Guild Wars 2

For those that tested the Reaper with GS and Staff. What gear has worked? Is celestial the most optimal or power gear?

For the first beta a lot of players went with the “full zerk” gear since there was an obvious lack of damage. And so did I for the first day of beta. The next day is switch to power/toughness/ferocity. I also tried condi build but not with the gs on.

I personnaly always like the stat “power / toughness / ferocity” as the reaper can reach 100% critical hit without precision. and toughness is a good thing in VB. I don’t think this stat is available in exotic right now (not sure at all) but it is in ascend. And it was available in exotic for the beta, so I believe it will be in HoT anyway.

But for the friday, we have to keep in mind that the reaper has been buff. Yeah I know not nerf but buff, on necro, it’s sound like Dhuum is back in tyria to me. So we might see “new” gear stat.

Also condi reaper look pretty fun to play. I didn’t spend much time on it but Dhuumfire on RS is fun, and with reaper onslaught unbugged it may rain fire.

Celestial is really mediocre on Necromancer in general in my opinion. Go some kind of power gear, with whatever mix of non-condition damage stats you want basically, though precision isn’t particularly important due to the free crit we can get.

Iam gonna go mostly Valkyrie now, and use the Shroud Traits to buff my crit chance to yet still have higher LF-Pool, still gonna test exaclty how big deal of my Gear that will be Valkyrie.

xadine.7069:

For the first beta a lot of players went with the “full zerk” gear since there was an obvious lack of damage. And so did I for the first day of beta. The next day is switch to power/toughness/ferocity. I also tried condi build but not with the gs on.

I personnaly always like the stat “power / toughness / ferocity” as the reaper can reach 100% critical hit without precision. and toughness is a good thing in VB. I don’t think this stat is available in exotic right now (not sure at all) but it is in ascend. And it was available in exotic for the beta, so I believe it will be in HoT anyway.

But for the friday, we have to keep in mind that the reaper has been buff. Yeah I know not nerf but buff, on necro, it’s sound like Dhuum is back in tyria to me. So we might see “new” gear stat.

Also condi reaper look pretty fun to play. I didn’t spend much time on it but Dhuumfire on RS is fun, and with reaper onslaught unbugged it may rain fire.

Thanks for the reply. You think GS will be viable in PvP (both sPvP and WvW) and PvE?

For PvE I assume it will be, I mean as viable as any other build in PvE.
Top tier…. well I’m not so sure, but we’ll see what “new meta” HoT will bring.

For PvP ask Bhawb he is one good guy to listen to when it comes to PvP. Maybe some other but I usualy use his post as “references” even though I’m a PvEer. I don’t agree with everything he say/think but he never write crap.

Spoj is also a nice forum necro and he focus on PvE if I’m not mistaken.

I used soldier gear last BWE and managed to very nearly kill the Champion Mordrem Troll in Southeast VB on my own. While using primarily GS and Shouts, with obvious use of RS. So, for me, as always, Soldier Necro/Reaper is the way to go for a power build with clear tanky overtones

Valkyrie is actually probably the best stat set for Reapers. It has as much power/ferocity as zerkers, but instead of precision, we get a kittenload of hp, and can still get all the crits we ever need from Decimate Defenses and Death Perception. Decimate Defenses with fury up can reliably put us at 75% crit chance, and if you want Death Perception, that puts us at over 100% without fury, or you can take Dhuumfire instead to just take advantage of our insane might stacking for Tons of Damage.

I’m not sure what would be best in PvP, since I didn’t try reaper much in pvp, but in PvE, berserkers is really just not necessary, Valkyries gives us the same damage but with a ton of survivability.

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

posthumecaver.6473:

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

Unfortunately, Valk’s is Power/vitality/ferocity. There doesn’t seem to be a Power/toughness/ferocity set.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

Oh man that would be the absolute best. We’d have pretty beastly damage with that set, actually.

Captain Unusual.9163:

posthumecaver.6473:

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

Unfortunately, Valk’s is Power/vitality/ferocity. There doesn’t seem to be a Power/toughness/ferocity set.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

Oh man that would be the absolute best. We’d have pretty beastly damage with that set, actually.

power/toughness/ferocity is Cavalier. I think toughness is the mainstat however.

Even if Power/Toughness/Ferocity were an actual set, I’d take Valkyrie. More toughness = more aggro. I’ll leave that to the guardians/warriors instead.

Zenith.7301:

Captain Unusual.9163:

posthumecaver.6473:

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

Unfortunately, Valk’s is Power/vitality/ferocity. There doesn’t seem to be a Power/toughness/ferocity set.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

Oh man that would be the absolute best. We’d have pretty beastly damage with that set, actually.

power/toughness/ferocity is Cavalier. I think toughness is the mainstat however.

Even if Power/Toughness/Ferocity were an actual set, I’d take Valkyrie. More toughness = more aggro. I’ll leave that to the guardians/warriors instead.

I think Reaper can tank quite well also, with Blighter’s Boon and Blood Magic, with all the healing from Wells and Life Leeching from Whirl Combo’s in Dark Fields, it might be quite decent with tanking and dishing tons of damage also.

But we have to see, I will test that in next BWE.

Yeah, but I don’t want to tank. Let somebody else lose their scholar runes bonus instead lol.

xadine.7069:

For the first beta a lot of players went with the “full zerk” gear since there was an obvious lack of damage. And so did I for the first day of beta. The next day is switch to power/toughness/ferocity. I also tried condi build but not with the gs on.

I personnaly always like the stat “power / toughness / ferocity” as the reaper can reach 100% critical hit without precision. and toughness is a good thing in VB. I don’t think this stat is available in exotic right now (not sure at all) but it is in ascend. And it was available in exotic for the beta, so I believe it will be in HoT anyway.

But for the friday, we have to keep in mind that the reaper has been buff. Yeah I know not nerf but buff, on necro, it’s sound like Dhuum is back in tyria to me. So we might see “new” gear stat.

Also condi reaper look pretty fun to play. I didn’t spend much time on it but Dhuumfire on RS is fun, and with reaper onslaught unbugged it may rain fire.

Hey guildie! At least, I think you’re the xadine I know xD

I think I wrote something about necros using cavalier gear in our guild forum, and based on calculations from the build editor, I’d say a Cavalier-geared necro has about 100 less base power than a Berserker one in Reaper Shroud, but obviously more survivability . It’s based around hitting hard in short bursts than sustained damage. I don’t think it’ll necessarily be meta, but it seems like an interesting build, and I’m planning to make an armor set soon enough.

Why toughness?
life force pool is 80% of health pool ( or 70 without soul reaping). So taking vitality might be better damage wise… You might take more damage, but you also have more death shroud to take that damage. skills that generate lf also generate a percentage, so more life force pool = more life force gain.

Basicly:
toughness = take less damage, easyer to heal, normal life force gains.

vitality = take the same damage but on a bigger total pool, harder to heal up fully, but you also gain a lot more life force, since 80% of 30k is a TON more then 80% of 18k…

I’d think that if you know the high damage boss phases and can go reaper shroud on those, then the vitality increase might be better, by a lot.

So basicly, take chest and bottom berserker (or another one you already have,to save you some money) to get to 30% crit chance, and let fury and decimate defences bring you up to par with a full berserker build. then stack p on valkyrie

This makes you equal to a full berserker reaper, but with 23k health and 18.5k Life force instead of 19k health and 15k life force, which let’s you dps in ds a bit longer.

or am i looking at this the wrong way?

the noobiniser.7465:

Why toughness?
life force pool is 80% of health pool ( or 70 without soul reaping). So taking vitality might be better damage wise… You might take more damage, but you also have more death shroud to take that damage. skills that generate lf also generate a percentage, so more life force pool = more life force gain.

Basicly:
toughness = take less damage, easyer to heal, normal life force gains.

vitality = take the same damage but on a bigger total pool, harder to heal up fully, but you also gain a lot more life force, since 80% of 30k is a TON more then 80% of 18k…

I’d think that if you know the high damage boss phases and can go reaper shroud on those, then the vitality increase might be better, by a lot.

So basicly, take chest and bottom berserker (or another one you already have,to save you some money) to get to 30% crit chance, and let fury and decimate defences bring you up to par with a full berserker build. then stack p on valkyrie

This makes you equal to a full berserker reaper, but with 23k health and 18.5k Life force instead of 19k health and 15k life force, which let’s you dps in ds a bit longer.

or am i looking at this the wrong way?

depends on game mode as well as how hard mobs are to deal with in the new maps.

@Sabetha: yep I’m probably the one you’re looking for. I mean I use this names since 2000 on pretty much every game I play and never seen another xadine.

As for the vitality / toughness talk.
During the WBE I had no trouble at all killing everything I found either zerk or cavalier. I found way more efficient in cavalier since I was able to take so many risk and I barely saw damage differences. I don’t think more vitality and lf is needed, it may give us a more damage sustain but that not the way I see the necro^^ (full time DS).
What I mean is that necro have the possibility to do good damage while tanking. So I always play a dps necro that try to stay in the melee and absord damages for his party but I switch all the time between in/out DS with not trouble to fill my LF. Sure you can have more damage than I do, and to be fair it is not a lot more on a mob / standard event. Sure on Boss and several event it might be different but on this kind of event a bit more or less dps barely impact the fight.

Currently (GW2 vanilla) I have a mix between Cavalier and Assassin set wich I really enjoy and allow me to do pretty much all I want without any trouble. I think I will remove Assassin pieces for my reaper And I will try with valkyrie to see if it bring something to my gameplay (your arguments are worth a try^^) before craft my new ascend pieces.

But tbh in the end valkyrie or cavalier, it is pretty much the same idea: Reaper doesn’t need precision stat and therefore zerk doesn’t seems to be the better stat. Still we can do good damages (not top tier but doesn’t mean low dps) so power and ferocity should be on your gear. For vita/tough I believe it is more about your gameplay and both are good choice. I have quite a lot of time on my necro, I play it on a power gear since the release with a focus on dungeon, especially FotM and I never had any complain about my build/gear/efficiency. And I can’t remember how many time I save the day in FotM 50 when we get dredge^^. And it happened because I turn myself into a front lane for my team wich I believe is easier in cavalier, but probably can be achieve in valkyrie too.

Toughness and vitality should be present in a 1:1 ratio for Max EHP vs white damage.

Personally I would use cavalier gear but as it’s not PTF I don’t bother; I’m going pure Valkyrie for reaper; with s few pieces of soldier for some toughness. I’m just not going to wear any great without power as the primary stat.

If cavalier was PTF instead of TPF I’d mix it with Valkyrie, but as it is right now I won’t bother.

I played every single gear/spec combination that I could fit into 30 hours of in-game time with the Reaper, and I found that the scaling “precision” built into the Reaper made stat sets like Knight’s and especially Soldier’s have the best Effective Power to Effective Health. I did play with Marauder and Berserker stat sets as well, and I found that the burst was incredible if you could land skills appropriately (One of my favorite moments was chaining a 5k GD into an 8k GD, into a 7k GD while fighting a 2v2 on point), but the speed of greatsword and the lack of a strong ranged option while running greatsword made it extremely easy to be kited and bursted. With the speed changes to greatsword and GD, I think Berserker/Marauder will become much more viable in combination, and I believe greatsword might also be fast enough as a standalone weapon to have staff as a suitable second weapon set to help shore up the lack of ranged damage, although they may still be too slow in tandem to really be able to combat thieves and mesmers.

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

This depends on how pve changes. Going to assume not all the new content and mobs will be so easy that you can zerk gear everything and some other stats may be needed.

If they have pulsing aura damage or unavoidable aoe attacks that are toughness/vitality checks that go through immunities/blocks, some people will have to change away from berserk.

They can even make rez traits useful by introducing boss mechanics that automatically down people and part of the fight is rezzing people efficiently before a boss finishes them off.

Of course, the warrior’s elite banner would need nerfing for that. It seems warriors bring everything except reflects.

Zenith.7301:

Captain Unusual.9163:

posthumecaver.6473:

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

Unfortunately, Valk’s is Power/vitality/ferocity. There doesn’t seem to be a Power/toughness/ferocity set.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

Oh man that would be the absolute best. We’d have pretty beastly damage with that set, actually.

power/toughness/ferocity is Cavalier. I think toughness is the mainstat however.

Even if Power/Toughness/Ferocity were an actual set, I’d take Valkyrie. More toughness = more aggro. I’ll leave that to the guardians/warriors instead.

Switch toughness for condi and youll have the set I mentioned. :P

RS would have constant 4 stack of Burning, up to 24 stack Poison, and Dagger AA Power DPS. That would boost us up to maybe 14k DPS in RS I think.

Sigmoid.7082:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

This depends on how pve changes. Going to assume not all the new content and mobs will be so easy that you can zerk gear everything and some other stats may be needed.

That I am not so sure about.

Tactics aren’t static. The “meta” doesn’t have to stay as stack and melee. If there is a more dangerous enemy being engaged, then using ranged attacks to disengage while others melee makes for an effective defensive tactic.

That said, even in GC gear the power necro is incredibly durable, and the reaper will be moreso, given the generation of life force per hit. Even if there is a cheesy EHP check via area wide pulsing damage, the necro will pass with flying colors. With shroud and its base health, the necro essentially has 45.7k effective health against direct damage, and 32.4k against condition damage.

This makes me a bit worried about the ele/thief/guard, though. Even in full soldier gear they don’t get those numbers.

Captain Unusual.9163:

posthumecaver.6473:

Yeah I think Valkyrie is better, getting Toughness means all PVE mob will aggro you. If you want to tank for the group sure go ahead but live I run power Necro with Valkyries and I hit the crap of the mobs none of them Aggro to me but goes to Zerker Guardians/Warriors

But for PVP you should definitely got for Power/Toughness/Ferocity but I am not sure GS will function in PVP.

Unfortunately, Valk’s is Power/vitality/ferocity. There doesn’t seem to be a Power/toughness/ferocity set.

meow one twenty.4376:

I’m hoping for a Power/Condi/Ferocity armor to come out. We can make better use of it than most classes thanks to all of our Crit enhancing traits and Power/Condi that comes from GS2, RS1 + Dhuumfire, and RS4. I’m holding off on making Ascended armor for the slight sliver of hope we get this.

Oh man that would be the absolute best. We’d have pretty beastly damage with that set, actually.

Cavalier gear is pow/tough/ferocity. I mix it Cav armor and zerk trinkets. You will hit 2600 armor and have a base 25% critical so with death perception and decimate defense you can easily hit 100% critical even if some of your vuln drops off and still have A decent critical chace out side of reaper shroud.

Samhayn.2385:

Cavalier gear is pow/tough/ferocity. I mix it Cav armor and zerk trinkets. You will hit 2600 armor and have a base 25% critical so with death perception and decimate defense you can easily hit 100% critical even if some of your vuln drops off and still have A decent critical chace out side of reaper shroud.

The issue is that Cavalier is Toughness primary rather than Power so you’re losing quite a bit of offensive capability swapping over to it. As the other posters have said, if it was power primary it could be nicely mixed with Valk to maintain even levels of vitality/toughness while not losing power.

I’m also one of those hoping for a stat set with power as the primary and condition damage/ferocity as the secondaries to come out of HoT. It’d work really well for quite a few classes (but mostly Reaper and a Corruption/Mallyx Revenant).

I did full sinister and full Berserker the first beta. Both were underwhelming to say the least. Fun, but underwhelming. The changes they’ve made should help both power and condi though I personally feel that condi needs allot more work outside of the reaper spec to be viable. So there’s that. But Power should be great. I’m itching to play again to see how well the changes turned out.

For outside spvp ( I’d recommend pure power for that), I came up with an idea that uses reaper shroud with some celestial gear.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhF6kjGoaTsdTwzGgeTsUMYx7wi4SkqJMFuVRBgvVBA-TFjEABe/IAgb/hjVCFieAAVC2hmAlUioiaFAcEAwS5BMqqw8JAAA-w

Since we need a decent ranged option that can effectively kite (I’m not good with the staff) I opted for the scepter. Condition damage is just shy of reaching 1000 (nothing some food can’t fix) while still maintaining good power and vitality throughout the build.

ps: sigils and runes were selected for purely entertaining purposes, but seriously, sigil of mishief + chilling darkness

For Solo Roam in first BWE I tested Zerk and then Sinister aswell and it feels like Reaper due to it being hit alot more couldnt really take those “squishy” gear sets all that good compared to traditional Necro. I then tried both Knights and Valkyrie with some Zerk trinkets and found it much better…

The GS being so bad in first BWE and Shouts almost no use in Solo Roam except CttB it wasnt easy so changes with more base effect and GS tweaks are gonna be fun to test (tho I still think cast-time , NOT dmg is issue).

Imho in Power Builds Valkyrie (boost LF-Pool) with mixed Trinkets worked best. Celes did not work for me at all.

I really liked soldiers amulet on a GS reaper in pvp. For pve its probably zerker.

I dont think condi reaper is good with GS. If you play condi reaper dont take GS.

Skill 5 has a bit of poison but oitside that neither the gs or reaper shroud do ANY condition damage without traits, the only two off the top of my head being the reaper on that makes chill dot and dhuumfire.

Loki.4871:

Skill 5 has a bit of poison but oitside that neither the gs or reaper shroud do ANY condition damage without traits, the only two off the top of my head being the reaper on that makes chill dot and dhuumfire.

I believe that is being changed to Chill instead of Poison.

RS 4 is poison, not RS5, and its 11 stacks.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

For PVE, the answer is always going to be zerker. However, there is a decent build in spite/soul reaping/reaper that can make good use of valkyrie. So long as you have the vulnerability to sustain it, which bitter chill and unyielding blast bring in spades.

Zerk seems like a waste of stat budget, though. Especially when all that precision is just being wasted since you’re sitting really high already on crit chance, at times even above 100%.

We also got a nice glimpse of how PvE changes with many of the fights we saw in the beta. Smokescales, the beethrowers with their massive area denial, the snipers, and the pocket raptors were prime examples of cases where either damage was irrelevant or extra survivability was necessary.

There are several builds I will try.
Sinister and rampager Chill condition damage scepter
PVT Chill duration power CC wells sword dagger
Zerker scholar shout sword/dagger
Healing vampire Transfusion support
Max toughness super tank

Bhawb.7408:

RS 4 is poison, not RS5, and its 11 stacks.

Its 12

Soul Spiral: Reduced recharge from 40s to 30s. Fixed number hits skill fact to show 12 hits. Fixed duration skill fact to list 3s duration.

Wait so RS 4 procs 12x Transfusion? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Bhawb.7408:

Wait so RS 4 procs 12x Transfusion? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Transfusion states 9 so will have to test that this weekend. But the ability itself does do 12 hits and 12 poison stacks.

According to Robert Gee (forgot where) it is allowed to proc more times on Soul Spiral because the healing is only 300 range instead of 600, but I’m not 100% sure if that made it through development.

Bhawb.7408:

According to Robert Gee (forgot where) it is allowed to proc more times on Soul Spiral because the healing is only 300 range instead of 600, but I’m not 100% sure if that made it through development.

I’d be surprised if it didn’t. Reaper’s Might and Dhuumfire are allowed to be stronger because of the extra risk involved in using them with RS.