Guild Wars 2

So i have a lv 45 necro, and i am spec’d mainly tanky. I dont really understand what the condition damage would help, or what triggers it, or even how helpful it is in fights. Could anyone please explain to me why this is something i need to spec into, or if i should just ignore it like i am right now.

Condition damage is not a must-have, but I quite like it. It gives you sustainable damage output as soon as you’ve applied your stacks, as opposed to outright burst damage. But by no means a must-have, I’m certain a power/precision/crit damage dagger or axe build is just as good.

If you apply conditions to foes (bleed, poison, chill, etc.) as a primary source of damage, then you want to increase condition damage as much as possible. It increases the damage per tick of each condition, increasing the total damage over its duration.

Condition damage, simply put, improves every tick of every damage-over-time effect you have on an enemy. This at first doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you play a condition-based build like scepter-dagger, or BiP/Epidemic (Or both!), that extra damage starts to add up really, really quickly. 13 stacks of bleeding, each doing 25% more damage than usual, can reduce even veteran mobs to jelly pretty quickly.

Groborthir.5306:

Condition damage is not a must-have, but I quite like it. It gives you sustainable damage output as soon as you’ve applied your stacks, as opposed to outright burst damage. But by no means a must-have, I’m certain a power/precision/crit damage dagger or axe build is just as good.

I think that Condition damage IS a must-have.. al least for the necromancer.

Dagger -> Sucks
Axe -> Sucks
Minions -> Sucks (well, the flesh golem maybe not, but his AI is very stupid)
Almost every support skills, is abount boons&conditions.

Scepter+Dagger
Staff with very cool mark
Epidemic
Consume Conditions
Corrupt Boon

:-)

Alright, thanks guys. I will have to try that build out

Unless you’re playing condition/bleed Necromancer, you don’t need to worry about it. That said, that spec of Necro is quite fun with sustained damage.

I leveled mostly as tank/support Necro though, you don’t have to change. That’s the nice thing about GW2. Any class can play how they like with several viable ways. They mgiht not all be competitive, but there are many ways to be good enough.

I am only 53 but I don’t find DoT management fun at all, so I run a dagger/focus & staff build. I focus on power and currently blood for the vitality increase and I do just fine soloing veteran mobs.

……I don’t mess with champions solo though lol

marianitten.1247:

Groborthir.5306:

Condition damage is not a must-have, but I quite like it. It gives you sustainable damage output as soon as you’ve applied your stacks, as opposed to outright burst damage. But by no means a must-have, I’m certain a power/precision/crit damage dagger or axe build is just as good.

I think that Condition damage IS a must-have.. al least for the necromancer.

Dagger -> Sucks
Axe -> Sucks
Minions -> Sucks (well, the flesh golem maybe not, but his AI is very stupid)
Almost every support skills, is abount boons&conditions.

Scepter+Dagger
Staff with very cool mark
Epidemic
Consume Conditions
Corrupt Boon

:-)

Please don’t go outright and say that Dagger and Axe suck. This is obviously just your opinion, but there are plenty of viable builds where Axes or Daggers don’t suck. Granted, in early levels, condition damage usually does more damage than a power build. But it seems that power scales better into later levels, eventually becoming on par with condition damage.

So yes, Power/Crit builds are viable.

Condition damage is for mainhand Scepter and offhand Dagger. If you don’t plan on running those, then you can pretty much ignore the statistic (with the caveat that Staff is a secondary weapon and is thus not considered for this discussion). Mainhand Dagger and Axe do no condition damage, and thus stacking it would be ill advised. The Axe benefits from condition duration while the Dagger only has a single immobilize and thus would depend on your offhand far more.

Link.4039:

marianitten.1247:

Groborthir.5306:

Condition damage is not a must-have, but I quite like it. It gives you sustainable damage output as soon as you’ve applied your stacks, as opposed to outright burst damage. But by no means a must-have, I’m certain a power/precision/crit damage dagger or axe build is just as good.

I think that Condition damage IS a must-have.. al least for the necromancer.

Dagger -> Sucks
Axe -> Sucks
Minions -> Sucks (well, the flesh golem maybe not, but his AI is very stupid)
Almost every support skills, is abount boons&conditions.

Scepter+Dagger
Staff with very cool mark
Epidemic
Consume Conditions
Corrupt Boon

:-)

Please don’t go outright and say that Dagger and Axe suck. This is obviously just your opinion, but there are plenty of viable builds where Axes or Daggers don’t suck. Granted, in early levels, condition damage usually does more damage than a power build. But it seems that power scales better into later levels, eventually becoming on par with condition damage.

So yes, Power/Crit builds are viable.

If i said that sucks.. it’s pretty obvious that is My opinion.. ;-) relax people

for pve and wvw, condition dmg with epidemic is best. Just don’t run off alone or you will die by some OP 1v1 class in wvw.

Fortunately WvW isn’t about 1 vs 1s ^^

On the Axe/Dagger vs Scepter discussion, I think both direct damage weapons equal the condition weapon, but you have to be higher level for Axe/Dagger to be as useful. Axe/Dagger are also single target.

marianitten.1247:

Groborthir.5306:

Condition damage is not a must-have, but I quite like it. It gives you sustainable damage output as soon as you’ve applied your stacks, as opposed to outright burst damage. But by no means a must-have, I’m certain a power/precision/crit damage dagger or axe build is just as good.

I think that Condition damage IS a must-have.. al least for the necromancer.

Dagger -> Sucks
Axe -> Sucks
Minions -> Sucks (well, the flesh golem maybe not, but his AI is very stupid)
Almost every support skills, is abount boons&conditions.

Scepter+Dagger
Staff with very cool mark
Epidemic
Consume Conditions
Corrupt Boon

:-)

Dagger doesn t suck
Zerker with dagger does quite alot of damage.

I also like raising the dead, but AI often won t work.

Dark FQ.1038:

raising the dead

How relevant.

DO you use scepter and a lot of skills that apply bleeding, poison, and other damaging status effects?
If yes, then you want condition damage.

If you use dagger or axe, then you shouldn’t get any condition damage.

If you are leveling, do not run scepter or invest in condition damage. Almost every condition you have access to apart from scepter does not improve with condition damage and you automatically have a “base” condition damage anyway.

Go power, vitality, and toughness until you get close enough to 80 for precision to be high enough for you to critical hit with any frequency.

regarding crits, your stats will not allow you to crit much until you are close to L80 so signets that do something on critical hit are also poor investments. Armor, weapons, and trinkets are the same way. A crit bonus on any of that is not as good as power, vitality, or toughness. You will have lots of time for berserker builds later.

*sniff sniff * Where is that rotten smell coming from?

Skoigoth.9238:

*sniff sniff * Where is that rotten smell coming from?

I am a necromancer, I can do that. Besides the forum ai is alteast as good as the minion ai.

And also a sign that the devs/moderators not even care about the necro forums lol.