Guild Wars 2

After the trait updates were announced about 4 weeks ago, I thought condimancer may be in a rough spot going forward. After seeing the Reaper, I think condimancer may see a dramatic evolution. Suddenly changes to Dhuumfire and Target the Weak make much more sense, and combined with other set ups, this could be a powerful spec.

Chill dealing what is likely condition damage is a real game changer for the Reaper trait line and condition necromancers. Anet deserves some credit for giving us access to another unique damaging condition. Coupled with Lingering Curses, you could have massive chill uptime on multiple players. (I know, Shoutbows exist).

Death Shroud was never really that friendly to condimancers; realitstically only 2 of the 5 skills were really valuable. Now every single skill on Shroud Knight, if properly traited, is valuable. Having someone in your face as a condimancer isn’t all bad anymore.

Another point is that a GS wielding power Reaper will only have the option of a single ranged weapon set, compared to 2 now (if you include DS as a weapon set). Using Scepter and Staff solves the ranged issue. Wurm and Spectral Walk still address the lack of mobility to some degree. And it seems that with the right spec, you can maintain respectable crit chance with improved life force gain over what we have right now, not to mention improved control with hardly any losses. Plague with chilling darkness could be one of the best elites, if not the best elite, in the game.

Every offhand also seems to have a place. If taking higher crit chance with vulnerability, focus can be a good choice with some vuln, chill, and boon strip. Dagger is an obvious choice, and warhorn offers more life force, swiftness, cover conditions and an interrupt.

Is anyone else with me in being more intrigued by condi Reaper?

You’re right, Nothing is stopping you from taking scepter and staff still, would benefit much more than a greatsword . Shroud Knight will help in giving you a melee option for when the enemy is close to you, which condition builds are currently lacking. A melee AA with burning , no cool down too mind you, fits in really well.

With every fear will come chill, both scaling off of condition damage. It’s something a lot of people will over look but what will be really good.

something like http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQCrAW8Bqg~ will be interesting

Sororita.3465:

You’re right, Nothing is stopping you from taking scepter and staff still, would benefit much more than a greatsword . Shroud Knight will help in giving you a melee option for when the enemy is close to you, which condition builds are currently lacking. A melee AA with burning , no cool down too mind you, fits in really well.

With every fear will come chill, both scaling off of condition damage. It’s something a lot of people will over look but what will be really good.

something like http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQCrAW8Bqg~ will be interesting

death perception also looks a good option for those that would like to see crits while taking crit stats for other.

That combination really looks deadly

Now that Terror won’t be a largest chunk of my damage I would much rather have Vital Persistence over Master of Terror.

This is what I plan on running
Staff and Scepter/Dagger
Carrion Amulet, Runes of the Nightmare, Sigils of Geomancy and Hydromancy.
Consume Conditions, Wurm, Spectral Walk, Corrupt Boon, Plague Form.

I’d even consider going “You are all Weaklings” if the might duration were slightly longer. Still 6s weakness and a stunbreak with a 25s cd isn’t terrible.

If these traits go live the way they are, it is going to be a slaughter.

Ashur.6403:

Now that Terror won’t be a largest chunk of my damage I would much rather have Vital Persistence over Master of Terror.

This is what I plan on running
Staff and Scepter/Dagger
Carrion Amulet, Runes of the Nightmare, Sigils of Geomancy and Hydromancy.
Consume Conditions, Wurm, Spectral Walk, Corrupt Boon, Plague Form.

I’d even consider going “You are all Weaklings” if the might duration were slightly longer. Still 6s weakness and a stunbreak with a 25s cd isn’t terrible.

If these traits go live the way they are, it is going to be a slaughter.

Thanks for posting that build calculator.

This is what I’m looking at right now: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQC5AWsBqg~

There’s so much chill there it’s unbelievable. AOE chill. Reduced damage from chilled enemies. Might when hitting chilled enemies and tons of AOE to take advantage. You could even run chill runes and chill sigils.

It would take some wind up but it would be so difficult to fight against once it got going. I think this is closer to the attrition we’ve always wanted. I can’t wait to start trying these builds out.

I’m not as optimistic as you guys are. Reaper will make an excellent line to spec into for power necros, but I don’t see the benefits to conditionmancers as clearly.
The benefits of speccing into Reaper for conditionmancers SPECIFICALLY would be:
a. Reduced damage from chilled enemies from cold shoulder
b. Increased damage from Deathly Chill (especially when fearing people)
c. Massively improved life force gain (which is possibly the biggest issue for conditionmancers right now) from Blighters Boon in combination with Chilling Force.

Now, to get the most benefit from b. you need frequent reapplication. But to get the most benefit from a. and c. what you really need is uptime. In pvp and wvw, frequent reapplication helps with uptime, because there’s a lot of cleansing and long-duration conditions rarely stick. But when those frequent reapplications are only 1-2" duration, it still means that total uptime will be low, possibly under 30%.

With chill on autoattack on GS, full-on power reapers would have both frequent reapplication (proccing Deathly Chill frequently) as well as good uptime, because even though most of their chills are short duration, they’ll reapply them constantly, and they have the longer applications to stack them with.

But conditionmancers (meaning scepter+dagger/staff) have only one “long”-duration chill (from Chilblains) on a 20" cooldown. If you can call 4" long. All other applications would be from Chilling Darkness or Shivers of Dread procs, and there won’t be that many of those. Deathly Swarm has a fairly low cooldown, but you’d probably save that for the condition transfer. All the conditionmancer’s fears have long cooldowns, and a Reaper-specced conditionmancer will actually have fewer fears applications than the current conditionmancer, because assuming you want Dhuumfire or FitG (and you’d be crazy not to) you won’t be speccing into Death for Reaper’s Protection. I personally would probably drop Nightmare runes for Grenth, so that’s another fear gone. Plus, Doom becomes Infusing Terror, which is a 360 range pbaoe rather than a 1,200 range single-target skill, so Reaper’s Mark becomes your only ranged fear! You’ll get the occasional chilling darkness proc by corrupting Fury, and presumably Alacrity will corrupt into Chilled, but you can’t really count on those, and they’ll be short duration. So Shivers of Dread won’t really do much for uptime: its purpose is to provide more Terror burst and that’s it.

So my point is that conditionmancer’s Chilled uptime is pretty terrible. GS Reapers will do much better, and even hammer guardians can keep Chilled up more now (although they’ll losing Glacial Heart soon). So the benefit you’ll get from Cold Shoulder and Blighters Boon/Chilling Force aren’t that great. Honestly, today’s conditionmancer can keep Chilled up more than a Reaper conditionmancer will be able to, since Dark Path is losing its Chilled! Considering you’ll also lose the Bleeds from Dark Path, the Torment from Tainted Shackles, the range from Doom and the extra fears from Reapers Protection, plus the fact that your Dhuumfire will only proc in melee range, I really don’t think that Reaper conditionmancer will be better than core conditionmancer. Chill uptime just isn’t good enough to help with damage mitigation (through Cold Shoulder) or life force generation (through the Blighters Boon/Chilling Force combo).

So that leaves Deathly Chill. Now, I know the numbers are preliminary here, but the damage on the tooltip seems pretty low. Assuming that damage scales with power, and assuming Robert had zerker or soldier gear on while demonstrating it, those number4s will be even lower in carrion or rabid gear. So, if your plan is to boost your Terror damage from the Shivers of Dread/Deathly Chill procs, I really don’t think your plan is a goer. Especially considering you’ll lose 1,200 range on your Doom and won’t be able to spec for Reapers Protection, so you’ll have fewer Fears.

I could see a tough reaper-conditionmancer spec with Runes of Grenth and some chill-related sigils being viable in conquest as a bunker build. That kind of conditionmancer would probably even drop Dhuumfire and spec into Death for Putrid Defence: assuming it’ll stack with Cold Shoulder it’ll result in SIGNIFICANT damage reduction . But, thing is, the conquest meta has moved away from bunkers lately. Good teams prefer to actually kill enemies so they can be 5v4 across the map and dominate that way, rather than have 1 person holding up 2 enemies for ages so their team can outnumber the enemy on the other 2 points. So, while that build would be pretty tough, I don’t see it catching on. Plus, since the necro needs to keep attacking to keep chilled and poison on the enemies, stun-locking them will be as effective as ever

OK, since I’m on this train of through now I might as well say how I think they should fix it:

1. Increase the damage on Deathly Chill, and stick an ICD on it. That way, instead of doing bonus damage on each and every 3rd attack on the GS auto chain, it’ll proc every 10-20" for a respectable, significant amount. That way, conditionmancers who want to use it to give themselves more Terror burst will actually do some real damage instead of just a smidgeon more. The ICD on this would be per-target, so that you wouldn’t waste this on a target that got hit accidentally from your aoes or your chilling novas.

2. Put either Chill or Blind back into Death’s Charge (Reaper’s Dark Path). Honestly, I was excited that Dark Path gets turned into a charge skill, and had its cooldown drastically reduced. But then I saw that it only has 600 range and its movement speed is VERY slow, and my excitement waned a bit. Gap closer skills need to either be longer ranged/faster, or should have a snare associated with them to be useful. A shorter-duration chill (1") would do it, but I think a blind would be better, since Dark Path used to have that back in betas, and it was removed. Then you could combo that with Chilling Darkness to give yourself a snare. This wouldn’t just benefit conditionmancers, but GS-wielding Reapers as well, because, honestly, they’d struggle keeping . I mean, it’s bad enough they gave us the ONLY greatsword in the game that doesn’t have a gap-closer (except the mesmer’s, but that’s not a melee weapon), but they also remove our gap closer from Shroud? I know reaper GS has a pull, but it only has 600 range! Honestly, to be the “monster movie”-style villain that you just can’t get away from, in a game where your targets have a myriad teleports, you need to get into range and land your snares in the first place. Pulls are useful in order to land melee-range burst skills or to interrupt: they’re not used as “inverse gap closers”. To catch people, you need a teleport/charge of your own!

3. Reduce Chillblains cooldown to 15" (12" traited). I don’t think thjat’s too much, and with an only 4" chill it’s still pretty bad uptime. Give us something that makes it worth swapping to staff for EVERY time your weapon swap recharges! (Restoring the extra bleed stack on mark of blood wouldn’t hurt either…)

4. Feast of Corruption needs a condition on it. It’s ridiculously sub-par, both in its damage and its life force generation, so a condition would help. A 5" blind or a 3" Chill would be very nice there, thank you very much.

Optional:
5. If they won’t make scepter/staff a good option for Reaper, how about making GS a good option for conditionmancer? They could do that by replacing Reaper’#s Onslaught with another GM trait that added conditions to GS skills. A single bleed on each of auto 1&2 would make GS a perfectly viable condition weapon. It won’t stack as many bleeds or have the poison uptime of scepter, but you have Reaper’s Shroud and your other weapon set to make up for that.

I just thought of a 6th one:

6. Increase the life force gain on Blighter’s Boon and put an ICD on it. That way, it’s not useful only to builds that can gain frequent, spammable boons (eg a Reaper with Chilling Force and high chilled uptime). Only problem is, most of the boons we can give ourselves are on DS entry, so…

manveruppd.7601:

-snip-

The thing is you don’t factor in the extra bolts from whirls, and for whatever reason completely ignore how Dhuumfire will actually work with RS. With the faster attack trait and 100% condi-duration, You should be able to retain 6-7 stacks of burning on 3, and 3-4 on 5 foes… And currently burning seems to hit like a truck (6 stacks = ~4.5 k damage with 25 vuln which we can also easily sustain now, see DH bursting chieftain).

well of darkness + Chilling Darkness will now be a potential viable condi well on top of being ultra defensive too. Plague with chilling darkness will be insane (stacking poison + blind + chill + on crit bleeds?) dhumfire potentially stacks 12+ burns on 3 targets, path of corruption is now as low kitten sec cooldown for 2 boons corrupted plus you get base 100% condi duration if you hold a scepter. If you use all these plus your transfers you should do ok as a condi necro ;o.

While I currently play a power based Chillmancer, I do not think it required to go GS to have a high chill uptime.

I am able to keep high chill uptime in the current build with sigils and traits. Remember that with scepter you will get 100 percent on chills. That means a blind off chilling darkness traited gets a 2 second chill. Hydromancy will give 4 seconds on a weapon swap. Ghost pepper poppers as food at night along with Sigil of ice can get another 6 seconds on a crit. If you wanted you could even go hyydromancy/mischief on a single weapon which means a 6 second chill on swap.

While i prefer Runes of Ice in my own build since it is vitality, the Nova from those Runes then add another source of Chill. With a Condition build you will get two more sources that give 6 second chill each, one on a heal and one when struck with cooldown if you use grenth.

Needless to say you might want to get some other condition over chill on a sigil but you can still get a lot of chill without GS. They key is high durations of that Chill which is not too hard to get.

Shiki.7148:

The thing is you don’t factor in the extra bolts from whirls, and for whatever reason completely ignore how Dhuumfire will actually work with RS. With the faster attack trait and 100% condi-duration, You should be able to retain 6-7 stacks of burning on 3, and 3-4 on 5 foes… And currently burning seems to hit like a truck (6 stacks = ~4.5 k damage with 25 vuln which we can also easily sustain now, see DH bursting chieftain).

The extra finishers are awesome (not just the whirls, reapers will get a leap finisher on a 6" cd too!), but it’s not like they’ll help chill uptime specifically: we get one ice field on a 30" cooldown. You can leap through that for 5" Frost Armour, which will probably chill an enemy for 4" if you’re lucky and they hit you twice.
Also, the activation time is REALLY slow, and we don’t know if the ice field forms if they dodge the attack.
Bottom line is don’t count on the finishers for extra chill uptime, and my post was specifically on what Reaper brings to conditionmancer. I think I argued pretty convincingly that the only things the specialisation brings that are useful for conditionmancers require either high chill uptime or frequent reapplication, and I’ve yet to be convinced we can get either of those without GS.

I still can’t understand why Anet thinks Lingering curse is a good idea.

Not only is the idea of a single trait doubling all condi durations unbalanced as hell, it also makes any other source of condi duration literally redundant, which included other traits.

Anyone who uses curses + reaper, will have 30% chill duration and 20% bleed duration wasted on their main weapon set. Bonuses from runes or sigil are also wasted, same with the fear duration trait.

Even putting balance aside, it’s simply bad game design.

I think Lingering Curse is only “while holding a scepter” isn’kitten Meaning your other weapon set won’t be affected at all, and possibly not even DS conditions depending on what state of bugginess DS is currently in.
I could be wrong, might be you only need to have a scepter equipped, not currently using it.

manveruppd.7601:

Shiki.7148:

The thing is you don’t factor in the extra bolts from whirls, and for whatever reason completely ignore how Dhuumfire will actually work with RS. With the faster attack trait and 100% condi-duration, You should be able to retain 6-7 stacks of burning on 3, and 3-4 on 5 foes… And currently burning seems to hit like a truck (6 stacks = ~4.5 k damage with 25 vuln which we can also easily sustain now, see DH bursting chieftain).

The extra finishers are awesome (not just the whirls, reapers will get a leap finisher on a 6" cd too!), but it’s not like they’ll help chill uptime specifically: we get one ice field on a 30" cooldown. You can leap through that for 5" Frost Armour, which will probably chill an enemy for 4" if you’re lucky and they hit you twice.
Also, the activation time is REALLY slow, and we don’t know if the ice field forms if they dodge the attack.
Bottom line is don’t count on the finishers for extra chill uptime, and my post was specifically on what Reaper brings to conditionmancer. I think I argued pretty convincingly that the only things the specialisation brings that are useful for conditionmancers require either high chill uptime or frequent reapplication, and I’ve yet to be convinced we can get either of those without GS.

GS chill is coming mostly from the auto attack, which is highly telegraphed and slow.

A condi reaper could get chill from RS as mentioned, plus chiliblains, every application of fear and blind, every corruption of stability and fury, plus runes of grenth seem like they’d help a lot, not to mention sigil of ice.

All while doing this from range.

Fhenrir.5297:

well of darkness + Chilling Darkness will now be a potential viable condi well on top of being ultra defensive too. Plague with chilling darkness will be insane (stacking poison + blind + chill + on crit bleeds?) dhumfire potentially stacks 12+ burns on 3 targets, path of corruption is now as low kitten sec cooldown for 2 boons corrupted plus you get base 100% condi duration if you hold a scepter. If you use all these plus your transfers you should do ok as a condi necro ;o.

12+ burning stacks?? Since when does burning stack? What did I miss? Can you please explain

Gexim.3289:

Fhenrir.5297:

well of darkness + Chilling Darkness will now be a potential viable condi well on top of being ultra defensive too. Plague with chilling darkness will be insane (stacking poison + blind + chill + on crit bleeds?) dhumfire potentially stacks 12+ burns on 3 targets, path of corruption is now as low kitten sec cooldown for 2 boons corrupted plus you get base 100% condi duration if you hold a scepter. If you use all these plus your transfers you should do ok as a condi necro ;o.

12+ burning stacks?? Since when does burning stack? What did I miss? Can you please explain

Burning and Poison (only the damage from poison) will now be stacking conditions in intensity as opposed to duration. I think this was announced with the new trait lines.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

Lingering curse + sigil of ice is 40% uptime, add in Staff 3 and reaper shroud 5 and you are over 100% chill uptime, no GS needed. Add in extra chill from fears, and epidemic spreading and keeping chill up shouldn’t be an issue even if you don’t take chilling darkness.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lingering curse + sigil of ice is 40% uptime, add in Staff 3 and reaper shroud 5 and you are over 100% chill uptime, no GS needed. Add in extra chill from fears, and epidemic spreading and keeping chill up shouldn’t be an issue even if you don’t take chilling darkness.

Chilling nova with condi duration will mean 7.5s of chill aoe every 10 seconds too, so yep, even with cleanses, a condi reaper can keep enemies chilled 100% no problem.

Chilling nova is actually the key factor to keeping a high chill uptime.

It’s effectively a chill only epidemic which runs 3 times every 10 seconds. A traditional ICD would actually be more effective for keeping constant chill (for example ICD 3s etc), instead of the more likely burst of AOE chill that the x3 every 10sec will do (depending on crit chance), but I’m not complaining there.

It is important to note that using nova means not taking Augory, which significantly weakens the potential strength of using the shouts.

On the flip side, running Augory significantly effects your ability to maintain AOE chill due to the lack of chilling nova, although I honestly don’t think running multiple shouts on a condi build would be worth it anyway, but we’ll see.

War Mourner.5168:

Chilling nova is actually the key factor to keeping a high chill uptime.

It’s effectively a chill only epidemic which runs 3 times every 10 seconds. A traditional ICD would actually be more effective for keeping constant chill (for example ICD 3s etc), instead of the more likely burst of AOE chill that the x3 every 10sec will do (depending on crit chance), but I’m not complaining there.

It is important to note that using nova means not taking Augory, which significantly weakens the potential strength of using the shouts.

On the flip side, running Augory significantly effects your ability to maintain AOE chill due to the lack of chilling nova, although I honestly don’t think running multiple shouts on a condi build would be worth it anyway, but we’ll see.

I only see 2 of the shouts being desirable for a condi build, and chilling nova will be really strong if it’s combo’d with chill dealing damage, not to mention the reduced damage from chilled enemies. No contest, in my opinion.

Walk, wurm and corrupt boon are so strong I just can’t see replacing them, at this point.

Roe.3679:

War Mourner.5168:

Chilling nova is actually the key factor to keeping a high chill uptime.

It’s effectively a chill only epidemic which runs 3 times every 10 seconds. A traditional ICD would actually be more effective for keeping constant chill (for example ICD 3s etc), instead of the more likely burst of AOE chill that the x3 every 10sec will do (depending on crit chance), but I’m not complaining there.

It is important to note that using nova means not taking Augory, which significantly weakens the potential strength of using the shouts.

On the flip side, running Augory significantly effects your ability to maintain AOE chill due to the lack of chilling nova, although I honestly don’t think running multiple shouts on a condi build would be worth it anyway, but we’ll see.

I only see 2 of the shouts being desirable for a condi build, and chilling nova will be really strong if it’s combo’d with chill dealing damage, not to mention the reduced damage from chilled enemies. No contest, in my opinion.

Walk, wurm and corrupt boon are so strong I just can’t see replacing them, at this point.

Think about the synergy between chill and minions too. They don’t need to run after the enemy → more dps.

I can see a curse/death/reaper condi necro with the minions transferring condis back (and dealing +25% dmg while in tank mode)

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQGqALkA1g~

with well of darkness/blood fiend/flesh wurm/shadow fiend (one more chill). Remember the cooldown reduce is becoming baseline on minions and wells are ground targeted too.

I wonder if conditions transfered back doubled with lingering curse.

I will most likely skip Terror in favor of Lingering Curse.

I think I am going to try Runes of Grenth. Even if someone has decreased condition duration, Runes of Grenth and Lingering Curse should give perma chill.

My build will end up looking like this.
Staff (Energy/Hydromancy) and Scepter/Dagger (Ice/Hydromancy), Carrion Amulet, Runes of Grenth
Consume Conditions, Flesh Wurm, Spectral Walk, Corrupt Boon, Plague

At the very least it will be annoying as hell to fight against in spvp.

Depending on how long you stay in reaper form sigil of Ice would be better than hydromancy.

Also has synergy with chilling Nova and Gs#3, Rs#4 and any multi hit/ fast attack skill.

Sigmoid.7082:

Depending on how long you stay in reaper form sigil of Ice would be better than hydromancy.

Yeah, I agree. In the other thread I put I planned on running Staff (Energy/Hydromancy) and Scepter/Dagger (Ice/Hydromancy). I just forgot to change it here. Thanks for reminding me.

Take Lingering curse. Terror really isn’t going to provide you with the sustain damage you need. Lingering curse will provide greater control and give your damage higher sustain. Also, with runes of the nightmare the fear will last much longer allowing you to abuse it to pressure your foe into a really bad situation.

Also, Terror with Dhuumfire isn’t as good as it sounds. Lingering curse should increase the burn duration giving you 6 seconds of burn on attack while you’ll have 3 with terror. The damage will be half that of LC which wont make up for the over all sustained damage loss.

Unless some major changes happens to the core necromancer I can’t see taking terror as anything but a waste of time. But that’s my opinion. I could be wrong, but that 100% condition duration will just be too useful not to pass up. Even if you’re sacrificing the damage from terror. 24 seconds of chill on your elite, double the fear duration with the chill, double burn duration. There just isn’t enough incentive for me to take it. And depending on how much damage deathly chills deals you might just want to take blighter’s boon.