Guild Wars 2

I MISCALCULATED THE COMBO CAST TIME OF SCEPTER ATTACKS! ITS 2,5 seconds and NOT 4,5 seconds, sorry!

Necrotic Grasp (Staff 1)

• Cast 1,4 seconds
• 246 dmg @916 Power
• 494 dmg @1839 Power
• coEff 0,2686
• 175,7 DPS @916 Power
• 352,8 DPS @1839 Power
• Lifeforce per second 2,14
• attacks per second 0,71

Rending Claws (Axe 1)

• Cast 1,2 seconds
• 236 dmg @916 Power
• 472 dmg @1839 Power
• coEff 0,2556
• 196 DPS @916 Power
• 393,33 DPS @1839 Power
• Lifeforce per second 4 ONLY WITH #2 and uninterrupted
• attacks per second 1,66

Dagger 1

• Whole Combo 2,2 second
• 1st 302 dmg @916 Power
• 1st 608 dmg @1839 Power
• 2nd 235 dmg @916 Power
• 2nd 472 dmg @1839 Power
• 3rd 403 dmg @916 Power
• 3rd 809 dmg @1839 Power
• 1st coEff 0,3315
• 2nd coEff 0,2567
• 3rd coEff 0,4398
• 427,27 DPS @916 Power (whole combo)
• 858,63 DPS @1839 Power (whole Combo)
• Lifeforce per second 2,7272
• attacks per second 1,81

Scepter Combo

• Whole Combo 2,5 seconds
• 1st 118 @916 Power
• 1st 236 @1839 Power
• + 5,xs Bleed (1 stack) 5×43/215 @0 condition
• + 5,xs Bleed (1 stack) 5×89/445 @923 condition
• 2nd 118 @916 Power
• 2nd 236 @1839 Power
• + 5,xs Bleed (1 stack) 5×43/215 @0 condition
• + 5,xs Bleed (1 stack) 5×89/445 @923 condition
• 3rd 168 @916 Power
• 3rd 337 @1839 Power
• + 2,xs Poison 2×84/168 @0 condition
• + 2,xs Poison 2×176/352 @923 condition
• 1st coEff 0,1278
• 2nd coEff 0,1278
• 3rd coEff 0,1830
• DPS 666,4 @916/923 (the DPS isn’t really correct, its rather the damage applied of one combo than the damage dealt in 2,5 seconds)
• Lifeforce per second 1,66 ONLY WITH #2 and 3 conditions on the target
• attacks per second 1,2

Life Blast (Death Shroud)

• Cast 1,5 seconds
• 235 – 470 dmg @916 Power
• 472 – 944 dmg @1839 Power
• 314 – 629 DPS @1839 Power

On Minions: Minions only scale with level, your equip doesn’t matter at all. Only Traits influence Minion attributes.

Flesh Golem

• Autoattack 1,25 seconds
• DMG 770
• DPS 616
• NOTE: Applys Cripple (1s) every 1,25 seconds

Bone Fiend

• Autoattack 3 seconds
• DMG 572
• DPS 190,66
• NOTE: Applys Cripple (4s) every ten seconds

Shadow Fiend

• Autoattack 1,6 seconds (probably 1,5)
• DMG 350
• DPS 218

Flesh Worm

• Autoattack 3,6 seconds (probably 3,5)
• DMG 833
• DPS 238

Bone Minions

• Autoattack 3,5 seconds
• DMG 2 × 159
• DPS 90,85
• Putrid Explosion
• Cast 1s between explosoions
• DMG 2 × 1592
• DPS 1592
• NOTE: Bone Minions can be detonated while casting other abilities and while dazed or otherwise hindered.

So, according to this, Dagger is the weapon for DPS, although it would mean losing an AoE cripple…

Unless you want to be outDPSed by your Flesh Golem, yeah, pick dagger. Its just autoattack though. I’d say staff outperforms dagger on multiple targets.

As long as you have them in line (for autoattack).

Also, Staff’s autoattack is pretty dodgeable and slow.

Looks like I better get a dagger for my necromancer and swap out that axe.

The other downside for Daggers is that you need to be in close quarters to use its skills, on the other side, Scepter and then Staff give you more kiting abilities.

Devilsmack.5736:

The other downside for Daggers is that you need to be in close quarters to use its skills, on the other side, Scepter and then Staff give you more kiting abilities.

Thanks to Risen frenzy giving them ridiculous speed I often find myself in melee range with scepter anyway. Seriously considering switching to dagger based on this info, if only D2 wasn’t so awful. Thanks for the info Fiesbert.

Then Dagger/Dagger might be good for both WvW and PvP.

Anyway, for WvW it is bet to use Staff, Wells, DS and Epidemic.

I use Staff/Dagger. Both benefit quite well from Power as does Death Shroud and those Staff/Dagger are the best Lifeforce Generators. Although Axe 2 has the potential to generate the moste Lifeforce it gets interrupted/canceled quite often, which makes it lag behind.
After further testing: without any traits Bleedings from Scepter tick 5 times and with both +20% Bleeding and +33% Scepter Condition Duration they tick 8 times, I guess the base Bleeding is something like 5,3 seconds.

I would not bet my money on a dagger necro in WvW, you would not be able to use it nearly as much as you want to. Scepter or axe is much more flexible there.

Fiesbert.9816:

Unless you want to be outDPSed by your Flesh Golem, yeah, pick dagger. Its just autoattack though. I’d say staff outperforms dagger on multiple targets.

Depending on how you’re specced this may not be a good idea though. You have to basically be in melee range to use dagger, which can be risky.

Are you basing all of these numbers off of tooltips or actual testing in-game?

Most of them look similar to what I’ve found against the Practice Dummies in LA (Which seem to have 0 Armor), except for the Golem. The damage on the tooltip only seems to account for the damage the first two attacks in his combo do.
Ie, He will do 700, 700, and spike for 1.2k. The tooltip damage doesn’t seem to account for his third ‘spike’ hit. This is a consecutive thing, which leads me to believe that his damage output is actually higher than stated in here.

Other than that, the numbers look approximately equal to what I’ve noticed. Much thanks for the information on the Life Force generation though, I’d been wanting to get around to checking on that but hadn’t bothered to.

Judges.4527:

Fiesbert.9816:

Unless you want to be outDPSed by your Flesh Golem, yeah, pick dagger. Its just autoattack though. I’d say staff outperforms dagger on multiple targets.

Depending on how you’re specced this may not be a good idea though. You have to basically be in melee range to use dagger, which can be risky.

The only viable MH Dagger spec would be with Spectral Walk to get into the mayhem, cast every spell known to us and port back to cast Epidemic.

once test with golem in spvp. you will see flesh wurm is strongest and Shadow Fiend second strongest if you don’t use any other skills. bone fiend doesn’t do 500 damage x2. he repeats this cycle. 500 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 500 damage x2….

Was a bit pointless doing it with and w/o the power amulet considering power is the same % dmg modifier for everything. =p

nice numbers but why so many commas instead of periods?

Corrected Rending Claws DPS to 196 DPS @916 Power

forice.3165:

once test with golem in spvp. you will see flesh wurm is strongest and Shadow Fiend second strongest if you don’t use any other skills. bone fiend doesn’t do 500 damage x2. he repeats this cycle. 500 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 150 damage x2 – 500 damage x2….

I didn’t state that Bone Fiend does 500×2, he does 500 with 2 attacks. Although the crippling attack of the Bone Fiend does a little more damage.
The damage numbers of minions are an average, there is a certain spread. For example the Flesh Golem hits between 500 and 1000 which is an average of ~750 damage.

Unpredictability.4086:

nice numbers but why so many commas instead of periods?

Other countries use commas instead of periods. He’s probably just not from the US.

Thats right, I’m from Germany

The dps of the staff and the Axe are depressing as hell. No surprise there.

Seriously who is the kitten who thought thata miserable 10-12 stacks of vulnerability could make up for the huge damage loss when you attack with an axe. Doesnt matter if you’r whole party does 10% more damage per player if you do 80% less damage then you would with a condition build.

It takes god kitten 10 people in WvW and an excellent coordination to make up for the miserable Axe damage.

Arenanet what have you done to our Axe it was fine in beta and now it’s a joke.

I seriously haven’t seen a Necro with a god kitten axe in kittening 3 weeks.

Dagger won’t scale with Condition Damage…at all; it needs Power or Precision, so Epidemic isn’t really synergistic.

Dagger does hit enemies other than the targeted enemy, just like a normal melee weapon, so if they are close together it is a form of AoE. Don’t assume that D/D is going to be the best combo. Try the other off-hand weapons. I like D/W.

I thought that Life Blast scaled with Life Force? Does it really scale with Power, too? If it does scale with Life Force, does it scale by percentage, or amount? Since total Life Force scales with Vitality, it makes a difference. The tooltip is ambiguous.

Yeah, I’ve been MH Daggering it up since release. It kills in PVP when played right, I love it. There’s no arguing that it’s situational, but wearing an opponent down from range with Staff then charging in and finishing things up with the Daggers… It’s pretty great. Everyone underestimates the damage until it’s too late.

I thought that Life Blast scaled with Life Force? Does it really scale with Power, too? If it does scale with Life Force, does it scale by percentage, or amount? Since total Life Force scales with Vitality, it makes a difference. The tooltip is ambiguous.

Life Blast scales with power. The damage range of Life Blast probably is percentual. As a rule of thumb, don’t use Life Blast for DPS if you reach 50% Life Force. Actually if you can attack your enemy with your dagger don’t use Life Blast at all…

Minor point for consideration:

The line attack on staff will proc the lifeforce gain multiple times if it hits multiple targets.

Dagger MH is the best DPS weapon since they buffed from BWE tests (before was not). I feel it is not viable in dungeon, because being melee in many encounter mean being downed or “crushed on the ground” 9/10. I still prefer the axe in dungeon in combo with the staff.

Also note that DPS isn’t everything, I’m running a MM spec but i lack of utilities for dispel conditions or boons.

Edit: I used so much the dagger in MH when I was specced in Deathshroud master, my Life force bar was always full

That’s the key to making the dagger build work in dungeons and WvW. It’s not safe to use the dagger autoattack chain all the time, but dagger mainhand and staff on switch is also the best weapon setup for generating life force quickly, which means Life Blast becomes your ranged attack of choice.

Sure, the axe is easier to use, but axe damage is pretty bad. I’d rather use a mainhand dagger, which at least has a serious payoff when you’re able to get in on a target and run the chain a few times.

By the way, the necromancer axe skills really need to be looked at. Like the guy above, I never see a necromancer using an axe, and I never use one either. If I want a high-risk but high-damage weapon, that’s the dagger. If I want to deal AE, that’s the staff. If I want consistent ranged single-target damage, that’s the scepter (with condition damage gear.) The axe seems to be kind of intended as a power version of the scepter, but it’s shorter range and lower damage, so no one uses it. If you want a ranged power attack, you’re much better off going with a Death Shroud based build.

Either raise axe damage so it becomes a more viable choice or redesign it to provide some kind of compelling utility or defensive options that separate it from our other weapons.

Haligator.9615:

Dagger won’t scale with Condition Damage…at all; it needs Power or Precision, so Epidemic isn’t really synergistic.

Dagger does hit enemies other than the targeted enemy, just like a normal melee weapon, so if they are close together it is a form of AoE. Don’t assume that D/D is going to be the best combo. Try the other off-hand weapons. I like D/W.

dagger dont cleave, its not aoe – if you are hitting somebody else than the one you are targeting it mean that he’s out of range and you hare NOT hitting him.

Would a moderator mind making this thread a sticky? I’d consider it valuable information for every Necromancer. At least there should be a sticky with links to such valuable information as this thread.

I second the call for a sticky. Very useful informations. Thank you Fiesbert.

Updated scepter DPS

I did some rough testing earlier comparing different weapons in a power build and found that the scepter outdamages the axe pretty significantly (even with 0 condition damage).

As I felt your numbers should probably also reflect this, I took the liberty of calculating the scepter’s ‘DPS’ for the 1839/0 case and found it to be 562.8. What’s interesting to me here is that the loss in DPS by going full power instead of full condition is actually a lot smaller than one would expect from what is generally considered our condition weapon.

PS. I also calculated the DPS for the 916/923 case, to see if we used the same formula, but I arrived at a slightly different result: ((118+445)*2+168+352)/2.5=658.4

ya, axe was really good in beta. Now not so much. I think when used with a MM build the vuln shred for the pets and ae cripple etc is what the play style its catering to. But as many pointed out its often still not worth it.

Tbh i would just like a reliable dps contributing offhand. Or atleast one without huge casting times, seems like necro has more and longer casting times overall than any other class….then again i havent played elementalist.

the problem with axe is that, as a straight power damage dealer is in competition with dagger.
dagger has all its limitations from melee range so if axe dealt similar dps it would make dagger completely obsolete.
so the solution is to adjust extra effects, not dps – axe is in dire need of something else than just vuln in skill 1 and something at all in skill 2 (I would love some defensive boon as we dont have any reliable ones thus making dagger our all-out balls-to-the-wall burst damager and axe the tanky weapon, but that’s just my personal preference).

Zinwrath.2049:

ya, axe was really good in beta. Now not so much. I think when used with a MM build the vuln shred for the pets and ae cripple etc is what the play style its catering to. But as many pointed out its often still not worth it.

Tbh i would just like a reliable dps contributing offhand. Or atleast one without huge casting times, seems like necro has more and longer casting times overall than any other class….then again i havent played elementalist.

Nar I honestly think we have it the worst for cast times. Ele is pretty good apart from some staff abilities.

Also OP I think for bone minions you should be dividing the explosions damage by how often you actually can do it (cooldown+cast time of bone minions so around 20) to get more accurate picture of their dps.

dagger dps is high, but it’s still sad considering other classes can do the same or more damage with their autoattack at less power. And still have cleave on theirs.

Also OP I think for bone minions you should be dividing the explosions damage by how often you actually can do it (cooldown+cast time of bone minions so around 20) to get more accurate picture of their dps.

You probably won’t be able to use Bone Minions twice in a sPvP fight, which is what I’m really interested in. So I’m rather calculating the damage of using it once than using it several times during a long drawn out fight.

Added attacks per second (important for crit procs/life siphon)

Dagger doesn’t cleave. Making it one of the kittenest melee attacks in the game.

Don’t just slap a condition on axe and call it done.

We’re sick of builds that leave stat distribution in an impossible place.

Currently it’s like this:

Use scepter and stack condition damage, but have death shroud be pointless.
Use scepter and stack power damage, usable death shroud, but terrible bleeds, be useless outside of death shroud.

Use dagger and need to be in melee usable death shroud (our only real competitive dps, by the way).

Use axe and do terrible dps, usable death shroud.

Use staff (well obviously this is required on every necro no matter the build/main weapon) — you either have a scepter main and your marks do pitiful damage or you use a power build and have the dot portion of the staff usage do pitiful damage.

—

Axe needs to be buffed…
We need to have another option.
Greatsword 900 range would suffice.
Sword main hand 900 range would suffice.
I don’t even care if it’s a pistol (main and off) — this is personally my favorite idea.

Use scepter and stack condition damage, but have death shroud be pointless.

Someone else pointed out in another thread that theres actually a bleed on DS #2…

Between that and the might stacking trait, theres actually a reason to pop into it occasionally and fire off a couple blasts.

Cast times are now in the tooltip. Will update this thread soon…

Tooltip data is off. There is a small pause in between attacks that belong to an attack. For example Necrotic Grasp is listed as 0,75seconds. While it actually is the cast time, the time lost in between attacks is missing. So it takes 1,3 seconds to cast and pause or until the next attack.

I’m amazed, this thread is still not stickied or mentioned… o.O

I just saved it for future reference.

NixZero.7540:

the problem with axe is that, as a straight power damage dealer is in competition with dagger.
dagger has all its limitations from melee range so if axe dealt similar dps it would make dagger completely obsolete.
so the solution is to adjust extra effects, not dps – axe is in dire need of something else than just vuln in skill 1 and something at all in skill 2 (I would love some defensive boon as we dont have any reliable ones thus making dagger our all-out balls-to-the-wall burst damager and axe the tanky weapon, but that’s just my personal preference).

I agree, either:
1. increase vulnerability stacks from 2 to 3-4
2.Have the axe 2 cause weakness in an AOE around the channel target

Come on… I spend a good 3 hours on this :/

Props TO OP, and i think this should be a Sticky also -

but maybe Arena Net doesnt want everyone to see how bad necromancer dammage is

does anyone have links to similar info to other classes?

deapee.7516:

Don’t just slap a condition on axe and call it done.

We’re sick of builds that leave stat distribution in an impossible place.

Currently it’s like this:

Use scepter and stack condition damage, but have death shroud be pointless.
Use scepter and stack power damage, usable death shroud, but terrible bleeds, be useless outside of death shroud.

Use dagger and need to be in melee usable death shroud (our only real competitive dps, by the way).

Use axe and do terrible dps, usable death shroud.

Use staff (well obviously this is required on every necro no matter the build/main weapon) — you either have a scepter main and your marks do pitiful damage or you use a power build and have the dot portion of the staff usage do pitiful damage.

—

Axe needs to be buffed…
We need to have another option.
Greatsword 900 range would suffice.
Sword main hand 900 range would suffice.
I don’t even care if it’s a pistol (main and off) — this is personally my favorite idea.

Or… you could go 20/30/x/x/x or 30/20/x/x/x and use rampager’s gear with Blood is Power, Epidemic, and a spectral utility with plague/lich/golem ult and stack about 12k of bleed damage then faceroll with dagger1 auto (since you’ll have about 10-13 stacks of might) and if you trait for might blast proc, you can end DS with about 15-18 stacks of might and autohit for 4k each on DS1 alone.

people keep min/maxing their toons and realize the classes aren’t meant to play that way.
Rampagers adds power/cond/precision with max attribute on precision. use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature for stat adding calculations

Sheobix.8796:

deapee.7516:

Don’t just slap a condition on axe and call it done.

We’re sick of builds that leave stat distribution in an impossible place.

Currently it’s like this:

Use scepter and stack condition damage, but have death shroud be pointless.
Use scepter and stack power damage, usable death shroud, but terrible bleeds, be useless outside of death shroud.

Use dagger and need to be in melee usable death shroud (our only real competitive dps, by the way).

Use axe and do terrible dps, usable death shroud.

Use staff (well obviously this is required on every necro no matter the build/main weapon) — you either have a scepter main and your marks do pitiful damage or you use a power build and have the dot portion of the staff usage do pitiful damage.

—

Axe needs to be buffed…
We need to have another option.
Greatsword 900 range would suffice.
Sword main hand 900 range would suffice.
I don’t even care if it’s a pistol (main and off) — this is personally my favorite idea.

Or… you could go 20/30/x/x/x or 30/20/x/x/x and use rampager’s gear with Blood is Power, Epidemic, and a spectral utility with plague/lich/golem ult and stack about 12k of bleed damage then faceroll with dagger1 auto (since you’ll have about 10-13 stacks of might) and if you trait for might blast proc, you can end DS with about 15-18 stacks of might and autohit for 4k each on DS1 alone.

people keep min/maxing their toons and realize the classes aren’t meant to play that way.
Rampagers adds power/cond/precision with max attribute on precision. use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature for stat adding calculations

Of course you can hybrid to make condition and power damage both somewhat effective at the same time. You can do this on any class.

However in this situation you lose out on tough/vitality.

Unlike many of the other classes if we go power + (eitehr vit or tough) we lose out as deapee says.
If we go condition damage + (either vit or tough) we lose out.

Personally I simply don’t understand why sceptre AA damage is so weak since they nerfed the bleed duration. Perhaps they should have increased the power damage of it when they nerfed it? I look at things like dagger, pistol on thieves, or rifle, sword on warriors and it just pisses me off. Higher bleed duration, higher dd.. hmm ok.

DS bleed on the teleport is just some bandage they added last minute before release. It’s obviously not well thought out (it puts you in melee range when you should be kiting) and apart from that DS is very poor for condition spec. You can’t stay in DS as long as you would like because your dps in it sucks and you can’t apply pressure, which hurts you defensively imo [not as good to use it to bridge heal cooldowns since u just cant apply decent pressure].

Add to this the axe damage, again, is too low. Another change they made (perhaps they nerfed it because 2 damage was very high, or it was aoe, or vulnerability worked differently,) and never adjusted it to compensate later.

Now staff. I feel they need to do something with the autoattack so that you can hit objects more than 900 away from you. Maybe even 900 is an underestimate. Additionally, imo, the marks should all be hitting as hard as mark 4 to make them more effective in a power build as their damage is weak. And they should probably all be blast finishers, especially given the cooldowns. None of this is unreasonable (well again, I am comparing it to say thief shortbow or ele staff).

they designed the staff AA to be a slow moving projectile that hits multiple targets. it actually passes through your target, getting LF for each hit. kite in a subtle crescent and you’ll get more hits out of it. Difficult and frustrating, but still usable. even with rampager’s gear, you still lose out on vitality or toughness, like you mentioned. But through spectral utilities that make LF generation skyrocket, axe2 or dagger auto, there are other ways to mitigate damage through DS. Just depends what the player wants to sacrifice. By pushing a full damage hybrid with rampagers, the player can squeeze every last drop of damage available to the class at all times but has to pause to use DS when taking damage.

again, there’s always going to be a loss with necros. Our DS mechanic lending itself to power builds exclusively, combined with our lack of +healing power scaling spreads the class too thin compared to other classes.