Ascended for my Necromancer or Reaper?
No one knows what HoT will bring. We only have two pieces of evidence to build from right now: (1) the meta for the last three years and (2) ONE raid boss encounter from a limited weekend with beta builds.
In both cases, you want full Berserker gear. No defensive stats. Berserker has been overwhelmingly dominant in PvE for the last three years. Out of the two Vale Guardian kills by The Sickest Guild and Legion of Doom, only Legion of Doom I believe used a necro, and the necro was running full Berserker gear.
Based on the examples we have right now, there is no need for defensive stats, especially on necro. The Sickest Guild had one rabid engineer, and Legion of Doom had one celestial guardian, everyone else was full zerker/sinister.
Also this implies of course that both reaper and base necro prefer berserker.
Zerker is the safest bet, there is no content we have seen so far that it wouldn’t be the best at.
The Shipwrecked Pirates
Tarnished Coast
Tarnished Coast
Zerk isn’t really any better than Valk’s offensively for reaper, though, and Valk gives a ton of defensive stats without actually sacrificing any offense due to decimate defenses. Valk armor/weapon with Zerk/valk trinkets and Wurm runes seems to be best.
(edited by Captain Unusual.9163)
We know from the raid boss that they looked at health gating to break the zerker meta, and likely implemented it. It’s a common enough tactic, and worked very nicely in wow dungeons and raids to force dps and healers to not just go complete damage/healing stats, as well as provide a bit of an entry hurdle.
Health gating gives Necro a fairly sizeable bonus. It makes Necro more desirable, since our high base health and LF pool(in worst case scenarios) means that we can devote more stats towards zerker/sinister stats than an ele or engie.
This also brings up an experiment I am eager to see: how the minion change affects the health gating mechanic of the boss we saw.
Zerk isn’t really any better than Valk’s offensively for reaper, though, and Valk gives a ton of defensive stats without actually sacrificing any offense due to decimate defenses. Valk armor/weapon with Zerk/valk trinkets and Wurm runes seems to be best.
Without precision you can miss those huge gravedigger crits so i think zerk is still better than valkyrie if you’re planning on using the GS
Zerk isn’t really any better than Valk’s offensively for reaper, though, and Valk gives a ton of defensive stats without actually sacrificing any offense due to decimate defenses. Valk armor/weapon with Zerk/valk trinkets and Wurm runes seems to be best.
You also trade off Dhuumfire if you rely on Death Perception for that 50% critical rate. With 25 might stacks, which is achievable in about eight seconds of autoattacking even with an enemy above 50% HP, you get 750 condition damage which scales incredibly well with the ~5 burn stacks you’ll be maintaining.
And this isn’t even considering the possibility that the optimal damage rotation may be dagger autoattack and gravedigger instead of reaper shroud 1 and gravedigger. Then Valkyrie + wurm damage would pale in comparison to berserker + scholar/strength.
(edited by chunx.9521)
A sample of the gear I proposed.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQFABSAAgYA-TRxTwAw0BwU9HHK/CqEEw+DAA-e
Gear puts you at 21% crit, Decimate Defenses puts you at 71%, Fury puts you at 91%, Food(don’t remember which off the top of my head)/utilities/spotter/banner can cover the rest. No Death Perception needed, still get to rock dhuumfire. Could even take scholar instead of Wurm, I just really like lots of ferocity.
(edited by Captain Unusual.9163)
Valk all the way, necro scales nicely with Vitality and lots of ways to get free crit chance, I might have a zerk peice or two but most valk.
I prefer valk to cavalier because of power main stat. If was P/T/F gear I would mix the two but there isnt unfortunately.
Also, Ice runes with Hydro sigils. Wurm aint a bad choice either though if you can maintain really high crit %. Leaning towards Ice but wurm a contender
I’m curious about WvW. Any thoughts?
I plan to be a mid-liner.. Using staff for long-range, then use GS for enemies that are pushing, then switch back to staff. Basically I’ll be further out than melee, but further in than backliner. Not sure how optimal it’ll be… But I think I’ll have fun this way!
Zerk isn’t really any better than Valk’s offensively for reaper, though, and Valk gives a ton of defensive stats without actually sacrificing any offense due to decimate defenses. Valk armor/weapon with Zerk/valk trinkets and Wurm runes seems to be best.
Even with valk gear wurm runes still don’t result in the highest damage possible. Other runes are better but far more expensive and haveno conditions to get the damage boost.
I am kinda undecided too about reaper’s ascended. I guess i’ll just wait a couple weeks after HoT to see how things will be.
I’ll use my old ASC, just add a Twilight
Ok, lets forget about stats for a moment…
Should I gear ascended with my regular necromancer or my reaper?
Really depends on which one you’ll be playing the most. I’ll be playing Reaper and only Reaper once I get it unlocked. I’m never going back to the boring base necro. So the choice is easy for me. I don’t know how you’ll split your time between necro/reaper, so the choice is really up to you and whichever one you’ll play the most honestly.
If I were you, I would wait and see how things roll out once HoT has settled a bit.
Lady Cerba, Ascalonian Priestess of Grenth
- Piken Square, [REN][DKAL]
- Piken Square, [REN][DKAL]
Ok, lets forget about stats for a moment…
Should I gear ascended with my regular necromancer or my reaper?
They are the same. Your necro can become a reaper and your reaper can become a necro. It simply depends whether you equip the traitline or not.
Plus ascended is account bound. So you can swap it between characters if you do have two necromancers. So that means the only discussion worth having is what stats you want.