Guild Wars 2

I have 20 in Spite atm, mostly for the +20% condition duration but also for the focus trait kitten I wish it worked for the #4 as well, stupid bugs). Im considering switching them out for something in either Blood magic or Soul Reaping.
What results do you guys have doing without the condition duration (I mainly WvW) ?

Im wearing classic condition gear with the nightmare runes (because Im too cheap to switch and they are fairly decent) so I already have +10%.

Are you using food? Rare pizza (40%) is pretty expensive, but super pizza (36%) is cheap enough to keep up all the time in WvW. It lets me ignore spite entirely.

I have put a lot of thought into this over the weeks, in trying to figure out for WvW what is really valuable and what is not. Necro’s on these boards talk about hybrid builds and how they are pretty good etc, but for WvW, I find there are just too many people that run around without condition dispell to ignore maximizing conditions/epidemic.

My personal opinion if you plan to be a condition based necro, is that the spite tree is worthless (outside of Spvp). Runes have very little effect for a condition based hero in general unless you take the duration runes. Even runes of the undead only give a marginal increase in condition damge.

Taking two Krait/Afflicted, and two Mad King/Lyssa will give you 40% increased bleed duration and 10% condition increased duration. Factor in the good food (40% duration), which isnt really that expensive to make if you buy order lower end pizza’s, and you are at 80% bleed 50% conditions.

In the curses tree now you can take Hemo (20%), and be at 100% bleed duration. I also take master of fear (50%) from the DS tree because I like the double length fears.

In any condition build, having that 100% bleed duration is so important, not because you want your long lasting bleeds to be longer, but because barbed precisions crit will now tick twice instead of once. So each crit that procs that short bleed now has double the effectiveness.

If you can get to 100% without spite, I say do it. The control that I get from the longer fears and reapers protection (which I just recently on these boards discovered is amazing), makes the skirmish fights in WvW tons of fun.

A reason to invest points into the Spite tree is not for the Bleeding duration, which you can get rather easily elsewhere. Its for increasing the duration of your other conditions, which is more difficult (outside of the food buffs).

There are also enough traits in the line to make it not a waste to go there. The minors are pretty terrible — but then again pretty much all of our minor traits are terrible so there isn’t much lost there.

I normally end up with 10 into Spite because I haven’t found anything better with the last 10 points (10/30/30/0/0).

It’s generally for the best if you pick your trait lines for the traits themselves and almost ignore the stats, which you can use gear to tweak. Let that guide your decisions, and you’ll do ok.

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s generally for the best if you pick your trait lines for the traits themselves and almost ignore the stats, which you can use gear to tweak. Let that guide your decisions, and you’ll do ok.

Not to be a Negative-Nancy, as I generally think the Necro isn’t as bad as many on the forums believe, but…

The “pick the traits and ignore the stats” only does a little bit of good for the Necro, as if I did that myself my build would be 0/20/20/0/0 and therefore less competitive with 30 unused points. The current trait lines we have just don’t have 7 major traits worthy enough.

alanis.6094:

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s generally for the best if you pick your trait lines for the traits themselves and almost ignore the stats, which you can use gear to tweak. Let that guide your decisions, and you’ll do ok.

Not to be a Negative-Nancy, as I generally think the Necro isn’t as bad as many on the forums believe, but…

The “pick the traits and ignore the stats” only does a little bit of good for the Necro, as if I did that myself my build would be 0/20/20/0/0 and therefore less competitive with 30 unused points. The current trait lines we have just don’t have 7 major traits worthy enough.

I complete agree with this statement. If you compare say the major traits that the Mesmer gets, which I also enjoy playing, they make HUGE differences in play-style and strength in pvp/WvW. Clones on dodge is literally a game changer. Self shatter? Game changer.

The necromancer traits, I could basically take or leave most of them. My entire build goes around and cherry picks some hard to find durations (fear), ignores all the minor traits, gets greater staff marks because I love that, and thats it.

You would be hard pressed to find any necro build that requires a certain major or minor trait to work well. Most of them if you skipped would only marginally effect your playstyle/damage. Hence why people look at the trait trees for stats, because well…. thats the largest benifit we get.

Traits in this game simply don’t make the sort of impact they should. There should be pretty major differences and VERY obvious benefits, instead of “Meh, I can make it up with gear…”.

Cranking up healing effectiveness simply doesn’t benefit you all that much…

Cranking up condition duration does WHAT exactly when people just purge it?

All vampiric/siphoning abilities don’t give the obvious benefits one would expect.

I compare it with what I can do in other MMOs and its just so underwhelming.

Josher.9612:

Traits in this game simply don’t make the sort of impact they should. There should be pretty major differences and VERY obvious benefits, instead of “Meh, I can make it up with gear…”.

Cranking up healing effectiveness simply doesn’t benefit you all that much…

Cranking up condition duration does WHAT exactly when people just purge it?

All vampiric/siphoning abilities don’t give the obvious benefits one would expect.

I compare it with what I can do in other MMOs and its just so underwhelming.

Traits make an absolutely ridiculous amount of difference on my Mesmer. They just don’t really matter for the Necro.

Right. So according to you guys, the following things are not game changing:

A free stomp every 10s.
Free AoE weaken for when someone closes with you.
Removing a condition every 5s for free.
Removing 5+ conditions every 10s with a minion build.
100% fury uptime.
20% bonus damage half the time.
Guaranteed-to-land marks.
Long fears doing over 6k damage (IIRC from another thread).
Permanent weakness on a single target.
Automatic 2s AoE fear on being disabled (before increasing duration and damage).
Free spectral armor.

I’m not sure if we’re playing the same class.

lettucemode.3789:

Right. So according to you guys, the following things are not game changing:

A free stomp every 10s.

Our rez and stomp abilities are lackluster in comparison to other professions.

Free AoE weaken for when someone closes with you.

Weakness is a terrible condition and we will be a much stronger profession when its fixed.

Removing a condition every 5s, or 5+ every 10s with a minion build.

Not gamechanging when we already have countless ways to deal with conditions; minions are terrible currently.

100% fury uptime.

Was one of the traits I go for, though its really only 50%, as 100% requires two different ones.

20% bonus damage half the time.

Good trait, not gamebreaking.

Guaranteed-to-land marks.

Agreed, one of the only ones worth bothering.

Long fears doing over 6k damage (IIRC from another thread).

Don’t believe this is possible.

Permanent weakness on a single target.

Weakness is a terrible condition and we will be a much stronger profession when its fixed.

Automatic 2s AoE fear on being disabled (before increasing duration and damage).

Good trait, I use it but don’t consider it game changing by any means.

Free spectral armor.

Gladly trade it for Armor of Earth.

alanis.6094:

Manticore Five.9867:

It’s generally for the best if you pick your trait lines for the traits themselves and almost ignore the stats, which you can use gear to tweak. Let that guide your decisions, and you’ll do ok.

Not to be a Negative-Nancy, as I generally think the Necro isn’t as bad as many on the forums believe, but…

The “pick the traits and ignore the stats” only does a little bit of good for the Necro, as if I did that myself my build would be 0/20/20/0/0 and therefore less competitive with 30 unused points. The current trait lines we have just don’t have 7 major traits worthy enough.

I agree. The gear you choose is actually a more important factor of how you build your necro.

Like, if i was building a conditionmancer, I’d have to choose either between Rabid, Rampager, or Carrion gear. The major cleaves between those sets would be minors in Power/Vit, High precision, or Toughness vs. Power.

If i just chose what traits i want and sort of filled the holes in with gear…

well, i’d also have 30 points left over.

1. Stomp isn’t free. If I see a necro shroud-stomping me, I wait 3 seconds before firing off my downed CC. Easy to do. Of course, I play a Necro mainly, so I start my CC at 2.5 seconds.

2. 100% Fury Uptime is mutually exclusive with shroud stomps, since it requires the other Grandmaster trait in Soul Reaping.

3. Our fears can at max last 4 seconds (downed and traited vs disable only). Warriors and Thieves can get theirs to 4 1/2 seconds with less effort. The damage dealt by fear (if we have that trait) is equal to 3 stacks of Bleeding, which I’m pretty sure cannot get up to 6k damage in that time frame. Even fear-chaining is only possible to do up to 4 seconds total time.

There were people in this thread saying that traits are not good on a necro and I responded to that. It’s funny how you guys corrected me, saying that you can’t get certain combinations of the things on my list (as if I didn’t know) or start polarizing the debate toward individual traits and effects. I’m not going to get into a non-meaningful debate, which is 95% of the debates on this forum. The point is that traits are useful on all classes, including necro.

I concede the point about the 6k damage on fear unless I can find the thread where someone did the math on it.

lettucemode.3789:

There were people in this thread saying that traits are not good on a necro and I responded to that.

“Not good” is not the same thing as “gamechanging”

lettucemode.3789:

Right. So according to you guys, the following things are not game changing

Most of what you listed are a mix of decent traits. Not much that changes how the profession is played.

“Not much that changes how the profession is played” is such a vague phrase that I’m not sure how to respond to it. Are you saying that a necro isn’t going to try to stack bleeds if he takes Hemophilia? That a necro won’t be less afraid to close with enemies when he has Enfeebling Blood, or Foot in the Grave? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

Shatter on self pushes a mesmer toward a shattering build the same way taking Hemophilia pushes a necro toward a bleed build – what’s the difference?

lettucemode.3789:

Taking a cue from the other traits mentioned in this thread – clone on dodge doesn’t mean you’ll dodge more often, you still dodge when the situation calls for it.

I agree with most of what you said except for the above. If you’re a mesmer and you take this trait, it changes the situation in which a dodge is called for. Instead of just dodging to evade attacks, you now also dodge to increase dps and/or spike damage someone. It changes the way you play your class.

Clone on Dodge means you have more fodder for shatters more rapidly, even when your illusion skills aren’t off cooldown. It drastically improves the power of the class.

It’s like if we got a free mark of our choice when we dodged. We avoid all attacks that would be hitting us and get a good effect at the same time. Mark of Blood is still a good effect, but Mesmers get fodder for one of 4 different skills.

Kheldar.6278:

lettucemode.3789:

Taking a cue from the other traits mentioned in this thread – clone on dodge doesn’t mean you’ll dodge more often, you still dodge when the situation calls for it.

I agree with most of what you said except for the above. If you’re a mesmer and you take this trait, it changes the situation in which a dodge is called for. Instead of just dodging to evade attacks, you now also dodge to increase dps and/or spike damage someone. It changes the way you play your class.

Yea, I edited that out last minute, but thanks for bringing it up again. I’ll use your post to pose another question to the others – how does the equivalent trait for necromancers, Mark of Evasion, not also prompt the necro to use dodge more offensively, just like mesmer?

Mark of Blood can be used offensively, but due to the Regen portion of it being overall stronger than the bleeding, it still promotes defensive use as opposed to offensive. Plus, Mark of Evasion has a 10 second cooldown and we don’t have any dodges built into skills. Necros are much more inclined to use their dodges as defense, even with Mark of Evasion because we have a lot more need to use them for such.

lettucemode.3789:

“Not much that changes how the profession is played” is such a vague phrase that I’m not sure how to respond to it. Are you saying that a necro isn’t going to try to stack bleeds if he takes Hemophilia? That a necro won’t be less afraid to close with enemies when he has Enfeebling Blood, or Foot in the Grave? I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.

Shatter on self pushes a mesmer toward a shattering build the same way taking Hemophilia pushes a necro toward a bleed build – what’s the difference?

The difference is that Hemophilia is a minor bonus to duration, while IP is extremely strong and players with and without IP play different.

Other examples from the Mesmer:

Desperate Decoy
Harmonious Mantras
On-kill Illusion traits
Warden’s Feedback

And incredible minor traits like all three in the Illusions line, Illusionary Membrane, and Critical Infusion.

Basically, when I trait my Mesmer, there are always traits that I say: “Wow, it sucks that I can’t get x, but I guess that is a choice I need to make”

On my Necro, I say “what can I use the rest of these points to get something that helps me” and I struggle to find anything that strong. There is rarely a build that I feel like I’m missing out because I can’t get a trait.

Thanks for the info, Drarnor. It still changes the playstyle of the class by rewarding you for dodging in some situations where you wouldn’t before – either to stack bleed when your switch to scepter is cooling down and you’ve already used Mark of Blood, or to keep your regen up when you’ve already used Mark of Blood.

Truthfully, I think some of that was left over from GW1 where people weren’t sure what a Mesmer was really supposed to be doing. They did get a big revamp later in the game’s life, but I think this time around they wanted to make them fairly obvious about what they could do.

Alanis – and players without Hemophilia will play different, too, usually by not using Scepter as one of their main hand weapons, or by doing a more hybrid build. In my opinion there’s no difference.

I have hard decisions to make on necro, too. It sucks that I can’t get good boon duration and stability on DS and good condition duration just from traits all at the same time. It sucks that I can’t have minions drawing conditions and ripping boons off of enemies and doing 30% more damage at the same time. It sucks that I can’t have stability on DS and 20% bonus damage and use the siphoning traits I want (2 majors). All classes have meaningful decisions in their trait lines – that’s what makes GW2 so special compared to a game like WoW, where there were 3 builds per class. Last I played anyway, which was mostly BC and some Wrath.

Ooo, also, something just occurred to me concerning your last paragraph. I’ve noticed that too, but I love it about the necro. I can do what I want to do (in my case, power and siphoning) with less than 70 points. You’re right that deciding where to put those remaining points is so, so difficult. Would less recharge on Spectral skills help me more than EB on entering DS? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I feel like the other classes have less leeway in this regard than necros do. They’ve got to use all 70 or at least 60 to get the traits they need for a particular build.

lettucemode.3789:

Alanis, and players without Hemophilia will play different, too, usually by not using Scepter as one of their main hand weapons, or by doing a more hybrid build. In my opinion there’s no difference.

I can, and have, played a 1700+ condition damage Necro and skipped using Hemophilia. I can get decent duration between food, spite, runes, etc. Hemo is merely a minor bonus.

There is nothing I can get that can replace IP, Harmoneous Mantras, Warden’s Feedback, or Desperate Decoy.

I have hard decisions to make on necro, too. It sucks that I can’t get good boon duration and stability on DS and good condition duration just from traits all at the same time. It sucks that I can’t have minions drawing conditions and ripping boons off of enemies and doing 30% more damage at the same time. It sucks that I can’t have stability on DS and 20% bonus damage and use the siphoning traits I want (2 majors). All classes have meaningful decisions in their trait lines – that’s what makes GW2 so special compared to a game like WoW, where there were 3 builds per class. Last I played anyway, which was mostly BC and some Wrath.

You can get good boon duration and stability on DS, either though using points into Death, or more easily just using Boon Duration boons and food — its quite simple.

The minion issue might be more of one if they were terrible…but until that happens these traits are just fodder.

The 20% bonus damage just isn’t that strong of a trait, and you can get similar from Runes.

lettucemode.3789:

Ooo, also, something just occurred to me concerning your last paragraph. I’ve noticed that too, but I love it about the necro. I can do what I want to do (in my case, power and siphoning) with less than 70 points. You’re right that deciding where to put those remaining points is so, so difficult. Would less recharge on Spectral skills help me more than EB on entering DS? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I don’t know if I’d really call it “difficult” to put those other points. I guess deciding between varying degrees of mediocrity might be a “difficult” decision. A better way of describing it would be “inconsequential”.

I feel like the other classes have less leeway in this regard than necros do. They’ve got to use all 70 or at least 60 to get the traits they need for a particular build.

If we had compelling choices then our build decisions might feel like we don’t have as much leeway, because we’d have more choices that some people feel they “have” to have. I’d much rather have that type of decision than one that I don’t feel matters at all.

Your first response intrigues me. You said that there’s nothing you can get that replaces your mesmer traits. Couldn’t that be viewed as a bad thing? Maybe this is why many other classes say that they are pigeonholed into certain builds, because there’s no replacement for the traits they need and are forced to take in order to do certain builds effectively! Necros, on the other hand, can make up for some traits with food or runes and thus have points for other things. How is that a bad thing for necros? It seems like we have the greatest flexibility within our builds compared to any other class.

This conversation has reinforced my belief that necro builds are designed to encompass a variety of things, instead of being just a shatter mesmer or just a killshot Warrior.

I understand your position now, though. In order to gain this flexibility we give up having many of the more compelling traits in the game. Personally this works very well for me, the necro is my favorite class even with its problems. If the design puts you off then that’s the way things are I guess.

lettucemode.3789:

Right. So according to you guys, the following things are not game changing:

A free stomp every 10s.
Free AoE weaken for when someone closes with you.
Removing a condition every 5s for free.
Removing 5+ conditions every 10s with a minion build.
100% fury uptime.
20% bonus damage half the time.
Guaranteed-to-land marks.
Long fears doing over 6k damage (IIRC from another thread).
Permanent weakness on a single target.
Automatic 2s AoE fear on being disabled (before increasing duration and damage).
Free spectral armor.

I’m not sure if we’re playing the same class.

I am the one that did the math on the fear on damage, and with BIP and a max condition build, its actually just slightly over 1000 per tick of fear. Now to get it to do 6k damage, you would have to get stunned to proc reapters protection, then hit them with the staff or DS fear to get it to go another two seconds, but certainly possible, and I do it frequently when given the opportunity. It goes without saying you need +100% duration on fear to make that happen.

I don’t argue that is VERY nice, and VERY effective as a trait setup, and is the one I run right now. It is possibly one of the few builds that really changes the way other players would have to deal with us because of the long disables. Doesn’t really change the way I play a condition necro, but it makes it much easier to kill people and large groups of people. To address your other points:

A free stomp every 10s.
- Its not really free since it uses LF and its arguably not intended and overdue for a “fix”

Free AoE weaken for when someone closes with you.
- Had this already with dagger 5, which is going to be up on someone I am fighting often anyhow.

Removing a condition every 5s for free.
Removing 5+ conditions every 10s with a minion build.
- Never have issues with conditions

100% fury uptime.
- Crit rate is already over 50%, and in a condition build it doesn’t make a huge difference

20% bonus damage half the time.
- Again not much use for a condition build, but very nice in a power build.

Guaranteed-to-land marks.
- A personal must have for me, and I mentioned that in a previous post – Good example of a GREAT trait. It makes the staff an incredibly attractive choice.

Long fears doing over 6k damage (IIRC from another thread).
- Explained above and also agreed as a GREAT trait/build setup

Permanent weakness on a single target.
- Not really that great because of how many people run crit rates over 40%.

Automatic 2s AoE fear on being disabled (before increasing duration and damage).
- Same as above – Agreed as amazing, and loving this.

Free spectral armor.
- Its a lackluster skill CD wise, but as far as Minor traits go it is one of the best.

To use the mesmer example, self shatter opens up so many interesting things. You can now daze someone with no clones up, pull off a safe stomp with no clones up (very carefully). Clones on dodge literally lets you have twice as many clones out at a time. Shatter recharge at 50% HP lets you do 2 quick mindwracks in a row if well timed, and in conjuction with the clones on dodge can do it with 3 clones each. Thats 8 clones worth of Mindwrack. Thats NOTHING like a mesmer without those traits could/would play.

Do your necro traits dictate the way you play to that degree? Or do you generally use the skills you have available to your weapon set and pick some utilities you like? I realize comparing to mesmer is a little unfair, as they are the most interesting and unique class out there, but the point still stands.

Can you point me in the direction of the math that gets you 1K/tick from Terror?

I just tested it in game. The math doesn’t work out right because the WIKI has the wrong scale for the damage. What is the scale? I guess I can figure that out really quick if you give me a second to go run the numbers.

Rennoko.5731:

I just tested it in game. The math doesn’t work out right because the WIKI has the wrong scale for the damage. What is the scale? I guess I can figure that out really quick if you give me a second to go run the numbers.

Well, the wiki would indicate that you’d need almost 6000 condition damage to get 1K/tick, so…yah, that I why I was asking.

Here you go (and i hope this changes everyones opinion of this trait, because it certainly did mine).

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks = 1846
Damage from fear = 916 per tick

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks and BIP up = 2196
Damage from fear = 1021 per tick

So the wiki is wrong, and its actually a stronger debuff damage wise than burning, so I have no idea what formula is used. It seems to get about 46% of your condition damage.

See attached

PS: A fond thanks to the huge sorrows furnace zerg that ran over me while I was happily getting stacks on drakes. I was a huge threat to your drake population by the river.

Rennoko.5731:

Here you go (and i hope this changes everyones opinion of this trait, because it certainly did mine).

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks = 1846
Damage from fear = 916 per tick

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks and BIP up = 2196
Damage from fear = 1021 per tick

So the wiki is wrong, and its actually a stronger debuff damage wise than burning, so I have no idea what formula is used. It seems to get about 46% of your condition damage.

See attached

PS: A fond thanks to the huge sorrows furnace zerg that ran over me while I was happily getting stacks on drakes. I was a huge threat to your drake population by the river.

That is quite interesting, as I tested it quite a while back in Mists (obviously less CD) but it wasn’t near that high. I was either mistaken then, or they ninja-buffed it.

I presume you also get the damage for all enemies hit by our AoE fear?

Edit: I’m mostly interested in this question: This damage you list, that is ‘per-tick’, so if you get 100%+ condition duration, you’d get two ticks of 900-1000? Or is that the total damage you deal out for the entirety of the fear?

alanis.6094:

Rennoko.5731:

Here you go (and i hope this changes everyones opinion of this trait, because it certainly did mine).

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks = 1846
Damage from fear = 916 per tick

Condition damage with food and crystal and stacks and BIP up = 2196
Damage from fear = 1021 per tick

So the wiki is wrong, and its actually a stronger debuff damage wise than burning, so I have no idea what formula is used. It seems to get about 46% of your condition damage.

See attached

PS: A fond thanks to the huge sorrows furnace zerg that ran over me while I was happily getting stacks on drakes. I was a huge threat to your drake population by the river.

That is quite interesting, as I tested it quite a while back in Mists (obviously less CD) but it wasn’t near that high. I was either mistaken then, or they ninja-buffed it.

I presume you also get the damage for all enemies hit by our AoE fear?

And this damage you list, that is ‘per-tick’, so if you get 100%+ condition duration, you’d get two ticks of 900-1000?

You got it.

In the case of reapers protection its 4 ticks and 4 seconds, AOE.

I would presume the downed state fear lasts 4 seconds as well, but I did not test to see if you get the 40% duration food buff while in the downed state. You would have at least 3 ticks/seconds in that state at a minimum either way.

That is quite interesting, can’t wait to get home to check it out myself — gives me a reason to drop points into SR.

The big question that I’d have to decide would be: Hemophilia, Master of Corruption, or Reaper’s Protection. Actually leaning to dropping Hemophilia, as it often feels like overkill. That would give a 0/20/30/0/20 build.

Remember that if you trait that way and you are prec/tough/condition damage, that dropping hemo could mean you lose that last damage tick from the barbed precision proc (1 seconds becomes 2 seconds at 100%). It happens all the time and you will lose out on that damage. Right now I am 0/30/20/0/20, with runes specifically chosen to get me at 100% bleed 100% fear.

Also im curious what you want that is 30 points into the minion tree and worth dropping lingering curses?

Rennoko.5731:

Remember that if you trait that way and you are prec/tough/condition damage, that dropping hemo could mean you lose that last damage tick from the barbed precision proc (1 seconds becomes 2 seconds at 100%). It happens all the time and you will lose out on that damage. Right now I am 0/30/20/0/20, with runes specifically chosen to get me at 100% bleed 100% fear.

Also im curious what you want that is 30 points into the minion tree and worth dropping lingering curses?

I have little interest in speccing to get an extra 125-150 damage from Barbed Precision on 2/3 of my crits — its a bad trait, IMHO. Even with Hemo, I’m not getting close to 100%, especially since I’d want to get the Necro Runes for the extra fear duration.

This is entirely WvW based, where scepter auto-attack frankly gets minimal use, at least for me. For non-scepter autoattack, 36% food buff already puts the gives the three main bleeds: MoB (10s), GD (9s), and EB (13s). I just don’t use the autoattack enough for Lingering Curses — my current build has 30 into Curses and I already skip that trait for Spectral Attunement.

For the death tree — there is zero chance I’m running around in WvW without Staff Mastery or Greater Marks. The last 10 would, obviously, be Reaper’s Protection.

I have never really considered taking staff mastery before. My staff is only up long enough to drop marks, switch to DS for a drain, then swich back to scept. Then again I hate moving in any group larger than 5, and generally like engagements that are small group vs. small group, where I can actually use scept. 1 effectively.

Rune wise I just find the overall condition damage you get from runes is too minor to notice. The extra second from barbed precision doubles the damage that skill does. The extra damage from say runes of the necro only give you an extra 9 damage per bleed tick. Even at 10 stacks of bleeding thats only 90 more damage per second.

If each of those bleeds you applied lasted just one second longer, they would each do 120-140 damage more. Of course this all assumes the conditions don’t get cleansed, and they often do. The reason why the barbed prec. talent is good is because in 2 seconds its likely to not get cleared, and its free extra damage.

In the end I can hardly tell one way or the other with bleeds. The people I kill I normally horribly overkill with conditions, which are completely wasted when they go down. Back on topic though, the fear duration really does make a huge difference in mitigation and damamge.

Rennoko.5731:

I have never really considered taking staff mastery before. My staff is only up long enough to drop marks, switch to DS for a drain, then swich back to scept. Then again I hate moving in any group larger than 5, and generally like engagements that are small group vs. small group, where I can actually use scept. 1 effectively.

Yah, its just different playstyles between the two of us. When I’m running in smaller groups, I still don’t use the scepter autoattack as much — I have half Carrion gear on my jewelry so my DS skills aren’t that bad so I’m switching between staff, DS, and scepter/offhand.

I just tested this briefly and had a very decisive 1v2 (thief, warrior) — the extra fear time/damage was very noticeable, even with no stacks of corruption. I actually caught the thief with stability/corrupt boon, and that melted him pretty well.

All-in-all, thanks for the knowledge.

Edit: Also, staff mastery gives 32 second Reapers Mark I also got Path of Midnight so that lowers Doom CD as well.

Rennoko.5731:

So the wiki is wrong, and its actually a stronger debuff damage wise than burning, so I have no idea what formula is used. It seems to get about 46% of your condition damage.

It is 30% Malice and 362 base dmg.

Rennoko.5731:

I have put a lot of thought into this over the weeks, in trying to figure out for WvW what is really valuable and what is not. Necro’s on these boards talk about hybrid builds and how they are pretty good etc, but for WvW, I find there are just too many people that run around without condition dispell to ignore maximizing conditions/epidemic.

My personal opinion if you plan to be a condition based necro, is that the spite tree is worthless (outside of Spvp). Runes have very little effect for a condition based hero in general unless you take the duration runes. Even runes of the undead only give a marginal increase in condition damge.

Taking two Krait/Afflicted, and two Mad King/Lyssa will give you 40% increased bleed duration and 10% condition increased duration. Factor in the good food (40% duration), which isnt really that expensive to make if you buy order lower end pizza’s, and you are at 80% bleed 50% conditions.

In the curses tree now you can take Hemo (20%), and be at 100% bleed duration. I also take master of fear (50%) from the DS tree because I like the double length fears.

In any condition build, having that 100% bleed duration is so important, not because you want your long lasting bleeds to be longer, but because barbed precisions crit will now tick twice instead of once. So each crit that procs that short bleed now has double the effectiveness.

If you can get to 100% without spite, I say do it. The control that I get from the longer fears and reapers protection (which I just recently on these boards discovered is amazing), makes the skirmish fights in WvW tons of fun.

People die fast in WvW which is why hybrid builds are more popular. How often do you see your conditions running full length or getting high stacks before the person dies? not often. That’s why I prefer a crit/condtion/power build so you still have some burst and your only source of damage is not long running conditions.

tldr: condition duration is quite worthless in wvw

Sprawl.3891:

Rennoko.5731:

I have put a lot of thought into this over the weeks, in trying to figure out for WvW what is really valuable and what is not. Necro’s on these boards talk about hybrid builds and how they are pretty good etc, but for WvW, I find there are just too many people that run around without condition dispell to ignore maximizing conditions/epidemic.

My personal opinion if you plan to be a condition based necro, is that the spite tree is worthless (outside of Spvp). Runes have very little effect for a condition based hero in general unless you take the duration runes. Even runes of the undead only give a marginal increase in condition damge.

Taking two Krait/Afflicted, and two Mad King/Lyssa will give you 40% increased bleed duration and 10% condition increased duration. Factor in the good food (40% duration), which isnt really that expensive to make if you buy order lower end pizza’s, and you are at 80% bleed 50% conditions.

In the curses tree now you can take Hemo (20%), and be at 100% bleed duration. I also take master of fear (50%) from the DS tree because I like the double length fears.

In any condition build, having that 100% bleed duration is so important, not because you want your long lasting bleeds to be longer, but because barbed precisions crit will now tick twice instead of once. So each crit that procs that short bleed now has double the effectiveness.

If you can get to 100% without spite, I say do it. The control that I get from the longer fears and reapers protection (which I just recently on these boards discovered is amazing), makes the skirmish fights in WvW tons of fun.

People die fast in WvW which is why hybrid builds are more popular. How often do you see your conditions running full length or getting high stacks before the person dies? not often. That’s why I prefer a crit/condtion/power build so you still have some burst and your only source of damage is not long running conditions.

tldr: condition duration is quite worthless in wvw

Precision is one of the more poor stats in the game for necro’s. The fact that it’s the primary stat on Rampager’s just self-nerfs your offensive effectiveness potential via condition damage/power. If Precision were a secondary stat on Rampager’s and either Condition Damage or Power were primary, it’d be a different story. To take Rampager’s over either Carrion/Rabid or Knight’s/Soldier’s is a poor decision, in my opinion. To take Rampager’s and die using it because you have no Toughness also decreases your effectiveness.

I’d rank necro stat importance something like(discounting Magic Find):

1. Condition damage
2. Toughness
3. Power
4. Vitality
5. Precision
6. Healing Power
7. Critical Damage

The only reason I’m listing Precision lower than Vitality is because:

• Vitality synergizes with the Soul Reaping tree in affecting Life Force pool capacity.
• Barbed Precision duration .
• Low base damage across all abilities.

Furthermore, at one time I’d have agreed slightly with you that Condition Duration is worthless in WvW and sPvP. That was until Terror was buffed to deal 50% more damage per condition damage stat than Poison.

For frame of reference, here’s some Duration-Stacking Condition coefficients listed in descending order of magnitude:

• .25 -> Burn
• .15 -> Fear
• .10 -> Poison

Then Intensity-stacking Condition coefficients:

• .15 -> Confusion (PvE / WvW)
• .075 -> Confusion (sPvP)
• .05 -> Bleed

To further explain, Rennoko above has done extensive experimenting with condition duration and maximizing how many damage ticks he can get out of our numerous fears. Fear spec is rather amazing in 1v1’s due to condition duration that is only attainable in PvE/WvW. Fear spec loses efficacy in sPvP due to lack of rare veggie pizza, master tuning crystal, etc.; but that’s an entirely different story.

i like precision for bleed on crit trait and sigil it allows you to keep bleeds up without spamming scepter 1 and makes wells hit hard. I dont have much toughness or vit and rarely die in WvW thanks to proper use of spectral walk, DS, fears and plague form. I find toughness/vit stacking a waste. I’m also comfortable with where my condition damage is and prefer to get some power/precision to keep wells, marks and DS attacks hitting hard. Too much condition damage is a bad investment with the speed people remove conditions thats why i prefer a balance and more like the “critmancer” build. Conditions and epidemic are nice for tagging people and some pressure but wells and DS 1+4 are what drop people in big fights.

It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks and supply camps all night i guess stacking condition as your primary stack would be fine.

The Terrormancer is born.

alanis.6094:

Josher.9612:

Traits in this game simply don’t make the sort of impact they should. There should be pretty major differences and VERY obvious benefits, instead of “Meh, I can make it up with gear…”.

Cranking up healing effectiveness simply doesn’t benefit you all that much…

Cranking up condition duration does WHAT exactly when people just purge it?

All vampiric/siphoning abilities don’t give the obvious benefits one would expect.

I compare it with what I can do in other MMOs and its just so underwhelming.

Traits make an absolutely ridiculous amount of difference on my Mesmer. They just don’t really matter for the Necro.

Which is why its broken. Since that’s the only character I really care about, that’s all that matters.

Sprawl.3891:

It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks and supply camps all night i guess stacking condition as your primary stack would be fine.

Hey, I want to play that game, too!

“It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks, supply camps, and looks for 1v1s all night i guess glass cannon works fine. If you want to be near the front lines and make a difference in some of the larger scale battles, go conditions.”

alanis.6094:

Sprawl.3891:

It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks and supply camps all night i guess stacking condition as your primary stack would be fine.

Hey, I want to play that game, too!

“It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks, supply camps, and looks for 1v1s all night i guess glass cannon works fine. If you want to be near the front lines and make a difference in some of the larger scale battles, go conditions.”

um no, front lines in large scale battle conditions aren’t going to kill people. big hitting AoE is. I run with one of the more dominating guilds on BG where we continually finish 1st in T2 rankings and I have continued to gear away from condition damage and more towards a balance of precision (55% crit unbuffed) condition damage and power. Like I said before wells, staff and DS are what drop people having some condition damage to make bleed procs and scepter/dagger keep pressure on are still great, but straight up stacking condition damage with low power and low crit is going to make you less valuable than someone with a more balanced crit/cond/power build.

Also as I said if you l2p you can run with low tough/vit (i have 1,050 toughness and around 20k hp) and still stay on the front lines and use spectral walk, DS, fears and plague form to basically never die unless your entire force dies.

tldr: best way to get bags and cause havoc in big battles: staff 2, swap to scepter/dagger drop your 2 aoes (use spectral walk here if needed to get close then port back), epidemic, swap back to staff, drop 2, 3, 4, wells, DS4 then DS1 anyone that may still be alive. My bleeds tick around 100-110 which is plenty and then dropping 55% crit wells, staff 4, ds 4 all hitting for big #s is where people go bye bye. when i see necro bleeds ticking on me for 120+ i laugh when it gets cleansed and they have nothing to fall back on.

Sprawl.3891:

alanis.6094:

Sprawl.3891:

It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks and supply camps all night i guess stacking condition as your primary stack would be fine.

Hey, I want to play that game, too!

“It’s all playstyle though, if you are a small group roamer that just attacks dolyaks, supply camps, and looks for 1v1s all night i guess glass cannon works fine. If you want to be near the front lines and make a difference in some of the larger scale battles, go conditions.”

um no, front lines in large scale battle conditions aren’t going to kill people. big hitting AoE is. I run with one of the more dominating guilds on BG where we continually finish 1st in T2 rankings and I have continued to gear away from condition damage and more towards a balance of precision (55% crit unbuffed) condition damage and power. Like I said before wells, staff and DS are what drop people having some condition damage to make bleed procs and scepter/dagger keep pressure on are still great, but straight up stacking condition damage with low power and low crit is going to make you less valuable than someone with a more balanced crit/cond/power build.

Also as I said if you l2p you can run with low tough/vit (i have 1,050 toughness and around 20k hp) and still stay on the front lines and use spectral walk, DS, fears and plague form to basically never die unless your entire force dies.

tldr: best way to get bags and cause havoc in big battles: staff 2, swap to scepter/dagger drop your 2 aoes (use spectral walk here if needed to get close then port back), epidemic, swap back to staff, drop 2, 3, 4, wells, DS4 then DS1 anyone that may still be alive. My bleeds tick around 100-110 which is plenty and then dropping 55% crit wells, staff 4, ds 4 all hitting for big #s is where people go bye bye. when i see necro bleeds ticking on me for 120+ i laugh when it gets cleansed and they have nothing to fall back on.

I don’t think anyone is going to argue in ZergvsZerg, you’re better off with as much burst damage as possible, which conditions don’t do. Bottom line is conditions clear on down, burst damage is still very effective after someone goes down. Duration on conditions is very easy to get from runes and food, and makes up for itself on any player in a zerg that doesn’t have a condition clear off cooldown. They run scampering off to the back of their zerg and your zerg moves forward. Clearly we have a difference of opinion on this, but many other players on this forum agree with you on duration being garbage, so I will let it go and dissent quitely. =

I also don’t really know what optimal build runs “condition damage with low power and low crit”. Carrion has power, Rabid has crit, Rampagers as you pointed out has all of them. This argument might hold water if a set of Condition/vitality/toughness gear existed and that would be more of a “selfish” set of gear. I would tend to agree that having two defensive stats is overkill and effects your ability to maximize your group contibution.

A blanket statement like “L2P” aside from making you look like a tool, does nothing to acknowledge the reasons why having that extra toughness is worth it. If you are huddled in the middle of the zerg all day long, then yes, toughness is a wasted stat. If however you run in a group of 5-10, who largely deals with groups of 10-20, then your going to be useless to your team without the toughness.

If you are not in the zerg, it also does not mean you run around slapping yaks all day. The group I run with tries to find choke points where we can cut of reinforcements running back during a keep seige. Normally we can handle it until a huge glut of people develops in that choke and we have to back off. Now our zerg has taken bay because of us preventing those players from manning the siege and getting back in the keep.

That being said, going rampager’s is just the glass cannon version of the necro. Yes its higher damage than you will get from carrion/rabid. Run in a big zerg? Sure, its better. Even with the lower condition damage you will output more damage. But you know what does even more damage? The ranged zerker version of rangers/elementalists/mesmers.

To expand ever further on why Toughness is worthwhile on the Necro, not just as a defensive stat, but as a part of our someone required survivability toolkit:

Take a mesmer for example or a thief. Both classes can easily run a full berserker build, and yet still have survivability, because they have skills that allow for the concept of “avoidance” as it relates to survivability. They have invulnerability skills, blinks, and stealths. All what you would call, skill based avoidance maneuvers (skill being used loosely here). They must use those skills at the right time to avoid damage. An extension of the dodge roll mechanic to other skills.

The necro on the other hand, has no such abilities. Spectral recall could be called a blink, but its much harder to be used effectively for positioning when you can only go back to the place you started. We get no stealth and no invul. skills of any type.

We do get fears, and as this post was originally about, those fears can be used to great effect in that survivability toolkit. But at the end of the day, we are going to take hits, and damage, and we do not have a way to deal with that burst outside of using DS to absorb damage, or cloud to absorb damage.

What helps DS and cloud absorb that inevitable damage we are going to have suffer with low mobility? Toughness. Necros shouldn’t take toughness as simply a defensive stat, but because of how well it works in our overall survival toolkit as a piece of that pie. A good necro can run without toughness, but without that stat, even the best necro is going to have a lower threshold for survivability.

The flip side is an amazing mesmer could literally dance around with blinks, invis, and invuln and take zero damage from a warrior and run circles around him indefinitely. Necro just does not have that capability, which is fine, as long as you accept that going “zerker” style on a necro has that inherent risk and reduced survivability.

The less I need my thief friends to come shadow refuge res me, the more they will be able to down the people i have dotted up. Talking about “skill” and experience with the class is asinine, when any intelligent player knows the necro can’t invuln, blink, invis. And as soon as they realize you are running all offensive stats you are going down.

Again this is all outside of a zerg. Zerg wvw is my least favorite part of this game and is ultimately the weakest part of that experience. Because of the downed mechanics it rewards glass cannon builds and mass stacking to reduce AOEs. Even if i had 3000 toughness, if I get caught out of position in a zerg, i’m going down. I can cloud, DS form, whatever, it won’t matter against a smart zerg. They will just lock me down with an immob skill (or 3), and a necro is done for. Thief/mesmer/engineer can blink/stealth/invuln and prob make it out…. but that will not work for a necro that did not run in with spectral recall already queued up.

Not a complaint about how the necro works at all mind you. I love the class and what it can do, but believing that going a rampager build is the best fit is a matter of interpretation. Mobility is king in most every fight, and we get the least of it. Avoiding toughness? I won’t be doing that, when adding power to my build gives me a marginal dps increase.