Guild Wars 2

Curses Reaper is an all out condition damage dealing build that can do absolutely massive condition pressure on any team. It is not hard to absolutely condition bomb an entire team due to Reaper’s AoE condition potential, I have ran this build in Platinum division on Europe for Ranked and the amount of condition pressure this build does has won me the past 25+ games.

Build: Curses Reaper

A lot of people have been underestimating Curses, as the more popular specialization to take is Spite. Due to the new amulet, Deadshot Amulet, I was able to create this build that can do massive Condition damage and pressure while still making it able to survive.

Wanderer’s Amulet and Deadshot Amulet are the same thing, well almost. Deadshot grants you +560 vitality vs Wanderer’s +560 Toughness. Vitality is much more essential for necromancer, as the more health you have, the more Life Force you can gain through Reaper Shroud. Now, you might be asking why don’t I just go Carrion Amulet, and there are a few reasons why:

Deadshot Amulet has expertise, which increases Condition Duration, making Conditions do more damage because of they’re extended Duration.

Deadshot Amulet has 1050 Precision. The reason why this is important is because of the 2 passive traits in Curses. The Barbed Precision trait has a 33% chance on a critical hit to inflict the Bleeding Condition on a foe for 4 seconds (this passive trait does not have a cooldown to it so if you keep critting, you can get a lot of Bleed conditions on an enemy.) Target The Weak converts your the amount of Precision you have to Condition Damage by 13%

The Burning Condition on Reaper Shroud gained by spamming #1 ability on Shroud can quickly stack up, making the condition tick for 2000k health per second, and the #1 ability can hit multiple people, making this build a truly devastating team fighter to the ridiculous condition pressure it can put out.

Now, like I said survivability is a bit of a struggle, but you should get along fine. The current metabuild for Necromancer is Power Boonstrip, and it has the exact same health pool of this build, having the health of 24812, so if you kite around correctly and time your defensive cooldowns, you should be fine. (Also the reduced cooldown on Consume Conditions from 30 seconds to 20 seconds should keep you fairly sustained.)
Thieves are the really only main threat to this class, as they can move around fast in the map even when you kite.

This is surely a viable build. But:

You have 4 condition transfers and clears on low cooldowns to mitigate condition damage. Direct damage bursts will be a bigger issue for your build. This is the reason why I would prefer Wanderer Amulet and Rune of the Undead.

KrHome.1920:

This is surely a viable build. But:

You have 4 condition transfers and clears on low cooldowns to mitigate condition damage. Direct damage bursts will be a bigger issue for your build. This is the reason why I would prefer Wanderer Amulet and Rune of the Undead.

He’s got Rise to mitigate direct damage but, just like you said Wanderer’s is still a better amulet for necros since we have large base health pool, Rune of the Undead is nice too.

Speaking of the power reaper build, you also have to consider that some of it’s survival comes from blighter’s boon. With strength runes and a strength sigil, I can go into Reaper Shroud, hit RS 5 on point for aoe chill, then RS 3 for pulsing stability, and then spam RS 1 for quite of bit of might generation (I stay at 25 stacks of might) and usually recover about half of my health from blighter’s boon before exiting Reaper Shroud.

KrHome.1920:

This is surely a viable build. But:

You have 4 condition transfers and clears on low cooldowns to mitigate condition damage. Direct damage bursts will be a bigger issue for your build. This is the reason why I would prefer Wanderer Amulet and Rune of the Undead.

I would recommend those too, for people beginning to learn Necromancer. Kiting is something that I have practiced over and over since this game launched, and it is an essential part of playing a squishy class, as I can get rid of some Power pressure that comes from other classes by staying in ranged or hiding behind something. For the beginners at Necromancer they will struggle, as they do not know yet how to Kite or time they’re defensive cooldown abilities. Direct Damage is a problem on this build like I said, but if you Kite correctly and hide behind something, you should be fine. When Reaper Shroud starts to run out, you should always get back into a ranged position where melee burst classes can’t harm you. That is the thing that most Necromancer’s do wrong, and they stay at melee range at a team fight even when they’re Shroud is already gone. Thieves are the really only main problem with this build, as they are movement based and can get to you fast, and if you have nothing left then surely they can kill you, but I take Deadshot Amulet because of the increased Vitality. With Wanderer’s you only have 15k Life Force in Shroud opposed to Deadshot where you have 19k+

Dirame.8521:

KrHome.1920:

This is surely a viable build. But:

You have 4 condition transfers and clears on low cooldowns to mitigate condition damage. Direct damage bursts will be a bigger issue for your build. This is the reason why I would prefer Wanderer Amulet and Rune of the Undead.

He’s got Rise to mitigate direct damage but, just like you said Wanderer’s is still a better amulet for necros since we have large base health pool, Rune of the Undead is nice too.

The large base health pool isn’t the problem, the only reason why I took Deadshot is because of the fact that it increases the amount of Life Force you can obtain for Reaper. With Wanderer’s you can only get 15k+ max Shroud, while Deadshot gives you 19k+ Shroud. Since Shroud is a very important mechanic to Necromancer’s I decided to go with Vitality as the most important stat. For Direct Damage, like I said if you know how to Kite and stay in Range you should be able to counter a lot of classes that run power builds (not all classes, but many of them). Am I saying that Kiting will make you invincible to Power Damage? No, not at all. I’m just saying if you know how to Kite wonderfully, you should be able to survive Power Damage until either your cooldowns are off, or you can burst them with Shroud.

Is deathly chill worth it or would blighters boon an option for sustain.

I don’t think his build has enough boon generation to make any meaningful use of Blighter’s Boon, so he is probably better off with Deathly Chill.

I don’t know I have a lot of experience on Necro and while the traitlines do different things I feel like something like Spite, Soul Reaping, and Reaper is very comparable to Curses, Soul Reaping, and Reaper when it comes to how you will perform w/l wise in spvp over the long term. Different but equal. To be honest I almost always seem to come back to Spite over Curses with my condi Reaper but both are good. I have even tried to play Spite and Curses together (with reaper) although the Life Force management is terrible it can work too.