Guild Wars 2

Just got my necro to 80, and now the headache of gearing him… I figure he will need viper gear eventually since raids favor condi reaper so I’ll probably be living in the auric basin in the near future. For the purposes of doing the jungle meta events with ease, do you guys recommend zerker or condi?

I prefer condi personally, although have been lately trying out zerker.

Imo condi has better options for tankiness and you can pretty much walk through events at a leisurely pace. It’ll be easier, albeit will take slightly longer.

I’m currently running full toughness/vitality/condi damage gear with Blood Magic/Spite/Reaper, pets and that 10% heal off condi damage. I imagine it will work just as well with more damage focused condi gear. I’m playing around with Shouts, and taking the 50% damage reduction as well as the one that generates might can further improve your solo ability (since I assume you won’t be using vit/tough gear, the 50% damage reduction can really help)

Mind that’s just from personal experience >.>

I like getting a balance of both and why not? Reaper lets you do that.

I’d say zerker. Both are fun, but the zerk playstyle really enables you to go balls deep and wreak havoc. :P

Here’s the build I’ve been using on the HoT maps:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQD7kZTolGscTwbTgeTskLYxTxu4YkqMsGeWQBgGwKA-TxRBABRcRAuS5HN7PgnuBAeCAUq+jZKBJCwaLA-e

Chill condi has my vote, I am using vipers armor and rabid weapons and trinkets. This gives me a nice amount of toughness for when I need it. With a combination of four nightmare runes and two trapper runes and the vipers armor I get a fair bit of condi duration too. In my weapons I use bursting and malice sigils in my+ scepter/dagger and bursting and corruption sigils in my staff.

My trait lines are curses (weakness)/soul reaping (fire) and of course reaper for the chill. So far I am loving it, most things are a fire and forget, in that you hit em a few times and take a sip of coffee whilst they die…

Honestly I’d say both are pretty equal. I’ve been running around HoT with both cavalier’s (100% crit chance reaper shroud build) and rabid and both have been equally effective although the cavalier’s power build was a bit more godly (and fun) for me.

I have both full zerker and full viper on my reaper.

So far, I prefer zerker. The condi set by itself feels quite lackluster, actually. I’ll be ticking away fro 4k-5k damage, where I would be hitting 15k with Gravedigger. Also, the zerker set is less reliant on utilities for its DPS, so if I feel it prudent to swap out wells for other utilities (against a large group of enemies, “Rise!” is a lifesaver), I can do so quite easily. Also, I do more damage in Shroud, so when things get dicey I can pop in shroud and maintain a decent offense.

There is one place that Condi beats zerker, though: Epidemic. Letting loose an epi on a champion in Dragon Stand… there’s no feeling like it. Suddenly there’s a fountain of numbers all over the place, and you’re hitting everything for 15k per second for indeterminate amounts of time. So you’re rocking around 50k damage per cast with Epidemic, maybe more, and the 12 second recharge means its always available when you need it.

The hard part is fulfilling those conditions. Though there is no skill that is arguably as damaging as Epidemic, there is also no skill that is as situational. Getting the right circumstances for a full epidemic is hard, since its maximum damage is dependent on other classes running viper gear as well.

Condi is a lot easier to survive. Being in melee is a great way to get chain stunned or not be able to see a Sniper AOE.

Zerker is just so much fun though.

Viper/Carrion/Zerker are best 3 imo

I wish viper was easier to get

I will be evil kitten and say: Neither.
Go with power necro but not zerk necro – valkyrie’s or cavaliers.

I personally run dire (so condi) and lived to regret it. The survival is good, no complaints there, but condi necro as amazing as he is in terms of condi manipulation is flat out annoyin in open world. Applying condies as a necro is a pain – we lack the burst in most cases, and if it’s bursty somehow it has horrid duration. In the end, you either:

a) have too little damage (me) and take ages to stack enough condies for decent damage (i’m still missing some gear).

b) have too great condi damage, overkilling stuff before you can land that juicy epidemic for some mass slaughter, again hating yourself in the morning.

Power damage has no such issues. If you hit harder – better for you, no penalties of missing epidemic for that. Also as mentioned above power damage doesn’t need much in terms of utilities – you can use those for survival, mobility or w/e floats your boat.

Ah and seems no one is mentioning the elephant in the room – necromancer’s healing. It’s amazing. He may not be druid in terms how often he can pump green numbers for othersk, but still can do decent job there. However in terms of cleansing condies off your team, and reviving downed ppl druid has nothing on necro. This is where necro is unrivaled #1 no competition;) So even if you’re not the top damage disher, remember you can be top tanker, top reviver and pretty amazing condi cleanser. Plus with some healing power a pretty darn good healing support (transfusion, aoe healing when you end shroud, well of blood).

If you want best performing, Berserker and Viper sets.

I personally run Zerk, as it will let you stay on top of the game in almost every game mode from Raids, Open world, fractals, etc. But I’ve also wanted a full set of Viper for the chance to be able to run condi builds.

I’ve run both condi and zerk and the best build in my opinion to run around with in Hot’s and not worry about dying is a minion master zerk build. Blood, death, reaper…but again might not be everyone’s cup of tea.