Guild Wars 2

Suppose we are making a build that gets it’s crit from traits in reaper shroud.
Spite, Soul Reaping and Reaper being the trait lines, built to stay in reaper shroud.

The idea would be you get enought crit from reaper form, you can forget precision, and tank up. When outside of shroud, your extra vitality will help you build up enough LF to get back in.

No idea how good it would be and it also depends on game mode but it is something that is entirely possible.
should be around 27khp ad21k life force.

celestial + dhuumfire = win

Jekkt.6045:

celestial + dhuumfire = win

You would have to drop something to take blood magic to make the most of the healing power from siphons else carrion would be better.

Jekkt.6045:

celestial + dhuumfire = win

Why not dire and go full tank condi/perma chill

because direct damage with dire is crap and there is no dire in pvp, + celestial gives healing power.

carrion won’t be better because you will lack healing and crit damage.

you get 25 might stacks in best case so you wanna make use of the power stats of celestial.

apart from your main heal, what do you use your healing power for? Plus, celestial is getting nerfed right.

why you not haz some cavalier love?

Well forced crit builds already exist that use mechanics to increase crit chance a lot or guarantee crits that then use power+ferocity+[insert something else]. I do plan to use such a build for when I make my necro.

And a lot of people underestimate vitality for whatever reason. It’s suppose to be ablative armor that can be repaired through various means! And it looks like the shouds will definitely help repair that ablative armor. I’d be surprised if there aren’t necro builds that already do what the OP is talking about. If anything, the change to lifesteal healing you while shrouded is the real game-changer here.

celestial will get nerfed in all the stats you currently invest in with your normal build (and a -10% to amulet stats) but they also buff the base stats which means you will get more in the lines you currenty don’t use.

for example if you play a 300 power 300 vit trait setup you will lose those 300 but (idk the actual numbers so this is just an example) your base stats increase by around 80 and your overall stats from amulets will also get a buff.

celestial is just perfect (for the build i made) and the healing you get comes from the gm trait in reaper that heals you for every boon you get (auto attack in shroud) by 133 (+healing from celes).

I’m leaning over to celestial because I prefer to be more sustainable rather than just raw damage.

If feel if you get blood magic over spite,then celestial will get more use, but without blood magic, I would shy away from celestial. I think it would be more worth to focus on more primary stats rather than a little of everything, if you can’t use them.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

why you not haz some cavalier love?

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to abuse Cavalier. But its a bit tougher(No pun intended). With the toughness you kinda want the bonus from Death magic to gain 14% toughness to power but you also want the 50% crit chance from deathly precision and the valn stacking in Spite.. I’m sure there is a way, in a group that stacks might really high it shouldn’t matter. But we’ll see. I’m still working out a heavy damage tanky build.

blood magic is bad and spite is good, that’s the difference.

reapers might + death shiver + close to death. that’s where your damage comes from + dhuumfire, and also your sustain from the might = heal.

run blood magic and you won’t have any damage but more self sustain. but i don’t think it’s worth it.

You cant say blood magic is bad since they reworked the entire line and we have yet to see it.

Blood magic will not contain healing power or vitality as a stat. If you want healing from siphons, Transfusion, or WoB, you might want healing armor.

Honestly, i am afraid we may all be taking some new armor stat that increases condition duration.

Jekkt.6045:

blood magic is bad and spite is good, that’s the difference.

reapers might + death shiver + close to death. that’s where your damage comes from + dhuumfire, and also your sustain from the might = heal.

run blood magic and you won’t have any damage but more self sustain. but i don’t think it’s worth it.

I personally wouldn’t Run Dhuumfire without Lingering Curse. As long as it works the way other weapon bonuses do currently, you wouldn’t want to use Dhuumfire with out it. The damage would be subpar otherwise. Death Perception would be better. You can still do hybrid but you’re still probably going to want to run Lingering curse.

sorry but you’re wrong, the whole shroud auto attack takes roughly 2 seconds to complete, adding 3 burn stacks and dhuumfire is 3s per burn so that’s around 4-5 stacks uptime.

so if you have enough might your burn ticks will most likely tick for 250 or more which results in 1k+ dps just from burning. add in the power damage from the chain and we will have over 3k dps.

with hoelbrak might stacks last around 20s, that means 10 auto chains (assuming exactly 2s) and 3 might per chain so we can have 30 might stacks in that time which is a perm 25 uptime. of course you will also use other skills when you need them, death’s charge for the poison for example, or the stability, chill, whirl whatever, but we can still expect 15-20 might stacks.

death perception:

not needed. you have a base crit chance of around 30% with celestial, with the spite trait that causes vulnerability when you’re in shroud + other minors and stuff will give you max +50% crit chance when the enemy has 25 stacks. you really won’t need death perception.

you also won’t need spite if you manage your dark fields, whirls and boons well.

if we kinda try to compare ele to reaper: signet of renewal heals for around 270 per skill use and reaper gets around 450hp/2s from a shroud auto chain because of the 3 might stacks and 1 might/5s from hoelbrak. if we try to calculate that somehow.. we get 255hp/s. we also get a dark field whirl finisher that gives 11x leeching bolts which is 11×150hp every 40s from soul spiral and some others from gravedigger. you also get some life force from shroud auto. then we still have the normal heal and stuff.

so the healing is comparable to ele, reaper just doesn’t have that many dodges and protection but death shroud to make up for it. reaper will also have more damage than ele so it’s kind of a trade off. add a sigil of blood and and frailty and you will have even more heal and more crit chance from vulnerability.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAb0Bew~
celestial gs/staff, frailty blood on gs, energy/x on staff, hoelbrak runes. consume conditions, spectral grasp, spectral armor, fleshwurm, plague.

I was talking about valk armor with a Reaper setup here → https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vulnerability-stacking-on-Reaper-wow I think it is the best option if you want to run Death Perception and/or Decimate Defenses.

Anchoku.8142:

Honestly, i am afraid we may all be taking some new armor stat that increases condition duration.

This is something that bothers me a lot, actually. Condition duration is pretty core to a lot of necro builds, so without us gaining that stat from trait lines, will condition duration runes be made stronger to compensate?

Valk will be op, question answered lololol.

Im not sure Valk will be better than Cavaliers…

Necro has high health pool to start with
so why not roll that advantage into a much higher armor value?

any thoughts?

i’ll explain it again

if you make use of dhuumfire, reapers might and blighter’s boon -> celestial
if you make use of death perception, blighter’s boon and maybe siphons -> valk
if you dont trait for dhuumfire or healing traits -> soldier

generally it’s power > crit damage.

can’t really say yet what’s best. maybe for pve sinister or valk/berserk (valk because you don’t need crit chance with decimate defense).

for pvp i still believe that celestial will be best, followed by soldier or valk.
reaper is a “frontliner” so you wanna have a bit of defense,

Jekkt.6045:

if you make use of dhuumfire, reapers might and blighter’s boon -> celestial

Carrion will still be a lot better than celestial, even (or especially) with that trait combo.
The only redeeming factor for celestial could be the rework of Blood Magic, but that really depends on how well it’s going to scale with healing power and how much healing you get out of it in the first place. If you don’t get a substantial amount of healing more (no, Bligther’s is not enough) then you’ll just be less tanky and do less damage at the same time.

On topic: yes, Valkyrie will easily be better than Berserker, in PvP/WvW anyway.

it won’t.. carrion doesnt provide neither toughness nor healing power which both are needed to go in melee range. your direct damage will also be weak because you don’t have the base precision/crit damage of celestial. so if you have an enemy that cleanses vul your direct damage will hit like a wet noodle.

furthermore greatsword is a power weapon, why would you ever play this with carrion

if you take carrion you won’t go blighters boon but chill = damage, so your self sustain is bad.

all it will be is a worse condi necro, reaper is hybrid/power, not condi.

I wouldnt count out zerker. Less reliance on vulnerability and RS for crit chance means you can land some heavy grave diggers and night fall will do decent ticks. Around 5~9k grave diggers and 2~3k nightfall ticks without max might or vulnerability. It goes higher.

Also with just death precption you hit 100% crit chance in RS meaning your #4 will do like 6~11k damage and exe strike will go anywhere from 4~10k.

Valk will have similar numbers but in RS only. Soliders are lower still and again in RS only. Plus you cant take chilling force with either of these since you need decimate defences for extra crit so less healing potential from blighters boon.

Jekkt.6045:

it won’t.. carrion doesnt provide neither toughness nor healing power which both are needed to go in melee range.

Wrong. If you’re melee in Reaper’s Shroud all you need is good life force regen, and that happens to scale with vitality.

Jekkt.6045:

your direct damage will also be weak because you don’t have the base precision/crit damage of celestial

Since you get a lot of crit chance through traits, the only question here is: can celestial’s ferocity compensate for having less power than carrion? I doubt it.
And then carrion just has a ton more condition damage. So you either have a build that puts out enough condition pressure to make it worth going with carrion, or you’re more on the power side and you’ll go with valkyrie.
Celestial’s only selling point is defense, so unless there’s going to be some huge synnergy between healing power and Blood Magic there’s no way celestial will beat other prefixes for necros.

Jekkt.6045:

furthermore greatsword is a power weapon, why would you ever play this with carrion

And that makes it better for celestial how?
Also, who says you need to have a GS with Reaper?

flow.6043:

Jekkt.6045:

it won’t.. carrion doesnt provide neither toughness nor healing power which both are needed to go in melee range.

Wrong. If you’re melee in Reaper’s Shroud all you need is good life force regen, and that happens to scale with vitality.

Jekkt.6045:

your direct damage will also be weak because you don’t have the base precision/crit damage of celestial

Since you get a lot of crit chance through traits, the only question here is: can celestial’s ferocity compensate for having less power than carrion? I doubt it.
And then carrion just has a ton more condition damage. So you either have a build that puts out enough condition pressure to make it worth going with carrion, or you’re more on the power side and you’ll go with valkyrie.
Celestial’s only selling point is defense, so unless there’s going to be some huge synnergy between healing power and Blood Magic there’s no way celestial will beat other prefixes for necros.

Jekkt.6045:

furthermore greatsword is a power weapon, why would you ever play this with carrion

And that makes it better for celestial how?
Also, who says you need to have a GS with Reaper?

if you take celestial you want a power/hybrid weapon, greatsword has good power coefficients and poison on it, it’s a great control weapon when you’re not in shroud. with scepter/dagger and staff it will be the same as now, the same classes will farm you and in tfs you will get the stick even harder because shroud is melee now.

In all honesty the GS is a power weapon and thats it. It has poison to help attrition. It cant stack it fast enough to be considered a hybrid weapon. Its essentially the guardian great sword. It maps directly across. Auto > damage > utility > area denial > control.

Staff actually gets a boost on a reaper.

Depends on the numbers when the devs tell us how much they will be changing armour weapons and runes etc

Sigmoid.7082:

In all honesty the GS is a power weapon and thats it. It has poison to help attrition. It cant stack it fast enough to be considered a hybrid weapon. Its essentially the guardian great sword. It maps directly across. Auto > damage > utility > area denial > control.

Staff actually gets a boost on a reaper.

the poison on gs5 and shroud2 is extremely viable for a celestial build because you won’t have to run doom sigil and other celestial classes can’t outsustain you, that’s why it is perfect for a celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele, you have burn, few bleeds and poison and it is a very good celestial class. gs/staff has a similar amount of that.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

why you not haz some cavalier love?

Valkyrie has more power, and thus does more damage, while the vitality is effectively 1.6x stronger on the Necro than on other classes because of death shroud scaling.

Jekkt.6045:

Sigmoid.7082:

In all honesty the GS is a power weapon and thats it. It has poison to help attrition. It cant stack it fast enough to be considered a hybrid weapon. Its essentially the guardian great sword. It maps directly across. Auto > damage > utility > area denial > control.

Staff actually gets a boost on a reaper.

the poison on gs5 and shroud2 is extremely viable for a celestial build because you won’t have to run doom sigil and other celestial classes can’t outsustain you, that’s why it is perfect for a celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele, you have burn, few bleeds and poison and it is a very good celestial class. gs/staff has a similar amount of that.

My point was that GS isnt a hybrid weapon because it has only 1 condition. Other than that it is a pure power weapon and an essential copy of guard GS, again a power weapon.

Not only that but because of how the build would play, mostly in shroud for dhuumfire and might stacking, GS isnt essential. You can take a different mainhand/offhand combo and still do essentially the same thing.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

why you not haz some cavalier love?

Valkyrie has more power, and thus does more damage, while the vitality is effectively 1.6x stronger on the Necro than on other classes because of death shroud scaling.

I just remembered, there’s no vitality on Valkyrie in PvP…

Anyway, it’s definitely more than just 1.6x better. There’s that 50% damage reduction in DS, that alone would make that a factor of 2.2. It gets even more if you factor in the +15% base lf pool we’re going to have, plus maybe another 15% with Soul Reaping.
Also, the percentage based regen on life force gives vitality a different dynamic than how other classes have to balance toughness and healing power in addition to that.

Jekkt.6045:

celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele…

That’s the problem, you can’t compare ele to necro regarding celestial builds.

The only way celestial could provide a better defense/offense-ratio than carrion is if Blood Magic gets some incredibly good synnergy with healing power. If not: vitality > rest.
With the Spite/SR/Reaper build you’re planning to run you’ll be less tanky either way. Also, with those specializations you’re losing way too much damage if you’re not going full power. Every zerker build has access to the same poison you mentioned, so the difference is really just Dhuumfire and that is just no where near the extra direct damage you’d get with a power amulet and Deathly Perception.

Sigmoid.7082:

Jekkt.6045:

Sigmoid.7082:

In all honesty the GS is a power weapon and thats it. It has poison to help attrition. It cant stack it fast enough to be considered a hybrid weapon. Its essentially the guardian great sword. It maps directly across. Auto > damage > utility > area denial > control.

Staff actually gets a boost on a reaper.

the poison on gs5 and shroud2 is extremely viable for a celestial build because you won’t have to run doom sigil and other celestial classes can’t outsustain you, that’s why it is perfect for a celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele, you have burn, few bleeds and poison and it is a very good celestial class. gs/staff has a similar amount of that.

My point was that GS isnt a hybrid weapon because it has only 1 condition. Other than that it is a pure power weapon and an essential copy of guard GS, again a power weapon.

Not only that but because of how the build would play, mostly in shroud for dhuumfire and might stacking, GS isnt essential. You can take a different mainhand/offhand combo and still do essentially the same thing.

You can trait to make chill deal condition damage. That would make it very much a hybrid weapon, though I can’t help but feel like condi/hybrid builds with this are going to be rather gimmicky. It depends on how much damage chill ends up doing.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Sigmoid.7082:

Jekkt.6045:

Sigmoid.7082:

In all honesty the GS is a power weapon and thats it. It has poison to help attrition. It cant stack it fast enough to be considered a hybrid weapon. Its essentially the guardian great sword. It maps directly across. Auto > damage > utility > area denial > control.

Staff actually gets a boost on a reaper.

the poison on gs5 and shroud2 is extremely viable for a celestial build because you won’t have to run doom sigil and other celestial classes can’t outsustain you, that’s why it is perfect for a celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele, you have burn, few bleeds and poison and it is a very good celestial class. gs/staff has a similar amount of that.

My point was that GS isnt a hybrid weapon because it has only 1 condition. Other than that it is a pure power weapon and an essential copy of guard GS, again a power weapon.

Not only that but because of how the build would play, mostly in shroud for dhuumfire and might stacking, GS isnt essential. You can take a different mainhand/offhand combo and still do essentially the same thing.

You can trait to make chill deal condition damage. That would make it very much a hybrid weapon, though I can’t help but feel like condi/hybrid builds with this are going to be rather gimmicky. It depends on how much damage chill ends up doing.

Then you cant take blighters boon for sustain and its the same as saying guards GS is condi cause of passive burn. Also only way so spread enough chill would be to take chilling dark due to nightfall synergy for aoe chill damage.

flow.6043:

Every zerker build has access to the same poison you mentioned, so the difference is really just Dhuumfire and that is just no where near the extra direct damage you’d get with a power amulet and Deathly Perception.

Exactly this like i stated before, a pure build would so so much more damage that it would be a better fighter. Especially as as soon as someone is below 50% hp they are essentially dead to a zerker reaper.
4~8k Gravedigger, downed body cleave/res denial
6~11k Soul Spirals 100% crit chance
4~10k Executioners Scythe 100% crit chance
2~3k ticks on Nightfall, can drop into shroud for 100% crit followed by #4 for epic leech.

Unless bloodmagic is epic now and healing power benefits is greatly.

the reason why you want to take staff/gs with celestial is, when you’re not in shroud you want to have something with what you can 1. chill 2. control 3. still deal damage and build life force. thats why gs is perfect.

i said it is a power/hybrid weapon, so more of a power than hybrid but more of a hybrid than for example dagger (if that makes sense?).

Jekkt.6045:

the reason why you want to take staff/gs with celestial is, when you’re not in shroud you want to have something with what you can 1. chill 2. control 3. still deal damage and build life force. thats why gs is perfect.

i said it is a power/hybrid weapon, so more of a power than hybrid but more of a hybrid than for example dagger (if that makes sense?).

Dagger focus can do the same thing. Just have to see and feel exactly how gs plays out. Until we get our hands on it we wont really know.

The big thing making me not want to drop dagger is the mixing of immobilize with other hard CCs for really difficult to deal with CC chains. I do hope they buff dagger 3 a bit though, its CD just doesn’t match its effect right now, comparable immobilizes on the same CD either do way more (Pin Down), or abilities with just immobilize would have more like 20s CD.