Guild Wars 2

Took me quite some time to gather the items for this build, plus the actual recording process of it… A lot of work went into this one indeed… so…
Without further ado…. here it is

Guild Wars 2 – Fear… is my weapon [6x fear build – WvW version/tutorial]

This video includes the differences between PvE conditionmancer and WvW conditionmancer – how and why you change the build, why fear is so important & testing of the fear in this build… All of these explained in detail with the reasoning behind each decision.

Last but not least… we take this build on a field test in the most fierce WvW battles you have ever seen…
It will show you what to do in open battles, how to sustain the fight & pick your targets in the crowd and bring them into the ground… all of this while having really high survivability.

FINAL STATS:

“???” Attack – irrelevant
1837 Condition damage
93% Bleeding duration
50% Critical strike chance
2703 Armor
~ 20,992 Health
—
+ 100% fear duration increase
+ 6 potential fears
+ protection at 50% health
+ the ability to support in large fights

If i missed anything or if you have any questions feel free to comment here, on in the comment section on youtube.

I ran a build like this for over a month, maybe two, and while it is very good, my final analysis with it was, I do not agree that siphoning is useless in WvW, and I ended up going that way and liking it better. The problem with soul reaping for fear duration is you really have no way to sustain in battles, since this build gives virtually no life force or normal health regeneration.

If you don’t kill someone by the time you’ve exhausted your first few fears, they often will take the upper hand. Especially classes that regen like ele’s, guardians, and BM rangers.

Going back 20 points into Blood Magic instead of Soul Reaping, you can get some sustainability back (siphon traits + regen at 90%) and more sustainability means living longer to cast more fears. The siphoning can easily give you over 1000-2000 health back even in a 1v1, and several thousand more in a siege fight. As well as in sieges and zerg fights your marks will hit multiple people and each crit will heal you individually.

20 points of Blood Magic also gives you 2000 more HP which is also 2000 more HP in Death Shroud, which is better than just the 20% extra death shroud you get from the SR line. The idea in this trade is to stay in main form longer as that is where all your damage is, instead of in death shroud more where you do gimp damage as a conditionmancer, and only need to bounce in for the fear.

The cost of this trade (at least for me) was losing +100% fear down to +80%. But the real trick is even at 80% you will almost always get the second tick of damage from Terror as long as they already have conditions on them.

I also find Reaper’s Proection overrated, the cooldown is just too long. It did save my life at times when thieves jumped me, but in bigger fights it often gets wasted on some trivial ability (even a pet stun) then it gives you nothing for 90 seconds. In most sustained engagements you will not have Reaper’s Protection to help you except for the very first CC. If you like to roam as a necro alone in wvw, god forbid, but then it might be well worth it. But most good players will stun break long before Reaper’s runs 4 seconds.

Anyhow, that is just my comments as someone who has played a fear build, and I encourage people to test what is best for them. Keep up the good work Nemesis.

Your thought process is very good i don’t deny that. Everything you say is an alternative to be honest. It is not an alternative that i like, since i would much rather see someone go down permanently, then have the extra sustain which can only happen vs multiple over a longer period of time. In that period of time if you get focused you die, if you don’t… you get to heal and not die anyway…

In 1v1s you can as you said get up to 2000-3000 extra heal from your build, but from my experience that is just half a thief hit, half a hundred blades hit, a few ranger hits…
Time wise it does not overwrite the damage you take in my opinion.

Even though even at 80% fear duration you almost always get a second tick i preffer to turn that into an always get the extra fear, especially in WvW where you get PvE gear, and you condition damage can reach 1800, fear will do 1300 damage, two ticks will do 2600 damage on top of the bleeding stacks you have on your target. If you have only 10 bleeding stacks on the target, in two seconds those bleeding stacks to an extra 2600 damage. 5200 damage from 10 bleeding stacks and 1 fear, if they stun you it’s an extra 2600 damage 2 second fear + 2600 damage from bleeding stacks… so basically an extra 5000 damage each extra fear… more or less…

If they stun you and put stability on in a fight… if you already had 10 stacks of bleeding… you have 4 fears on them, that’s ~ 20000 damage that can not be denied or mitigated… This is why i say… i rather put someone in the ground then pew pew around with higher sustain. It’s my preferred playstyle, and in my eyes the sustain just won’t do…

I also like to have the protection on 50% health just in case i get zerged… cause when you get focused by 3+… they will stun you but at the same time instantly bring you to half HP even at this high toughness… if they stun you they get feared, switch to staff fear again… then heal + run + fear + plague form…

Also since fear is so long when ever you get downed, and the rest of the zerg leaves and it’s just you and one player… since you feared him from getting downed that’s damage + bleeding, you have an extra fear while you are downed, and instead of finishing you off you bring him down. As a necromancer in WvW you sort of win most of the downed fights because of the poison…

That was my experience with WvW…

Thank you for your input, it is a valuable addition from clearly an experienced WvW player.

It’s more of a playstyle preference I agree. It’s true once in a while I may not get the second terror tick, and lose a fraction of a second on fears, but I just prefer having the 2k more health, esp with the toughness you naturally have it goes a long way.

I saw in the vid you had 19k something health, and this is about what I had when I was into Soul Reaping, I just felt kind of squishy as this health level. I.e. in long fights with disappearing thieves, I saw my health slowly ticking away, with no way to catch up. So much so that I ended up having to add some power/vitality/toughness gear to get my health where I wanted. This costed me damage. But with the extra 2k from Blood Magic I can put all my rabid gear back on and get back to the same damage I originally had but with more health.

My experience on getting downed, most zergs will finish you off, and it feels odd to take a trait that is built to help you when you’ve kind of already lost.

A tradeoff I also liked in switching things up, I ended up with 80% duration to all conditions, (and 100% bleed which doubles Barbed Precision, 93% just misses this and you lose about 1000 damage every 20 attacks), instead of when I had Master of Terror, I only had 50% on all other conditions (except bleed). So this is a gain for things like poison, chill, weakness, etc.

Also one other preference for this build, I like Master of Corruption over Lingering Curses. Lingering curses is only giving me 3 seconds at the end of an already 10 second bleed (scepter 1) and a little extra bleed and weakness on Enfeebling Blood past 20 seconds, those are usually cleansed long before getting to that point. Having Blood is Power, Corrupt Boon, or Epidemic up 20% sooner I think is a much bigger damage boost.

But I would recommend either of these really for condition WvW builds.

Great video Nemesis, I really enjoyed it once again.

I have been playing condition build the last 3 weeks in wvw and prefer it much more than my power build for team support. There is nothing more satisfying than machine gunning marks on a npc or player on top of a tower then hitting epidemic. The black splat noise and seeing numbers fly is never dull.

One question I have for you. Do you see any reason not to take withering precision over lingering curse?

Alkaline.2809:

One question I have for you. Do you see any reason not to take withering precision over lingering curse?

Off the top of my head, it would be that Lingering Curse gives you more damage (remember that it breaks the normal cap of +100% duration) both from longer bleeds and poison, but also ensuring those keep ticking when Terror deals its damage (boosting that damage by 50%).

Plus the longer duration cripple gives you more kiting ability to increase survivability.

I don’t think you’d see a huge loss in damage if you take Withering Precision. Especially in a PvP situation. It’s more important to prevent your bleeds from getting cleansed than it is to make them last longer. Anything that isn’t a full cleanse will take weakness or cripple instead of your bleed stacks. What it ultimately comes down to though, IMO, is your playstyle. Do you use staff way more than scepter? If so, Withering Precision is for you.

I run a similar trait setup exculsively, though I got rid of the “fear on downed” trait, because I just don’t like traiting to die, as that sort of rubs me the wrong way. I much prefer the cooldown reduction on DS skills for D2 and D3 about 2-3 seconds after DS comes off cooldown every time.

I have full tough/prec/condition similar to the video, and even though I have 18500 HP, i hardly notice it making a big difference. The very high toughness makes up for it, and HP is really only worth while if you can either gain Life Force quickly (which you can’t in this build) of if you have to soak condition damage, which you don’t.

I don’t really get why you didn’t use Afflicted X2, Krait X2, and Mad King X2, which with the 40% duration food, Fear trait, and bleed trait gives you 100% fear and 100% bleed. 93% bleeding duration is a horrible waste of our most powerful PVP bleed (barbed prec.). Going over 100% duration on fear is also a horrible waste.

The siphon traits are nice, but the cooldown reduction on DS skills is very important to me to keep chills and bleeds up. The DS 2 skill is just so kitten good at bleeding and chilling, to not cast it every 12-13 seconds. I don’t like the 50% duration fear trait at all, but since the spite tree is complete garbage for a condition build, I will live with using that for my extra duration.

Reapers prot. is also horribly wasted VERY frequently in WvW, and I have considered dropping it because of the lackluster traits in death magic, but when it works good, it works REALLY good. A 4 seconds fear, even if it only connects effectively once every 5 times it goes off, wins fights. I would much prefer if we had control over when it went off, or at least if the game AI was intelligent to know not to blow it when someone uses a ranged disable on you, thus fearing nothing. Mesmer pistol stun from 1200 range….. doh….

The trait that casts fear on knockdown/stuns, does that work in WvW? Because I see it go off all the time in PVE, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it go off in WvW and I get stunned all the time in there.

It definitely goes off, but you might not even notice it a lot in big fights, which will trick you into thinking its not working on subsequent ones.

Also people have stability and mobs generally don’t.

I don’t get this build at all.

In fact, the footage proved it to be even worse than I thought.

Re-watch your own video and notice in all that edited footage…

1. How many times did the “downed” fears help you?

2. How many times did ANY of your “juiced” fears make a BIG difference from a normal fear? I noticed almost none, but even the most optimistic analysis would say sparingly.

3. The cooldown on one of your fears is 90 seconds so at best it can only help you that often. Combine that with the sparing or rare use of “downed” fears and you really only used 2 fears with any regularity. In fact, sometimes you entered DS and didn’t even use fear.

4. Despite a 15 second cooldown on epidemic, it was sparingly used and only a couple of uses seemed extremely productive (i.e. with lots of bleeding stacks on target). In fact, the one case where you highlighted its use was not even that great….a wellomancer would have done tons more damage in that same situation.

5. How many times did you successfully use Corrupt Boons? Sometimes it worked, but not enough to justify it over other Elites. It definitely did not hit a target with stability very often…so no extra fear. Well of Corruption would have converted far more boons …on more targets…more often in those group fights. Even when people avoid wells, they serve as area denial and endurance drains that cannot be overlooked from team value perspective.

6. You have ZERO speed buffs. Spectral Armor or Necrotic Travel would have provided equal quality survivability while also giving you extra damage in the form of LF or Minion Damage.

7. You like Dagger 5, but I didn’t see much use of Dagger 4 when you had conditions…plus the blindness is helpful too.

8. Seems like Plague form wasn’t used much despite it being ideal offensively and defensively for many of those fighting situations.

If you’re going to go condition build and not use Plague much, not use Epidemic on cooldown, not find many successful applications of Corrupt Boon in all that play time…then it would be much better to go Wellomancer.

In short, a Wellomancer with speed elite/Lich would have been just as survivable and dealt much more damage in a group setting. Just watch how many times your elites weren’t being used or wasted compared to a ground targeting Wellomancer in group PvP like you showcased.

It’s fine to get excited about a thousand or two extra damage due to 1 more second of fear on 1 target…until you realize how many traits and runes you spent to get that occasional “payoff”.

With one trait in ground targeting wells..you would have hit the same people (and more) that you hit with all your marks with even greater synergy in runes/gear/traits.

If Anet ever provides stats for total damage like WoW after BGs, you would see just how paltry your contribution was in those fights.

SPESHAL.9106:

I don’t get this build at all.

In fact, the footage proved it to be even worse than I thought.

Re-watch your own video and notice in all that edited footage…

1. How many times did the “downed” fears help you?

2. How many times did ANY of your “juiced” fears make a BIG difference from a normal fear? I noticed almost none, but even the most optimistic analysis would say sparingly.

3. The cooldown on one of your fears is 90 seconds so at best it can only help you that often. Combine that with the sparing or rare use of “downed” fears and you really only used 2 fears with any regularity. In fact, sometimes you entered DS and didn’t even use fear.

4. Despite a 15 second cooldown on epidemic, it was sparingly used and only a couple of uses seemed extremely productive (i.e. with lots of bleeding stacks on target). In fact, the one case where you highlighted its use was not even that great….a wellomancer would have done tons more damage in that same situation.

5. How many times did you successfully use Corrupt Boons? Sometimes it worked, but not enough to justify it over other Elites. It definitely did not hit a target with stability very often…so no extra fear. Well of Corruption would have converted far more boons …on more targets…more often in those group fights. Even when people avoid wells, they serve as area denial and endurance drains that cannot be overlooked from team value perspective.

6. You have ZERO speed buffs. Spectral Armor or Necrotic Travel would have provided equal quality survivability while also giving you extra damage in the form of LF or Minion Damage.

7. You like Dagger 5, but I didn’t see much use of Dagger 4 when you had conditions…plus the blindness is helpful too.

8. Seems like Plague form wasn’t used much despite it being ideal offensively and defensively for many of those fighting situations.

If you’re going to go condition build and not use Plague much, not use Epidemic on cooldown, not find many successful applications of Corrupt Boon in all that play time…then it would be much better to go Wellomancer.

In short, a Wellomancer with speed elite/Lich would have been just as survivable and dealt much more damage in a group setting. Just watch how many times your elites weren’t being used or wasted compared to a ground targeting Wellomancer in group PvP like you showcased.

It’s fine to get excited about a thousand or two extra damage due to 1 more second of fear on 1 target…until you realize how many traits and runes you spent to get that occasional “payoff”.

With one trait in ground targeting wells..you would have hit the same people (and more) that you hit with all your marks with even greater synergy in runes/gear/traits.

If Anet ever provides stats for total damage like WoW after BGs, you would see just how paltry your contribution was in those fights.

How many high damage wells do you have and what is the CD on them ? How can you have the same survivability as 2600 toughness in a power build and still do high damage with wells…

What do you do when you are on a wall or at a wall, when you are at a gate or on a gate ? Do you place wells then ?… Do you dedicated one entire trait line just to make wells ground target, also… what’s the CD on your wells again ?… also when you make them ground targeted what’s their damage ?… mmm… can people simply walk out of a well ?…

In all my footage people were disappearing faster then i could tab through them, either from dying or from having too many characters in one place, so they wouldn’t render anymore. Each time i had an opportunity i tried to take advantage of it.

I thought i will show what you do in open massive battles… cause for single target the same build / a variation of it i have been using in TPvP. The only class that gives me any problems are bunker elementalists, but then again that gives problems to anyone…

They either kill you or run away, and you can’t stop the run away part… they have sustained low damage, insane healing, insane escape mechanisms… they never come alone, because with their high mobility sometimes they can join two fights…

Its a fun build, but you’re making people run away. Most likely into their own groups, they get downed, and will get rezed. Its also very 1v1 orientated, can’t say that’s the best thing for WvW. Still, props for being innovative.

I tried running a fear build close to Nemesis’ recommendation and it did add to survivability more than traiting the vitality line. A few thousand extra HP at the start of a battle does not mean much in the long run and traiting the blood line never seemed to provide any significant functional benefits. I have been traiting at least 20 in the death magic / toughness line for the last couple of months after giving up on what I thought was supposed to be one of the the Necromancer’s two specialties; vitality. If healing capacity and HP scaled better, then I might change my mind. It would also be nice if the LF pool also scaled significantly with traiting the blood magic line.

So right now, for me at least, I trait for reducing incoming damage rather than improving my health pool and healing. There is also the effect of agony in Fractals that doubly-kinks the vitality route. More defense or more potent heals/life steals are needed. A bigger HP pool has almost no effect.

Nemesis.8593:

How many high damage wells do you have and what is the CD on them ? How can you have the same survivability as 2600 toughness in a power build and still do high damage with wells…

What do you do when you are on a wall or at a wall, when you are at a gate or on a gate ? Do you place wells then ?… Do you dedicated one entire trait line just to make wells ground target, also… what’s the CD on your wells again ?… also when you make them ground targeted what’s their damage ?… mmm… can people simply walk out of a well ?…

In all my footage people were disappearing faster then i could tab through them, either from dying or from having too many characters in one place, so they wouldn’t render anymore. Each time i had an opportunity i tried to take advantage of it.

I thought i will show what you do in open massive battles… cause for single target the same build / a variation of it i have been using in TPvP. The only class that gives me any problems are bunker elementalists, but then again that gives problems to anyone…

They either kill you or run away, and you can’t stop the run away part… they have sustained low damage, insane healing, insane escape mechanisms… they never come alone, because with their high mobility sometimes they can join two fights…

Where do I start with all your questions? I thought my post was fairly detailed and clear.

First of all, your reply keeps referencing well cooldowns as being such a negative…well (forgive the pun)…I got news for you…

1. If wells are so bad, why do YOU use a well as 1/3 of your elites. The wellomancer build I discussed involved using 2/3 wells (corruption and suffering) with Spectral Walk…so I’m only using 1 more well than you, but the two I use are getting used far more often and effective.

2. You make fun of the cooldown on wells, yet YOUR Corruption elites might as well had the same cooldown. You hardly ever used them on cooldown and even when you did, they weren’t that effective. Count how many epidemics hit lots of targets with big stacks of bleeds. Count how many times you successfully used Corrupt Boon on a target with Stability and got your ‘juiced up’ Fear with 1 extra tick of damage.

3. Yes, people can walk out of wells, but Epidemic is even worse. It has a one second cast time compared to 1/4 for a well. Many times your target disappears or others around are gone by the time it even hits. I can get 2 wells down to cover a wide area in the same time it takes you to do 1 Epidemic.

4. You can’t use Wells in every scenario as you mentioned, but the same applies for marks…You seemed to use marks plenty in your video and they hit often. YOU even tauted all the all the AOE damage you were doing. Instead of "juicing up’ fear, I choose to juice up things that are used OFTEN like AOE.

5. BTW, you ask if I “dedicated a whole talent line to ground targeting”…Yet it is YOU who is dedicating far more traits, runes, etc. to get fear to do damage and get that damage to do anything significant.

6. As for survivability, it’s true you can’t get the same amount of toughness, but you don’t need it. As you already mentioned, people move out of wells because they are so potent. You can use this to your advantage defensively at times to get people off of you or choose another target. Also, with Spectral Walk, I’m generating tons of lifeforce that adds BOTH survivability AND damage via Death Shroud. Your build does almost no damage in Death Shroud and builds LF at a fraction of the pace (I also build LF on crits and 3% on marks, so that substantially adds to my survivability via DS).

5. Spectral Walk is amazing for survivability if you know how to use the juke properly. It’s incredible when fighting on a Z-axis, but works well too just running in one direction and then teleporting behind them. Some use the Flesh Wurm portal skill to similar effect. Your build has ZERO mobility/speed increase…that weakness offsets any extra survivability from toughness…unless you are comparing two bots standing in place hitting each other.

I would agree that your build is fairly effective in 1v1…especially if you “allow” for getting downed and have a chance to do 2 fears via “down-state”. However, if Anet provided total damage stats in WvW or sPvP, the damage you did would be embarrassing compared to a wellomancer and survivability would have been almost identical.

SPESHAL.9106:

Nemesis.8593:

How many high damage wells do you have and what is the CD on them ? How can you have the same survivability as 2600 toughness in a power build and still do high damage with wells…

What do you do when you are on a wall or at a wall, when you are at a gate or on a gate ? Do you place wells then ?… Do you dedicated one entire trait line just to make wells ground target, also… what’s the CD on your wells again ?… also when you make them ground targeted what’s their damage ?… mmm… can people simply walk out of a well ?…

In all my footage people were disappearing faster then i could tab through them, either from dying or from having too many characters in one place, so they wouldn’t render anymore. Each time i had an opportunity i tried to take advantage of it.

I thought i will show what you do in open massive battles… cause for single target the same build / a variation of it i have been using in TPvP. The only class that gives me any problems are bunker elementalists, but then again that gives problems to anyone…

They either kill you or run away, and you can’t stop the run away part… they have sustained low damage, insane healing, insane escape mechanisms… they never come alone, because with their high mobility sometimes they can join two fights…

Where do I start with all your questions? I thought my post was fairly detailed and clear.

First of all, your reply keeps referencing well cooldowns as being such a negative…well (forgive the pun)…I got news for you…

1. If wells are so bad, why do YOU use a well as 1/3 of your elites. The wellomancer build I discussed involved using 2/3 wells (corruption and suffering) with Spectral Walk…so I’m only using 1 more well than you, but the two I use are getting used far more often and effective.

2. You make fun of the cooldown on wells, yet YOUR Corruption elites might as well had the same cooldown. You hardly ever used them on cooldown and even when you did, they weren’t that effective. Count how many epidemics hit lots of targets with big stacks of bleeds. Count how many times you successfully used Corrupt Boon on a target with Stability and got your ‘juiced up’ Fear with 1 extra tick of damage.

3. Yes….

In case it was not clear with my reply i was mimicking the impulsiveness of your first input on this build.

The thing is as a “well’o-mancer” your damage comes from wells, and if you look at what wells do… two of them are support from the start, and one has a bit of damage… and only well of suffering can be counted as damage. If you base your damage into well of suffering you will fail miserably. It has a 45 sec CD at best, people can move out of it… and to make it range you need to trait into curses, in which you get condition damage which does nothing for a power build.

So what do you do in the rest of the time… you run after them in a zerg with your dagger ? If you want to do damage with that dagger and not just tickle them you have to go glass cannon, same goes for your two damaging 45 second CD wells that can only be ranged if you invest in curses which makes you unable to be glass cannon effectively either.
Do you go about with an axe and poke people ?

What do you do when your wells are on CD. Let’s say it’s a 3v3 scenario… one of the opponents focuses you and it quickly becomes a 1v1 between you two. You put down your wells, he dodges… and… what do you do then ? You can’t finish him off because you don’t have enough power since you’re not glass cannon… you can’t survive cause you are not support orientated and even if you could… for how long ?…

The well’o-mancer is a one use only, from my point of view there is no well’o-mancer. Wells if you read the description are mostly for either support or support by debuffing, they can be integrated into builds but never act as a build themselves because of their very nature.

If you go glass cannon grab a well of suffering just to complete your build and finish him off, if you go condition build grab a well of darkness since you have enough condition removal but are vulnerable to bursting by multiple, as we all are…

They never act as a stand alone build. You are right, for the brief 2-3 seconds every 45 seconds wells do better then my build, yet my build can sustain the fight and allow me to take my tine, chose my victims in the crowd and bring them into the ground.

You are survivable enough to not die from random AoEs which allows you to pick your targets in the crowd. Also this build shines when it comes to defending keeps. Every 2 seconds you give your allies, by fearing the kittens that are on catapults / rams are 2 extra seconds in which the massive zerg outside didn’t got in and didn’t overran you… you have 3 basic fears, even go down and sacrifice yourself to fear one more time… sometimes a few seconds are all that is needed to hold out, to keep the enemy out… reinforcements are coming…

My WvW example which is in an annotation attached to this video proves all of these. Back then i wasn’t even running such a fear orientated build since i was not able to, due to the nature of reanimator trait.

kKagari.6804:

Its a fun build, but you’re making people run away. Most likely into their own groups, they get downed, and will get rezed. Its also very 1v1 orientated, can’t say that’s the best thing for WvW. Still, props for being innovative.

I am making people run away and die… they get downed and now there are 2 people from their group that are ineffective… the downed player, and the player that is trying to get the downed player up…

If i could get this survivability alongside this range damage on a power build i would do it trust me… but if we could burst people at range with high survivability, we would get nerfed as it would be OP. Snipers are OP just go in Arah…

Think about it, if you go on a power build you have less range and you are twice as squishy… go in such a big zerg and try to stab people, see what happens, you’ll die from random AoEs that fall on you.

you should use corrupt boon to remove stability from people or you wont be able to fear them!

tehsmooth.7493:

you should use corrupt boon to remove stability from people or you wont be able to fear them!

Corrupt Boon changes Stability into Fear…….watch his video.

Nemesis,

Thanks for all your efforts……it is very much appreciated!

I have two things I would like to ask clarification on:

1- Although I disagree with most of what Speshal has said, he does have a point that some of the damage provided by this build is dependent on someone cc’ing you, downing you or having stability up. I realize the survivability benefits but, compared to your bleed duration build, I am not sure your damage output loss is as minimal as you are asserting.

In your Fear video, you said that to get the full benefit of the bleed duration, one would need to have 25 stacks of bleed. In the bleed duration video, you stated that if one were to use Blood is Power, the duration boost would turn a 7k damage spell into a 14k damage spell. So I would not need 25 stacks to benefit from the bleed duration spec.

Please clear this up as I am trying to decide between these two and find the Fear survivability comforting when I am trying to move between objectives alone, or in small groups.

2- In your videos, you reference your gear but I am unable to find one that addresses these points:
-Are they all from the same set?
-Are they transmuted from other pieces?
-Do they all require PvE? (I am almost exclusively WvW)
-Do I need to use these pieces (armor) if they are PvE or can other be used?
-If I can use others, what set would be ideal?

Thanks again so much for your contribution to this community!

Keep in mind you can retain 100% bleed duration and 100% fear duration, unlike what is shown in the video. So you can have a max duration bleed build and max duration fear build. I mentioned it above with runes. Because this build has zero power, the gear setup it uses would be Condition/Toughness/Prec, which can be karma bought or dungeon bought, or TP bought.

The only comment I would make, is that this build is lackluster compared to a hybrid build in PVE. The mobs in PVE stun/daze all the time, so reapers protection is horribly wasted, and the fear damage is negligible on a boss, or even IMMUNE. WvW wise it is my favorite build to run (a variant, but relatively close).

Rennoko.5731:

Keep in mind you can retain 100% bleed duration and 100% fear duration, unlike what is shown in the video. So you can have a max duration bleed build and max duration fear build. I mentioned it above with runes. Because this build has zero power, the gear setup it uses would be Condition/Toughness/Prec, which can be karma bought or dungeon bought, or TP bought.

The only comment I would make, is that this build is lackluster compared to a hybrid build in PVE. The mobs in PVE stun/daze all the time, so reapers protection is horribly wasted, and the fear damage is negligible on a boss, or even IMMUNE. WvW wise it is my favorite build to run (a variant, but relatively close).

Rennoko,

Thanks for the reply. I need to go read you earlier post, as both 100% bleed and fear would be ideal. EDIT: I read your thoughts and like the idea. I would like to see Nemesis’s response to this as well…….it seems like you make some solid points.

Which Karma set is precision/tough/cond? I found a really nice chart on GW2 wiki for my engineer for Karma armor sets but can’t seem to find one for Necros.

Thanks again!

The karma set is spread across several temple vendors (all different names), and I think it is only 5 or the 6 slots you need. You can check Dulfy.net, he has all the info there, plus the new info on the jewelry stuff you can get with karma for Rabid (Cond/prec/toughness). To get that last armor slot you can buy Khibron, or do twilights arbor dungeon for instance.

It is a lot of karma to do that, and since you can get rings//amulets/access. with RABID stats now, i would use my karma for that and then run dungeons for the rest of the armor. Those access slot items are only available either off the TP (expensive) or from these new temple items.

Nemesis.8593:

In case it was not clear with my reply i was mimicking the impulsiveness of your first input on this build.

You’re right…I WAS mimicking your build…Your other videos are fine and probably helpful to many.

However, anyone reading the “advice” on this build should be perfectly informed of the following:

1. You spent several traits, runes, and gear on getting 6 potential fears and for those fears to do ONE extra tick of less than 2,000 damage on ONE target.

2. One of the fears is on a 90 second cooldown and is not available on demand. Two require you to be down. Another one REQUIRES the other person having stability and you successfully landing Corrupt Boons on them.

3. ONLY 1 of your 6 fears works if your opponent has stability and that requires you to have Corrupt Boons off cooldown and land it successfully.

4. Your own EDITED video didn’t highlight 4 of those fears doing much of anything that made a difference.

5. You make fun of wells…yet you use one.

6. You claim the cooldowns are too long yet you waited longer than 45 seconds between applications of Epidemic and Corrupt Boons in virtually the entire EDITED footage. Corrupt Boons has almost the same cooldown as my wells….Plus, YOU use a well with an even LONGER cooldown than mine..lol

7. Wells have shorter cast times and provide area denial…break up front lines…sabotage other professions area buffs…etc…mine also corrupts more boons on more targets.

8. You use Plague Elite sparingly (probably because it has zero range…what did you say about your build’s great range?). Yet a wellomancer with Lich form would be devastating opponents regularly with it from much greater range.

I use Axe and Dagger O/H, so you have slightly greater range with the scepter, but, in your own video, there was almost always someone withing the 600 range to hit with an axe.

You have ZERO mobility. I can spectral walk to chase someone…or get in range…and then portal to get away. I can exploit z-axis for which there are many in this game. I can also get to a point or help someone faster…You can’t.

My LF pool is greater than yours and does tons of damage while also giving greater survivability. Your LF generation is horrible, the pool is smaller, and you do no damage in DS.

BTW, I’m not your typical power build. I get 18+ seconds of protection at 50% health…so my survivability and mobility murders your extra 800 toughness.

You claim power builds don’t use condition damage which is patently FALSE. Barbed precision, dagger 5, DS 2, and mark 2 all give bleeding. In fact, my bleeding damage adds up to much more than your piddly fear damage.

As for a 3 v 3 scenario, you would be in very sorry shape against me and my team. I could just pop Lich and kill 1-2 of your guys.

Or I could burst you with the axe/dagger while spreading weakness and vulnerability. I could add further LF and conditions with my marks and then burst you more with my piercing and vulnerability stacking DS#1. (I also have the same 2 fears you primarily use..they just don’t last an extra second or do a little damage.)

Oh yeah…I also have those wells…I’ll just wait for you to dodge some of my burst which drains your endurance. Then, I’ll chill/cripple you and drop wells on you. Other professions may be able to escape wells, but not YOU and your build…lol

Fighting my 3 man team would at least give you a chance to showcase 2 of your fears because you would be going DOWN…except of course, if one of my teammates has stability…then your 2 down fears are worthless. Even if they hit…how many times would you actually be able to rally????

Let’s think of your best case scenario…You succeeded in building stacks of conditions and landed a successful epidemic and also landed your 90 second cooldown fear on me or my teammate who cc’d you…Big deal…I could just heal to remove all conditions or use my staff/dagger 4 to xfer them back to you. I also have an added fear break with spectral walk..so gg to you.

Oh…and best of all…even if things go wrong and my 2 other teammates suck…I can just spectral walk out of there and fight another day.

What are your options again???

That’s what I thought.

If you’re having fun with this wacky build…more power to you (pun again?)

I’ve explained enough for people to decide on their own.

GLHF

It’s a nice fear build, but I much prefer the fear/might stacking build that was posted around here a few weeks ago (with some minor personal trait modifications for myself).

It has nice survivability, decent LF generation, and might stacks help for big numbers in both power and condition damage. Nothing like fearing for 1.4k a tick for 2 seconds while wailing for 3k LF crits. Not to mention the AE mayhem that a full staff rotation does with the spec…

[/quote]
BTW, I’m not your typical power build. I get 18+ seconds of protection at 50% health…so my survivability and mobility murders your extra 800 toughness.
[/quote]

Care to share your build? For inspiration and whatnot.

Dietzen.6127:

BTW, I’m not your typical power build. I get 18+ seconds of protection at 50% health…so my survivability and mobility murders your extra 800 toughness.
[/quote]

Care to share your build? For inspiration and whatnot.[/quote]

I am sure he is using runes of the forge, which give protection for 10 seconds at 50% HP. And he has spectral armor from the DS tree, which give 6 more seconds, so with some toughness tree points, he gets around 18 seconds.

BTW, the post up a few was insanely hostile, take a chill pill. A power necro build is going to whomp a condition necro build every time. So talking about how you would pwn him is waste of time. I am sure he knows this build would suck against a power necro build.

I personally think counting downed fear, and a fear while going down, and reapers protection as accessible fears in the build is a misnomer, and makes a niche thing sound like a strength. There is nothing wrong with traiting for 100% fear duration if you match it in such a way that you do not punish the rest of your conditions. Staff and DS3 are up a lot, espeically with the CD reduction, and the extra damage is nice in a condition build.

Also I wouldn’t take his video as a classic example of the build working well. No movement utilties is in my humble opinion a serious fail, and not using DS2, and epidemic constantly is also fail (long AOE chills). Just because his video shows him not playing it right, doesn’t mean 100% bleed 100% fear is bad. Again, the downed state fear/long cooldown stuff is very niche/wasted. I also hate* corrpution boon because of its long cooldown. (compare it to BIP and epi).

While I cannot categorically say a fear/bleed/condition build (similar to this one)works better than power builds in wvw, it has given me a much better place in team fights because of the access to more control, and longer game changer conditions (like chill). Power necros still geat fears, but mine come off cooldown faster and last much longer.

So I really like the comparisons and am finding it very helpful. Please keep contributing in a positive way and I should be piling up stacks of bodies sooner rather than later.

Rennoko….do you have any vids or a link to your build? I am anxious for Nemesis to jump back in and discuss the changes you suggested. I think you have tweaked some things that will give more “up time” to abilities that you have invested in, which I like. I don’t like investing heavily on abilities that are “niche” unless they are great. I really like the “no you don’t” fear that Nem shows to protect against the “i win” thief opener.

Keep it coming…….

I’d been toying with the idea of trying a fear build recently also. I have always found myself playing power builds (I’m a serial respeccer so have tried a few) and had just settled on one I quite liked (I usually judge them by running around solo in wvw and seeing what I can accomplish), but this inspired me to give conditions a try for a change.

I’m a cheapskate though, plus I am not a pve fan, so I don’t have access to (and am certainly not paying for with the prices they are at) the chest, boots, accessories and staff. I filled the staff/chest/boots with rampagers instead and used rare accessories.

So my stats aren’t quite as good as those listed above, but I did go for the 100% bleed and fear duration variant in the runes.

I have to say I’m enjoying it so far, considering I’ve never played a condition spec before (and hence am making a lot of mistakes) it’s proving pretty effective. For a condition build you can put out a pretty nice burst using fear. Using corrupt boon to turn stability into fear is particularly satisfying.

I have to say though, I think I agree about the lack of usefuleness of the fear on being downed. I was never downed when I found a 1v1 (I’m sure I will be, but it wont happen often enough to make it worth it) and in a 1v2+ the fear when you go down isn’t going to save you. I think I’ll change it for the DS skills cooldown reduction as that seems like it will be more useful to me.

I just woke up, going to cook something nice relax for a few hours after that i will finish the SPvP video/version of this build.

From everything i saw here, the problems that are brought up are… i don’t use everything (it’s hard in such a big zerg, my targets were disappearing faster then i could target them, the down fear doesn’t count as much…) and a few other things.

In SPvP… actually TPvP there will be a more clear demonstration of the build, just because of the fact it’s not as hard to demonstrate it there, i can afford focusing on what i want to demonstrate rather then a few dozen other things.

Some of the things you guys were saying aren’t bad or wrong, but you guys need to understand that it is very easy to say, “you should have done this… should have done that…” but it’s not as easy as it sounds, when every second you have to tab 3 times and make a decision, ops… that one’s gone, then tab 3 more times and make a decision… in such a big zerg… you guys can try it out for yourselves if you don’t believe me.

So i appreciate all of you guy’s input and i will answer all of you individually later today.

MeanMug.2630:

So I really like the comparisons and am finding it very helpful. Please keep contributing in a positive way and I should be piling up stacks of bodies sooner rather than later.

Rennoko….do you have any vids or a link to your build? I am anxious for Nemesis to jump back in and discuss the changes you suggested. I think you have tweaked some things that will give more “up time” to abilities that you have invested in, which I like. I don’t like investing heavily on abilities that are “niche” unless they are great. I really like the “no you don’t” fear that Nem shows to protect against the “i win” thief opener.

Keep it coming…….

I would love to do a video one day, but considering how much suffering my computer does when the screen has more than 4 sprites rendering at the same time, it may be a while. My build is as follows, and I was running it even pre-terror buff.

0 Spite
30 Curses
Hemophilia, Terror, Lingering Curses
20 Death Magic
Greater Marks, Reapers Protection (can swap this with staff CD for PVE)
0 Blood
20 Soul Reaping
Path of Midnight, Master of Terror

Utility: Epidemic, Blood is Power, Sign. Locust/spectral walk, Plague Form

I run all Condition/Toughness/Prec gear, occasionally with the fractal rings that give Cond/Vitality/Toughness if I feel squishy.

Sceptor MH/Dagger OH : Staff

The stats are the same as was linked in the nem build above more or less. Runes are as follows:

2xAfflicted
2xKrait
2xMad King

Superior Sigil of Earth in both staff and MH, with Sigil of corruption in the dagger.

Rare veggie pizza (40% duration + 70 cond).

Freqenty use of DS2, and DS3 are part of what I think makes this build shine in WvW. Getting in the mix makes your reapers protection almost guaranteed to hit a few people, and then they run for 4 seconds if they don’t have a fear break. Chills and cripples last a very long time.

To be honest though, this build doesn’t work well in spvp at all, because losing the 40% duration on all fears/bleeds/conditions is a massive hit to a build that focuses only on conditions. Also your condition damage is so much lower in Spvp.

Terror/barbed precision are very reliable sources of damage in wvw, and losing that extra second tick on each of those effects hurts badly. To get long enough durations in Spvp you would have to change up traits and runes.

In my opinion the above gets a nice mix of defense and offense, and really only falls short against the dreaded inanimate object. If big or small groups the greatest control you have is over spreading conditions, and this maximizes those conditions without giving up your bleed and fear damage.

Rennoko.5731:

I would love to do a video one day, but considering how much suffering my computer does when the screen has more than 4 sprites rendering at the same time, it may be a while. My build is as follows, and I was running it even pre-terror buff.

0 Spite
30 Curses
Hemophilia, Terror, Lingering Curses
20 Death Magic
Greater Marks, Reapers Protection (can swap this with staff CD for PVE)
0 Blood
20 Soul Reaping
Path of Midnight, Master of Terror

Utility: Epidemic, Blood is Power, Sign. Locust/spectral walk, Plague Form

I run all Condition/Toughness/Prec gear, occasionally with the fractal rings that give Cond/Vitality/Toughness if I feel squishy.

Sceptor MH/Dagger OH : Staff

The stats are the same as was linked in the nem build above more or less. Runes are as follows:

2xAfflicted
2xKrait
2xMad King

Superior Sigil of Earth in both staff and MH, with Sigil of corruption in the dagger.

---

Rare veggie pizza (40% duration + 70 cond).

Freqenty use of DS2, and DS3 are part of what I think makes this build shine in WvW. Getting in the mix makes your reapers protection almost guaranteed to hit a few people, and then they run for 4 seconds if they don’t have a fear break. Chills and cripples last a very long time.

To be honest though, this build doesn’t work well in spvp at all, because losing the 40% duration on all fears/bleeds/conditions is a massive hit to a build that focuses only on conditions. Also your condition damage is so much lower in Spvp.

Terror/barbed precision are very reliable sources of damage in wvw, and losing that extra second tick on each of those effects hurts badly. To get long enough durations in Spvp you would have to change up traits and runes.

In my opinion the above gets a nice mix of defense and offense, and really only falls short against the dreaded inanimate object. If big or small groups the greatest control you have is over spreading conditions, and this maximizes those conditions without giving up your bleed and fear damage.

Awesome man….tyvm for writing this up.

One thought: Have you considered ‘Unyielding Blast’ for Soul Reaping 10? I know on my Engi that piercing projectiles is severely underrated in group / chokepoint fights. Not only does it hit multiple targets but, on the necro, it add Vuln and bleeds on crits……

I don’t know if this would be as impressive as my Engi but, compared to 15% cooldown improvement, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

MeanMug.2630:

Awesome man….tyvm for writing this up.

One thought: Have you considered ‘Unyielding Blast’ for Soul Reaping 10? I know on my Engi that piercing projectiles is severely underrated in group / chokepoint fights. Not only does it hit multiple targets but, on the necro, it add Vuln and bleeds on crits……

I don’t know if this would be as impressive as my Engi but, compared to 15% cooldown improvement, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

So here is my rational about that.

When I am in DS form there are only two reasons I am there. I am popping in to get DS2/DS3 off and to put up fury. Occasionally I will use DS4 if a lot of mobs are around just for the few extra bleeds I get from the crits.

I never ever use the DS1 skill as a condition build, because it is sub-par DPS to anything else I could do. The same reason why I never use the staff 1 skill. When you have built around having zero power and zero crit damage (aside from traits) it seems completly illogical to try and blast anything with DS1. The windup is slow, and bad for applying bleeds. Vulnerability also does very little for a condition build.

So in wanting to keep up my conditions, the shorter DS2 comes off cooldown the more chill/bleed I can apply. The DS2 bleed and chill last quite a while, and are equal to the largest number of bleeds from a single skill (3) for the necro. Plus people make mistakes when you port in their face and chill them, and it combos very well into staff2/3 or sceptor 2/5.

To be playing a condition build right you need to be going in and out of DS as often as possible for the fury and the DS skills that work for conditions (2 and 3). So shorter cooldowns on those 2 skills seem like a good plan to me, and I have gotten VERY used to having dark path up nearly anytime I hit the DS key.

Its a playstyle choice, and most hybrid builds would scoff and what I have said, but I play the role I am in very well, and while I don’t maximize my DPS, I retain a lot of survivability and punish anyone without multiple condition clears.

We ran Terror build tests after the Dec patch, and while the build was neat at first, it’s actual contribution in WvW and SPvP was found lacking when compared to most all other builds.

No matter how you spin it, the DPS of a Terror build resides with bleeds, not fears. The total contribution of Terror damage coupled with the long recharge timers of the fears available, made up an estimated 5% of total damage dealt. The tests were run in a controlled SPvP room among friends, and used the ‘on death’ damage breakdown to compare both inactive killing (killing someone standing still), and duels ranging from 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3. The damage from conditions and direct damage vastly outstripped Terror, especially in prolonged encounters.

While the video provided here shows active WvW, the necro’s damage contribution is extremely below par, which is what several individuals are picking up on. A change in playstyle can fix some of that; such as picking a target more off to the side, to build up conditions, and then Epidemic. Allowing auto-target to repeatedly choose the closest target, or directly choosing the obvious target will result in little to no condition stacking, and constant condition removal. Which is what your audience saw.

What the audience didn’t see was the use of fear for control, which is one of the strengths when running this style of build. Enter DS, use Dark path to teleport to your opponent, run through them, and then chain fear them into your allies. Standing back and using your fears the way the video demonstrated did little to help in the grand scheme, because your targets were pushed out of range of yourself and your allies; effectively helping your opponents survive.

This video also demonstrated what a typical condition type necro runs into during WvW, with the large number of condition cleanses. Save for a few cases where 1 player was being focused by the entire zerg (in which case they were going to die regardless), the average bleed stack across the entire video was 3-5, and not all of which were even from the main necro, Nemesis. The net result was minor damage ouput, over the course of the recording.

Quillixx.7034:

We ran Terror build tests after the Dec patch, and while the build was neat at first, it’s actual contribution in WvW and SPvP was found lacking when compared to most all other builds.

-snip

I agree with some of this post, but realize that terror is one trait, where no other traits would give more or comparable damage in that tree in that spot. Arguably the 20 points in SR could be put anywhere and they would add marginal/null DPS to a condition build.

I would absolutely dispute that the damage from terror only accounts for 5%. Maybe over the course of a long fight against a boss (prob lower than 5%), but against a player that is just inaccurate. If I fight and down someone in 30 seconds, and I have them feared for 6-8 seconds of that (1300+ a tick)….. thats quite a bit more than 5%. You are also ignoring its bursting potential through a chain.

I remember the posts early on after the terror buff talking about how weak the damage was when you count how long the cooldowns are and use that to calculate DPS over the full duration. Again that is just stupid, because pvp is fluid, and 2600 damage NOW is not the same as 2600 damage at some point in time during the fight.

You said you tested in Spvp, where you cannot get this build to work with 100% bleeds and 100% fears. You can in WvW.

When you start factoring in 2v2 and 3v3, and AOE such as Epidemic, healing, prolonged fights, the fears amount to very little overall damage. Yes, in 1v1, where your opponent is standing still and you kill them outright, it’s more, when you get into a 1v1 duel that factors in several minutes, the damage percentage it contributes drops drastically.

Quillix…thanks for that comprehensive input. Do you have a WvW build that you suggest?

Rennoko….thanks for that explanation. Your logic is sound. On that note, perhaps I should discuss my playstyle and see if you (Nemesis, others) have thoughts on the direction I can get the most from my build (hybrid, CM, pwr etc).

I view WvW much like Nemesis’s WvW “ownage” video….ie it is a large scale objective and not reduced to random 1v1 in the field. I play with the big picture in mind

Let’s take a known area, for example, and I will describe what I consider my playstyle:

So, my team has taken the Ogre camp in Eternal BG and we have set up siege in the camp to assault Ogrewatch keep. The enemy is pressing to get into the Ogre camp to kill the siege.

As a Necro, I feel I am most valuable by sustained pressure on selected targets. My role is to prevent the enemy from gaining/keeping momentum in a given fight.

I will use the doorway (chokepoints) to keep Staff 2,3,4,5 down for area denial. I will then use Scepter 1,2,/dggr 5 to stack conditions on the most aggressive targets. I will scroll through targets looking for a few key things:

1- Players with low health. They will likely be retreating and make great “dirty bombs” that walk back to their friends as I Epidemic them

2- Gurdians. They will almost always pop all of their Boons as they rush in. I will use Corrupt Boon and Epidemic. (Haven’t decide whether I will keep CB but when it works…..it WORKS)

3- Any player with a large quantity of buffs/cond to corrupt/speread. When Corrupt Boon is on CD, I will use Epidemic on players with lots of conditions as it comes off CD.

Now, once I get a big hit off on an Epidemic something interesting happens almost every time. This is a bit outside just gaming and translates to real world scenarios but stay with me…… if the front line of an offensive pushes toward a conflict, those behind them will follow. If ONE person turns to run away, just about everyone does.

Once that BIG Epidemic hits (say a Guardian Corrupt Boon / Epidemic at full boon) the front lines of that group withers heavily. I then push into that and begin using DS 4 to further pressure. Almost without fail, I have a surge follow me and all that is left is to loot the bags and regroup.

Very frequently, I will rush a grp of downed players and use DS4 to help finish them to save the CD on my Scepter skills that have added effects (cripple etc) that would be better used on active enemies.

Another example…..I will go into a keep Scepter 2, dggr 5 on the inside of the door and then DS 4 through the door. I often use this on the outside of a keep as we assault (stand close to the wall) forcing wall defenders to either back off the edge or get close to the edge to target me.

So, although I am heavy conditions, I do use some of the pwr necro stuff to add some short term sustained pressure. I don’t want to give it up because I see the psychology of all the numbers on players screens influencing their behavior. That behavior translates into impatcing the “big picture” of WvW……

So how to I maximize my playstyle….or am I hopelessly lost?

Thanks in advance!!!!!

Okay, but what do you take alternatively? In that build setup with 0/30/20/0/20?

If your argument is you are better off going hybrid, then thats a choice you make, but in that build setup you cannot get more damage from a different trait, even if you consider the sole purpose of terror to be dealing damage (ignoring the bursting potential and psycological effect of the damage ticking with the bleeds).

MeanMug.2630:

-Snip

Thanks in advance!!!!!

So given your situation, which is a very common EB situation if you happen to be east on that map for the week, I would say your best build bet would be just a standard 20/30/20/0/0 build. Again this is just my opinion, not trying to dictate for you or anyone else.

If you don’t fight in small skirmishes much, and you do the right thing with point defense and keep defense, the most powerful deny tool for you is the staff and epi, which you pointed out. If you are not tooling around semi-solo small group, the toughness stat in general is mostly wasted.

If you focus on rampagers gear, and staff mark size/cooldown you are going to deal quite a bit more damage. You do not keep 100% fear duration, but that is not a big deal in the big zerg fights, as was pointed out.

Since you have the extra power and you can get reapers might, you can stay on staff more often, and not go into 900 range unless its safe, using life blast to build might on your conditions improving their damage.

Also you have 20% duration from the power tree, which means you can drop some other trait somewhere, or go with different runes to improve your hybrid damage. I would still maintain 100% duration on my bleeds, as that is a must for a condition/hybrid build, but you have much more leeway on how you get there. Also you can forgo hemophillia for a nice trait in its place, like chilling darkness.

Alternatively you can keep the toughness stuff and just use undead runes, to try and squeeze everything out of condition damage, with the logical argument that the bleeds rarely ever run full duration (I don’t subscribe to this philosophy, but the builds are out there).

Nemesis.8593:

I just woke up, going to cook something nice relax for a few hours after that i will finish the SPvP video/version of this build.

From everything i saw here, the problems that are brought up are… i don’t use everything (it’s hard in such a big zerg, my targets were disappearing faster then i could target them, the down fear doesn’t count as much…) and a few other things.

In SPvP… actually TPvP there will be a more clear demonstration of the build, just because of the fact it’s not as hard to demonstrate it there, i can afford focusing on what i want to demonstrate rather then a few dozen other things.

Some of the things you guys were saying aren’t bad or wrong, but you guys need to understand that it is very easy to say, “you should have done this… should have done that…” but it’s not as easy as it sounds, when every second you have to tab 3 times and make a decision, ops… that one’s gone, then tab 3 more times and make a decision… in such a big zerg… you guys can try it out for yourselves if you don’t believe me.

So i appreciate all of you guy’s input and i will answer all of you individually later today.

I can see this build working more in sPvP actually, it’d make those 1v1 scenarios use the fear on down trait more useful. As of WvW I kinda feel like you’ve ran with a gimmick a little too far, I don’t feel it works well as some others have pointed out.

I think some of the earlier comments about Bleed still being your bread and butter ring true to me. Terror should be a supplement to a bleed/condition build not its central core in my opinion. But you do not need 6 fears for 100% extra fear duration (or even close to 100%) to be well worth it. Nor do you have to sacrifice very much in the way of condition damage to get there.

Longer fears actually work in great harmony with high condition damage, because it increases the amount of time that opponents must suffer under condition damage.

Also want to make one input on Rennoko’s comment about never using DS1. When I ran almost an identical build to his, I also hated ever having to use DS1, but I found myself in situations where I was in DS to eat damage, waiting for a heal to come up and had no choice but to use it. In my experience normal health ran out way faster than LF, which is where you ended up in before you died.

With having dropped master of terror I needed to go 10 points into spite to get fear respectable enough duration, and I used to hate spite, but having tried it, I think 10 points is not bad at all, because Reaper’s Might is nice a little trait that gives you a reason (or at least some benefit) to firing off 1-3 Life Blasts while you are sponging damage. 2 or 3 stacks of might for about 15 seconds when you come out of DS will give you a nice little damage spike through nearly your whole rotation. Just an alternative to put out there.

Also would agree that sPVP tests are of little relevancy here, when these type of builds are so reliant on the usable food buffs in PVE/WvW. They pretty much don’t work without it.

Rennoko.5731:

I would say your best build bet would be just a standard 20/30/30/0/0 build.

Well yes, an 80 point build would be the best, no doubt :p

MeanMug.2630:

…

If you ask me, you’re mindset is above 90% of the people who actually play Wv3, so keep it up.

I use a classic conditionmancer with a twist, because it’s better for small figths, in a “zergy” kind of battle the Wellmancer with IX Curses is the best.

I have failed to find better builds for those two Wv3 situations.

Rennoko.5731:

-Snip…back at ya

Well, the survivability comes in when you may be going to/from and objective and solo roaming thiefs etc will want to stop you from getting back to the fight. Alternatively, there are those who will notice me playing around the fringes of a battle to get those “dirty bombs” set up and jump me.

What I want is to incorporate a few of those fears (4 sec fear….woot) and survivability while being able to maintain my playstyle, which I see as meaningful in the “big picture”.

Well now, Ill go edit that.

I meant to say a 20/30/20/0/0 build

I do have another build suggestion then based on your above comments. Less tanky but more overall damage for someone who wants the long fears. I will post details later.. gotta hit the road for now.

ratmanduohana.6824:

If you ask me, you’re mindset is above 90% of the people who actually play Wv3, so keep it up.

I use a classic conditionmancer with a twist, because it’s better for small figths, in a “zergy” kind of battle the Wellmancer with IX Curses is the best.

I have failed to find better builds for those two Wv3 situations.

Ty sir….you are too kind.

Also, one might be able to find this ‘Wellmancer’ build where? Do share….

Rennoko.5731:

Runes are as follows:

2xAfflicted
2xKrait
2xMad King

Are the extra 10% condition duration worth not going 3xAfflicted + 3xKrait (110 condition damage)?
All in all, if you really feel the need for those 10%, you can always go to Givers weapons.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Alkaline.2809:

One question I have for you. Do you see any reason not to take withering precision over lingering curse?

Off the top of my head, it would be that Lingering Curse gives you more damage (remember that it breaks the normal cap of +100% duration) both from longer bleeds and poison, but also ensuring those keep ticking when Terror deals its damage (boosting that damage by 50%).

Plus the longer duration cripple gives you more kiting ability to increase survivability.

…and on top of that Withering Precision is a 25% chance of a 50% critical chance, it’s lower then you might think so you won’t get an activation that often. When you do it may get cleansed, the fight might be over and/or the target might hit you with a condition adding hit or fast attacks in which case weakness did nothing.

Morvian.3270:

I don’t think you’d see a huge loss in damage if you take Withering Precision. Especially in a PvP situation. It’s more important to prevent your bleeds from getting cleansed than it is to make them last longer. Anything that isn’t a full cleanse will take weakness or cripple instead of your bleed stacks. What it ultimately comes down to though, IMO, is your playstyle. Do you use staff way more than scepter? If so, Withering Precision is for you.

In which scenario do you use staff more then scepter ?