Guild Wars 2

Hey,

Apart from the Bolts of Damask I’ve every material needed ready to make the full set.

My question is.. Which stats do you think will be THE stats for the Reaper in PvE?

Zerker / Celestial or something else?

Atm I run Zerker gear with Celestial jewelry..

I have:
22,542 HP
17,888 Life Force
2,234 Power
34.42% crit chance
And I do run the Bloodlust sigil.

soldiers

Berserker for PvE.

spoj.9672:

Berserker for PvE.

Valkyrie’s is possible for PvE, since a Reaper can hit 100% crit chance with no precision without much difficulty. Sure, you don’t need the Vitality in current PvE content, but you don ’t know about HoT.

If you go valk you are going to only have 50% crit from decimate defences and the rest from buffs which means you will be short on crit in organised groups. Being forced into DP just to get a bit of extra health you dont need isnt a wise idea imo. Besides we dont even know if camping DS will be worthwhile yet.

Currently assassins is better because we need the crit. Reaper just means we dont need the extra prec anymore because we can finally cap crit easily without being forced into certain builds. So when HoT comes out berserker will be the go to.

Base necro health is plenty. If we ever need defensive gear i would go for power, ferocity, toughness/healing (doesnt exist yet). But theres no way defensive gear will ever be required if anet wants to maintain their design philosophies. So we are safe to assume berserker will still be the number one choice.

EremiteAngel.9765:

soldiers

I second that.

At present with food you can do a mix of zerk and soldiers to get a good mix of stats and 50% crit, 200 ferocity, and about 3200 power with bloodlust stacks. I think I’m hitting 24000 hps, with 20k lifeforce. Armor is like 2400 so it’s not terrible. Sure you don’t hit tHat hard as full zerk, but it’s more survivable

I want to run a condi reaper with a holy trinity of burn/fear/chill damage, but it’s looking like a pipe dream with constant chill nerfs and massive opportunity cost from running fear traits (They should be compiled into one grandmaster or at least not be next to things like Vital Persistence and Path of Corruption).

If you’re making Asc. armor, make Berserker. It is very expensive (especially for Light) and accounts for much less stats than weapons+jewelry. Jewelry and weapons can be altered easily to change your build later. As a Necro, na matter what build you ever decide to run (even condi), Berserker’s will still be good.

Note: Berserker’s is ‘go to’ but I honestly prefer Assassin’s for several reasons and is even what I run in PvP. So you might consider that as well. Any other stats are bad advice for build flexibility.

Eggshells.1748:

Atm I run Zerker gear with Celestial jewelry..

I have:
22,542 HP
17,888 Life Force
2,234 Power
34.42% crit chance
And I do run the Bloodlust sigil.

I run soldiers with bloodlust. I use cheap food right now. 5% toughness to power, 3% vitality to power, 5% toughness to vitality.
I have in WvW roughly:
34K HP
3.1K power, 3.4K power in DS
27K Life force
4% crit, 54% crit in DS
3K armor, 3.4K in DS

Note: Numbers include WvW stacks that add 250 vitality and 100 power. DS armor includes corruptors ferver
Note2: Numbers do not include might stacks of any-kind. It’s WvW, I run wells.

Yea about wvw i wonder. When the reapers releases frontline necros might become acutally viable. But what stat set would be best?

Just full soldiers or mix it up with knights and/or cavaliers?
Maybe someone who has already experimented with the idea might share his insight on this

Ascended armor is awkward enough to make that there is a good argument for Celestial. Whatever the situation, Celestial won’t be too far from what you need.

I think it’s too hard to say what will be the best set. People need to play with the builds to see their strengths/weaknesses. PvE difficulty was going to be handled, but do we still run berserker or go more defensive.

Too hard to say right now. So I would just create some armor that is solid by todays standards and hope it transfers good into HoT.
Berserkers is probably a solid pick. Necro’s have a bit of sustain by default, and you can swap weapons/accessories a bit easier to fit your needs.

As for WvW. I’m not too sure we’ll see many reapers in the front lines.

The kind of difficulty they are going for is the kind which makes you use utility to survive. So CC, blinds, projectile defence. Which means theres no reason to expect anything other than berserker for most effective play. Its ascended. Its expensive. It doesnt make sense to go for “feel good options” over the actual most effective option.

And they certainly arent going to force us into defensive gear. That would be a complete turn around from what they have said about avoiding a hard trinity. Berserker should still be possible to survive in. It will just require greater effort, skill and use of utility.

I think reapers have a couple of gear status to use, but as for ascended i’d stick with berseker. Because even if your reaper not gonna use it, another characters will, because berserker is the PVE status.

Pride.1734:

Yea about wvw i wonder. When the reapers releases frontline necros might become acutally viable. But what stat set would be best?

Just full soldiers or mix it up with knights and/or cavaliers?
Maybe someone who has already experimented with the idea might share his insight on this

Idk about using knights or cavaliers, but I found that full soldiers lets me front line.
Sometimes they don’t focus you, you shrug off the AOE and go bag farming. Sometimes they do focus you and you pin ball around for awhile, get up, walk to the back line, heal back up and dive back in.
If my Zerg loses I tend to be the last to die.
Sometimes I have trouble disengaging. Positioning is something you have to watch out for, because if the commander runs away, 1v30+ is not going to end well. I actually bring plague form as both an escape and rampage counter (I can handle rampage without plague, but the rest of my zerg can’t, so it is a good idea to pop it).

OH and if your commander likes to might stack, those seconds of having over 4K power are delicious. I run wells, but I could see trading out Blood for Spite and running signets to pump up the damage. Your survivability would drop a lot though.

Marthkus.4615:

Idk about using knights or cavaliers, but I found that full soldiers lets me front line.
Sometimes they don’t focus you, you shrug off the AOE and go bag farming. Sometimes they do focus you and you pin ball around for awhile, get up, walk to the back line, heal back up and dive back in.
If my Zerg loses I tend to be the last to die.
Sometimes I have trouble disengaging. Positioning is something you have to watch out for, because if the commander runs away, 1v30+ is not going to end well. I actually bring plague form as both an escape and rampage counter (I can handle rampage without plague, but the rest of my zerg can’t, so it is a good idea to pop it).

OH and if your commander likes to might stack, those seconds of having over 4K power are delicious. I run wells, but I could see trading out Blood for Spite and running signets to pump up the damage. Your survivability would drop a lot though.

Marthkus, I like the cut of your jib, sir. Soldier Wells are awesome

Zerker is a great 1st Necro ascended set.

As others have said, we have high health compared to other classes. On par with Warrior when not counting Shroud. As much as we complain about Shroud mechanics, it gives all Necro builds a universal meat shield that makes it easier for us to survive intense pressure situations compared than other Zerk classes without timing/depending on active defense. Assuming there’s enough LF regen in encounters I feel a Zerker Necro/Reaper, especially after the balance patch (siphons though DS etc.), will be able to perform quite well in HoT even if difficulty of encounters is greatly increased.

The only road block you will initially run into for HoT, is what appears to be a wide range of mobs immuned to power based attacks until you CC breakbars etc. Mastery point lines in HoT appear to solve this though like the one that makes your attacks peal Husk armor off so you damage normally.

As for other sets I’m on the fence about a couple.

To bypass any of the above immunities, Sinister as a hybrid set sounds viable as well. It’s just that old problem of which weapon set combination is best for hybrid to get the most DPS out of both damage types.

Celestial may work too for a hybrid too. I don’t really like celes for Necro though, since our mechanics lend to us focusing on certain roles rather than slapping celes on an OP build and running with it.

Zealots is attractive for high DPS in addition to good healing support from Transfusion and Life From Death+Speed of Shadows heal spam. Could make a good DPS oriented, minion sustaining MM build too. This set isn’t worth it right now for Life Siphons alone, as they still won’t scale well. Better off with full zerkers, because you get the most out of your core DPS with relatively similar siphon effectiveness.

Sustain/support sets and condi sets are probably secondary in priority to getting a Zerker set. First of all condis scale less tier to tier compared to zerker stat synergy (I could be very wrong on this with the new condi scaling combined with the crit dmg/ferocity change). Doing lots of spike damage is always welcomed when in many cases, a sustain/support set isn’t doing much for players and teammates that already keep themselves up.

Lastly Zerker will allow you to experience the pure DPS power capabilities of the new Reaper specialization. while hybrid/condi Reaper builds will play very much like core Necro. So going pure power DPS means lots of damage fun with GS/RS.

Edit: Regardless of all of that, you can’t really mess up with ascended stats anymore. If you find you don’t like a set’s stats just Mystic Forge it into another. The only real loss being infusions. So maybe try not to put in infusions right away or do enough fractals to store some basic ones. I guess MFing expensive infusions would be a no no.

Ascended gear can be moved between other characters so keep that in mind. A Berserker’s or Celestial set will not go to waste but you may have need of a Soldier’s set in WvW or instanced play. Sinister may be useful, too, with some professions, or armor with healing stats now that healing seems to scale more.

Thanks a lot for all the useful replies!

@Balekai, That’s a really handy tip! thnx