Guild Wars 2

Sorry if this is the sort of question that comes from someone living under a rock, but I’ve been living under a rock…

…what is going to be more viable for reaper? Power or condition builds? I’m talking raw damage output.

Ideally there would be a power major & ferocity + condition damage minor stat set. That would give reapers the best damage, but since it doesn’t exist the strongest you can get is berserker gear + greatsword (gravedigger spam <50%) and dagger/X (>50%). Alternatively, you could opt for valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets and still have a 30%ish crit chance (80% with decimate defenses & 100% with fury) and not really lose any damage but gain some health.

tldr; obviously power

Awesome, thanks. Am still a scrub and trying to craft ascended armour for HOT. Will try for full zerker.

Simplicity.7208:

Ideally there would be a power major & ferocity + condition damage minor stat set. That would give reapers the best damage, but since it doesn’t exist the strongest you can get is berserker gear + greatsword (gravedigger spam <50%) and dagger/X (>50%). Alternatively, you could opt for valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets and still have a 30%ish crit chance (80% with decimate defenses & 100% with fury) and not really lose any damage but gain some health.

tldr; obviously power

Would Sinister work well?

Kill.3458:

Simplicity.7208:

Ideally there would be a power major & ferocity + condition damage minor stat set. That would give reapers the best damage, but since it doesn’t exist the strongest you can get is berserker gear + greatsword (gravedigger spam <50%) and dagger/X (>50%). Alternatively, you could opt for valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets and still have a 30%ish crit chance (80% with decimate defenses & 100% with fury) and not really lose any damage but gain some health.

tldr; obviously power

Would Sinister work well?

Not necessarily, our traits take care of most of the precision we need. With the current available stat archetypes, we are lacking an ideal set with ferocity.

Gnat.9405:

Kill.3458:

Simplicity.7208:

Ideally there would be a power major & ferocity + condition damage minor stat set. That would give reapers the best damage, but since it doesn’t exist the strongest you can get is berserker gear + greatsword (gravedigger spam <50%) and dagger/X (>50%). Alternatively, you could opt for valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets and still have a 30%ish crit chance (80% with decimate defenses & 100% with fury) and not really lose any damage but gain some health.

tldr; obviously power

Would Sinister work well?

Not necessarily, our traits take care of most of the precision we need. With the current available stat archetypes, we are lacking an ideal set with ferocity.

That’s assuming we run those traits. I think anyone sporting Sinister gear would skip Death Perception for Dhuumfire and Chilling Force is really handy, so they may not even be running Decimate Defenses.

Such a set has not been hinted at by anet though right?

Sevans.4619:

Gnat.9405:

Kill.3458:

Simplicity.7208:

Ideally there would be a power major & ferocity + condition damage minor stat set. That would give reapers the best damage, but since it doesn’t exist the strongest you can get is berserker gear + greatsword (gravedigger spam <50%) and dagger/X (>50%). Alternatively, you could opt for valkyrie armor and berserker trinkets and still have a 30%ish crit chance (80% with decimate defenses & 100% with fury) and not really lose any damage but gain some health.

tldr; obviously power

Would Sinister work well?

Not necessarily, our traits take care of most of the precision we need. With the current available stat archetypes, we are lacking an ideal set with ferocity.

That’s assuming we run those traits. I think anyone sporting Sinister gear would skip Death Perception for Dhuumfire and Chilling Force is really handy, so they may not even be running Decimate Defenses.

Ill probably play around with Sinister, Zerker, and Soldier gears still havent gotten a hands on with the Reaper yet, but from what I hear they’re survivability is high accompanied by nice damage (avoiding BWE to really go into HoT fresh)

What weapons would you use for Sinister stats or (supposing it exists) the Power/Condi/Ferocity stat?

If we are talking strictly about dps, i’d say power builds. If you don’t have to worry about other stuffs like soft CC, survivability.
Like in Pve, power builds with greatsword will be the highest for sure.
Using Berserker or Valkyrie.

I used both berserker and Sinister in the beta. A theoretical power/ferocity/condition damage might not be the best for damage though since you can’t stick in reaper’s shroud 100% of the time. And to get that 100% crit chance means you pretty much have to run Spite and soul reaping. Of course if you have allies applying the vuln for you than you can run something else like curses.

Now as for which does more? Thats very difficult to say actually. Its not as clear cut as people think it is. While testing both I was killing foes just as quickly with condi as I was power.

Although I will mention that Valkyrie vs Sinister, sinister is by far much stronger DPS than Valkyrie. Its about that DPS up time and Valkyrie loses allot of damage when out of reaper’s shroud

Compared to Berserker? its a bit harder to tell. I think berserker slightly wins out but only at the beginning. Once you get to the midfight the sinister build seems to scale much higher.

These suggestions are for current PvE content, which is basically Patchwerk-like style of beating a training dummy . Nobody knows how PvE raid content will look like in HoT yet.

That’s said, you can always re-forge your ascended set to other stats if needed.

Rym.1469:

These suggestions are for current PvE content, which is basically Patchwerk-like style of beating a training dummy . Nobody knows how PvE raid content will look like in HoT yet.

That’s said, you can always re-forge your ascended set to other stats if needed.

I wasn’t making a suggestion. I was just talking about the damage comparison. Truthfully I wouldn’t run sinister or Berserker all too often in HoT. If I was to make a suggestion I’d actually suggest NOT running full Valkyrie. Although its better than berserker/sinister for survival its absolutely horrible for recovery.

At the moment I’m looking into running a Valkyrie+cavalier hybrid for that content. Though I’d prefer a primary power, toughness, ferocity set over Valkyrie and cavalier, its not currently available to us.

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

Holl.3109:

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

With upcoming Reaper being able to stack crit based on vuln on enemy (and this is outside of shroud), I think valks will indeed be a valid alternative for Necros.

Hexalot.8194:

Holl.3109:

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

With upcoming Reaper being able to stack crit based on vuln on enemy (and this is outside of shroud), I think valks will indeed be a valid alternative for Necros.

the issue isn’t valkyrie’s lack of precision or the reliance on traits. Its its lack of recovery that hurts it. Any heal you want to use, any heal used on you is less effective because of your high health pool. Compared to a similar set with toughness rather than vitality, the toughness set has easier recovery. Now, Vitality does scale with both power and condition damage while toughness only scales with power. However, when trying to recover high vitality compared to high toughness, vitality has a much harder time recovering than toughness. And since condition damage isn’t very common in PvE, the extra health is really more a hindrance.

Also, I’ve been testing full valkyrie in the beta weekends. It still has greater survivability than berserker or sinister. But its weaknesses make me suggest mixing it with cavalier so recovery isn’t so kitten you. or you could mix it with clerics if you don’t care about the crit loss.

You can always mix gear to get the balance you want. However, remember these three things:

Ferocity is additional damage on top of the basic 50% damage bonus for making a critical hit but you need to crit often enough to pay for ferocity investment and that means precision.

Condition damage only adds additional bonus damage to base condition damage and only applies on specific conditions. If you do not substantially use those conditions like bleed and poison, then your investment in condition damage is largely wasted.

Toughness is like having Taunt on you. Use it everywhere but PvE or risk being the default tank.

Power.

Condition necromancer will not be a thing.

None of the conditions that the necromancer/reaper has scale well. This means that additional stats from gear don’t really help you.

(Unless they do something unexpected like turn the greatsword trait from a lifesteal trait to a condition trait).

& before anybody says “but dhuumfire…” understand that reaper RS uptime is tiny because of all of the extra damage that you are face tanking. Dhuumfire is still a bad trait.

Lily.1935:

Hexalot.8194:

Holl.3109:

Full valkyrie is quite bad for pvp/wvw since you rely on traits for ctit% soooo much.
For PvE it doesn’t really matter…

With upcoming Reaper being able to stack crit based on vuln on enemy (and this is outside of shroud), I think valks will indeed be a valid alternative for Necros.

the issue isn’t valkyrie’s lack of precision or the reliance on traits. Its its lack of recovery that hurts it. Any heal you want to use, any heal used on you is less effective because of your high health pool. Compared to a similar set with toughness rather than vitality, the toughness set has easier recovery. Now, Vitality does scale with both power and condition damage while toughness only scales with power. However, when trying to recover high vitality compared to high toughness, vitality has a much harder time recovering than toughness. And since condition damage isn’t very common in PvE, the extra health is really more a hindrance.

Also, I’ve been testing full valkyrie in the beta weekends. It still has greater survivability than berserker or sinister. But its weaknesses make me suggest mixing it with cavalier so recovery isn’t so kitten you. or you could mix it with clerics if you don’t care about the crit loss.

Oh sorry… I was looking at it more from a www/pvp perspective where having a large health pool is more important for mitigating bursts than toughness. And of course the necro shroud’s life force is dependent on the size of it’s health pool too.

nekretaal.6485:

Power.

Condition necromancer will not be a thing.

None of the conditions that the necromancer/reaper has scale well. This means that additional stats from gear don’t really help you.

(Unless they do something unexpected like turn the greatsword trait from a lifesteal trait to a condition trait).

& before anybody says “but dhuumfire…” understand that reaper RS uptime is tiny because of all of the extra damage that you are face tanking. Dhuumfire is still a bad trait.

Well, there will be chill condition damage but that will likely be a drop lost amid a bucket of burning stacks.

I believe your point is still valid.

nekretaal.6485:

Power.

Condition necromancer will not be a thing.

None of the conditions that the necromancer/reaper has scale well. This means that additional stats from gear don’t really help you.

(Unless they do something unexpected like turn the greatsword trait from a lifesteal trait to a condition trait).

& before anybody says “but dhuumfire…” understand that reaper RS uptime is tiny because of all of the extra damage that you are face tanking. Dhuumfire is still a bad trait.

I wouldn’t count your chickens just yet. Considering the Husks that show up in silverwastes and you can bet there will be elite husk type enemies in raids. one or two condi users might be necessary to taking those things out. Much like in Triple trouble. And if their is a high enough number epidemic might become an extremely handy tool that could be demanded.

I say that a condi necro could be a thing. Which we’ll have to wait and see with this upcoming patch.

Given the heavy frost condition usage in reaper, and our cleave mechanics, are these going to effectively be soft taunts making us psudo tanks and needing to stack more toughness and vitality for pve content?

It’s just a little worrying given how we now have a pure healer. I’m not bashing on the idea of trinity (gw2 has always had a soft trinity aspect with control, support and dps), it’ll just be interesting to see how our role shapes out in HoT.

WTB Power/Condi/Ferocity stat combo. Just call it Reaper

I’ve seen some pretty great looking condi reaper builds being bandied about, and while that gives seems to give less overall DPS in most cases, the stronger conditions give an added dimension that opponents have to watch out for.

Personally, I’m planning on grabbing two sets of exotic gear and try both builds to see which I like best.

I want to note that you want at least 30% crit chance in every single pve reaper build, so you can max crit chance out of DS. Also, condi reaper is nothing to scoff at. Scepter is getting some buffs, and HOT looks to be adding more and more enemies to each fight, which makes epidemic all the more powerful. They also probably want to encourage condition damage for more diversity, so I would be unsurprised to see direct damage immune creatures as Lily suggested.

I think a part of me wants reaper hybrid to work purely because chilled to the bone + rune of the mad king = awesome