Guild Wars 2

I know I’m not the first person to try this by far, but after a whole year of pvping as a rabid conditionmancer and a PVT minionmancer, I decided for the first time ever to go berzerker with a Deathly Perception build. After a lot of trial and error I decided on the following build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAnYWjMaZ7daaa07JEpCYD0j3rWcGqHlD68hA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNoY9xUEA

Though when I say “a lot of trial and error”, I mean the 6 games I played with this last night, so not a lot at all!
So anyway, here are the observations of a noob berserker necro:

1. OMG THIS BUILD DIES SO FAST!
It’s not just the reduced toughness that I miss, it’s the conditionamancer’s ability to keep enemies snared and weakened, the absolute awesomeness that is Terror, and Corrupt Boon’s ability to completely turn a fight around. With this build there’s not much stopping them from getting up in your face. If you thought chain-stun warriors are tough to deal with when you’re running conditions, you aint’ seen nothin’ till you’ve seen how they rip through you in Berserker gear!

2. LF is surprisingly hard to build!
Staff 1 is, of course, useless, Axe 2 on its own isn’t enough even with the reduced cd from axe mastery. I even tried Reaper’s Precision briefly (Curses V), which is, frankly, a joke of a trait! :p I tried popping both Spectral Walk and Armour just as I’;m joining a fight, but with the 1" internal cd on LF buildup on them they just don’t generate enough now – and popping them early leaves you with no stunbreakers when you need them! And, of course, the extremely low toughness and relatively low HP means that your life force gets eaten through VERY quickly once you’re in DS, even if you have a full bar.

3. Deathly Perception is not that scary.
Sure, Life Blast regularly does 2.5k damage with it, but when you consider the 1" cast time it’s not really ridiculous. A glass cannon thief or warrior can easily hit for over 1k with their normal 0.5" cast time autoattacks, and those are fully spammable rather than requiring them to build up life force beforehand! Now, if you’ve managed to build up a few might stacks from weapon swapping, the enemy has a bit of vulnerability on them, and they’re under 50% health so that Close To Death kicks in, THEN you can start getting some scary numbers. I didn’t write down the biggest number I’ve gotten, but I have never before been able to get such huge chunks off a healthbar in 14 months of playing necros!

4. In view of the above, my biggest realisation tonight is: Death Shroud is your finisher, not your bread and butter autoattack damage. You should basically only go into DS after the enemy is >50%, keeping your Doom handy in case they try to heal themselves or pull off some escape. It’s tempting to stay in DS and build those might stacks with life blast, but your life force just gets eaten away too quickly if the enemy isn’t stunned or immobilised and has the ability to hit back. Having realised this, I’m wondering how much use I’m really getting from Near to Death and Reaper’s Might. I briefly tried Spiteful Talisman with Signet of Spite as an opener, but 3 Might stacks isn’t really much to write home about. I could keep Reaper’s Might and use Blood is Power if might-stacking was the plan.

5. You’d think with a Deathly Perception build you’d be spending most of your time in DS and your utility slots don’t matter much, but boy are you wrong! Utilities are the thing I changed around the most tonight. My “full spectral jacket” bar didn’t last long, as I found out 2 stunbreakers aren’t worth much if they don’t also grant stability, cause your average stun warrior can just CC you again immediately. So I swapped out walk for well of power, not so much for the measly 1" stability but because its tick can get rid of those immobilises and let you dodge away. This was never as much of a problem for me with a conditionmancer, as when you’re playing conditions, your bleeds keep ticking even wihle you’re stunned, and if you have a bit of LF you can pop into DS and fear them, doing even more damage. That’s the greatest thing about Fear really: it’s not just the ability to save your skin by making an enemy flee just when they have you stunned and they’re about to unload their damage combo on you, it’s also the fact that it lets you do up to 3k Terror damage while you’re stunned. But with a power build, if you’re stunned, you’re not doing any damage. With this in mind, I got rid of Spectral Wall too, cause fear is nice if you have Terror but I felt I needed to go more aggressive. I really miss the boon stripping of Corrupt Boon. Tried swapping in focus for OH dagger but then I didn’t have enough condition cleansing, I tried Chill of Death instead of Axe Training but that affected life blast damage too much, so I decided to double up on wells, and move my last 10 trait points from Curses (I had Weakening Shroud) to Death for Ritual of Protection. Another possibility, which I haven’t tried yet, would be to sweap OH dagger for Focus, and take Shrouded Removal instead. However, like I described above, I don’t really “shroud dance” very much, I just build LF and pop into DS to finish people off, so I’m not sure how much use I’d see from Shrouded Removal.

6. Sigils were an interesting one:
One thing I also tried, but it didn’t work for me: swapping sigil of air for sigil of quickness. My thought was with near-100% crit in DS I’d be sure to proc it, and then burn them down with my massive Life Blast crits. However, even when that did work (a lot of the time it would proc earlier before I had enough life force built up, and then the long cd would mean I didn’t have it at all for the rest of the fight), all it did was let me get in 4 life blasts in the time when I would hagve gotten 3. Very nice and bursty, but not that destructive, and the fact that you can’t control when you get it makes it worthless. I tried Sigil of Blood for a long time, and I have to conclude that when you’re not in DS it’s actually a lot better and more consistent than Sigil of Air. Even though its damage doesn’t scale and it can’t crit,

So, that’s it. I’m still fiddling with the build, might even try mh-dagger instead of axe, though I’m so flimsy I’m a bit scared of getting any closer to the enemy than I already have to. The TL;DR is it didn’t work like I expected it to – there’s neither shroud-dancing, nor staying in DS for a long time; instead you get your enemy low and then use life blast to burst them down. It does great damage, but it isn’t quite as bursty as I would hope a glass cannon berserker build wouild be, since it relies on either axe 2 or a slow 1" autoattack.

Hope this was a little useful to some. Any advice on how I could improve my build, or anything similar anyone else is using, would be warmly welcome!

Dagger 3, Well of Suffering, Swap (any damaging sigil really is ok, but air or hydromancy are best IMO), Pop DS and lifeblast away.

You need to bait your opponent’s outs before the burst chain, but locking them into the well for the duration and critting with every (or nearly every) tick kills stuff dead in a hurry. Non-bunkers will 100-0 before the last tick of the well most times.

You consider running 20/20/0/0/30? Taking both Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery makes a much better LF-gen build. Spec Grab, for instance, insta-gens 20% LF on successful connect… Popping both Spec Armor and Spec Walk will give you the LF you need to enter DS from empty.

Also, Focus and Warhorn are infinitely better at LF-gen than Staff, and D/ will keep you permanently topped up.

I run a 10/30/0/0/30 build in WvW focused on Chills with D/D and D/F that tears up in 1v1 and can hold pretty well in 1v2-3…

Seems you all think I should switch from axe to mh dagger, I’ll try it out tonight and let you know how it goes

If you’re running a DS build in any sort of competitive environment, Axe just can’t cut it. The ONE LF-gen skill gets canceled as soon as your target moves out of range, depriving you of both your best out-of-DS damage, and your LF-gen.

So yeah, I’d run D/ and see how it goes.

Yeh, Axe 2 is pretty visual. It can be avoided leaving you very Life Force dry.
With dagger you can ‘Dark Pact’ to Immoblize them so they can’t just step out of wells.
Well of Suffering/Well of Corruption both ‘tick’ direct damage. So you should be able to get 100% crit out of that trait with them!

(Also Signet of Spite, doesn’t do anything while your in DS, But Blood is Power’s might stacks DO!
Also, Close to Death trait & Eagle runes stack)

Edit: (Also swapping to staff before entering DS, will give biggest Life Blasts)

Bweaty.9187:

Yeh, Axe 2 is pretty visual. It can be avoided leaving you very Life Force dry.
With dagger you can ‘Dark Pact’ to Immoblize them so they can’t just step out of wells.
Well of Suffering/Well of Corruption both ‘tick’ direct damage. So you should be able to get 100% crit out of that trait with them!

(Also Signet of Spite, doesn’t do anything while your in DS, But Blood is Power’s might stacks DO!
Also, Close to Death trait & Eagle runes stack)

Edit: (Also swapping to staff before entering DS, will give biggest Life Blasts)

I’ve never heard that about the staff before, is that true? I’ve only heard that a trained axe being equipped would increase damage from DS1.

Roe.3679:

Bweaty.9187:

Yeh, Axe 2 is pretty visual. It can be avoided leaving you very Life Force dry.
With dagger you can ‘Dark Pact’ to Immoblize them so they can’t just step out of wells.
Well of Suffering/Well of Corruption both ‘tick’ direct damage. So you should be able to get 100% crit out of that trait with them!

(Also Signet of Spite, doesn’t do anything while your in DS, But Blood is Power’s might stacks DO!
Also, Close to Death trait & Eagle runes stack)

Edit: (Also swapping to staff before entering DS, will give biggest Life Blasts)

I’ve never heard that about the staff before, is that true? I’ve only heard that a trained axe being equipped would increase damage from DS1.

Your base damage in DS is taken from your mainhand weapon. The reason that traited Axe is good is simply that the percent bonus is applied to DS skills. So it takes the base damage of Axe, then calculates the DS skills damage, then adds 10%.

Untraited, however, Staff wins out by merit of having the highest base damage.

Yeah I’ve done the maths and traited axe is only a hair lower than staff in average damage.

Switched to dagger, WAY harder staying alive. Need more practice.