Guild Wars 2

Ok so basically Necromancers have lately gone from the “dead last” to the “peak of the food chain” thanks to Viper gear.

I mentoined a long time ago the 2 main problems with condition damage here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-has-2-problems

Now with the removal of the 25 stack cap for conditions and adding stats which also increase condition duration both problems have been pretty much solved.

But a fun question is can there be even better stats than this? Well yes obviously a 3 stat set with Condition Damage as major and Expertise as minor attribute.
So all that remains is the 3rd attribute – which would be the best?
Well it could be Vitality to increase Health and Life Force pool.
Or Toughness as another way to increase survivability. But it would not be a good idea if you are not suppose to tank Raid Bosses.

However if we are talking about maxing out the damage output then the best would be Precision. Why you ask? Well due to Necromancers Curses traits.
“Barbed Precision” gives 33% chance to inflict bleeding when you critical strike.
So obviously the higher chance to critical strike the better.
And “Target the Weak” converts 13% of our Precision into conditional damage.
Thus more Precision means more Condition Damage.
And if you don’t know these 2 are minor traits so the only way not to use them is to not use the Curses trait line.

It’s unlikely we will see another 3 stat set. Anet seems to prefer the 4 stat approach recently.
But yes Condi Damage, expertise, precision would be the best set by far for damage.

Rampager’s (or sinister, but rampager’s is cheap) is really not all that far behind Viper’s since necro can’t really apply large stacks of conditions that are not bleeding. Getting 100% bleed duration is pretty easy even without any expertise.

Hesacon.8735:

Rampager’s (or sinister, but rampager’s is cheap) is really not all that far behind Viper’s since necro can’t really apply large stacks of conditions that are not bleeding. Getting 100% bleed duration is pretty easy even without any expertise.

Kinda true, it’s bleeds and condi transfers that are the big players, but don’t discount poisons which can tick for thousands. They come more in spurts from nova’s/CPC and RS4 but it’s still a fair bit of damage.

Hesacon.8735:

Rampager’s (or sinister, but rampager’s is cheap) is really not all that far behind Viper’s since necro can’t really apply large stacks of conditions that are not bleeding. Getting 100% bleed duration is pretty easy even without any expertise.

Nuh uh 100% duration is not exactly the limit. “Lingering Curse” does indeed give 50% duration to all conditions from Scepter skills. But this bonus is independent from the cap.
Thus in fact if we could reach 100% duration without it then with it the duration would be trippled. Yes the attribute “does” stack beyond the cap.
So while I currently have around 170% x bleed and poison duration, with lingering curse it’s actually around 255%.
I can of course reach the normal 200% using Pizza and Toxic Crystal and thus reach 300% with “Lingering Curse” on on my scepter. But if I could do it without the food it would be better.

Rikimaru.7890:

Hesacon.8735:

Rampager’s (or sinister, but rampager’s is cheap) is really not all that far behind Viper’s since necro can’t really apply large stacks of conditions that are not bleeding. Getting 100% bleed duration is pretty easy even without any expertise.

Nuh uh 100% duration is not exactly the limit. “Lingering Curse” does indeed give 50% duration to all conditions from Scepter skills. But this bonus is independent from the cap.
Thus in fact if we could reach 100% duration without it then with it the duration would be trippled. Yes the attribute “does” stack beyond the cap.
So while I currently have around 170% x bleed and poison duration, with lingering curse it’s actually around 255%.
I can of course reach the normal 200% using Pizza and Toxic Crystal and thus reach 300% with “Lingering Curse” on on my scepter. But if I could do it without the food it would be better.

Krait runes give 45% to bleed
Barbed Precision gives 20% to bleed
Food 20%
Giver’s Scepter/off hand 20%

For a total of 105% to bleed, and 40% to everything.

Scepter AA takes 2.4 seconds to go through the sequence, but let’s say with quickness it’s 1.2 seconds.

Scepter 1.3 applies 6 seconds of poison, plus 3 with lingering curse and in this example 40% vs. 100% condition duration. Lingering curse only works on the base condition damage.

Rampager’s/Sinister would then be 11.4 seconds of poison
Viper’s would be 15 seconds of poison

For a difference of 3.6 seconds, and our sequence took 1.2 seconds. So it follows that you maintain an extra 3 stacks of poison. Rampager’s would allow for 9.5 stacks of poison (total) and viper’s 12.5.

Then we can look at the damage per tick for poison. Let’s call bleeding a wash because the crit rate for rampager’s is higher and krait runes can generate some additional bleeding. Let’s also ignore power-based scepter damage for the same reason.

It’s also a raid, so let’s say you have a 25 stack of might.

Rampager’s:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNArdWnc04ohqbs2Y5mGbw7GpNQvp/GL4CG0AIA0Ci2adgRQ8VsLOGB-T1RFABDqEUgTAwSK/UR9n40DAwDAIl9HIEwiFA-w

Viper’s:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNArdWnc04ohqbs2Y5mGbw7GpNQvp/GL4CW0WrDMCividxxI0AIA0CA-TFSFQBC4EActFGaoyv2pHYkKBBwDAQJ7D0P1fIFwi6qA-w

Rampager’s poison is 166 damage per tick, Viper’s at 181; for a difference of 15.

9.5*166 = 1577 damage
12.5*181 = 2263 damage

Or a difference of 686 damage per second.

Let’s say you were aiming for 30,000 DPS (I forget what people aim for). 686 DPS is 2.3%. And this is a perfect quickness/might uptime scenario. Anything but perfect uptime for both will lower this difference.

QED my original statement that rampager’s is not far behind viper’s is accurate.

Yes there is a damage boost, but it’s not a night and day difference. If it took you 8 minutes to kill vale guardian, a 2.3% boost in party DPS would kill him 11 seconds faster.

That’s not factoring in CPC or Soul Spiral(reaper4). That’s a decent amount of additional poison, especially if you end up with poison bolts rather than the more ideal options. Also while not as big of a deal the Torment from Scepter 3 is something.

As far as crit chance, in an optimal setting it’ll be maxed for either option. Fury + Decimate defenses maxed out is enough to hit 100% crit chance easily. Actually really you only need 21 stacks of vuln which his quite common. .

I’d actually really like another 4 stat gear combo.

Primary: Condition damage
Primary: Precision
Secondary: Expertise
Secondary: <forth>

It doesn’t matter so much what the forth would be. Though Vitality or power would be prefered. I’d even be alright with Concentration considering we do have a couple of boons, though its not too important. Just about any 4th will do. Even healing power…

This is pretty close to the current meta build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQzNY1Ng3NAHOYpYwiCADgEg0HIE0Bi7hFxkIA-TBSAQBYT5BAeCABU/AD3fIiq/cTlghUJGFOJAkCYRlVA-e

You also have to account for the loss of thorn runes, so that’s a considerable amount of condi damage in ideal circumstances. With a standard rotation you should be keeping a good amount of poison up. It’s usually 15-25% of my dps.

Having 40% poison duration instead of 100% is a big loss.

That said however, using rampager’s is probably good enough damage for general play. Open world and even some fractals you can play with whatever stats you want. I just wouldn’t bring it into raids.

Fluffy.1932:

This is pretty close to the current meta build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQzNY1Ng3NAHOYpYwiCADgEg0HIE0Bi7hFxkIA-TBSAQBYT5BAeCABU/AD3fIiq/cTlghUJGFOJAkCYRlVA-e

You also have to account for the loss of thorn runes, so that’s a considerable amount of condi damage in ideal circumstances. With a standard rotation you should be keeping a good amount of poison up. It’s usually 15-25% of my dps.

Having 40% poison duration instead of 100% is a big loss.

That said however, using rampager’s is probably good enough damage for general play. Open world and even some fractals you can play with whatever stats you want. I just wouldn’t bring it into raids.

Honestly it’s good enough for raids, just you know… why? It’s not like Vipers gear is all that expensive. If it was trailblazers or something I could understand.

The power damage from viper is significant. When you look at the bleeds each scepter auto inflicts, and then look at your crit damage from the power portion of scepter auto, you’ll notice it’s almost equal. Around 1300 bleed and 1000-2000 power damage per crit.

Viper is good, the only thing I think would be better is if Power and expertise were switched. The duration off expertise alone would be huge, and would free up runes/sigil/food/etc for other things.

must be good to be pve necro, if only