Guild Wars 2

So I was trying to find a way to rehabilitate Dhuumfire and I think the Reaper’s Decimate Defenses, Reaper’s Onslaught and the ability to more effectively hit multiple enemies with Reaper shroud skill 1 might just make it possible. My understanding is that Dhuumfire isn’t necessarily bad just that a 50% bonus to crit chance or making shroud a stunbreak/stability buff is just much better.

I’m not some great theorycrafter and this is more of a rough idea of mitigating the need to take Death Perception by taking Decimate Defences and combining it with Rending Shroud and Unyielding Blast (and maybe Death Spiral) to stack vulnerability for the crit bonus. Reaper’s Onslaught helps to more rapidly stack burning and vulnerability. I’ve had some fun with it in pvp using a Rabid amulet and great sword with the Earth and Smouldering sigils.

I ditched the 50% shroud crit for Dhuumfire even with a power build, the extra damage of having 3-4 stacks of burning is nice considering you already get 50% from DD and 20% from fury

Yeah, Dhuumfire is great with Reaper’s Shroud. It’s only with Death Shroud that it’s terrible. The increased attack speed and cleave on RS1 make a huge difference.

I tried different builds and while I still have to test with a proper Sinister gear I think the benefit of having a few stacks of burning does not compensate the loss while using them. Specifically if you are condition you are using a Scepter or a Staff, and entering Shroud prevents you from applying more condition of those weapons, on the contrary if you are a power user a few stacks of Burning does not compensate the Malice you used instead of another stat or the +50% crit chance you lost due to Dhuumfire instead of Death Perception.

So… meh

you lose 0% crit chance in a power build by picking Dhuumfire (30% base crit chance with a mix of valk + zerk or valk + cele gear, 50% crit chance from decimate defences and 20% crit chance from fury is already 100% crit chance). So every tick burning is additional dps.

You can make Dhuumfire work with RS, but I personally find auto-attacking to be the least effective use of my time. Traits like Reaper’s Might and Dhuumfire reward RS/DS auto-attack so that it’s used even in cases where auto-attacking might not be the best course of action. I ditched them both because they were building bad habits D=