Guild Wars 2

Apologies for another newbie question, but I’m currently leveling a Necromancer (level 40 at the moment) and I’ve basically been full condition damage since level 10. Using corruption + agony sigils, 1 piece condition damage runes, condition damage consumables and traits etc.

I quite enjoy using staff at the moment, and I understand that it’s a fairly good condition damage weapon due to the low CD on #2 ability with bleeds. Though, it also has a fairly strong auto attack damage.

My question to the Necro community is;
What’s faster (better at killing) full power or full condition damage?
I’m guessing Staff + Scepter/Dagger is what’s used for condition damage builds and Staff + Axe/Focus for power.

Thanks in advance

EDIT: I should add, I have a level 80 Warrior with a fair bit of experience and I’ve played many, many hours of Necromancer in SPvP. I’m just new to Necro PvE. I’d just like to level as fast as possible to 80.

Either. Scepter/dagger epidemic with ravager gear worked for me (at 60 ravager changes to carrion or rampager) but axe/focus mm is highly recommended.

Im currently using s/d and staff. Ravaging gear, +20% bleed runes, +7% cond. Duration. corruption sigil with two agony runes and using epidemic regularly (when its worth).
Im just curious if going full power would be faster kills?

Excuse any typos, im using phone.

I’ve tried a lot of builds while leveling and currently (lvl 48) I can say wellomancer or any power build of that sort it’s a lot faster to kill stuff than conditionmancer

I use dagger/focus with focus on the blood tree and well skills and I Can say that I’ve killed faster and survived stuff and that could easily kill me if I was condition based

I used staff/wells when levelling my necro with dagger/focus as secondary and it worked great. I was able to pull a dozen mobs in at a time and nuke them down quick. For levelling power beats out condition IMHO.

Power is usually the go for PvE. As turrets/doors/other objects don’t take condition damage.
Also for group events, your condition damage wont be as much as fully exotic geared 80, meaning your conditions will just be pushed off as boss will be at condition cap. So you wont get rewarded.

Wells or MM, seem easiest to use while leveling.
Sure minions are pretty bad, but, they do work pretty nicely vs trash mobs. They also have the advantage of not being affected by your gear, so you can be a cheapscate and have crappy gear and let your minions do the work for you. ;-P

Minions are actually remarkably good for general PvE, they’re extra damage and meatshields, they’ll chew through standard mobs with ease and even make group events very manageable on your own. They suffer in some of the world boss fights where the whole area is peppered with AoE, but against garden variety champions they’re incredibly useful.

Ok so I switched to full power.
Bloodlust + force sigils, Dagger/Focus, 2 wells with 20% reduced CD, 20% reduced CD on focus, power food, power gear and runes etc.

kills are by far faster. Dagger burns through small group fights really fast, and wells are low enough cooldowns to be used often enough on slightly larger fights.
Thanks for the help guys!

I leveled to 45 with conditions, staff + scepter/dagger. It was easy but slow with a lot of kiting and could only take on a couple enemies at once.

Then I switched to power axe/focus + staff MM and steamrolled thru Tyria. If conditions got to be a problem, I just swapped my focus for an oh dagger and continued on my way. Very easy leveling.

Power scales better at lower levels than any other stat. conditions and precision scale like crap into the lower levels, so you want flat power.

dagger+warhorn/axe+focus would be your fastest killing set for leveling.

I tried MM but I wasn’t too keen. Minions were constantly keeping me in combat by attacking stuff when I was trying to kite away. I felt the need to wait for my minions to heal up after every fight, and they also die really fast to anything that uses AoE.

I was breezing through PvE with Dagger/Focus and using wells. I’ll go back to using that

I’d say full power/crit. Use flesh golem to tank mobs. Pull like 5-10 mobs. use staff 2,3,4, put the two dmging wells + blind one. Use DS 4. Repeat.

I’ll vote Power as well.

But… remember leveling is just leveling. IMO, what you really want is
1) movement speed,
2) decent blue/green gear from the trading post every 5-10 levels (basically free),
3) a playstyle you enjoy enough to get you to 80 without burning out.