precisions/Condition Dmg — but as I said, if Precision doesn’t help condition damage — what would be the benefit?

That doesn’t make any sense lol.

And yeah, crit doesn’t really do all that much for a condition build unless you use Sigil of Earth.

Running On kill sigil or Bleed/Might on swap and using power instead would be better. Especially since you already get some crit from Curses you’ll be very well rounded.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/163/wutw.jpg/

Precision helps condition damage builds alot, power is completely useless to those who use conditions.

“66% CHANCE ON CRITICAL to cause bleeding, NO internal CD.”
“Sigil of Earth”.

These are just examples from the necromancer class alone, many classes have the same kinds of traits, engineers and guardians as well.

Sigh.

The minor trait is a 66% chance on crit for a 1 second bleed. The only thing that is useful for is Life Transfer, it will add a bit of extra dmg to it. (50% crit chance that is roughly a 33% Chance per hit to do 100-117 dmg.)

And as I said, if you’re NOT using Sigil of Earth, crit won’t really do anything for you. Power will add alot more dmg overall to the rest of your abilities. Crit w/o any power is pretty crappy.

If they actually added more/better On Crit procs in our trait tree I would agree that crit is good for condition specs.

But hey if you’re really want to use Sigil of Earth and precision, go for it. But it’s not the only way to go.

20% from Precision Trait + 40% from food + Power Tree’s Condition Duration = A lot of Benefit.

Those 2 ticks alone uncontested damage make up the extra 400 damage you get from going power.

Precision does nothing for a condition build. I have a crit chance of over 50% and I see a condition crit about 1% of the time. When I get the conditions stacked up, I watch them ticking off the health extremely fast, but hardly ever see any of the condition damage actually crit.

The OP has a point, in order to build up condition stats from my armor, I have to sacrifice vitality or toughness. I would rather sacrifice precision instead, since it is worthless to a condition build.

Personally, I would like to see some armor with some different stat combinations such as Power/Condition/Toughness.

So much fail to let this thread have so many responses without linking the simple and easy to craft precision and condition damage jewelry…

http://www.gw2db.com/recipes/8110-coral-orichalcum-amulet

Power is terrible on a Necro Condition build. We are not Thieves with a base damage two to three times that of what it really should be. Our base damage is pitiful, and the majority of our scaling is pitiful. This results in power being an extremely underwhelming stat in general for almost anything other than Dagger. It also means that Precision is, in terms of damage, terrible as well (If our base damage is low, the Crit damage is going to be minimal; Not exactly a good choice). Our dream set would more than likely be Condition/Toughness/Vitality. That doesn’t exist in-game though.

Condition/Toughness/Precision is the stat set Condition builds generally go for. There are other niche builds that could use something else, just like we -could- use the Healing Power stat for the -amazing- 30:1 healing it would provide to Life Siphon.
Toughness converts to Condition Damage via Rune of the Undead. Yes, it is only a 5% conversion rate, but it makes Toughness even more valuable than it already is as a defensive stat. This means we would want to go for a Condition Damage/Toughness/X stat set. Guess what the only stat set is that contains Condition/Toughness/X? Condition/Toughness/Precision.

Precision isn’t exactly a -wanted- stat in a Condition build. However, if we’re going for the most damage possible with conditions, the set is going to come with Precision anyways. Luckily for us, we can somewhat convert an otherwise completely useless stat into actually having a small impact via Traits (Which you will be getting entirely by default), and Sigils if the need be.

So while the OP is correct in regards to not having as much stat allocation customization as would be nice, Precision isn’t a stat we so much -want-, it’s a stat that Condition builds have shoved down their throat, and need to make the most out of.

Wow! An incredibly informative post Arianna, with a single exception. Hybrid builds. Say what you will about our base damage values, but staff works amazingly well with both power and condition damage.

Dagger has almost double the damage per second of other weapons, with the same amount of power. Thus, you could very efficiently sacrifice what you would have otherwise gained in power to improve your survivability, and deal the same amount of damage as other weapons!

Like you mentioned, this would require 2 of the three armor stats to be defensive, with the primary stat being condition damage. As you also already mentioned, this is unrealistic- and I believe it to be the primary reason double dagger doesn’t work as well as other combinations. (however, you can still do something similar with proper stat allocation and carrion/rabid gear).

Actually I’d reckon Death Shroud’s Life Blast would benefit a whole lot from power and precision. 3-4k consecutive life blast crits are no laughing matter.

I will concede that I really haven’t done much testing with the Staff, so I can not say much in regards to it. I see it as a very support-esque based Weapon that has a jack-of-all, ace-of-none mentality, making it almost mandatory as a secondary weapon, but negligent as a primary. It works well for what it’s worth.

Dagger has much better Power scaling than Scepter does. That’s really all there is to it. Scepter is, literally, terrible with Power. Dagger is actually halfway decent with it.

Edited in to address above; I do believe that Life Blast at least has a half decent Power scaling as well. And if it scales well with Power, then Precision is generally not a terrible idea in terms of raw damage. It’s even better if the normal base damage is high, which Life Blast seems to be one of our higher.

I’d really like to point out the effective damage one gains by alternating between weapons. The “secondary weapon” mentality really diminishes what could be an entirely useful and significant set of abilities.

With my current build, using 20/25/x/x/x, it’s not uncommon to crit for more than 4k with putrid blast alone. The entire combination of marks (including the condition damage portion) deals approximately 10,000 damage in less than 4 seconds. Not even accounting for the utility you provide, the damage you gain from switching to a staff should not be overlooked.

Edit:
That’s not even taking into consideration the amount of base damage you’ll be increasing via the “Target the weak” trait in the curses tree. Regardless of how low the base damage may be, it synergizes extremely well in a hybrid build.

Before you mention how you’d be stuck auto-attacking with a staff after unloading your marks, consider spending the remaining 5 seconds of that weapon set in death shroud- gaining stacks of might every 1.5 seconds while capitalizing on the fury buff.

How does that damage compare to auto attacking the entire time with a scepter? I can’t give you the exact numbers. But in a hybrid build, I have a feeling you’d be surprised.

Oh, no, the Staff can do a considerable amount of damage. I understand that. But the Staff’s Auto attack will not out-damage the Dagger’s auto attack. Thus the only time I find myself in my Staff set is to A) Tag mobs in Events, or B ) If I know that all of my Marks are off of cooldown. Even then, I will rarely throw down all of my Marks at once. I’m generally already in melee by using a Dagger as my ‘primary’ weapon set, so Putrid Mark is better used as a Condition transfer than an actual damage component. Likewise. Chillblains is more useful to my build as both an AoE chill and a Poison Field, as opposed to damage output. Mark of Blood is also used more as a Regeneration proc on myself and allies, rather than another damage component.

This makes Staff, at least in my build, extremely situational as to when to use it, but very strong when the use for it actually arises. It supports and supplements the weakness of my Dagger mainhand weapon set. Thus I consider it my secondary set; because it complements, but isn’t the weapon I use the most.

Edited in to address your post as well; That is actually exactly what I do. When I find the time to use the Staff’s Marks, I will cast whatever it is I need and then hop into Death Shroud and use whatever would actually be useful in that scenario until my Weapon swap comes off of cooldown. But that doesn’t change the fact that I find my Staff as a supplementary item to my Dagger, and still find the majority of its abilities to be relatively situational.

From a PvE standpoint, it’s relatively easy set up a condition transfer before you even swap to the staff. If you’re in a group that is so reliant upon your 4 second duration aoe chill that you can’t use it at all offensively, I think your group may have larger issues than trying to maximize character effectiveness through stats. As for proccing weakness from the poison field, you would need to use putrid mark directly after it regardless. And with such a poor healing power, you shouldn’t be using mark of blood as a “regeneration tool”, but instead as a damaging tool that just so happens to also replenish life in an aoe.

The utility staff provides is amazing, and can be capitalized in PvE with little more than a 2,3,4,(5) button rotation. The utility is the secondary effect, not the staff’s damage itself.

Edit for clarification: Staff can be used with its utility in mind, with a specific build that takes advantage of the 100% up-time regeneration buff. In any other build, the utility it provides, although still extremely useful, takes a backseat to the amount of aoe burst you can unleash.

A fair comparison would be the usage of axe main-hand. You can either use it defensively with its extremely high life force generation in a death-shroud based tank build, or use it more offensively while taking advantage of the vulnerability stacks it applies.

Although both life force generation and the vulnerability stacks affect either build, one becomes more significant than the other depending on the scenario.

alanis.6094:

So much fail to let this thread have so many responses without linking the simple and easy to craft precision and condition damage jewelry…

http://www.gw2db.com/recipes/8110-coral-orichalcum-amulet

Yeah, and there’s also Rampager’s equipment with similar stats for weapons and armor. It’s a little odd that there’s 15 posts and one of them addresses a simple misconception.

Kayotik.5790:

From a PvE standpoint, it’s relatively easy set up a condition transfer before you even swap to the staff. If you’re in a group that is so reliant upon your 4 second duration aoe chill that you can’t use it at all offensively, I think your group may have larger issues than trying to maximize character effectiveness through stats. As for proccing weakness from the poison field, you would need to use putrid mark directly after it regardless. And with such a poor healing power, you shouldn’t be using mark of blood as a “regeneration tool”, but instead as a damaging tool that just so happens to also replenish life in an aoe.

The utility staff provides is amazing, and can be capitalized in PvE with little more than a 2,3,4,(5) button rotation. The utility is the secondary effect, not the staff’s damage itself.

Edit for clarification: Staff can be used with its utility in mind, with a specific build that takes advantage of the 100% up-time regeneration buff. In any other build, the utility it provides, although still extremely useful, takes a backseat to the amount of aoe burst you can unleash.

A fair comparison would be the usage of axe main-hand. You can either use it defensively with its extremely high life force generation in a death-shroud based tank build, or use it more offensively while taking advantage of the vulnerability stacks it applies.

Although both life force generation and the vulnerability stacks affect either build, one becomes more significant than the other depending on the scenario.

I don’t particularly want to get into theorycrafting on the forums, nor semantics, so don’t take this as anything substantial;

Quick test on the Medium Armor Golem in Heart of the Mists. 30 Spite, 30 Curses, PvP Carrion Amulet, Rune of the Undead by default. Left the Major slots blank.
Used the timer on Well of Power to guesstimate the timeframe of the kill. Dagger auto attack spam took 9 to 10 seconds to kill the Dummy, leaving the Well at a 50-51 second cooldown.

Same deal with the Staff, I swapped nothing out. Medium Dummy, Well of Power to guesstimate. Staff skill 2, 3 and 4 were all used, immediately swapping into Death Shroud to finish the Dummy off. Well had a 50-51 second cooldown remaining.

1) The quick setup I threw on heavily favored Staff over Dagger due to any Condition damage in the build.
2) The difference between the two is that you have Putrid Mark, Chillblains and Death Shroud all on cooldown by the time the ‘rotation’ is done. The Dagger had nothing on cooldown while also generating a chunk of Lifeforce. The Staff version also requires more input, which has god knows how many additional variables if we get into legitimate theorycrafting, which I, like stated, would preferably stay away from.

Now, once again, don’t take this as anything substantial. It was a quick test I did to see if your process had weight to it, and I didn’t see much at first glance. If there was something I missed, then I can try it some other time in more depth.

In terms of AoE, the Staff blows away anything the Dagger has. I honestly thought that was just something that didn’t even have to be acknowledged; If there is more than 1 target, the Staff immediately overtakes the Dagger in terms of, well… Pretty much everything.

Axe Life Force generation is also subpar in comparison to Dagger, just for the record.

Arianna.7642:

Axe Life Force generation is also subpar in comparison to Dagger, just for the record.

If you’re looking for super quick life force generation, you can only really go with dagger/focus and staff, provided you dip 20 points into soul reaping for that trait that gives 3% life force for every triggered mark.

dagger/warhorn also works well if you’re in a position to aoe multiple enemies.

About the only advantage you’d get for using an axe is range and that pitifully short retaliation on skill 3. You are far, far better off getting that trait that increases damage done by 20% to enemies below 50% health rather than traiting for extra axe damage.

Actually IMO its a mix of a couple of things, the bugs and gear.

If they fix the bugs we can start looking outside the condition-spec box that many (myself included) are locked into.
For example if the Vampiric’s traits and skills with daggers worked to scale with healing you could look at power + healing + whatever kind of gear and make something that ‘works’. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work yet as much as I’d be interested in trying something like that if it ever does.

Arianna.7642:

Quick test on the Medium Armor Golem in Heart of the Mists. 30 Spite, 30 Curses, PvP Carrion Amulet, Rune of the Undead by default. Left the Major slots blank.
Used the timer on Well of Power to guesstimate the timeframe of the kill. Dagger auto attack spam took 9 to 10 seconds to kill the Dummy, leaving the Well at a 50-51 second cooldown.

Same deal with the Staff, I swapped nothing out. Medium Dummy, Well of Power to guesstimate. Staff skill 2, 3 and 4 were all used, immediately swapping into Death Shroud to finish the Dummy off. Well had a 50-51 second cooldown remaining.

This proves exactly what I was trying to point out- That a staff, in a hybrid build, would deal the same exact amount of damage as a (180 range) dagger. The chill, poison, weakness, regeneration, fear, and conditions you transfer are all added utilities by taking the time to swap out your weapon. It’s an equivalent amount of damage, and thus should be treated as such… not the utility stick you seem to believe it to be.

Arianna.7642:

1) The quick setup I threw on heavily favored Staff over Dagger due to any Condition damage in the build.
2) The difference between the two is that you have Putrid Mark, Chillblains and Death Shroud all on cooldown by the time the ‘rotation’ is done. The Dagger had nothing on cooldown while also generating a chunk of Lifeforce. The Staff version also requires more input, which has god knows how many additional variables if we get into legitimate theorycrafting, which I, like stated, would preferably stay away from.

The build you chose did not favor dagger over staff. Regardless of the probably that dagger scales more heavily from power/the spite tree than from staff, and that the higher precision would affect that said higher base damage (with the inclusion of the more frequent hits) more prominently, you skipped some essential traits.

Spiteful Marks and Hemophilia.

Where those two traits increase the damage a staff does substantially, there are no traits you could possibly receive in this build that would affect dagger damage in the same way. You suggest cool-down reduction in blood, I say staff reduction in death. The fact that you saw similar damage while using lich runes is completely negated by the fact that you didn’t pick up 10% base damage on each mark, and 20% more bleed damage from mark of blood. I’m not suggesting that build you threw together favors staff more than dagger- Throw some divinity runes on with the traits I recommended and I’m sure you’ll see what I’m talking about.

As per your comment above, about trading the “generate(d) chunk of life force”-
In both PvP, and especially PvE, you should be continuously gaining life force over a period of time. Eventually, you reach 100%, and therefor need to expend this reserve to keep benefiting from the generation at all. Unless you never use death shroud at all, you lose absolutely nothing by switching to staff/death shroud. The fact that you don’t gain more life force during this process is irrelevant. And then now that you have your marks on cool-down means they’re actually being used as utility tool while you continue to supply damage… I’m not quite sure how you see this is a bad thing, unless you’re specifically saving putrid mark for a specific condition you know a specific mob is going to apply. And in that rare occasion, I would most certainly agree with you.

Arianna.7642:

Axe Life Force generation is also subpar in comparison to Dagger, just for the record.

Uchi.2419:

About the only advantage you’d get for using an axe is range and that pitifully short retaliation on skill 3. You are far, far better off getting that trait that increases damage done by 20% to enemies below 50% health rather than traiting for extra axe damage.

If you have any questions about the usefulness of axe’s life force generation being done in a burst-channel ability, please refer to my guide where I explain how the quick generation within a small window contributes to a theoretical 100% weapon swap efficiency.