Guild Wars 2

I’ve been running Perplexity for over a year prior to the big patch hitting. Dhuumfire/Terror/Perp burst build, very fun. Now, though, it feels thoroughly de-fanged. The confusion doesn’t burst for nearly as much, and Dhuumfire has defied all expectations and gotten even worse than before. After using the new Ascended stat changing to swap some armour around, I’m left with a choice of runes.

So, definitively – is Perplexity dead on Necromancer? Because it’s still 11g a rune, and I’d rather not go back if I make a swap.

If I do swap, what’s the new hotness? Krait to make up for the lost condi duration on the Curses line?

The bursty skill spam of confusion is down because they added the DOT part of it. I have 2 sets one with nightmare and one with perp. I still like perp over anything else simply because of Pew Pew rangers which drive me nuts and at a minimum you can get smart ones to stop Pew Pewing for a second or 2 to cleanse.

I asked the same question not long ago and the answer I got is Krait, Perp, Nightmare, Undead/Scavenging are all viable choices just depends on preference. Condi necro’s damage is down since the patch. Seems to me anyway that a more corruption with signets of suffering is the way to go. Many builds rely on boon spam in some way or another so it still works in that form.

I like Undead runes. They may not be top tier, but you can get a full set for under 10 silver now and they are tailor made for necro IMO. At worst, they can tide you over until you can obtain your premier set and they won’t cost you a lot.

I like them better than Krait, since they help overall toughness and condi damage—and convert toughness to condi damage as opposed to being bleed specific. I mainly run dagger/wh with staff on swap, so not a ton of bleeds there. Give them a look.

My condi-necro has celestial armor so is maybe more of a hybrid necro, but I find superior rune of the mad king to be very nice. The +bleeding helps with scepter autoattack 1 and 2, the power is very welcome since it is a hybrid build.

Also, I just <3 the birds. The birds rule.

What kind of armor stat’s do you want to run? Undead loves armor with toughness so something like Rabid would feed into it.

Krait adds a lot of bleed duration so you need to figure out how much you plan on having beyond the cap with traits, sigils and consumables.

There are so many condition runes that it is hard to recommend something without knowing how much defense you want.

If you want Terror, look into Nightmare or Mad King, iirc. Terror and Fear chaining may not be possible, anymore, but you can try.

I made an ascended zerker-perlexity set for my Necro almost a year ago, used it for farming ToT bags, then gave it to my Mesmer to play with.

Perplexity all the way for roaming.
Krait for pve/fractals if you running condi build.

I use perplexity a lot in WvW. It’s super potent vs fast attacking enemies (Warrior, Thief’s, Mesmers) but Krait runes do help with extra toughness for heavy condition dmg.

Krait is by far the best rune currently due to the removal of the condition cap.

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

Undead runes even with max toughness armor give ~5% dps increase.

they aren’t even in the same league.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Krait is by far the best rune currently due to the removal of the condition cap.

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

Undead runes even with max toughness armor give ~5% dps increase.

they aren’t even in the same league.

Your bleeds will never last until the end to make use of those +45% duration/damage increase you mentioned. Everyone is running tons of cleanse skills.

Nightmare

ZudetGambeous.9573:

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

How does that work

If you roam like I do, perplex is the best way to counter these skill spamming classes out there, ie powerful ele, thief, mesmer, guardian classes out there roaming. They will get mad at you and call you trash but It makes me love the runes even more because they are playing more powerful classes era d they know it but hate to lose. F them.

Axelwarrior.9084:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

How does that work

Bleed does 160 damage every second. bleed lasts 10s. Bleed does 1600 damage total.

Add in 45% condition duration.

Bleed now lasts 15s. Bleed does 2400 damage total now = 45% increase in damage for the same number of attacks.

In practice it lets you maintain a much higher stack of bleeds, which means more dps.

This of course assumes that your conditions don’t get cleansed. Which is a great assumption in PvE. In WvW/PvP it still can work but you need to force them to burn their condition clears with things like plague sending and SoS, then load up the bleeds.

Unfortunately this means in order for necro to be viable in PvE/WvW you MUST run 40% condi food at ALL times. As soon as it drops off you are suffering a potential 40% dps loss. Basically not having food is the same has power builds having perma weakness on them.

I just run the nughtmare runes. With some food and utilities I have 95% condition duration on poison and bleeding, and 75% on everything else, by taking Fear of Death, that will give me 100%fear duration, so good for my terrormancer roamer. When I’m not roaming and just PvEing, I just run curses, spite, and blood magic because of the might stacking you get from spite and combination of plague sending and the lesser signet of the vampire. (Can’t remeber its name). I can usually have around 20 stacks of might easy in a small PvE skirmish, 25 If it’s like a boss or something.

oooo I might have to invest in undead runes. I am currently running krait. But with rabid gear, undead runes and the trait that adds toughness (Corrupter’s Fervor)….so much toughness!!!!

And then you add in the Krait Tuning Crystal… and now you have so much condition damage

I am so going to do this now!!

pdavis.8031:

oooo I might have to invest in undead runes. I am currently running krait. But with rabid gear, undead runes and the trait that adds toughness (Corrupter’s Fervor)….so much toughness!!!!

And then you add in the Krait Tuning Crystal… and now you have so much condition damage

I am so going to do this now!!

You know you can’t feel much of difference beyond 3000 armor, right?

Perplexity is pretty scary and pretty expensive. Traveler’s runes are not a bad choice for a condi necro in WvW because assists with kiting melee builds and it gives a small condi duration boost, which isn’t too bad. If you decide to run warhorn, you should stick with perplexity, though

Lynnie.7213:

pdavis.8031:

oooo I might have to invest in undead runes. I am currently running krait. But with rabid gear, undead runes and the trait that adds toughness (Corrupter’s Fervor)….so much toughness!!!!

And then you add in the Krait Tuning Crystal… and now you have so much condition damage

I am so going to do this now!!

You know you can’t feel much of difference beyond 3000 armor, right?

I know. But with the added toughness that converts to condi damage, it’s actually pretty awesome. I switch to undead runes last night. And noticed a 400 point increase in condition damage.

pdavis.8031:

I switch to undead runes last night. And noticed a 400 point increase in condition damage.

That would mean your armor value was 5714.

flow.6043:

pdavis.8031:

I switch to undead runes last night. And noticed a 400 point increase in condition damage.

That would mean your armor value was 5714.

O.0 that might be a little on the high side,

Undead runes gives CD from 7% of toughness, and the Krait crystals give 7% as well, but 6% of vitality is also converted.

I honestly wasn’t paying attention to the armor or toughness, just the condition damage.
But does the % conversion to CD from toughness/vitality remove that much toughness/vitality? Or does it remain the same, but add to CD?

I really like nightmare runes. It prevents the one shotter builds mostly, and gives you a nice buff on duration + damage. But undead runes are pretty awesome too, especially if you are going with the rabid set Sadly all these do work in wvw. Pvp is something else entirely.

pdavis.8031:

flow.6043:

pdavis.8031:

I switch to undead runes last night. And noticed a 400 point increase in condition damage.

That would mean your armor value was 5714.

O.0 that might be a little on the high side,

Undead runes gives CD from 7% of toughness, and the Krait crystals give 7% as well, but 6% of vitality is also converted.

I honestly wasn’t paying attention to the armor or toughness, just the condition damage.
But does the % conversion to CD from toughness/vitality remove that much toughness/vitality? Or does it remain the same, but add to CD?

It’s a bonus, not a conversion, so your precision stat will stay the same.

Anyway, your earlier post made it sound like Undead runes alone gave you +400 cond dmg. Of course tuning crystals also buff your stats but that isn’t related to switching runes, unless you were refering to the additional 7% of the Undead’s 100 toughness.

Side note: having a higher condition damage stat doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re also doing more damage than with a +bleeding duration rune, or a rune that procs additional conditions or a leeching charge.

flow.6043:

pdavis.8031:

flow.6043:

pdavis.8031:

I switch to undead runes last night. And noticed a 400 point increase in condition damage.

That would mean your armor value was 5714.

O.0 that might be a little on the high side,

Undead runes gives CD from 7% of toughness, and the Krait crystals give 7% as well, but 6% of vitality is also converted.

I honestly wasn’t paying attention to the armor or toughness, just the condition damage.
But does the % conversion to CD from toughness/vitality remove that much toughness/vitality? Or does it remain the same, but add to CD?

It’s a bonus, not a conversion, so your precision stat will stay the same.

Anyway, your earlier post made it sound like Undead runes alone gave you +400 cond dmg. Of course tuning crystals also buff your stats but that isn’t related to switching runes, unless you were refering to the additional 7% of the Undead’s 100 toughness.

Side note: having a higher condition damage stat doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re also doing more damage than with a +bleeding duration rune, or a rune that procs additional conditions or a leeching charge.

Oh, my bad. Yeah I was referring to the additional condi damage from the 7% of toughness in general.

But the added toughness, converted into CD not only through the rune, but the crystal as well, certainly helps a lot.

I’ll check on my toughness when I get online tonight and keep you posted.

Ok so here are my numbers after switching to undead runes.

Just gear. No buffs: [img]http://i.imgur.com/LVMkW8Y.jpg[/img]

With Corrupter’s defense: [img]http://i.imgur.com/ZNmf1f9.jpg[/img]

With Krait Tuning Crystal: [img]http://i.imgur.com/rZ6Mrer.jpg[/img]

Its seems my armor doesn’t get much past 3k, but increases condi damage quite a bit.

Something isn’t right in those screenshots. Undead runes and tuning crystals means that 13% of toughness and 4% of vitality becomes a bonus to condition damage.
In the 3rd pic you have 2091 toughness and 1063 vitality, so that would mean you get an additional 314 cond dmg. But the difference you’re showing here is only 190.

Anyway, like I said before, Tuning Crystals are irrelevant here, you can use them with any other rune as well. So basically the only thing you have to worry about is if the 7% bonus on Undead will total more damage for you than the duration bonus or procs of other runes. Of course this depends on the situation, but from my experience the answer is usually: no.

Something is weird that. I have 1900ish condi damage no buffs in perplexity runes. Undead should be higher.

flow.6043:

Something isn’t right in those screenshots. Undead runes and tuning crystals means that 13% of toughness and 4% of vitality becomes a bonus to condition damage.
In the 3rd pic you have 2091 toughness and 1063 vitality, so that would mean you get an additional 314 cond dmg. But the difference you’re showing here is only 190.

Anyway, like I said before, Tuning Crystals are irrelevant here, you can use them with any other rune as well. So basically the only thing you have to worry about is if the 7% bonus on Undead will total more damage for you than the duration bonus or procs of other runes. Of course this depends on the situation, but from my experience the answer is usually: no.

I don’t know. I went to SW, took the first screen shot while out of combat. The second after I reached 10 stacks of Corrupters defence, and the last one after I took the crystal and had 10 stacks of corruptors defence.

Unless the Krait Tuning crystal is broke and isn’t giving the proper amount of condi damage

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Axelwarrior.9084:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

How does that work

In practice it lets you maintain a much higher stack of bleeds, which means more dps.

And how does it work out to be 45% increase, exactly?

Axelwarrior.9084:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Axelwarrior.9084:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

+45% bleed duration translates to a direct 45% increase in DPS.

How does that work

In practice it lets you maintain a much higher stack of bleeds, which means more dps.

And how does it work out to be 45% increase, exactly?

Exactly the same way as I said above.

Lets say you do 10 attacks every 10 seconds, or one attack a second with each attack applying 1 10s bleed.

Without any condition duration this means after 10s of attacking you have 10 stacks of bleed on the target. At the 11th second your first bleed falls off, but you gain a new one, keeping you at 10 stacks total.

That means with no buffs you will always have 10 stacks of bleed on the target after the first 10 seconds. So your dps will be ~150 damage per bleed X 10 bleeds = 1500 dps.

Now you get krait runes which increases the length of each bleed to ~15 seconds.

After 10 seconds you still have 10 stacks of bleed, but now on the 11th attack your first stack is still going so you have 11 stacks, then 12…. up to 15 stacks. On your 16th attack your first stack will fall off but be replaced by the new stack. So your dps is still 1500 after 10s, but now it keeps increasing for an additional 5s up to

150*15 = 2250 dps after 15s or a 50% increase.

so for fights lasting 10s or less you do the same amount of damage. for fighting lasting >15s you gain the extra 50% dps.

Pretty much every PvE boss fight lasts longer than 15s so you always gain the full benefit there, PvP is an advantage sometimes, but not nearly as reliably since fights are shorter. (I use nightmare runes personally in PvP)