Guild Wars 2

I hope this hasn’t been covered already and apologize if it has. Has any tested the Spite I trait Death’s Embrace in conjunction with a fear build? With the the Soul Reaping I trait Fear of Death on top of our downed state fear. That 50% boost would be incredible. Of course its gimmicky. But imagine rolling off 4 ticks of fear and over 8k damage on someone just when they think they’ve won.

Pendragon.8735:

^You can carry an extra weapon for stacking sigils, just switch it off once you farm up enough stacks in WvW. Temple of Storms is a great place to run them up. Or if you are running with a team in a no threat area, like about to take a camp, put on your stacking weapon.

Yes, that is true

Cayl Bourne.8073:

I hope this hasn’t been covered already and apologize if it has. Has any tested the Spite I trait Death’s Embrace in conjunction with a fear build? With the the Soul Reaping I trait Fear of Death on top of our downed state fear. That 50% boost would be incredible. Of course its gimmicky. But imagine rolling off 4 ticks of fear and over 8k damage on someone just when they think they’ve won.

The problem with going into Spite is that you have to give up on something else which is a no-go for this build. You can’t give up on Master of Terror in a fear build. You want to keep 30 points in Curses as it is the best line for condition build. And if you dont put 20 into Death Magic, you loose one fear.

http://goo.gl/GgAWS

You give up Target the Weak and Lingering Curses. Trade offs to be sure. But I suggested it for lulz anyway.

Still wondering if Death’s Embrace even effects condition damage though. Most of % damage increases don’t.

Yeah, these are the only traits that could be swapped, but 33% condition duration from Scepter is too lucrative to say no to it IMHO. It includes the Cripple, Bleed and Poison.

Feel free to experiment :P
Good thing is that you gain 10% in general condition duration which could give you more flexibility with Runes/Sigils.

So I ding’d 80 on Wednesday and had enough Karma to get all of the Rabid rings, assy, trinket and back piece. (with Rabid jewels)

I have decided to farm TA for the gear w/ Nightmare runes and have selected Fear of Death in ‘SR’ over the CD reduction there.

Once I get the gear and weps and add pizza…..what am I missing?

Cayl Bourne.8073:

http://goo.gl/GgAWS

You give up Target the Weak and Lingering Curses. Trade offs to be sure. But I suggested it for lulz anyway.

Still wondering if Death’s Embrace even effects condition damage though. Most of % damage increases don’t.

It doesn’t. Tested it a few months ago.

Would be hilarious if it did though… your fear would be hitting for like 1.8 to 2k lol

I tried out a Fear build and have a few comments on basic mechanic. The topic of this thread is about trying to used Fear offensively but was it meant to be a weapon?

Fear is our only real escape mobility skill and it is pretty weak. The terror buff addressed the wrong issue. It was a classic 1×1=2 mistake. They should have cut CD in half and left it with no damage. As it is, Terror only does a tiny amount of damage on the same, long CD. I would even have even taken a longer Fear duration or the addition of a second condition with more than the 1 second duration. Really, Fear is our primary escape mobility skill and it is extremely lame. The only other such skill is Flesh Worm and use of that is very limited.

I really wish Arenanet would look at the Necromancer’s Fear and Spectral skills. If spectral armor were of longer duration and shorter CD, it might be useful. Spectral Wall is not the least bit useful and should just be replaced with some sort of spectral mobility buff like a spectral leap, stability, or stomp. I always hated traiting for Spectral Walk but it was our only speed utility skill before Signet of the Locust finally became useful.

Ok, so I thought of a question that I want some feedback on……

Assume I am in a 1v1 fight and my enemy is suffering from a 4 second fear (just for example). I decide to follow that up with a 2 second fear ability. Do I have to wait for the 4 second ability to run its’ course before applying the 2 second fear?

I realize stacking the abilities would run the risk of being wasted for a stun break etc…….I am just interested in whether applying a follow up fear, before the initial fear runts its’ course, works by adding the second fear on to the end, or is wasted beacuse the target is still suffering the initial fear.

I ask this because in, the example of a theif who can drop target by stealthing, stacking several fears would ensure a nice chunk of health coming off and the application of significant conditions before he could stealth.

If I have to wait to apply the subsequent fears, they will have a chance to counter me.

I did not test it, but Fear stacks in duration.

MeanMug.2630:

Ok, so I thought of a question that I want some feedback on……

Assume I am in a 1v1 fight and my enemy is suffering from a 4 second fear (just for example). I decide to follow that up with a 2 second fear ability. Do I have to wait for the 4 second ability to run its’ course before applying the 2 second fear?

I realize stacking the abilities would run the risk of being wasted for a stun break etc…….I am just interested in whether applying a follow up fear, before the initial fear runts its’ course, works by adding the second fear on to the end, or is wasted beacuse the target is still suffering the initial fear.

I ask this because in, the example of a theif who can drop target by stealthing, stacking several fears would ensure a nice chunk of health coming off and the application of significant conditions before he could stealth.

If I have to wait to apply the subsequent fears, they will have a chance to counter me.

The only thing you have to be careful of is the maximum duration of fear. Fear does stack duration, but it caps out application at 5 seconds. So say you landed you reapers prot. fear, and then tried to immediately cast your DS fear. You would have the potential of wasting a second of fear.

Now practically speaking, if someone procs your reapers prot, that means you got stunned or dazed, meaning at best, it is one second till you can do something, meaning your enemy fear has dropped down to 3 seconds left on duration. If you DS fear at that point it goes back up to 5 seconds. If you wait for 2 more seconds and drop a staff fear it goes back up to 5 seconds.

So in all honesty you don’t need to worry about the cap, as it is really hard to hit with our fears. In pvp, the fears chain together well, and at worst case you are likely to waste only a second or so of fear if you blow them all at once (which you shouldn’t do).

The cap was put in so that when you flip (corup boon) a transformed lich or whatever with stability, it doesn’t fear them for 30 seconds like it used to.

In WvW terms, you need to make sure that they are not going to break the fear before you try and extend the duration. My general rule of thumb; if they ate the first 3 seconds of reapers protection, they don’t have a stun breaker available, so keep that fear going. If they broke the fear early, more power to them, you have two more fears available.

You just want to avoid blowing all your fears into them immediately, no matter how nice that burst damage is

As always Rennoko, you are appreciated.

Now if you can tell me an easy way to get my Arah gear to transmute for its’ looks…..you will become legend.

I already have 3 pcs of TA gear and all this PvE is killing me….

MeanMug.2630:

As always Rennoko, you are appreciated.

Now if you can tell me an easy way to get my Arah gear to transmute for its’ looks…..you will become legend.

I already have 3 pcs of TA gear and all this PvE is killing me….

I wish I had a good answer for you. I have run arah story once, and ONE explorable path. The experience was so terrible I never wanted to go back.

While I am willing to accept my guild was being “ kitten #8221;, and if we were serious it would have gone better, but the freaking dungeon takes SO LONG compared to pretty much everything else.

I can go in and in less than 30 mins (each path), run pretty much any of CM, AC, HOTW, COF. While I do want to look awesome, PVE is so unenjoyable for me, that it is hard to get pumped about anything longer than 30 mins.

Lets not even talk about how the ONE weapon skin I want requires powerful bloods, which seem to rise in price endlessly.

Rennoko.5731:

I wish I had a good answer for you….(snip)

A man after my own heart.

Maybe I can find another set that I like and you can show me the ropes.

Until then, I will be the evil looking plant/Char running around in my TA gear.

UPDATE and question(s):

So I have almost finished running CoF for the skins over my plant gear. As of now I have full P/T/C exoitc armor, all Rabid accsy/amulet/rings and running on pizza.

Here is my questions:

-The Rabid accsy/rings etc come with empty jewel slots. I am using Rabid jewels that are not exotic. Is there something better that I am not aware of?

-I am really struggling to find weps on the TP for any less than 20 gold with P/T/C. I am aware of the dungeon ones but am up to my limit in PvE. Any good alternatives?

Finally, I am looking good in my CoF gear but looking for anyone else who has this to post a pic of their dye scheme. I am using Midnight Fire / Midnight Gold (on waist, chain and base of shoulders) / Burgandy (face and top of shoulders).

Thanks in advance!

MeanMug.2630:

As always Rennoko, you are appreciated.

Now if you can tell me an easy way to get my Arah gear to transmute for its’ looks…..you will become legend.

I already have 3 pcs of TA gear and all this PvE is killing me….

As a word of comfort, I will say that I made a whole Arah armour and I hate it, it is okay for one day, but who likes to run around looking like a bag of potatoes?

Why not pick a more fabulous look?!

leman.7682:

MeanMug.2630:

As always Rennoko, you are appreciated.

Now if you can tell me an easy way to get my Arah gear to transmute for its’ looks…..you will become legend.

I already have 3 pcs of TA gear and all this PvE is killing me….

As a word of comfort, I will say that I made a whole Arah armour and I hate it, it is okay for one day, but who likes to run around looking like a bag of potatoes?

Why not pick a more fabulous look?!

Oh man….what scepter is that on the left???

I will for sure put the Arah helm with my set…..really works on a Char.

Ok, so does today’s patch make the focus attractive…….?

We have added chill with our duration add…..we have regen on #4 versus blind on dagger 4…..not to mention Epidemic (AE chill).

With the DD on focus 5 scaling w number of conditions on the target it seems like at least an even swap if not an upgrade.

Nem…….anyone???

I have been running Nem’s build the whole time, and with the patch update this build just got soooo much better. Focus is definately worth having now.

I’ve thought hard about changing to focus and I still do not think that you can do it. We still rely to heavily on bleeds and you give up two stacks from the dagger PLUS the ability to transfer conditions ie another two bleeds at the least from BiP. Is the focus making up that much dps?

Nah, you have Corrupt boon for more effective removal, and optionally Well of Corruptiontoo. And there’s A LOT of conditions in pvp lately so I like a bit of extra removal from Deathly Swarm. And you DEFINITELY need the weakness! I used to run with horn offhand (the #4 interrupt is godly, can pretty much guarantee a kill if you catch their healing skill) plus speed buff to run between points, but I had Weakening Shroud to give me weakness. If I’m going to use Terror in that slot then I need my dagger offhand!

I was using focus with this build last night and I got to 6-10 stacks of bleed, focus 5 then epidemic. kiting made easy, especially as your spamming available fears.

I am up in the air on it for WvW…

On the one hand the boon removal from focus is VERY strong, but I strongly dislike focus 4, because I am never in range to get the bounce, as both sceptor and staff keep me farther away. I guess if you duo’ed with someone it would be much better, but I find myself 1vX all the time, and its not good for that.

As for PVE, it is pretty much a no brainer. The regen on allies, the long lasting vuln, and boon ripping off PVE mobs is pretty good in fractals for instance.

Personally I hate to lose the AOE on dagger 5, and my brain is hard coded to hit BIP then dagger 4 at the start of every fight, so that is a hard habit to break. I am in the process of revisiting the equipment choices in this thread, and re-tooling what I am using.

As it turns out, I have been wrong all along about the barbed precision bleed, and having 100% bleed duration is not quite as big a deal as I once thought. Bascially after that first barbed prec crit (assuming it crits on the first attack), any barbed precision bleed after that is going to fall within a bleed cycle (somewhere within the 1 second between bleeds). Each % down from 100% means in general you have that percentage chance to get the extra tick from barbed precision, NOT that you can ONLY get the extra tick at 100%.

So lets say I have 80% bleeding duration, and the mob is already bleeding. If I crit, and proc barbed precision, there is an 80% chance that I will get two ticks now, instead of one. Given this math, it is almost certainly better to stick with undead runes instead of bleed duration runes. Couple that with the fact that the bleed cap is constantly haunting me in PVE. Currently running a 10/30/10/0/20 build, which gives 70% bleed and 100% fear with undead runes. But my condition damage is much higher.

Anyhow I will put some more thought into the focus. I did notice that in a power build the focus 5 hits pretty kitten hard if the target has boons up, crit for over 1k in a power build.

Rennoko.5731:

I am up in the air on it for WvW…

On the one hand the boon removal from focus is VERY strong, but I strongly dislike focus 4, because I am never in range to get the bounce, as both sceptor and staff keep me farther away. I guess if you duo’ed with someone it would be much better, but I find myself 1vX all the time, and its not good for that.

……..

I am confused……focus 4 has the same range (900) as dagger 4 and all of the scepter spells. Why wouldn’t you get the bounce if you are in range to use either spell?

MeanMug.2630:

Rennoko.5731:

I am up in the air on it for WvW…

On the one hand the boon removal from focus is VERY strong, but I strongly dislike focus 4, because I am never in range to get the bounce, as both sceptor and staff keep me farther away. I guess if you duo’ed with someone it would be much better, but I find myself 1vX all the time, and its not good for that.

……..

I am confused……focus 4 has the same range (900) as dagger 4 and all of the scepter spells. Why wouldn’t you get the bounce if you are in range to use either spell?

Focus 4 has two ranges. 900 distance to actually have the spell cast and hit, and then a closer range (not sure what it is), where it will bounce to and then back out again.

So if you are standing in melee range, it will hit the mob, hit you (giving you regen) hit the mob again, hit you again, etc.

If you stand at 900 range and use it, it hits the mob one time and stops, because there are no other valid targets to bounce to. Of course if you are against two people, I think it will bounce between them. I don’t use it enough to know the fine details of it, but I do know it will not bounce back to me from 900 range.

It works similar to the mesmer GS 2 skill, if you are familiar with that one.

Rennoko.5731:

snip

(from a WvW perspective)

I understand now, but since Dagger 4 has a bounce that is not intended to come back to you anyway, it becomes a blind vs a vuln and the potential for regen (thiefs etc) when in closer than you would prefer.

The #5s become the trade an AE bleed and weakness for a chill with respectable dmg and boon removal.

I need to test focus 5 but dagger 5 is so slow that it is reasonable to miss 1/2 the time due to dodge etc. The radius of dggr 5 also seems to be smaller than the ground target reticle suggests as well.

InWvW

RIght but remember the long cast time of focus 5. It is very long, and feels even longer in WvW. It could also be that I am just so used to dagger 5 that I have learned to lead it enough.

And from my perspective, a blind >>> vulnerability. Even all 12 stacks of vulnerability are less appealing to me than a blind. The condition transfer aspect and bounce are just additional perks. The big draw of focus 4 is the long regen uptime if you get the bounces back to you, which won’t happen at 900 range.

I am going to give it the good ol college try again either way, to see if I can get used to it. All the changes have convinced me to try a zerker or hybrid build seriously now with some ascended stuff… just deciding between zerker and rampager right now, and determining what I want to do.

In PVE
Everytime I consider going rampager I think about how weak that is compared to zerker in a direct damage situation. If a condition or hybrid player is already stepping on the bleeds aroun 20, I don’t want to even have a sceptor equipped (in PVE mind you). I think in general I would be fine going full zerker axe in PVE, with wells/minions, and see significant improvements to a full condition build. BUT THEN I realize I could just play my mesmer/guardian and do the same damage with the other benefits those classes bring. It is so irritating.

Or I can continue to hold out hope they fix the bleed cap, which would make a hybrid build tops on damage.

Rennoko.5731:

InWvW…..

RIght but remember the long cast time of focus 5. It is very long, and feels even longer in WvW. It could also be that I am just so used to dagger 5 that I have learned to lead it enough.

And from my perspective, a blind >>> vulnerability. Even all 12 stacks of vulnerability are less appealing to me than a blind. The condition transfer aspect and bounce are just additional perks. The big draw of focus 4 is the long regen uptime if you get the bounces back to you, which won’t happen at 900 range.

I am going to give it the good ol college try again either way, to see if I can get used to it. All the changes have convinced me to try a zerker or hybrid build seriously now with some ascended stuff… just deciding between zerker and rampager right now, and determining what I want to do.
…..

I agree….vuln is so bad it is not worth mentioning……the bleeds are better but the idea of chilling plus boon strip and nice DD is so appealing I WANT it to be better

Also, I am thinking of it as a small skirmish skill that could give me a bit of “hybrid” feel w/o giving up any of my condition build.

I am in love w this build and not interested in changing. But to have a small but of “burst” in small skirmish where I can combine DD with meaningful debuffing is appealing.

Love the discussion because my mind is far from made up…..

Not much to add other than those (cond based) who do try focus for extended period please come back and continue to share your opinions after a while vs dagger off hand. I haven’t been convinced enough to give it a real trial yet.

has anyone tried a full rampager axe focus and staff fear build? ive been theory crafting and you could get 140% fear duration, maybe a 3rd tick on fear? im not sure about that though.
ur condition damage wouldn’t be optimal (about 1200) but you would have a form of burst through axe and fear.
would be something along the lines of 30/10/10/0/20.
I think this would fit my play style. does this appeal to anyone else? or is this a ‘good in theory’ build?

Bull Zooker.1672:

has anyone tried a full rampager axe focus and staff fear build? ive been theory crafting and you could get 140% fear duration, maybe a 3rd tick on fear? im not sure about that though.
ur condition damage wouldn’t be optimal (about 1200) but you would have a form of burst through axe and fear.
would be something along the lines of 30/10/10/0/20.
I think this would fit my play style. does this appeal to anyone else? or is this a ‘good in theory’ build?

I will copy and paste my answer from my hybrid Terror build thread just to make sure you and others see it.

Extra condition duration is capped at 100%. So using the 40% condition duration food wouldn’t extend your fears any longer. However, it would still affect your bleeds, vulnerability, cripples, etc, so I’d say it’s probably still worth using. Heck, if you were okay with 1.9s fears instead of 2s fears (still very likely to get 2 damage ticks) you could just swap out the Master of Terror trait for something else.

So I had a lvl 77 Focus drop and decided to swap it out for awhile to see how it “feels”.

I have a lot more to consider but my initial thoughts are as follows:

I really think the focus vs dagger discussion is a cooldown (ability uptime) discussion. So, the dggr 4 transfers condition(s) off of me and onto enemy. Well, if my heal is up, I want those conditions on me for optimal healing. If I am using BiP (Rennoko…I’m looking at you) the BiP + dggr 4 is nice. But , to work, you have to be in 900 range which removes some of the advantage from BiP as a 1200 range spell.

Now, with Focus, you have a chill / strip / DD spell at 900 range that you can follow with Epi to get an AE chill. This is obviously not better than CB / Epi combo. But, going back to the cooldown theme, if you find yourself waiting on CB to come off CD, you could mix in a Focus 4 + focus 5 + Epi while waiting for CB to come off. (Poor man’s CB)

With the CB cooldown being 40 seconds and the Focus 4/5 being 18/20 respectively, you could mix in Focus 4/5 between CB “dirty bomb” runs.

Also, on dggr 4, the blind only works until the next outgoing attack misses, then it is consumed / fades. In an active fight, you will likely have that consumed before you can spread it with Epi.

So let me break this down to make sure we know what we are getting / giving up:

-Focus 4+5+Epi gives us AE vuln (10 secs), AE Chill (5 secs), AE Regen (3 secs (if in range)), and 3% LF generation.

Dagger 4+5+Epi gives us AE weakness (10 secs), AE Bleed (10 secs (if tgt not capped)), Condition Removal (not ideal if heal is avail), AE Blind (VERY unlikely) and no LF generation.

Also note that the DD on Focus 5 scales with boon removal giving a higher damage celing than dagger DD.

Depending on where the bleed cap discussion goes, I think the current Chill vs Bleed goes to the Focus over dagger……what am I missing?

For any type of group fighting or mob farming I can’t let go of Dagger, that #5 is a AoE is a big factor since you can tag up to five people with 2 more bleeds, and usually long bleeds (mine would be 20 seconds, well if the runes weren’t bugged now), and then double all those people up again once epidemic is used. The Focus 5 seems more of something you bring just to deal with a guardian, elementalist or someone spearheading a fight with lots of buffs.

The chill is nice but most will already have access to a similar one from Chillblains that can be spread.

You are also losing access to weakness unless you always use the 3 —> 4 combo on staff, but that isn’t always ideal since Putrid Mark you don’t really want to waste all the time. more conditions are always good to help bury bleeds and such so they don’t get removed as easily.

I think it comes down to Focus being more PVE centric (and power centric) and dagger being more PVP centric (and condition centric).

I also think on paper focus looks better than dagger, but as pendragon mentioned, I already have enough chill, and I don’t fight enough one on one fights to HAVE to run boon clears. Since I don’t like long casts, and I have enough chill, I don’t care for focus 5, even though it is good.

Focus 4 has some merits, but the vuln is completely useless to me as conditions, and the heal (while useful), its not reliable from range.

Dagger 4 and 5 are always good, not situationally good. Focus 4/5 CAN be better, but not in every case, and in some cases they are down right useless for a condition necro. (I am at 900 range, and I am facing someone without significant boons who is already chilled)

Again though in PVE, the focus is basically going to always win except in big AOE fights. I will continue using dagger, but I am trying to weave focus into the mix. I think if the scaling on Focus 5 is in a good place now for power builds, making it a must take. Most power builds were already taking it though.

Maybe i missed it, but what is everyone doing about Greater Marks now?
sorry if i missed it.

The default size of marks has been increased, so it’s not really necessary to get greater marks.

Rhomulus.6912:

Maybe i missed it, but what is everyone doing about Greater Marks now?
sorry if i missed it.

The base size change, and the fact that they buried the better marks deeper in the tree-that-no-one-wants-to-use.

You have to pull points from Spite (an all around poweful tree in any build), or the two best 15 point traits for the class (curses and SR) to get anywhere near greater marks, so mostly, no one bothers anymore.