Guild Wars 2

Hello, I’m trying to build my necromancer to do well both in PvE and WvWvW. I’m running with the build 20/30/20/0/0, I’ve already had a full rabid armor set with 6 undead runes, and all 6 carrion accessories. I’m trying to do FotM to change my accessories, so can give me an advice of what to take (carrion or rabid)? And can you give me some advice on weapons too? I’m currently using carrion scepter/focus and staff, should I change to rabid? What sigil should I use on them (I’m considering between agony, earth and strength). Thank you for your time.

For WvW I prefer all Rabid gear and im having better luck with Sigil of Ice on my Scepter instead of Earth. It really helps kite some of our weakness classes in wvw.

Assuming you’re playing as a condition necromancer, I’d suggest Rabid over Carrion.

I personally use Rabid armor for the precision and condition damage stats, coupled with a scepter of Earth to inflict as many bleeds as possible.

The extra precision is vital if you want to play as a condition necromancer, as it gives more critical chance and thus more chance to inflict the extra bleeds from the Barbed Precision trait and the Sigil of Earth on your scepter.

I strongly recommend Lopez’ Condition Necromancer guide to PvE. It’s a great guide if you want to play our necromancer effectively.

http://lopezirl.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/a-condition-necromancers-guide-to-pve/

Gilwe.9267:

Assuming you’re playing as a condition necromancer, I’d suggest Rabid over Carrion.

I personally use Rabid armor for the precision and condition damage stats, coupled with a scepter of Earth to inflict as many bleeds as possible.

The extra precision is vital if you want to play as a condition necromancer, as it gives more critical chance and thus more chance to inflict the extra bleeds from the Barbed Precision trait and the Sigil of Earth on your scepter.

I strongly recommend Lopez’ Condition Necromancer guide to PvE. It’s a great guide if you want to play our necromancer effectively.

http://lopezirl.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/a-condition-necromancers-guide-to-pve/

Couldn’t agree more about that guide. It helped me immensely. Of course, always fine tune to your taste, but the fundamentals he lays out and the explanations are fantastic.

Hi everyone,
I’ve been playing rabid almost since the game is out.I was ok with it.
Then i saw Gibbly playing his necro with carrion and decided to try it ,seeing that this great necro was using it.
I will never go back to rabid.
Go in PvP and go and kill some golems with rabid then with carrion.You will notice first that the damage done by a hit with carrion is equal to the damage done by a critical hit with rabid which means that it is as if you were doing only critical hits with a rabid amulet (—> 100% critical chance with a rabid amulet).Of course,you also do critics with carrion which are much more powerfull than those done with rabid.
The bleeding that proc on critical hits can be from the trait (1s) or the earth sigil so about 1/2 times the bleed that will proc on a critical hit will last 1s or about 6 or 7 s which means with 50% chance of critical hits that 1/6 hit will proc one 1s bleed and 1/6 hit will proc a 6s bleed.Supposing you do 114 damage /tick,in 6 hit,your proc bleeds will do 1112 damage or around 165 more damage /hit.This 165 more damage /hit doesn’t equal the damaged gained on blanked hit with carrion over rabid.And remember that you still do critical hits with carrion,criticals i don’t even need to take in consideration to see that carrion produce a much greater dps than rabid even if rabid proc bleeds (which carrion do too).
Second argument for carrion: you kill faster because you have more dps even without having to wait for the proc bleeds to do damages(damages which anyway will be inferior to these done with carrion).
Third thing: you can destroy objects much more faster with carrion (thank you to power).
You will survive a burst much more easily with carrion because even if toughness may bring you more Ehp (some say that it is better with carrion but i personnaly didn’t calculate it so let’s suppose that rabid is better),these extra Ehp are useless if you are bursted and don’t have the time to heal and geting quick into death shroud with carrion is much more usefull since DS ’s life bar scales with HP.
So personnaly,i will stick to carrion….The choice is yours.I just wanted to give my opinion since like many people do,i,for long, have thought that rabid was the best of the best for necros and totally changed my mind
Now,if you plan to do only dungeons,why not rabid…But against players:carrion.

Rabid can do as much as Carrion in damage, but the problem is, its mostly more condition damage and you have to wait for it. Usually 7-8 seconds for bleed proc to run from Earth. It can be cleansed or the fight can just end before you get the damage.

With a condi build already so dependent on condi damage, the direct damage from power is a better balancer I have come to feel.

Also on staff, which is used a lot in WvW, carrion is better because of all the aoe, the extra power helps every single target damaged. While the earth sigil goes on cooldown as soon as it procs on one person within the 5 aoe limit on your marks.

And about half your precision damage is dependent on those bleed procs. Unless you are running like 100% bleed duration, then you are getting a nice boost from Barbed Precision which has no cooldown and usually no fear to cleanse since it does all its damage in 2 seconds. But I find 100% bleed overkill because most of your other bleeds will never run their distance in pvp.

Where Rabid wins out is on your Scepter auto-attack, it is really quite good with 2 Earth Sigils, often proccing 3 bleeds in one hit. It’s low base attack makes power not do much for it. But I found not that many situations where I’m just sitting having to spam Scepter 1 on an enemy, other than lazy PvE. With Death Shroud, and 2 weapon sets, a Necro usually always has something better to do.

If you run carrion there is still a way to pseudo create rabid, and that is flash DS for the Fury proc. Risky to do, but if you are popping off a doom anyway, will give you that precision back for a few seconds for your regular attacks.

Earth sigils do not stack so i guess that when you say often seeing 3 stacks of bleed on one hit,you mean the bleed from the scepter attack+the bleed from the sigil+the bleed from the trait ?
2 earth sigils bring 84 % chance to proc a bleed instead of 60% if you have just one.
Isn’t there a Cod4 player called Pendragon ?(i’ve already seen your name somewhere ^^).

I too used to run all Rabid gear but have recently started using some pieces of Carrion in WvW. I’ve also switched over to using the Carrion amulet in sPvP with Geomancy Sigils.

Given the relative weakness of Barbed Precision (which is an oversight in my opinion), going for precision over power doesn’t make sense. Sure, Sigil of Earth is great (and I still keep my crit at a good level, around 40% for WvW) but it’s not worth sacrificing raw power damage for the chance at a proc. Furthermore, since AoE cleanses are quite common in WvW, having a bit more power damage is great for assisting when there’s four million Guardians on the other side of the zerg.

All in all, I’m sure the damage difference is minor and it all comes down to playstyle. I’ve found a lot of success in running all-stat jewelry with a mix of Rabid and Carrion across the rest of my gear.

mons.1386:

Earth sigils do not stack so i guess that when you say often seeing 3 stacks of bleed on one hit,you mean the bleed from the scepter attack+the bleed from the sigil+the bleed from the trait ?
2 earth sigils bring 84 % chance to proc a bleed instead of 60% if you have just one.
Isn’t there a Cod4 player called Pendragon ?(i’ve already seen your name somewhere ^^).

I’m sure its a common name, don’t play cod. Yes, on the 3 stacks being from the scepter/barbed precision/sigil.

mons.1386:

You will survive a burst much more easily with carrion because even if toughness may bring you more Ehp (some say that it is better with carrion but i personnaly didn’t calculate it so let’s suppose that rabid is better),these extra Ehp are useless if you are bursted and don’t have the time to heal and geting quick into death shroud with carrion is much more usefull since DS ’s life bar scales with HP.

Just a few notes which may or may not affect what you’re doing:

-For direct damage taken prior to any heals being applied, more EHP means a greater % of your health remaining after the damage is applied. So when it comes to surviving an initial burst your total EHP is important, but whether you get it via toughness or vitality (or both) doesn’t matter until heals and/or condition damage come into play.

-Mitigation also applies to DS.

I find everyone’s arguments interesting. I’m mainly a wvw roamer/small group player and I play a conditionmancer. Do you guys suggest a mix of rabid and carrion equipment, or just go full carrion in everything?

I wouldn’t mix and match. I would commit to one or the other.

Personally I only see an advantage in taking Carrion if you plan to avoid Undead runes. Undead runes a very compelling reason to run full rabid.

I also disagree with the premise that the barbed precision bleeds do not make up for the difference in damage between white carrion and white rabid hits. In my experience, they more than make up for it. Against structures though, you are very correct in that rabid is horrid.

I tend to dislike vitality over toughness though. As a necro, in 95% of the fights, I rarely am concerned with conditions on me. Since toughness counters burst and vitality counters conditions and burst to a lesser degree, I go with toughness.

Zerker thieves can hit me for 7-8k on a backstab, with 1800 toughness. With base toughness in Carrion its going to hit a lot harder, and my heals are not going to make up for that with my very poor sustain. I prefer stronger heals with a smaller HP pool when I am playing necro. (Ele/guardian/ranger can make use of the extra HP because they can overheal it… we cannot).

Rennoko.5731:

Personally I only see an advantage in taking Carrion if you plan to avoid Undead runes. Undead runes a very compelling reason to run full rabid.

The percentage of condition damage from toughness on the runes is so low, I’m not sure it’s that decisive of a factor. 5%, so that’s only 5 extra condition per 100 toughness. I don’t use Undead either way, but even if you did, switching full Rabid to Carrion, you are only talking losing 20 or 30 condition damage, which is like 1 or 2 at most ticks of damage on bleeds.

Zerker thieves can hit me for 7-8k on a backstab, with 1800 toughness. With base toughness in Carrion its going to hit a lot harder, and my heals are not going to make up for that with my very poor sustain.

I recently went from Rabid to Carrion (not full, about 75%), and you can definitely notice the difference, but you also have a lot more health to absorb such hits. Your initial health pool will handle the damage exactly the same in the long run.

Healing is where Rabid excels but it may not be as much as some think. In figuring for a fight where you heal one time, as well a few regen’s, let’s say 8000 total health healed, the difference in mitigation saved from Rabid is only about 1000 more health. Which will of course start getting negated by condition damage. Necro’s can get a lot of conditions off them, but quick ones like burning and confusion will often get through no matter what, and burning is pretty painful.

Carrion is giving you a bit more sustainability in Death Shroud as well since it refills on fixed percentage.

On the balance, I don’t find a big difference in survivability between the sets, I think Carrion vs Rabid is far more about the Power vs Precision.

Rennoko.5731:

I wouldn’t mix and match. I would commit to one or the other.

Personally I only see an advantage in taking Carrion if you plan to avoid Undead runes. Undead runes a very compelling reason to run full rabid.

I also disagree with the premise that the barbed precision bleeds do not make up for the difference in damage between white carrion and white rabid hits. In my experience, they more than make up for it. Against structures though, you are very correct in that rabid is horrid.

I tend to dislike vitality over toughness though. As a necro, in 95% of the fights, I rarely am concerned with conditions on me. Since toughness counters burst and vitality counters conditions and burst to a lesser degree, I go with toughness.

Zerker thieves can hit me for 7-8k on a backstab, with 1800 toughness. With base toughness in Carrion its going to hit a lot harder, and my heals are not going to make up for that with my very poor sustain. I prefer stronger heals with a smaller HP pool when I am playing necro. (Ele/guardian/ranger can make use of the extra HP because they can overheal it… we cannot).

I used to be all about rabid myself, but that changed. Most necros don’t go undead runes after the terror buff. Rune of nightmare is it. The fear(even though long CD) is great, and the 10% condi duration helps ensure two ticks of terror.

Carrion also increases your lf bar a lot.
When it comes to the meta, condi DMG is what people are going, even as a necro you can’t cleanse all of it. When it comes to tpvp carrion is superior

I’m planning to run rabid with runes of the undead.

Rabid gives toughness, so does the runes (I think) and with points in Death Magic, you could have some pretty high toughness. The last effect with undead rune is that it converts toughness for condition damage by 5% (like a trait)

I personally Prefer Carrion over Rabid. Mostly for the fact when I ran rabid gear I ended up downing myself half the time with self applied conditions since toughness doesnt dull the effects of conditions that much. Most of it is poor skill management or bad timing but I have more survivability with full carrion gear than rabid.

Damage wise I saw no difference between the 2 sets accept for a few more crits here and there.

I also have to agree with the nightmare runes. Even though I only use 5 of the set and have 1 undead rune for extra cd, the extra 10% cd duration helps out so much.

is the difference really that much? I have full rabid atm but really dont feel like regearing, and if it is that much better is it worth replacing all jewellery or can i just stick with rabid jewellery and use carrion armor

IMO condition build is useless in WvW where 30% of players are guardians.
But then again it depends on your server, who you run with, against what kind of team, etc.

rogerwilko.6895:

IMO condition build is useless in WvW where 30% of players are guardians.
But then again it depends on your server, who you run with, against what kind of team, etc.

Dont run a duration condi build instead go for a pressure condo build!

In PvP with any kind of LF generation Carrion is better, the only use of Rabid is having the highest amount of condition damage, and by way of high crit chance, the most bleeds possible. Otherwise, Carrion is better. But generally speaking unless you are going for that max condition damage, you want Carrion.

Login.5102:

Rennoko.5731:

I wouldn’t mix and match. I would commit to one or the other.

Personally I only see an advantage in taking Carrion if you plan to avoid Undead runes. Undead runes a very compelling reason to run full rabid.

I also disagree with the premise that the barbed precision bleeds do not make up for the difference in damage between white carrion and white rabid hits. In my experience, they more than make up for it. Against structures though, you are very correct in that rabid is horrid.

I tend to dislike vitality over toughness though. As a necro, in 95% of the fights, I rarely am concerned with conditions on me. Since toughness counters burst and vitality counters conditions and burst to a lesser degree, I go with toughness.

Zerker thieves can hit me for 7-8k on a backstab, with 1800 toughness. With base toughness in Carrion its going to hit a lot harder, and my heals are not going to make up for that with my very poor sustain. I prefer stronger heals with a smaller HP pool when I am playing necro. (Ele/guardian/ranger can make use of the extra HP because they can overheal it… we cannot).

I used to be all about rabid myself, but that changed. Most necros don’t go undead runes after the terror buff. Rune of nightmare is it. The fear(even though long CD) is great, and the 10% condi duration helps ensure two ticks of terror.

Carrion also increases your lf bar a lot.
When it comes to the meta, condi DMG is what people are going, even as a necro you can’t cleanse all of it. When it comes to tpvp carrion is superior

actually I believe it’s + 20%, the tooltip has been wrong since beta (unless they fixed it).. the 2 piece bonus is right but the 4th makes it add up to 20.

Carrion no question for me. was running rabid for a couple months after release and while it does a lot of things right, and synergises well with many traits it is just a little lacking. With carrion it is an extra bit of damage on top that speeds up killing, and it makes necro more flexible in regards to weapon and utility changes.

Also in wvw with the predominance of condition removal from shouts, combos, and the many people running melandru and lemongrass it makes solely relying on conditions less viable

One more thing about carrion’s advantage over rabid is that you can stack more conditions on you before transfering it with staff 4 then epidemic…

Jewel.1457:

Login.5102:

Rennoko.5731:

I wouldn’t mix and match. I would commit to one or the other.

Personally I only see an advantage in taking Carrion if you plan to avoid Undead runes. Undead runes a very compelling reason to run full rabid.

I also disagree with the premise that the barbed precision bleeds do not make up for the difference in damage between white carrion and white rabid hits. In my experience, they more than make up for it. Against structures though, you are very correct in that rabid is horrid.

I tend to dislike vitality over toughness though. As a necro, in 95% of the fights, I rarely am concerned with conditions on me. Since toughness counters burst and vitality counters conditions and burst to a lesser degree, I go with toughness.

Zerker thieves can hit me for 7-8k on a backstab, with 1800 toughness. With base toughness in Carrion its going to hit a lot harder, and my heals are not going to make up for that with my very poor sustain. I prefer stronger heals with a smaller HP pool when I am playing necro. (Ele/guardian/ranger can make use of the extra HP because they can overheal it… we cannot).

I used to be all about rabid myself, but that changed. Most necros don’t go undead runes after the terror buff. Rune of nightmare is it. The fear(even though long CD) is great, and the 10% condi duration helps ensure two ticks of terror.

Carrion also increases your lf bar a lot.
When it comes to the meta, condi DMG is what people are going, even as a necro you can’t cleanse all of it. When it comes to tpvp carrion is superior

actually I believe it’s + 20%, the tooltip has been wrong since beta (unless they fixed it).. the 2 piece bonus is right but the 4th makes it add up to 20.

Carrion no question for me. was running rabid for a couple months after release and while it does a lot of things right, and synergises well with many traits it is just a little lacking. With carrion it is an extra bit of damage on top that speeds up killing, and it makes necro more flexible in regards to weapon and utility changes.

Also in wvw with the predominance of condition removal from shouts, combos, and the many people running melandru and lemongrass it makes solely relying on conditions less viable

It was fixed a bit ago. Still the go to runes though

A good way to look at it is going carrion you have more flexibility vs. targets with easy access to condition removal. You are not putting all your eggs in one basket so to speak you can still do some decent pewpew while you get them back up on your target.

In WvW for example people running lemongrass+melandru runes for a -65% condition duration along with removal before traits(for further reduction or instant removals) even come into play fighting against them relying “ONLY” on conditions w/rabid armor you’re really pigeonholing yourself into a bad situation.

Carrion gives you the best of both worlds decent damage sustained and direct without being to squishy thanks to the vitality. With that said there is no Carrion stat ascended trinkets which is quite annoying so you could go for the divinity style all-stat ascended items, rampagers for a little precision(pow/pre/con) or directly go for extra power or condition damage depending on your personal preference/playstyle.

In PvE Carrion will win on general dmg vs. rabid as most targets won’t live that long or have mechanics that cause you to do things that may make it hard to keep the conditions rolling nonstop. If you want hybrid damage in pve rampagers is the better route to go you can still survive np being evasive and using DS.

Just to clarify, with full rabid, I have around 1800 toughness or so (may be a little less), so with undead runes, that is 90 condition damage (not 20-30). It is noticeable, and adds quite a bit in the long run.

It really surprises me so many people are pro Carrion though…. having a bigger HP pool just means you have to fill it that much more often, and we have so few options for filling it back up effectively in a drawn out fight. Short fights, bursty fights, it may pan out to be better, but not if it lasts past the first heal.

Check back when they improve our sustain and I may agree, but not right now.

I would argue Carrion only will out-damage rabid if the mob is condition capped, otherwise it is a wash. Bearing in mind you are down condition damage from the undead runes (+90 from the toughness + the rest of the rune bonuses).

In general its better to just run rampagers in PVE, then you get the condition/prec/power you need to deal more than both carrion and rabid. For PVP, run whichever you feel comfortable with. If you want more condition damage, run rabid, if you want bigger non-crit white hits, and to worry less about conditions, run carrion.

Rennoko.5731:

Just to clarify, with full rabid, I have around 1800 toughness or so (may be a little less), so with undead runes, that is 90 condition damage (not 20-30). It is noticeable, and adds quite a bit in the long run.

You assume that you don’t have any toughness at all with a carrion amulet in sPvP.
However, the difference is always exactly 644. That’s how much toughness you get with a rabid amulet in sPvP. And that adds 32 condition damage, or 1,6 extra damage per bleed tick.
Or: 1464 vs 1497 condition damage (for my build, 30 Curses + 20 DeathMagic).
So no… there’s no way you’ll notice a difference here (except for +1 on bleeds).

Rennoko.5731:

It really surprises me so many people are pro Carrion though…. having a bigger HP pool just means you have to fill it that much more often, and we have so few options for filling it back up effectively in a drawn out fight. Short fights, bursty fights, it may pan out to be better, but not if it lasts past the first heal.

More effective healing… pfff, please. If I heal 6k on a 20k or 26k health pool is not a game changer. Necro heals just aren’t effective in general and full rabid isn’t going to change that…

Bottom line imo:

PvE/WvW: I’ve always been favouring carrion but that’s because I don’t use a scepter. And promoting on-crit effects is really the only pro of rabid, which I don’t need so carrion is a win-win for me.

@WvW: Carrion beats rabid. Carrion mixed with non-carrion gear beats pure carrion.

@flow what kind of mix do you do? do you mix carrion and rampager?

right now, i’m in rabid, because i can get it for karma, and i had lots of that, but i’m willing to try out carrion in the future. do you mainly use staff for a weapon then?

I would suggest that zerker beats both carrion and rabid in WVW, but I guess that is another discussion for another day. I ran carrion for the first two months of the game, and switched and never went back.

But I like barbed precision and earth sigil, and I love sceptor.

Vitality vs. Toughness

Both give exactly the same effective health (24,812) with Carrion giving the additional 13,895 ds-health.

(assuming the [ds-health = (health * 1.20) * 1.30] formula is still correct (the 0.30 being 30% from Soul Reaping)
____________________________________________________________________

Power vs. Precision

644 Power adds 69.5% (118 > 200 tool-tip) damage onto Scepter 1.
Non-critical damage: 200
Critical damage: 360
Critical chance: 18%
Averaged Damage: 225

644 Precision adds 31% critical chance.
Non-critical damage: 118
Critical damage: 212
Critical chance: 49%
Averaged Damage: 164

Average damage worked out using 180% critical damage (150% base + 30% from Soul Reaping) over 100 hits.
____________________________________________________________________

Misc

644 Toughness from the Rabid amulet will give 32 condition damage extra with Superior runes of the Undead which is +1 bleed damage per tick.

I tend to mix armor a lot, now. Rabid is great for its condition damage and toughness but toughness can be overdone making you a target in PvE so adding Carrion, Rampager, or something else often makes up a bit for shorted stats in other areas. Soldiers is good for power builds but, without precision, limits crit chance. Figure what kind of trait skills you want, then match weapons and use equipment to achieve a balance that is strong enough without being too squishy.

I made a Rampager set that I can use for decent damage when placing points in toughness and health for the skills associated like greater marks and staff mastery along with flesh of the master. Ordinarily, such traits would short damage output but the minions do not scale and so can make up for some deficiency in spite and curses. A rampager set can help there because my traits are conservative.

Rabid is very powerful for a condition build because cond dmg is strongly boosted. Mix and match if you like. There is little harm in doing so. The temple gear is a mix and does very well on its own. Two rabid, two magi, and two soldiers, if i remember correctly. Just watch the crit chance from precision if using skills or sigils that proc on crit. They have cool downs to keep in mind, too, so payback diminishes as crit chance increases to more than the CDs will allow.

Ascii.9726:

Vitality vs. Toughness

Both give exactly the same effective health (24,812) with Carrion giving the additional 13,895 ds-health.

(assuming the [ds-health = (health * 1.20) * 1.30] formula is still correct (the 0.30 being 30% from Soul Reaping)
____________________________________________________________________

Power vs. Precision

644 Power adds 69.5% (118 > 200 tool-tip) damage onto Scepter 1.
Non-critical damage: 200
Critical damage: 360
Critical chance: 18%
Averaged Damage: 225

644 Precision adds 31% critical chance.
Non-critical damage: 118
Critical damage: 212
Critical chance: 49%
Averaged Damage: 164

Average damage worked out using 180% critical damage (150% base + 30% from Soul Reaping) over 100 hits.
____________________________________________________________________

Misc

644 Toughness from the Rabid amulet will give 32 condition damage extra with Superior runes of the Undead which is +1 bleed damage per tick.

You are generally the expert on DS mechanics, but DS base HP being equal to 120% of HP I am pretty sure was debunked some time ago when it comes to everything other than fall damage. My testing suggested it was much closer to 60% (I think I am remembering that right). When testing against regular damage from mobs. This would bring down your 13,000 bonus health number quite a bit.

Also wouldn’t the toughness effect on your DS HP give you more EHP from DS, thus an equivalent return similar to vitality in DS? I am not arguing VIT<TOUGH, I think for all EHP purposes, including DS, they are equal.

As for the other information, 18 criticals vs. 49 criticals, remembering that each crit is procing a 100+ damage bleed, that is 31 extra 100 damage bleeds, or 3100 bonus damage (with no duration increase). Since you are losing out on 6100 average damage or so over the course of 100 hits, and getting back 3100 from bleeds, it certainly seems the rabid route is less effective.

However that is based off SPVP stat, and is ignoring the fact that high armor/protection/weakness counter your white damage, while a 1 second bleed is nigh un-counterable.

Also again that last stat is rabid in SPVP, which is quite different than full rabid in open world. I won’t argue rabid vs carrion in SPVP, becuase that is not my area of expertise. I do WvW almost exclusively in rabid gear. (PVE is rampagers/zerker)

Rennoko.5731:

I would suggest that zerker beats both carrion and rabid in WVW, but I guess that is another discussion for another day.

I suppose it depends on your opponent(s), your group composition and the situation.
I can only speak for my WvW build: I would never lose a 1v1 against a Berseker necro. However, they might be able to handle other opponents better than I do…

Feldorn.6873:

@flow what kind of mix do you do? do you mix carrion and rampager?

right now, i’m in rabid, because i can get it for karma, and i had lots of that, but i’m willing to try out carrion in the future. do you mainly use staff for a weapon then?

Here’s my build
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/

So that would be carrion armor and staff, rampager’s axe+wh, soldier trinkets except for those two with cond-dmg/toughness/vit/precision.

Now this combo hits the sweetspot for my staff build, but if you want to use the scepter or go into other traitlines then the gear should maybe have more precision.
If you want to stick with rabid on armor you could mix it with some of those cd/t/v/pr accessories, or maybe some rampager’s or sentinel’s (are those available for ascended yet?).

Anyway, my point being: there are lot’s of ways in PvE/WvW to get both vitality and toughness without reducing your offensive stats too much.
As you can see in my build, my EHP is almost 34k which is more than pure rabid or carrion, but the playstyle with it is still rather aggressive.

Your right in saying Toughness would affect DS-HP too, taken into account it would mean both give close to identical E-HP. It would be hard to confirm/ reject until we have a new solid formula for DS-HP.

Taking into account Barbed Precision under a standard TPvP build the damage over 100 attacks (including condition damage this time) would be:

Carrion amulet
82 non-critical hits doing 16,400 damage
18 critical hits doing 6,480 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
11.88 barbed precision doing 8,042.76 damage

Total damage: 98,622.76
Average damage: 986

Rabid amulet
51 non-critical hits doing 6,018 damage
49 critical hits doing 10,407.6 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
32.34 barbed precision doing 21,894.18 damage

Total damage: 106019.78
Average damage: 1060

To sum up, Rabid would actually out-damage Carrion’s Scepter 1 by 7.5% through Barbed Precision assuming every proc lasted the full 1 second plus the additional 13,851.42 bleed damage dealt by Barbed Precision would not be reduced by enemy armour were as the 6454.4 direct damage from carrion’s power would be subject to armour reduction.

Note: This comparison in damage is only on the Scepter 1

Pure-spec equipment comes with handicaps, too. I hope you have the trait’s mixed in with your calculation. Spite adds condition duration, which is a very big deal for damage output. The other trait branches have their own advantages. Blood magic adds healing for endurance. The combinations that work for Necromancer are wonderfully varied. Nemesis’ hybrid really pushes damage output but players may wish to use cleric’s and apothecary’s gear with it for balance if they are not awesome dodgers.

Rennoko.5731:

Also wouldn’t the toughness effect on your DS HP give you more EHP from DS, thus an equivalent return similar to vitality in DS? I am not arguing VIT<TOUGH, I think for all EHP purposes, including DS, they are equal.

Toughness affects DS and therefore is equal to Vitality in DS, but only for your initial LF bar in a fight. Once you start regenerating life force, every skill regenerates at a fixed percentage, and that is where vitality pulls ahead of toughness for DS, because you get free extra life force to eat conditions, where compared to normal heals, you heal in fixed amounts which makes toughness gets better and better due to it giving back more EHP, in DS it does not.

flow.6043:

More effective healing… pfff, please. If I heal 6k on a 20k or 26k health pool is not a game changer. Necro heals just aren’t effective in general and full rabid isn’t going to change that…

Right, not unless you are in a long team fight or zerg situation getting tons of healing from other teammates.

Just the Necro’s main heal alone, assume Consume Conditions, if you heal once in a fight, the mitigation difference between carrion and rabid is only about 800 more EHP.

However you also have over 6k more real buffer health in carrion to deal with condition damage.

Ascii.9726:

Carrion amulet
82 non-critical hits doing 16,400 damage
18 critical hits doing 6,480 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
11.88 barbed precision doing 8,042.76 damage

Total damage: 98,622.76
Average damage: 986

Rabid amulet
51 non-critical hits doing 6,018 damage
49 critical hits doing 10,407.6 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
32.34 barbed precision doing 21,894.18 damage

Total damage: 106019.78
Average damage: 1060

To sum up, Rabid would actually out-damage Carrion’s Scepter 1 by 7.5% through Barbed Precision assuming every proc lasted the full 1 second plus the additional 13,851.42 bleed damage dealt by Barbed Precision would not be reduced by enemy armour were as the 6454.4 direct damage from carrion’s power would be subject to armour reduction.

Note: This comparison in damage is only on the Scepter 1

Hard to make a very context specific comparison like that, because in a Rabid setup you should be running Earth Sigil, or even 2 of them, and that is where Scepter 1 gains tremendous DPS for Rabid. When I was running Rabid, I figured nearly half of my damage added from precision was coming from those sigils procing.

However carrion makes most of that back in white damage, and once you are off a critical build, you can put on a different sigil that, while not as good as Earth in damage added, still adds quite a lot, and in total, puts you even or ahead of Rabid, but without jeopardy of a lot of it being cleansed.

Pendragon.8735:

However carrion makes most of that back in white damage, and once you are off a critical build, you can put on a different sigil that, while not as good as Earth in damage added, still adds quite a lot, and in total, puts you even or ahead of Rabid, but without jeopardy of a lot of it being cleansed.

Your white damage is going to be very in question if there is weakness going around, and that is worth keeping in mind as well. The numbers tilting towards rabid are a little surprising, I wouldn’t have expected it to pull ahead, but I can believe it, (plus it supports my position).

Apparently that white damage isn’t going to be as much in question with the weakness rework coming up.

Bhawb.7408:

Apparently that white damage isn’t going to be as much in question with the weakness rework coming up.

Yeah I will believe it when I see it, like the other propsed buffs.

Rennoko.5731:

Pendragon.8735:

However carrion makes most of that back in white damage, and once you are off a critical build, you can put on a different sigil that, while not as good as Earth in damage added, still adds quite a lot, and in total, puts you even or ahead of Rabid, but without jeopardy of a lot of it being cleansed.

Your white damage is going to be very in question if there is weakness going around, and that is worth keeping in mind as well. The numbers tilting towards rabid are a little surprising, I wouldn’t have expected it to pull ahead, but I can believe it, (plus it supports my position).

We don’t have trouble getting conditions (like weakness) off of us though. We can deal with that. What we can’t deal with or counter is our conditions being cleansed and neutering our DPS, which rabid is much more susceptible to than Carrion.

In damage dealing tests in PVE using a more realistic rotation of skills, I could not notice any discernible difference in kill time between Rabid and Carrion. But in fighting live players, what percent time of our condition damage is cleansed every fight, that is the hard thing to theory craft, 25%, 40%? It’s surely a big factor. And far more relevant than a Scepter 1 spam test which at least for me, is something I never did in PVP, but is going to produce about the most optimal outcome for Rabid on paper, since its one of our faster attacks, meaning more bleeds.

If you are using Scepter far more often than Staff and not up against a strong cleansing build, Rabid might be ideal though.

However, it always bothered me with Rabid that so many of our traits and utilities are set up to help power, even in a condition build. I.e. Target the Weak, Strength of Undeath, and of course all our Death Shroud Skills beside Dark Path. Since going to Carrion I actually can use Feast of Corruption on the Scepter and it can hit pretty hard. I think it plays a lot more balanced.

Having base Toughness in WvW scares me a bit, but I’m going to wait until the June professions patch and choose a path. I’m sitting on 100 Laurels because I just haven’t been able to make a definitive choice in gear/gameplay for my Necro (I WvW exclusively in large team play). This thread has really got me thinking about Carrion over Rabid for my conditions build, although I may just ditch conditions altogether in favor of a Power build.

" Ascii.9726
Your right in saying Toughness would affect DS-HP too, taken into account it would mean both give close to identical E-HP. It would be hard to confirm/ reject until we have a new solid formula for DS-HP.
Taking into account Barbed Precision under a standard TPvP build the damage over 100 attacks (including condition damage this time) would be:
Carrion amulet
82 non-critical hits doing 16,400 damage
18 critical hits doing 6,480 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
11.88 barbed precision doing 8,042.76 damage
Total damage: 98,622.76
Average damage: 986
Rabid amulet
51 non-critical hits doing 6,018 damage
49 critical hits doing 10,407.6 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
32.34 barbed precision doing 21,894.18 damage
Total damage: 106019.78
Average damage: 1060 "

First: 6,018+10,407.6+67,700+21,894.18=106,019.078 (you forgot the , )

But you made a big mistake since it seems that your barbed precision bleeds last 7s —> barbed precision applies a 1s bleed with a 60 % chance to proc so for Carrion amulet,for 100 hit : 60 barbed precision doing 112×60×0,18=1,2096
And for Rabid amulette : 112×60×0,49=3,2928

So total damage with Carrion :91,7896
with Rabid :87,4184

So Carrion out-damage Rabid.And remember that condition can be cleansed which is in favour for Carrion.

Since you didn’t take in account the earth sigil,i didn’t too.If you take in consideration the earth sigil,Rabid will out-damage carrion if you use only scepter 1 .And if conditions are not cleansed (in most part of Pve).

In PvE that works fine, PvP you are never just attacking, which is why these comparisons of DPS are nice, but not as helpful. Carrion players use their own sigil that procs on swap, and you use a full rotation including swapping, DS, and if the enemy doesn’t cleanse fear; epidemic. The only tests you can really compare (for PvP, PvE has quite a bit of auto attacking) is using full combos against golems for “perfect case” testing and seeing who kills faster.

mons.1386:

But you made a big mistake since it seems that your barbed precision bleeds last 7s —> barbed precision applies a 1s bleed with a 60 % chance to proc

I did indeed have a kitten moment. When i was going by Barbed Precision bleed damage i did the amount of Procs * 677 bleed damage (forgetting the 677 was scepter 1 and 6.5 seconds) although Barbed Precision is 66% chance and not 60%.

At 1 second doing 113 damage (0.05 * Condition Damage + 42.5) the damage would be:

Carrion amulet
82 non-critical hits doing 16,400 damage
18 critical hits doing 6,480 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
11.88 barbed precision doing 1,342.44 damage

Total damage: 91,922.44
Average damage: 919

Rabid amulet
51 non-critical hits doing 6,018 damage
49 critical hits doing 10,407.6 damage
100 bleed hits doing 67,700 damage
32.34 barbed precision doing 3,654.42 damage

Total damage: 87,780.02
Average damage: 878

Thanks for pointing that out mons

Geomancy vs. Earth is a completely different debate though. I failed to find the discussion thread but i think Geomancy was the better and popular choice.

Liquid.9672:

Having base Toughness in WvW scares me a bit, but I’m going to wait until the June professions patch and choose a path. I’m sitting on 100 Laurels because I just haven’t been able to make a definitive choice in gear/gameplay for my Necro (I WvW exclusively in large team play). This thread has really got me thinking about Carrion over Rabid for my conditions build, although I may just ditch conditions altogether in favor of a Power build.

If you’re playing with a coordinated team in WvW you’re much better off with a power build using the 2 damage wells and whatever you prefer as a 3rd util (spectral wall is nice, well of darkness+chill trait also nice); 0 20 20 0 30 used to be a pretty effective build as I recall, knights armor with berserker trinkets gets you some really nice dps output, especially if you coordinate your wells with a static field/guardian ring/other similar effects.

If not, condi can provide some nice giggles too I guess

It is a different debate, but it is important to bring up if Earth sigils are brought up; I brought it up with the mention mons put at the end, since Geomancy is almost always better in situations where you can afford to close the distance.

Ascii.9726:

Geomancy vs. Earth is a completely different debate though. I failed to find the discussion thread but i think Geomancy was the better and popular choice.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Superior-Sigil-of-Earth-or-Geomancy/

Bhawb.7408:

It is a different debate, but it is important to bring up if Earth sigils are brought up; I brought it up with the mention mons put at the end, since Geomancy is almost always better in situations where you can afford to close the distance.

I would be hard to give an accurate figure for Earth damage because of the 2 second internal, with a ‘perfect scenario’ case;

100 hits, with 49 being critical hits.
49 critical hits @ 0.5 seconds per hit takes 24.5 seconds.
2 second internal cooldown applied to 24.5 seconds (with first hit procing) is 19 hits that can proc Earth.
60% chance applied to the 19 hits leaves 11.4 procs.

procs x ((earth bleed seconds x duration increase) x bleed damage) = total damage
11.4 x ((5 × 1.3) x112.8) = 8,358.48 bleed damage.

flow.6043:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Superior-Sigil-of-Earth-or-Geomancy/

There it is!

Bhawb.7408:

In PvE that works fine, PvP you are never just attacking, which is why these comparisons of DPS are nice, but not as helpful. Carrion players use their own sigil that procs on swap, and you use a full rotation including swapping, DS, and if the enemy doesn’t cleanse fear; epidemic. The only tests you can really compare (for PvP, PvE has quite a bit of auto attacking) is using full combos against golems for “perfect case” testing and seeing who kills faster.

I like to test on the veteran sPVP mobs, because the Golems can’t even survive a full rotation of both weapons. At least with terror, you can kill Svanir and Chieftan without being hit giving you clean kill time. In my tests carrions vs rabid, they both routinely died within one or two total attacks of each other, depending on random crits. It’s just about a complete rotation with every single skill used one time, except maybe scepter poison.

Comment on Geomancy vs Earth (for Rabid), I would use Geomancy in sPVP, but Earth in WvW, since the battles are so much larger on balance, being in the thick of melee is extremely dangerous for necro. Even roaming 1v1 vs close classes like ele and thief, it will frequently miss due to how they bob in and out of range, without regard to a cap circle.

Ascii.9726:

100 hits, with 49 being critical hits.
49 critical hits @ 0.5 seconds per hit takes 24.5 seconds.
2 second internal cooldown applied to 24.5 seconds (with first hit procing) is 19 hits that can proc Earth.
60% chance applied to the 19 hits leaves 11.4 procs.

As an alternative, you might think about it like this:

From a cooldown state, the first four hits don’t count. Following, you get a proc if (A) you get a crit and (B) the sigil activates. The expected number of hits until this happens is 1/P.A*P.B. Then you enter the cooldown state again (4 hits), and so on. So the main thing is to figure out how many hits there will be until an activation, and then divide the total number of hits by that… from an uncooldown state the formula will be slightly adjusted.

If you have 50% crit, the expected number of hits until proc from an uncooldown state is 1 / 0.3 = 3.33. The expected number of hits between procs is 7.33. The expected number of procs from an uncooldown state in 100 hits is 1 + (100-3.33) / (4+3.33) = 14.19.

Personally, if I were to use condi damage in WvW, I’d go PVT with undead runes and carrion gemming.