Guild Wars 2

Has anyone done any good testing or math on what is the best rune for raids?

For those who don’t know:

Rune of Thorns:
(1): +25 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(2): +10% Poison Duration
(3): +50 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(4): +15% Poison Duration
(5): +100 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(6): +20% . Poison Duration; gain 50 Condition Damage Condition Damage for 60 seconds when you are hit by a poisoned foe. (Cooldown: 10s)

Rune of the Berserker:
(1): +25 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(2): +35 Power Power
(3): +50 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(4): +65 Power Power
(5): +100 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(6): +5% Damage and +5% Condition Damage.

For raiding, for most encounters you will be taking pulsing damage from the boss (VG, Gors, Sloth, Matthias), so you can guarantee a near constant 250-300 extra condi damage throughout the fight, which is a lot. But the 5% Condi Damage on Berserker is very very good because it affects ALL outgoing condi damage, not a flat modifier like Sigil of Bursting to your condi damage stat. This means it scales very well, and I think is one of the only condi damage boosts of it’s type.

The secondary of both are not inconsequential, but smaller by comparison. Berserker gives you a slight bump in your power DPS, and Thorns puts you over condi poison cap, which otherwise would be sitting at 80% after buffs and food.

The rub is, a set of Rune of Thorns will run you 1500 airship parts. A decent investment of time. Has anyone either done testing or at least run the math of what would do more DPS in the long run? The 250-300 condi damage on most fights, or the flat 5% modifier to your damage?

I’m currently running thorns in raids, but I haven’t tried berzerker’s

I imagine they are pretty close but i’m liking thorns. I have about 2000 condition damage, so 250 gives me a 12.5% increase in CD, which brings my bleeds from 142 to 157, poison from 153 to 168. That’s ~10% boost in outgoing condition damage, double that of Berserker’s but sacrificing the direct damage component. You also get increase poison duration which is an added bonus.

Is that with full raid buffs? 25 might, all food/utilities? Because I believe the 5% from zerker’s applies after that.

Rune of the berserker im pretty sure is still glitched so you dont get the +5% condion damage in the 6 spot…you only get the damage increase

Chase.2798:

Rune of the berserker im pretty sure is still glitched so you dont get the +5% condion damage in the 6 spot…you only get the damage increase

in pvp i just tested berserker rune, bleeds went from 96 to 100 per tick, without an increase in Cdmg stat. Poison and torment went up 5% also.

Also math wise, the diffrence with buffs is around 1-2% more dmg for thorns with 5x stacks.

Thorns
- 1-2% more dmg
- 20% more poison duration
- 100 less power
- 5% less physical dmg
- has ramp up time of 1 minute, not as effective in fractal/dungeons

Id say thorns is definetly better, even in dungeons the extra 20% poison duration addidng another 1-2k DPS would still be a worthy boost.
Also, when using epidemic, the burns and all conditions from other members should tick stronger from berserker effect.
Therefore, id say if you want to grind airship parts, its probably the best rune, otherwise buy berserker from TP.

Comments?

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Is that with full raid buffs? 25 might, all food/utilities? Because I believe the 5% from zerker’s applies after that.

With full buffs:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWjM0QzNWdDe3AHOWKGspVwMIGE3DHiJxoAwAIBA-TBibABAoEkU1fK7UAQp+AaV+85+DrpEisnAQAgDgdrbAM+4jP+4j3u7u7u7ubpAgZZF-e

2700 condition damage. 2950 with full thorns. So an increase from 184 to 200 for bleeds or 9% increase in damage.

Edit: looks like bursting doesn’t work on the site, so increase those by 6%, still ~8.5% increase but slightly higher numbers. In order for the thorns bonus to match the condition damage bonus of Berserker you would need 5000 base condition damage.

Interesting, Flumek, do you have your calculations anywhere? Looks like I’ll keep getting my airship parts, if anything just to be Indie.

Like zudet, i just typed a bleed tick into calculator at 3000 and 3250 cdmg, added vuln, then 5% to berserker and thorns won with 237.5 vs 233.6 for berserker.

You can also roughly view zerker as +5% and thorns as a +1.4% per stack, aka 4 stack to get equal to berserker.

For non raids, having a 20% (or +1-5k DPS if your poison ticks for 5-10k dps) higher spin2win which is starting rotation for quickiee fights.
That 1-2k probably are a lot more that what the power gives to your scepter autos.

I’m using Thorn runes too since the begining.

We talked about this in this topic :
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/optimized-condi-necro

I’m using this build :
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JDNQ5mYzNg1NA7NYpYwi7hFxkYUAYAkAk+AhgOAA-TBSAQBYTJXIVO0GlgRU9HGu/AFOJAA4JAEQ9DkCYRlVA-e

Don’t use sigil of bursting, earth or geo are better.

Flumek.9043:

Like zudet, i just typed a bleed tick into calculator at 3000 and 3250 cdmg, added vuln, then 5% to berserker and thorns won with 237.5 vs 233.6 for berserker.

You have to reduce the base condi for both sets and they don’t have the same base condi damage because you don’t need a full viper set in thorn runes.
Full buffs :
Zerker runes : 1893 + 750 = 2643
Thorns runes (5 stacks) : 1959 + 750 + 250 = 2959

Flumek.9043:

Also, when using epidemic, the burns and all conditions from other members should tick stronger from berserker effect.

Nope but the difference is negligible for the burn (3,89%).

Thorn 5 stacks 25 might : (0,155 * 2959)+131.,5 = 590.145
Zerker 25 might : ((0.155 * 2643) +131,5) * 1,05 = 568.223

Also if we take in consideration vulnerability (25 stacks) :
“Damage multipliers combine in a multiplicative fashion rather than additive; i.e. they stack on top of each other instead of being calculated separately”
cf http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Damage_calculation

So :
Thorn 5 stacks 25 might 25 vul : ((0,155 * 2959)+131,5)*1,25 = 737,68
Zerker 25 might 25 vul : ((0.155 * 2643) +131,5) * 1,3125 = 710.28
That a 3,88% difference.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

With full buffs:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWjM0QzNWdDe3AHOWKGspVwMIGE3DHiJxoAwAIBA-TBibABAoEkU1fK7UAQp+AaV+85+DrpEisnAQAgDgdrbAM+4jP+4j3u7u7u7ubpAgZZF-e

You are not caped in bleed on your build. This is not so great for your main damage

Aaah, so in your build you drop your condi cap to 60% before traits so you can maximize the poison bonus duration. It wouldn’t lower your epi dps for the most part either, in fact, should increase it because of higher condi damage.

However, you’re also sacrificing your chill dps, with a 20% loss. What would you think of putting a 20% chill duration sigil on weps?

Does anyone have a reasonable DPS breakdown of what kind of % of necro damage is? At least vs a single target.

i.e. 60% bleeds, 15% poison, 10% chill, 8% torment, 10% direct, 3% leeches (I know thats not 100%, w/e)

Chill can be overwritten by another chill so long chill are not so great in raid. If one day we can stack it in intensity I would reconsider my build.
Consider chill as a bonus and not as a part of DPS.
Also I can maintain it with the chilling nova, suffer, chill on blind, chill on fear and KS 5.

The DPS breakdown depends of the target but for most encounters :
Bleeds : 8k-12k-18k (18k on matthias but please do not target me! :p)
Poison : 1k5-3k5-5k-(10 k burst in some configuration spin to win in cpc)
Chill : 800 – 1k
Torment : 1k5 max

Bleeds are more 75-80% of total DPS I think.

For sabetha my max bleed tick was 43k on the third boss on my own – solo necro (he takes more conditions damage) it was before alacrity nerf and before of course the abuse of adrenal mushroom.

I’m so sorry for my awfull english… I hope i’m not too hard to understand

maxinox.6283:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

With full buffs:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWjM0QzNWdDe3AHOWKGspVwMIGE3DHiJxoAwAIBA-TBibABAoEkU1fK7UAQp+AaV+85+DrpEisnAQAgDgdrbAM+4jP+4j3u7u7u7ubpAgZZF-e

You are not caped in bleed on your build. This is not so great for your main damage

Yeah that last earring should be viper’s. Puts it at 80.4%

If we have one using rune of thorns here, can you just confirm for each boss how many stacks youre sitting on average?

Sure :
-VG 5-6 stacks pulse aura
-Gorseval 5 stacks pulse aura but you loose stacks when you do the adds phases (gorseval is immune and no more poison on him)
-Sabetha you have to stay in her hitbox if you want 5 stacks (shotgun damage) otherwise 2-3 stacks on average
-Sloth 5-6 stacks pulse aura
-Trio don’t know and I don’t care
-Matthias 5-6 stacks pulse aura

You can check out how thorn stacks go on my old raid video wing 1 (look at my buff and turn off sound) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR4Noaq4Yak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5C9Erxg-FM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzz80xJ7T18
Thoses videos are OLD. It was a record for fun and not a speedrun (I made a lot of mistakes like casting the wrong spell in lich for sabetha…)

Thanks for this! I finished my set last night, and with a sinister helm, and 2 accessories and a ring swapped out from viper’s to sinister’s, I have 59.93% condi duration (with consumables), with a sigil of agony. With traits, puts me at just around 100% bleed/poison, 80% chill. I gained about 75 condi damage from the sinister gear, plus the several hundred I’ll be getting from the buff itself. Looks solid.

It might even be worth it to use my other sigil as malice, because of the great stat value (150 expertise), you could then drop a few more pieces or a weapon as sinister’s, but I wasn’t willing to convert it yet. You could probably get more condi that way than using something like bursting.

It seems like it should be a little better for a lot of reasons, and it certainly shouldn’t be much worse. If I have any good footage using this I’ll add to the thread.

Thank you maxi for the demonstration.

Also skeleton, great find on the agony sigil over malice. thorns rune + agony sigil basically free up a sigil slot.
Just to calculate if its better to make it a malice and trade more vipers into sinister, bursting, or just let it be permanent 5x bleeds from earth/geo. My intuition tells me earth tho…

template
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJArIKMGq4PHAHAA-ThRAQBBUPAAeAAMc/hIq+D2UyFSlDkCYRlVA-e

I think it’s better to take a damage sigil like geo or earth over a malice. 5 bleeds are a nice bonus. It helps too when i’m not doing raid for faster fights like fractal or open world.
I’m using agony + earth btw.

If I use the malice and trade some viper into sinister :
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JDNQ5mYzNg1NA7NYpYwi7hFxko0HIE0BiCADgEAA-TRSAQBA4JAgNlfS7EAYN1AY4+DBU/AFOIAtRJYEV9hUALqsC-e
+65 conditions damage, that not great…

If I trade earth to bursting (with my actual build) +119 condi dam.

Earth is better than 150 conditions damage so :
Geo > Earth > Bursting > Malice with a thorn set

FWIW, I actually prefer energy as my off-sigil. Extra mobility and survivability can be extremely useful. Though I do put geomancy on my warhorn, since I’m probably in melee range when swapping to it.

Also it wasn’t my find for agony- I got the idea from Flumek’s build.

Thorns, simply because its more fun :O

It definitely is, I find myself purposely taking flak hits on sabetha to keep up more stacks.

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with the rune so far, it might just be my imagination but I think the increased condi damage afforded from the rune as well as being able to drop expertise 20% really helps a lot with the strength of my epis and condi transfers.

Here’s a run of me using Thorns on Matthias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H_5GjxI47w

Here was a kill from one of the first weeks, using Berserker runes. The DPS seems a decent bit lower:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7oAhBm4cns

I’m glad you like it ! Keep going and spread the info., we need more people =). This build must be knowned.

Do you use a build similar as mine ?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JDNQ5mYzNg1NA7NYpYwi7hFxkYUAYAkAk+AhgOAA-TBSAQBYTJXIVO0GlgRU9HGu/AFOJAA4JAEQ9DkCYRlVA-e

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Is that with full raid buffs? 25 might, all food/utilities? Because I believe the 5% from zerker’s applies after that.

With full buffs:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWjM0QzNWdDe3AHOWKGspVwMIGE3DHiJxoAwAIBA-TBibABAoEkU1fK7UAQp+AaV+85+DrpEisnAQAgDgdrbAM+4jP+4j3u7u7u7ubpAgZZF-e

2700 condition damage. 2950 with full thorns. So an increase from 184 to 200 for bleeds or 9% increase in damage.

Edit: looks like bursting doesn’t work on the site, so increase those by 6%, still ~8.5% increase but slightly higher numbers. In order for the thorns bonus to match the condition damage bonus of Berserker you would need 5000 base condition damage.

Bursting doesn’t work like that. Despite what the sigil description says it doesn’t actually increase your overall condition damage by 6%, it actually increases your condition damage stat by 6%.

maxinox.6283:

I’m glad you like it ! Keep going and spread the info., we need more people =). This build must be knowned.

Do you use a build similar as mine ?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JDNQ5mYzNg1NA7NYpYwi7hFxkYUAYAkAk+AhgOAA-TBSAQBYTJXIVO0GlgRU9HGu/AFOJAA4JAEQ9DkCYRlVA-e

I drop flesh golem cause lich form jagged horrors are a lot more dps. Flesh Golem is only useful if your breaks are really terrible. I use Sigil of Energy on my offhand dagger and geomancy on my warhorn, and I usually opt for Blood Magic for utility on most fights over death magic, but death magic should be a lot more dps.

Also while Suffer is good, I almost always take epi on all fights, even on VG (for seeker control, aoe spread chills/immobs), though some vgs I bring spectral grasp (ranged breakbar, seeker control), otherwise Epi is great for basically all fights.

Yup ! I was just asking your stuff not the build (sorry for that)
They are placeholders.
Wing 1 :
VG -> BM (vampiric signet/CPC/BiP/Suffer or Epi/Lich)
Gors -> BM (Vamp signet/CPC/BiP/Epi/Flesh or Lich depend on the party CC)
Sab -> DM (Vamp signet/CpC/BiP/Epi/Lich)
Wing 2 :
Sloth -> DM (Blood fiend/CpC/Epi/Plague signet/Lich)
Trio -> faceroll
Matthias -> 2 options :
If I stay in reaper : DM (Blood fiend/the 2 minions/Rise/Plague signet/Lich)
If I stay in necro : BM/DM(I take corruption fervor for this boss) (Blood fiend/the 2 minions/plague signet/BiP or Spectral grasp/Lich).

Do u take signet heal over minion heal for not having agro problems? afaik the minion is better heal wise

Not really but the signet adds a small dps group and can heal your lich minions in the same case when you activate it.
You can keep the blood fiend if you’re in heal trouble.

The blood fiend is really good in the second wing for the condi transfer.