Guild Wars 2

My advice would be to go more a flat power build in PvE.

Nemesis’s Hybrid (or any similar variation) is still heavy on Conditions. Which sadly just suck in PvE. Turrets/Doors/etc don’t take any condi dam. Most boss type’s have reduced condi. Stacking Condi, then direct dam on top as they tick away, works fine when your solo, but as soon as you get others there… Well most event mobs etc are going to be dead by the time you stacked. Then there’s the 25 stack caps that’s shared for ALL players. In say a dungeon having more than 1 player condi based, is going to start fighting for that cap, taking damage away from the group.

Then, the stats are so tight. Doing hybrid 2 types of damage, means your either getting no defensive stats in gear or traits, or your missing out on maxing one of your damage stats.
Also as people have said, 30 Points Soul Reaping, gives you a trait that lets you get 50% in DS. Which is lovely. But at a click, you can change it to 3 sec Stability. Which really helps heaps in harder content, as necro is really behind with the rework of DS not letting you use it as block. A CC’ed or Dead Necro, dose no damage.

Blood now factor in rotations, skill coefficients and the fact that you wont be in DS all the time. I wasnt argueing that DS dps is higher in your build. I was saying the potential damage my lifeblasts do is higher. Effective power isnt valid because it ignores coefficients and modifiers. When doing a proper dps calculation with rotations and everything 30/10/0/0/30 is pretty awful for damage. And like ive said before, in reality you wont be able to stay in DS for long enough in dungeons and then your dps will fall off because you are doing subpar damage with the dagger on your build.

When i use to use 30/10/0/0/30 the crit rate was terrible and its really not worth sacrificing that much crit chance for 15% extra crit damage. Also signet of spite passive doesnt apply inside DS. My build can maintain atleast 3 conditions permanently on my own and 4 conditions with very good uptime. Group will most likely be adding burn to that so 4 conditions full time is so much better than strength of undeath. Also dont know for sure but i believe strength of undeath is bugged and only increases power in increments at different lifeforce levels (so its not even a proper modifier and not as good).

Its viable for casual dungeon running because every terrible build is viable in this game. But if you want to be efficient in dungeons 30/10/0/0/30 is a trash build. You arent going to be using DS to dps bosses so dunno why you are focusing on having good damage with DS, its like maximising your build for 1% of a dungeon, completely stupid and pointless.

Now you’re just throwing words around. I already factored in coefficients. That was the first thing I did in this thread. I just did it again, too. Effective power is also very valid at comparing builds, especially when those builds use the same weapons and the same utilities. There is no difference in rotation because they’re the same weapons. I also just included all of the modifiers. There’s no need to do a “proper” DPS calculation because you’re all using the same weapons, so whatever effective stats are higher wins. But lets ignore the charity I gave before in my previous analysis by giving a 7 condition uptime, and just go with your 4: congrats, your build now has a 2.5% advantage over the deathly perception build against single targets. Whoop dee doo.

Also, your build can’t hit higher with life blast. It doesn’t use staff or axe training, so it has 10% less damage in life blast than with a deathly perception build. Target the weak doesn’t compensate for that.

Of course, deathly perception more than compensates for the loss of the signet when in DS. I’d give you the effective power, but you don’t seem to care about effective power. So tell me, if hard math isn’t what is behind how much damage you can do, then what is: spiral power, or heart of the cards?

EDIT: Just checked the wiki. I’ve found no evidence that strength of undeath is bugged. Forum search function doesn’t work.

Well Of Suffering and Locust Swarm also profit from Deathly Perception when going in DS after using one of those skills.

Rotation is different because your going into DS and im flashing it for weakening shroud proc which does damage. I also have traited locust swarm. You also failed to include that you cant stay DS 24/7…. The wiki doesnt have all bugs, i know a few poeple on these forums have said its bugged. I tested it and it did some weird things to my power so im inclined to believe its not a modifier like it says. And ill repeat, single target damage is the most important part of your build. Necros have poor cleave aoe abilities anyway in dungeons and most of dungeons are boss fights. 30/10/0/0/30 is not optimal.

The point was never to stay in DS 24/7. Who’d want to do that? If you do that, you’d lose out on damage whenever there isn’t two targets to hit. No, you pop into DS, lay waste with your skills to multiple enemies, then pop out of DS to clean up and gain a bunch of life force for the next fight. You don’t stay in DS for bosses who are by themselves, either. There, you use DS primarily for defense, instead opting to use the dagger/warhorn or dagger/focus for offense. Of course, the 30/10/0/0/30 build also pops DS for weakening shroud, too. It just doesn’t immediately pop out when there are multiple enemies to blast away at.

That whole “Necro has poor cleave” thing is the reason why you’d want to run a DS build in the first place. Because then when you do run it, you don’t have such poor cleave anymore. I’ve run every path of every dungeon except CoF and Arah (no interest in their tokens), and bosses by themselves aren’t the norm. Dungeons are chock full of places where you gather around a corner to pull a bunch of silvers, or a boss that has a ton of additional adds, or multiple bosses in one area, or bosses that summon additional adds through the fight. The biggest problem with going for single target DPS is that I run face first into places where that is not the optimal strategy in nearly every path.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Dungeons are chock full of places where you gather around a corner to pull a bunch of silvers

with an optimal team they die before you can get off wells+locust swarm+tainted shackles+life transfer

I have to say: great comparison by Blood Red Arachnid here, founded on a good analysis. Too bad people still think you can counter this by throwing a bunch of words around…

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Anyway, a summary, for the people that actually want to learn something. Both builds share the same 2 rotations:

• Dagger rotation: best single target dps
• DS rotation: overtakes dagger if you can hit more than 2/3 targets (depends on your traits) and is your best ranged option (if such a situation would ever arise ).

Both builds switch between the 2 depending on the circumstances. They differ in that 30/25/0/0/15 favors the dagger rotation (single target), while 30/10/0/0/30 favors the DS rotation (aoe, ranged). How much they differ in both areas depends on which buffs you have on you, but we can still make some estimates:

• Dagger rotation: biggest difference is around 10%
• DS rotation: biggest difference is 30+%

As such, both have their merits and you choose which one you play based on your team, play style, etc. Don’t be fooled by people saying either is a trash build, they don’t know what they are talking about (I had to think of Nemesis’ “There is no best build, only best at” here).
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Personally, I am playing 30/10/0/0/30 since a few weeks because, given that I don’t often have the luxury of playing in an optimal team, it offers a lot more flexibility: imo, the max 10% single target dps loss is a very small price to pay for a big boost in aoe (stuff doesn’t die in 2 seconds in my teams), ranged (again, if the rest of your team isn’t build for pure dps, ranged is often a must) and survivability (the difference between using DS as an ‘oh crap’ and using it as an actual health bar, especially with how quickly you can replenish life force in pve, is a lot higher than I anticipated).

PS. Strength of Undead is bugged, but it’s actually on their tracker now: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Strength-of-Undead