Stats for WvW blobbing
If you’re going frontline, you should be looking at marauder+cavalier trinkets and cavalier weapons.
Midline allows you to switch in more zerker/cavalier pieces, and backline is obviously glass cannon.
How big are your huevos? That’s really the question. Well that or are you a little touched in the head? The cavalier/valk/soldiers options are safer, probably smarter too if you want to play true frontline. However, if you’re a little nuts you can play it in full zerk, you just have to be more careful and more on point. If you go charging in with the frontline in full zerk and decide to squirrel, chances are you’ll be getting some additional exercise. But, stay on point and you can deal some nice damage while surviving just fine.
I just use my pve Full zerker set.
Surrender and serve me in life, or die and slave for me in death.
If you are blobbing, power, toughness, and vitality is fine. You will not be one-shotting enemy players. You will be working as a mobile siege weapon. Your greatest utility is in staying alive to AoE players and structures. Your greatest weakness is being caught alone, out of position, to be focused and sent back to a home point, leaving your team without your AoE.
Stat’s mean nothing. Being up and active means everything.
I will probably get a lot of flack for this but I use Rabid gear with some PTV trinkets. Never been a numbers guy so I use trial and error. I’ve tried berserker and dire, but rabid gives me survivability and I can sometimes kill stuff, albeit pretty much only in groups. Just my 2 cents.
Depends on definition of blob, if you mean blobbing as in 40+ players then you should always choose power builds.
A decent blob with organised squad will be clearing condis all the time.
Our boon share group runs with 40 seconds of resistance on engage, making condis effectively useless unless you boon strip.
I’d probably guess something like this:
Very good player: full Zerker (full damage)
Good player: Valkyrie (+soul reaping crit chance trait) or Marauder for high damage and extra vitality buffer
Average player: Cav, Soldier or Knights for some toughness plus some Zerk, Marauder or Valk for damage
Poor player: full Soldier, full Knights (very defensive and generally low damage)
A reaper generally needs more toughness than a Necro because much of their DPS is applied in melee and they are often standing in red circles. So I probably would NOT recommended a full zerker reaper to play in a blob fight. I would say you could go up to 2700 armour on a reaper and have the rest of it be damage stats. A necro you could theoretically run full zerker because you’re not supposed to enter the melee.
2700 may seem high but I play against groups with glassy casters that use boon share and they have 25 stacks of might and perma fury so the damage when they bomb is insane. Boon share is broken IMO.
TL;DR:
- if you’re dying too much swap in survivability – toughness and/or vitality
- if you’re not dying at all, swap in damage – power, precision and crit damage (in balance)
- don’t use any condi stats
(edited by dzeRnumbrd.6129)
In blobbing / zerging, staff and wells are the primary tools: trait them.
Spectral Wall was nerfed and is no longer worth its opportunity cost, in my opinion.
Corrosive Poison Cloud destroys projectiles. That, alone, is enough to merit a Corruption build, if you want to play more condi.
Reaper requires care when used because Shroud’s auto-attack is weak, Death’s Charge can get you out of position and vulnerable, Soul Spiral is not ground targeted, and Executioner’s Scythe has a huge tell that leaves you exposed. Infusing Terror is good but Foot in the Grave is more immediately useful.
Critical hits with wells are nice but more important is placing them when and where needed. WoS, WoC, WoP, WoB, even WoD have good utility in various situations but filling up your utility bar with wells will leave you more vulnerable than a solo-roaming or havoc build so play safely. An AoE power build for WvW zerging is very reliant on your team mates and your own discretion for survival.
Soldier’s or Dire armor are perfectly acceptable for zerging. It is more important you support your blob properly than have the highest sustained or burst damage. In all honesty, you can wear anything you want as long as you do not get downed. There are cases for Cleric’s, Rabid, Valkyrie, Berserker, Sinister, and pretty much anything else but gear selection is a lower priority than playing smart.
If you main frontline and you’re facing 50+ man blobs the way we face Blackgate in Tarnished Coast, running berzerkers will see you killed in no time.
You need a minimum of 3k armor and 24k HP to not be pinballed to death in between the permanent immobilize epidemic bombs with the ele bombs and melee trains smashing your face in.
You only got 2 dodges, no blocks whatsoever, no invulnerability or sself resistance application. There’s only so much play you can do when a zerg of 50 people are pummeling you as you push with your melee train.
That’s why most necros play mid/backline. You have neither the mobility nor hard defenses/evasion to not be pinned to death.
Marauder/Valkyrie+cavalier trinks is a bare minimum for a dedicated frontliner.
If you are blobbing, power, toughness, and vitality is fine. You will not be one-shotting enemy players. You will be working as a mobile siege weapon. Your greatest utility is in staying alive to AoE players and structures. Your greatest weakness is being caught alone, out of position, to be focused and sent back to a home point, leaving your team without your AoE.
Stat’s mean nothing. Being up and active means everything.
I Could not agree more with this person +1
For blobbing there are two types of reapers. 1) Mid-line well bomber and 2) Frontline. Condi’s not a good option ever since they introduced resistance and nerfed chill damage & duration. Condi is however preferred if you solo/small group roam, and they’re viable in some organized GvG.
For mid-line well bomber you can go full zerker to maximize your damage output. But if you play with a guild and have dedicated rev in your group to give you high fury uptime, you could swap in some Valkyries to increase your health & lifeforce pool. Just make sure you trait Decimate Defenses & Deathly Perception, and you’ll have no issues critting. Higher health & lifeforce pool will directly affect your sustain. But I myself run full zerker most of the time and it’s fine as long as you watch your positioning, and know when to leap in to cleave, when to drop well bombs, when to leap out of heat. You are expected to drop wells when called, goes something like Well of Corruption > Well of Suffering > Death’s Charge in > Spin to win > Gravedigger cleave on downies > Leap out. Perfect this without dying and you’re set.
Mid-line reapers usually take either Spite-Soul Reaping-Reaper or Blood Magic-Soul Reaping-Reaper. Spite will give you better might/vuln stacking, higher pop, and higher damage potentials. Blood Magic taken if your commander/guild leader wants you to have reduced cd wells so more wells can be dropped for organized guild raids. I roll Spite when I’m not in guild raids, and swap to Blood Magic when reduced cd wells are called for.
For frontline reapers, you usually try to stack armor to around 2.7-3k, then balance the rest out with power, ferocity, and vitality. You can mix Zerker, Cav, Valkyrie, and Marauder gear to find a comfort zone. In guild groups it’s more forgivable so you can be less tanky and slot in more power/fecority. Solo/pub blobs, you may need to go more tanky because you don’t have guildies to watch out for you, and you likely won’t be in organized comps with proper stab, boon sharing, and cleansing. Frontline reapers are usually full shout builds.
Note that while frontline reapers are fun, most guilds don’t run them. This is because frontline groups are already filled by 2 guardians, 1 warrior, 1 rev, and x. The x is usually a frontline ele, scrapper, or most likely just another guardian. Lack of cleanses, stab (our personal stab nerfed harshly), and group utilities pretty much make us a selfish frontline class that most guilds don’t need to run. They’d rather you be the B52 bomber that you are and run mid-line zerker wells.