Guild Wars 2

So you’ve been enjoying your Power Reaper build, but you want to try something a little different. Maybe you’re tired of having to dodge those nasty Modrem all the time and their heavy Toughness is making it look like you’re hitting them with wet spaghetti even when you crit. You’d kinda like to try out a Condi build but you dread the thought of dropping 40 or more gold on another set of armor and weapons, and how do Condi reapers work, anyway?

Well, fear not, my fine Necromancer friends! Turns out there’s a budget-conscious way to gear yourself up in level 80 Exotics for the low, low price of 6 gold. Yes, just 6! Aaaaaaand half a million Karma, but it’s not like you were using that for much anyway, were you?

Here’s the build, and here’s your shopping list:

Armor (x6): 252,000 Karma total (from Lightbringer Brutefur at the Cathedral of Eternal Radiance)
Trinkets (x5) and back item: 252,000 Karma total (from Historian Vermoth at the Cathedral of Zephyrs)
Rabid Pearl Rod: 87 silver (buy order)
Rabid Pearl Carver: 1.53 gold (buy order)
Bramblethorne: 2.61 gold (buy order)
Superior Sigil of Earth: 4.45 silver
Superior Sigil of Hydromancy (x2): 15 silver total
Superior Rune of the Undead (x7): 5.4 silver total
Embellished Brilliant Chrysocola Jewel (x6): 61 silver total (buy orders)

(Those Embellished jewels are the one true cost concession I’ve made; you can go with Exquisite ones if you’d like for +2.2 gold, but personally I don’t think it’s worth it for such a minor difference in stats.)

Additionally, you can drive the cost down to just a 1 gold total if you have 990 tokens from Caudecus’s Manor, Twilight Arbor, or Honor of the Waves to spend on weapons… though obviously those are at more of a premium these days.

For Runes, Grenth, Krait, Necromancer, or Sunless could also all work nicely at a similar price point. I went with Runes of the Undead because they’re so simple to use, but feel free to experiment.

Now, the build works pretty simply: empty every weapon cooldown as quickly as possible in the general vicinity of whatever you want to kill, then autoattack in Scepter or Reaper’s Shroud until your cooldowns are back. When fighting a bunch of opponents, press Epidemic occasionally. You can also pop Corrosive Poison Cloud at will since you don’t really care about the self-Weakness very much and the Poison application will give you a tremendous amount of damage. You can save Dagger 4 and Staff 4 to clear yourself of condis, but you can also use Dagger 4 to apply a bit of extra Chill thanks to Chilling Darkness or Staff 4 for its Blast finisher for some more AoE Weakness.

The thing about this build is, every single skill except for the Staff autoattack can apply at least one damaging condition, and many skills will apply several. As such, it will be very difficult to screw up using it in general PvE. There’s absolutely room for nuance and skilled play here and proper use of your debuff skills to take advantage of everything they have to offer can and will allow you to take on bigger and bigger challenges, but the skill floor is really quite low. As long as you’re using skills, you’ll be dishing out serious damage.

The one weakness this build has is a lack of on-demand stunbreakers. You can swap from Dhuumfire to Foot in the Grave for an easy Stunbreaker (and then change Unyielding Blast to Speed of Shadows or Soul Marks) if you want the added defense, or you could swap in a stunbreaker Utility as the current utilities aren’t really necessary.

I’m not sure how this compares to your standard Power Reaper build (though it’s probably weaker overall) and it’s certainly not as tricked out as it could be if you were willing to spend some extra bank, but if you were interested in trying out something different, you could do worse.-V

Nice writeup!

I’m a bit too addicted to shouts right now, but when I get around to using CPC some more, this is good to have.

Sound very nice, totally gonna give this one go.

Dead.5829:

Nice writeup!

I’m a bit too addicted to shouts right now, but when I get around to using CPC some more, this is good to have.

there are many variants of the condi necro, and there is definitely nothing wrong with taking shouts in a condi build

Oh I know, but I should probably play with… something else at some point : D

Dead.5829:

Oh I know, but I should probably play with… something else at some point : D

depends really. chillomancers work great with suffer, and any condi necro is fine taking “nothing can save you” and YAAW. “nothing can save you” gives you an easy way to apply vuln since you are likely not taking spite so you miss out on better chill, and YAAW gives you an easy way to get might, since once again you are likely not using spite

Azazel.1540:

Dead.5829:

Nice writeup!

I’m a bit too addicted to shouts right now, but when I get around to using CPC some more, this is good to have.

there are many variants of the condi necro, and there is definitely nothing wrong with taking shouts in a condi build

Absolutely. For this build, shouts make a little less sense since you mostly want to avoid getting into melee range of opponents (and you’d want to switch to Reaper’s Shroud when that’s unavoidable), but circumstances are rarely perfect and you would still have ample opportunity to fire off a couple of shouts.

To reiterate, the Utility skills for this build are entirely up to you — indeed, you should ideally be picking your Utilities before every fight to maximize your potential. I can’t imagine anyone running this build would want to drop Signet of the Locust when romping around the open world, and Epidemic can potentially give you way more AoE damage than any other skill in the game, but you could even swap those two out and still have a very effective build. (And obviously Epidemic should be swapped out when you know you’re only going to be fighting one target.)

Blaine Tog.8304:

Azazel.1540:

Dead.5829:

Nice writeup!

I’m a bit too addicted to shouts right now, but when I get around to using CPC some more, this is good to have.

there are many variants of the condi necro, and there is definitely nothing wrong with taking shouts in a condi build

Absolutely. For this build, shouts make a little less sense since you mostly want to avoid getting into melee range of opponents (and you’d want to switch to Reaper’s Shroud when that’s unavoidable), but circumstances are rarely perfect and you would still have ample opportunity to fire off a couple of shouts.

To reiterate, the Utility skills for this build are entirely up to you — indeed, you should ideally be picking your Utilities before every fight to maximize your potential. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to drop Signet of the Locust when romping around the open world, and Epidemic can potentially give you way more AoE damage than any other skill in the game, but you could even swap those two out and still have a very effective build. (And obviously Epidemic should be swapped out when you know you’re only going to be fighting one target.)

i know a lot of dhuumfire reaper builds don’t use CPC or even sometimes epidemic, as the goal is to stay in shroud as long as possible and you can’t use utilities in shroud

Azazel.1540:

i know a lot of dhuumfire reaper builds don’t use CPC or even sometimes epidemic, as the goal is to stay in shroud as long as possible and you can’t use utilities in shrou

Yup. If you’re focusing on Dhuumfire, you’d probably want “Your Soul Is Mine!” and some combination of Spectral skills to refill your Life Force as quickly as possible.

Awesome post, thanks Blaine!

Isn’t Chilling Darkness a bit of a waste if you are only running one blind? What’s Signet of Vampirism function in this build over CC or Your Soul is Mine? Building toughness may make you the #1 target of some bosses so maybe Vitality is a better idea. I believe Life Force Pool scales of Vitality so it might be better to build that or at least mix it in.

Running “Suffer” instead of Locust is probably preferred when you are not running around the map.

MartDiamond.8753:

Isn’t Chilling Darkness a bit of a waste if you are only running one blind?

You have two Blinds: Dagger 4 and RS 2 (and you should be switching to Reaper’s Shroud fairly frequently). You could go with Plague Sending instead if you want, I suppose, but we already have two Condi transfers. I prefer the extra Chills. Remember: Chill can only stack in duration a few times until it overrides itself, so there’s no point in cheesing it out too much. This build has plenty of Chill application, but not so much that you start wasting it.

MartDiamond.8753:

What’s Signet of Vampirism function in this build over CC or Your Soul is Mine?

More damage and more group Utility. I don’t find Lifeforce generation to be too much trouble so Your Soul is Mine is kinda overkill, and CC is also rather overkill (since, again, we already have 2 condi transfers). Either might be a better choice for a given fight, though. Really, the entire right half of the skill bar is open for changes depending on the content and your preferences.

MartDiamond.8753:

Building toughness may make you the #1 target of some bosses so maybe Vitality is a better idea. I believe Life Force Pool scales of Vitality so it might be better to build that or at least mix it in.

Carrion isn’t available as a Karma armor stat, so Rabid is what we’re stuck with if we want to max out our condition damage on a budget. I didn’t claim this was the best possible Condi Reaper build (Viper or Sinister are probably the best in terms of damage), just that it was one of the cheapest. That said, I might still prefer Rabid gear over Carrion for a pure Condition Damage build to help proc Barbed Precision and our Sigil of Earth more often.

As for Vit vs Toughness, it’s been a while since I’ve done out the math but I believe the two stats are of roughly equal value to Necromancers in terms of RS/DS. Because LF is measured in percentages, Necromancers are in the unique position of being able to gain sustain power by stacking Vitality; however, Life Force is still modified by Toughness in damage calculations, so both are quite valuable. Ideally, you’d probably shoot for a final ratio of 1 Armor per 10 HP, but again, Carrion isn’t an option so we’ll have to make due with our lopsided Toughness.

And finally, even if we assume that high Armor does indeed tend to draw aggro, I don’t see any reason we should be shy about taking it. We’ll be better able to survive a few hits than some aesthete zerker Mesmer.

MartDiamond.8753:

Running “Suffer” instead of Locust is probably preferred when you are not running around the map.

Locust is in there specifically for the movement speed, not for the active (though the active can be nice in a pinch). If you don’t need the mobility, then you should absolutely feel free to take it off your bar. Personally, I find the base movement speed in this game intolerable so I slot Locust almost all the time outside of boss fights, but your mileage may vary.

Totally missed the blind on RS2, my bad. I think you can get Rabid gear for honour badges so that’s somewhat of a budget option too. Agree on Locust for running around, but for big meta events in the jungle or bosses (like you said) it’s better to take a different skill.

Its true that carrion is hard to build on a bugdet but the good thing is it that what crafting is for. A good why to work around it is to run a hybird build. with half and half. Thats carrion armor and weapons. With rabid side gear. This gear can be hard to start collecting but its good blance of toughness and health with a good stack of condi damage. There many ways for us to stack chill. Sepectral Grasp is a good way to focus out a target, for more aoe well of darkness or GS 4, also the Elite pauge cloud skill 2. IT would be nice if there where more ways to stack chill but also an ele helps us we cant. On a side note runing Spite or cures works well for condi damage.

MartDiamond.8753:

Totally missed the blind on RS2, my bad. I think you can get Carrion gear for honour badges so that’s somewhat of a budget option too. Agree on Locust for running around, but for big meta events in the jungle or bosses (like you said) it’s better to take a different skill.

(FTFT )

You can buy Carrion gear from WvW vendors, but you shouldn’t: Brutus and Sheena gear goes for about the same gold cost off the TP if you put in buy orders, except it won’t then cost you the additional 1000 Badges of Honor. And in any case, that would double the cost of the set (to around 12 gold total); still pretty cheap, of course, but 6 gold is 6 gold. Plus, as I said, I prefer Precision over Power with this build for the procs. You’re mostly trying to sit in S/D here, and the Scepter skills scale just terrible with Power. Mixing Carrion and Rabid is probably ideal.