Guild Wars 2

Please suggest a build that can take advantage of Superior Runes of Tormenting. I have been considering what armor and trait skills but the real question is in play style; MM, terrormancer, conditionmancer, spectre, etc.

Once play style (weapons and utilities) and trait skills are defined, armor stats are easier but I have found these runes to be more perplexing than either of the other new types. Maybe they are best used on another profession, entirely.

Looking for ideas. Thanks in advance.

I don’t know if there is one you can throw them in any of the standard necro builds but tainted shackles torment is already long. People dont really use any other heal except CC unless you are talking about PvE then you can get good use out of the heal proc.

I wonder if you get two procs from 6th ability with Blood Fiend – one on summoning and one on heal…

Right. Before I bind them to armor I need to decide which profession should have them. When the recipe came out, I thought they were for Necromancer but they could be better on, for example, Engineer. Are the runes useful for a Necro and, if they are, how are they best used?

Godless.1857:

I wonder if you get two procs from 6th ability with Blood Fiend – one on summoning and one on heal…

You do… but you really have no way to get the 2nd proc, because the minion will be dead before the cooldown is up on the on-heal torment ICD.

The same reason why the blood fiend is terrible in any and every other non-minion build. It gets focused and killed, and now you have no healing.

Rennoko.5731:

Godless.1857:

I wonder if you get two procs from 6th ability with Blood Fiend – one on summoning and one on heal…

You do… but you really have no way to get the 2nd proc, because the minion will be dead before the cooldown is up on the on-heal torment ICD.

The same reason why the blood fiend is terrible in any and every other non-minion build. It gets focused and killed, and now you have no healing.

Agreed. It might work if you are roaming looking for very small 1v1 fights, duels etc. It would assist in trying to keep the opponent in range – but to be honest, we probably have better ways of doing that with chill and cripples.

I’ve never found the proc on the tormenting runes to be particularly complex. I run a standard conditionmancer, but it can also work for any condition based build, so long as you run consume conditions.

The build I use myself is 30/30/10, with the only requirements really being 30 in spite and hemophilia in curses to maximize bleed and condition duration. Food includes koi cakes and rare veggie pizzas. Weapons include scepter/dagger and staff. The stat setup I went with is carrion with some rampager, but in theory you can go with full rabid or full dire or even full rampager.

The biggest “tax” with using the tormenting runes is bleed duration, since normally you’d pick runes that would give bleeding duration. So, whenever you make a tormenting build, you’ll want to have that “covered” somehow. Hemophilia + 30 in spite + pizza gives 90% bleed duration, and this is satisfactory enough, but in comparison you will be shaving off a tick or two from every attack to take advantage of the proc, so to overall increase your damage you’ll want to take advantage of the proc. You can get an agony sigil to increase this to 100% duration, but proper proc usage will make this unecessary.

In PVE, the best time to use this ability is… pretty much anywhere. In condition builds, I use DS defensively, so I have quite a large amount of leeway with heals, so I spam my heal as much as possible to get the proc up. The best time to use it is when the enemies are grouped together, since it works in an AoE. The whole “enemy grouping” thing should come naturally by now, since that is how you maximize damage for AoE conditions anyway. You tag them with mark of blood or enfeebling blood or whatever, then when they run close to attack, you use Consume Conditions to simultaneously heal away their attack and inflict torment, then follow up by using weakening shroud + tainted shackles + life transfer while kiting away to maximize torment damage.

Another big advantage is in zergs. Torment is kind of a rare condition, and against champions that have maxed out conditions, the proc and duration contribute quite a lot since it doesn’t get overwritten.

In PVP is a bit harder to use. Personally, I like to use a particular combo in WVW:

Pop into DS (Weakening Shroud)
Use Dark Path
Use Doom (terrormancer)
Pop out of Deathshroud, an use Consume conditions while chasing them.

You don’t want to spam your heal in PVP though. It is best used tactically, and mostly for healing. The safest time to use the proc is definitely when the opponent is stunned by something, either fear or the Flesh Golem. Although sometimes you’ll have to use it in an emergency while being burst down.