Guild Wars 2

Obviously(i think), the main hand has to be a Scepter. But what about off-hand?

Dagger:
Deathly Swarm: Nice but i have Epidemic(another must have for Condition Master)
Enfeeble: More bleed and Weakness. How usefull is that? Weakness is affected by bleed?

Focus:
Reaper’s Touch: low damage but give Vulnerability and Regen.
Spinal Shivers: Chill your foe and remove three boons. Usefull For kiting.

Horn:
Wail of Doom: Usefull for CC.
Spinal Shivers: Locust Swarm: Another CC.

I see the dagger the less useful of the three. And the Focus better for soloing PVE and the Warhorn better for dungeons.

Thoughts?

Excuse my english :P

Dagger, take Blood is Power as a utility skill, and you suddenly have another 2 stacks of relatively long lasting bleed as well as a way to get 20% Life Force for emergencies.

Enfeeble is a decent way to reduce incoming damage and is another AoE skill for tagging mobs in dynamic events.

If I am in wvwvw by myself or generally pvp by myself I will toss on the dagger. If i happen to be with a buddy that is better at burst damage than I am then I will utilize the focus more to get some vulnerability stacked up. I only use the horn if I happen to be doing tpvp or spvp.

The best thing about enfeebling blood is the talent that makes it happen on your dodge, particularly in PVP.

Dagger vs focus depends to some extent on who you’re fighting but assuming you have a few skills that put conditions on you dagger is usually the better bet even if you’re not fighting an opponent who uses conditions heavily themselves.

The best thing about enfeebling blood is the talent that makes it happen on your dodge, particularly in PVP.

There is no such thing. Mark on dodge or Enfeebling when you go into DS.

Yeah that’s what I meant. Mark on dodge and enfeebling on DS are both awesome so I transposed the two.

I use dagger as my offhand choice but I haven’t tried the others at the same time as the scepter so maybe they work just as well. One of the factors that made me choose dagger is that deathly swarm blinds as well. The blind plus access to weakness as well is awesome for mitigating damage. I’m still leveling my necro at this point so I haven’t had much group experience with him but I definitely plan on trying other offhands once I get higher in lv.

dagger or horn for WvW. focus has some merit in sPVP, from what i hear, but i have no experience with it.

i think the dagger is better for wvw, though. while the horns daze and speed buff are nice, the transferring of conditions with your dagger is too good to pass up. plus that AOE skill really wrecks people if you combine it with other aoes, then epidemic it again.

Dagger all the way. To keep 10+ bleeds rolling constantly you need a diverse skill rotation with some long bleeds. Dagger OH is your butter if scepter is your bread.

+1 for /dagger for strict damage.

Based on some quick tables with 300 power/300 condition damage, bleeds are the second-best source of burst damage (top is bone minions, for a quick burst of 2k in two seconds at 80). Getting off two enfeebles, Blood Is Power, swarm to transfer the bleed, and then Epidemic, nets you a ton of Bleed over as many mobs as you could clip with the Epidemic. Needless to say, the numbers are strongly in favour of this as well.

As for WvW, I never used anything but a Scepter/ Dagger/Dagger combo. I would suggest going Dagger/Focus for duelling though, as that gives you stable rejuv (which, assuming healing is equivalent to damage, is superior to bleeding up to four stacks of the latter).

Dagger.

Focus and Warhorn, to me, are melee weapons.

i like focus. but thats because i like kiting.

Scepter/Dagger off/Staff are pretty much the only weapons you need.

marianitten.1247:

Deathly Swarm: Nice but i have Epidemic(another must have for Condition Master)

They are two different abilities. I personally like using epidemic then followed by deathly swarm

lunartic.3647:

marianitten.1247:

Deathly Swarm: Nice but i have Epidemic(another must have for Condition Master)

They are two different abilities. I personally like using epidemic then followed by deathly swarm

I would actually cast Deathly Swarm first and quickly Epidemic to spread the Blidness too.

I’m starting to like the warhorn more and more.

I think the they fixed the trait so the duration on locust lasts longer, and it gives 1% life force per hit + cripple. So you can pop locust and sit on people in death swarm and maintain quite a bit of lifeforce, and the daze gets close to 3 seconds with the trait, seems more like 2.5s.

I think if you go for an upclose melee conditionmancer warhorn will suit you better, you can still have signet for instant condition transfer and enfeebling on death shroud.

They all have different utility.

Dagger offhand is more about damage mitigation with blind and weakness. Weakness is really an underappreciated condition i think.

Focus is better for controlling one target (chill and vuln) and is good for life force generation.

Warhorn is better for crowd control (area cripple and daze) and is also okay at life force generation (locust swarm gains life force per tic per enemy hit, so can be very fast in a crowded environment)

Jackal.7432:

They all have different utility.

Dagger offhand is more about damage mitigation with blind and weakness. Weakness is really an underappreciated condition i think.

Focus is better for controlling one target (chill and vuln) and is good for life force generation.

Warhorn is better for crowd control (area cripple and daze) and is also okay at life force generation (locust swarm gains life force per tic per enemy hit, so can be very fast in a crowded environment)

IMO weakness is over-valued.

Most people I see still seem to think it’s a flat 50% dmg reduction on non-crits. When it’s actually a 50% chance for a 50% reduction on non crits, which roughly translates to 25% dmg reduction on average on something that has 0% crit chance. When someone has 50% crit chance (pretty much any crit build, not sure if mobs crit) that’s only a 12.5% dmg reduction. Compared to protection it’s laughable and not as consistent.

Would be nice if they made weakness a straight up 25% dmg reduction PERIOD.

Knote.2904:

IMO weakness is over-valued.

Most people I see still seem to think it’s a flat 50% dmg reduction on non-crits. When it’s actually a 50% chance for a 50% reduction on non crits, which roughly translates to 25% dmg reduction on average on something that has 0% crit chance. When someone has 50% crit chance (pretty much any crit build, not sure if mobs crit) that’s only a 12.5% dmg reduction. Compared to protection it’s laughable and not as consistent.

Would be nice if they made weakness a straight up 25% dmg reduction PERIOD.

Actually for PvE is very usefull, I usually do it like this:
Scepter 1×3 (for full cond), Scepter 2, OH Dagger 5, Well of Suffering, CPC, Epidemic, DS, DS 4.