Guild Wars 2

Premise: As a Necromancer, you want Rabid (Condition Damage > Precision = Toughness) Exotic gear. If you disagree with this, this thread is not for you.

• You cannot craft this gear.
• The only two farmable Explorables do not offer this gear.
• WvW does not offer this gear.
• There is literally no gear for your trinket slots beyond green quality whatsoever.
• There are 4 armor pieces you can buy for Karma. But not more.
• There is a sceptre you can build in the Mystic Forge or buy for ~6g.
• There is a drop staff you can buy for ~6g.
• There is a drop dagger you can buy for 10-15g.
• There is a set of 6 drop armor pieces you can buy for 8-15g a piece.

What’s up with that? Why can virtually every other class do a bit of farming while leveling up, salvage a couple of Ectoplasms and get Exotic gear for almost nothing, when Necromancers have to spent weeks to months of farming an absurd amount of gold or running the Explorables that no one else wants to run because they take hours to finish, if they are doable at all?

Sadly, I have absolutely no idea why Rabid wasn’t craftable. From what I hear, it WAS craftable in the BWEs, but I literally PvP’d 24/7 during BWEs so I can’t confirm it.

I am a Necromancer who HAS farmed the 168,000 karma needed to buy the 4 temple pieces, forked out the ~25g to buy the Sceptre, Dagger, and Chest & Boots, and I settled for a Carrion Staff(since arguably the Staff makes use of a power coefficient just as much as a condition damage, and if they ever make a Power build not complete dirt, then I can use the staff in both builds without needing two).

It is extremely unsatisfying and absolutely depressing that my Rings, Earrings, Amulet, and Back slot items are all blue and green. Everything else is exotic, and for some strange reason there simply aren’t any options for these slots. What is particularly confusing is that on the guild merchant, there is a green backpack that has Toughness, Precision, and Condition damage(T/P/C), but there is no rare T/P/C backpack. Argh.

At this point, I am seriously considering grabbing Chrysocola Exotic jewelry and putting Crests of the Rabid on them.

Itemization and how they distribute stat spreads is just one big messy clusterkitten at 80. Shaman’s Amulet for sPvP is Healing, Condition, Toughness. The closest equivalent in PvE that’s also “Shaman” is Healing, Condition, VITALITY. And the Shaman Crest upgrade is Healing, Vitality, POWER.

What is with this inconsistency man, all it does is create headaches

It’s the same deal with the “Knight” set, SPvP has Vitality, PvE has Toughness. No idea why.

I’d just really like to know if this is intentional or just a major oversight that’s going to get fixed in the near future. I tried asking on Reddit as well, but the fanbois downvote it into oblivion because they think I’m criticizing their favourite game and perceive that as a personal insult.

I’m glad to see you understand the issue I’m describing.

i agree with the OP. it is incredibly discouraging. i’m still going to stick with it because for some reason, i can’t leave my necro.

I agree. Necromancer seemed to have been boned regarding gear if you decided to use rabid set, along with an undead rune (i think its undead) which gives cond dmg/toughness and 5% condition dmg becomes toughness so if you wanted pure condition damage a rabid set seems like it would be the way to go.

I’m not exactly sure which gear setup does overall more damage; rampagers or rabid. In terms of condition damage, it seems like it would be good enough to at least try it out. Only problem is, it’s a pain in the eyesocket to get a exotic set of this stuff and I have no idea why rabid isn’t craftable. When I reached 400 tailoring with the intention of crafting the rabid set to begin with after I planned out what I wanted to do with the necromancer, it was like getting shot in the foot basically.

So far I’ve managed to acquire the end-game exotic pants and chest armor rabid pieces. I farmed Arah EM 330 tokens for chest (took 2 days non-stop all day), and spent 42k karma on the pants. Don’t feel like farming Arah anymore after that, and I have no karma left.

Twilight arbor gives the gear for tokens, but it is an insanely difficult dungeon and no one does it is too hard and time consuming vs the alternative options.

It’s really annoying when you look at other classes though. Warrior gets a perfect gear set for them, berserkers set. Elementalist also gets a perfect set for them, rampagers, which is what necromancer is forced to use as a condition spec.

Carrion set simply isn’t good enough when you look closer at it for condition mancer. There is also no rune in the game which turns overall vitality into condition damage.

Carrion gives vita/pwr/condtion damage, however scepter doesn’t hit hard and the vitality trait line is 100% useless for a condition mancer so rampagers is actually better. With rampagers set you can crit frequently with scepter doing 400 to 600 dmg hits while stacking decent condition damage and you can spec into power which gives condition duration as well as slightly more damage with scepter. You simply can’t do this with carrion set.

Carrion set simply is not as good if you’re looking at damage on paper and doesn’t mingle as good as rabid/rampagers due to our traitlines. If there was a rune that turned overall vitality into condition damage, that would be acceptable over rampagers. However there is no rune in the game that does this and frankly that’s surprising to me.

Here’s a list of all the runes to see for yourself. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune

I agree. Necromancer seemed to have been boned regarding gear if you decided to use rabid set, along with an undead rune (i think its undead) which gives cond dmg/toughness and 5% condition dmg becomes toughness so if you wanted pure condition damage a rabid set seems like it would be the way to go.
I’m not exactly sure which gear setup does overall more damage; rampagers or rabid. In terms of condition damage, it seems like it would be good enough to at least try it out. Only problem is, it’s a pain in the eyesocket to get a exotic set of this stuff and I have no idea why rabid isn’t craftable. When I reached 400 tailoring with the intention of crafting the rabid set to begin with after I planned out what I wanted to do with the necromancer, it was like getting shot in the foot basically.
So far I’ve managed to acquire the end-game exotic pants and chest armor rabid pieces. I farmed Arah EM 330 tokens for chest (took 2 days non-stop all day), and spent 42k karma on the pants. Don’t feel like farming Arah anymore after that, and I have no karma left.
Twilight arbor gives the gear for tokens, but it is an insanely difficult dungeon and no one does it is too hard and time consuming vs the alternative options.
It’s really annoying when you look at other classes though. Warrior gets a perfect gear set for them, berserkers set. Elementalist also gets a perfect set for them, rampagers, which is what necromancer is forced to use as a condition spec.
Carrion set simply isn’t good enough when you look closer at it for condition mancer. There is also no rune in the game which turns overall vitality into condition damage.
Carrion gives vita/pwr/condtion damage, however scepter doesn’t hit hard and the vitality trait line is 100% useless for a condition mancer so rampagers is actually better. With rampagers set you can crit frequently with scepter doing 400 to 600 dmg hits while stacking decent condition damage and you can spec into power which gives condition duration as well as slightly more damage with scepter. You simply can’t do this with carrion set.
Carrion set simply is not as good if you’re looking at damage on paper and doesn’t mingle as good as rabid/rampagers due to our traitlines. If there was a rune that turned overall vitality into condition damage, that would be acceptable over rampagers. However there is no rune in the game that does this and frankly that’s surprising to me.
Here’s a list of all the runes to see for yourself. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune

Very nice read. Is there chance you could post the build/armor/runes you’re using currently? There is so much spam over the forums it’s really hard to find anything that contains “more info”.

I mean considering necromancer has high vitality, it’s almost mind-blowing to me that there isn’t a rune in the game that turns overall health/vita into condition damage consider one of our biggest features as a class are conditions.

I feel they released this game a bit too soon or didn’t stop and take a long look at the necromancer overall, by overall i mean available runes, traits, and gear, especially tailoring. Which should an elementalist be able to use tailoring to craft a perfect set for them, while a necromancer can not? That is simply unfair.

I love Carrion’s for WvW, and I think you are downplaying how power is still useful for someone focused on conditions.

I think you are mistaken to overlook how much power provides for your weapon swap, which will normally be the staff. Additionally, power is very helpful for WoS. Both the Staff and WoS are staples of my WvW build, and I’d imagine staff is pretty popular with almost every WvW Necro.

That being said, I think that there really isn’t a reason that this set isn’t able to be obtained — though I though I had a piece of it from Grenth for Karma (the legs).

Currently my traits are setup like this.

30 spite.
30 curses.
Due to frequent crits with scepter because of rampagers set, I put 10 in soul reaping to give a bit more damage with scepter basic attacks.
I picked these options
Spite – Reaper’s might – Spiteful marks – Close to death
Curses – Hemophilia – Master of Corruption – Lingering curse
Soul reaping – Unyielding blast

So, why 30 spite… Well basically 30% condition duration is really a must if you don’t have higher condition damage because we can’t get rabid set easily. Secondly the way I calculated dps was basically this, if you can stack 9 bleeds and can do around 90 condition damage at lvl 80, that’s around 810 damage per second, along with your scepter attacks which crit for around 400 to 600 damage, so that’s also per second (each hit being 1 second). So overall I do around 1310 dmg per second to a single target, and around 810 damage per second when not hitting something with a scepter.

You also need 30 in curses because of lingering curse and target the weak, I tried using only 25 in curses and without the 33% longer condition effects with scepter you simply CAN NOT stack adequate condition damage. It’s 30 or nothing in curses.

Currently if I was to put a rune into my full rampagers set, I would likely use Rune’s of the Afflicted. That would be by choice.

Sadly, due to me personally feeling like I am wearing kittened armor set for a kittened class due to the way rabid end-game is so hard acquire, I haven’t runed it at all yet and I’m not sure if dumping that much gold into these end-game runes would even be worth it if rabid is truly better (which it probably is for a conditionmancer). I am only using gems that I have found which add condition damage. I use scepter/dag with pwr/prec/condition dmg, and staff 2ndary.

Also to note, in curses, I use master of corruption trait option, which is corruption skills recharge 20% faster. So because of that, for my optional skills I use corrosive poison cloud, blood is power, and epidemic. I also use consume conditions instead of well of blood, because well doesn’t heal adequately enough unless you have healing gear on for other party members or players, so you may as well heal yourself more if you can.

Plague is virtually useless to be quite frank, unless you intend to tank with it in s-pvp or tank with it in pve, so normally I just use flesh golem for extra damage and as a tank in pve while I spread conditions.

So, I use blood is power, which poisons yourself, then I follow that up with deathly swarm (dag skill), so the 2 bleeds I put on myself, go right back to the target I’m singling out. Then I use the aoe’s on it, then epidemic on it if there’s enemies around what I am targeting. Epidemic is also insanely useful when grouping as ALL the conditions everyone in the group puts on a single target, spreads to any in the area.

Carrion set, sadly, is utterly useless. We already have high vitality, and the vitality trait line is basically obsolete as a condition spec the way our traits are set up. Due to having high vitality if you were in fact looking for more survivability in WvW or in s-pvp toughness/rabid set, would be miles better for the build. You would also survive better and do better condition damage over carrion due to the rune of the undead.

More vitality for a necro ultimately only helps with being able to survive condition damage longer. However if you use consume conditions to heal, you do not need more vitality anyway. This is why dagger build is so utterly pitiful in every way you look at it.

I have 5/6 of the khilbron’s set and it only costed me about 15g. I also have the dagger you are talking about and it cost me 2.5g. Maybe you should try using buy orders instead of listing the prices people are trying to sell them for. My other armor piece is karma bought and there is no toughness/precision/condition axe.

There definitely needs to be some more jewelry and slot options though.

Point is Beeceebee, why should we really dish out 15g if other classes have an infinitely easier time getting gear, as well as having a superior overall class to boot? It’s lame on top of lame.

If you add up how much it costs to craft the regular exotics its really not much more expensive buying the khilbron and such. Other classes have problems with the limited crafting gear too, it is not just necros.

Other classes being superior really have nothing to do with the so called “gear problem”

Beeceebee.4973:

If you add up how much it costs to craft the regular exotics its really not much more expensive buying the khilbron and such. Other classes have problems with the limited crafting gear too, it is not just necros.

Other classes being superior really have nothing to do with the so called “gear problem”

They have builds they can go into though effectively with gear. We have 1 effective build, condition, and the gear is ridiculously hard to get.

Shelledfade.6435:

Carrion set, sadly, is utterly useless. We already have high vitality, and the vitality trait line is basically obsolete as a condition spec the way our traits are set up. Due to having high vitality if you were in fact looking for more survivability in WvW or in s-pvp toughness/rabid set, would be miles better for the build. You would also survive better and do better condition damage over carrion due to the rune of the undead.

More vitality for a necro ultimately only helps with being able to survive condition damage longer. However if you use consume conditions to heal, you do not need more vitality anyway. This is why dagger build is so utterly pitiful in every way you look at it.

Vitality is never useless, despite us having high base vitality. And even with consume conditions, deathly swarm, and putrid mark, conditions still add up in WvW.

Additionally, the ‘vitality trait line’ isn’t poor at all for someone focusing on conditions, at least in WvW. You can choose several traits that are effective:

1- The first minor isn’t useless, like so many we have
2- Transfusion is great in wvw, even without healing power stacked
3- Dagger mastery for quicker offhand cooldowns
4- Well cooldown reduction for those that choose to run well builds in wvw (and meshes with the Curses trait line, which makes wells ground targetted).

But again, what more is that you aren’t taking into account that many people will also be using the Staff as their other weapon set, and power is very helpful for this, especially for those that use staff half the time in wvw.

So ridiculously hard it took me 2 days with buy orders and 18g which i farmed in a few days. You don’t even need to buy all the pieces like i did. Like he said you can get 4 of them for 42k karma which is easy to get while farming for the rest or just general pvp.

The stat inconsistencies between sPvP and all other gear (and even between weapons/armor/jewelry of the same sets) drove me up a wall for the first week.

Now I just throw together stuff which has the primary stat I want and secondary stats that either, “provide a bit of bonus damage” or “provide a bit of survivability” in whatever form I can get, because I’m resigned to the idea that it won’t be in the form I want -.-

Beeceebee.4973:

So ridiculously hard it took me 2 days with buy orders and 18g which i farmed in a few days. You don’t even need to buy all the pieces like i did. Like he said you can get 4 of them for 42k karma which is easy to get while farming for the rest or just general pvp.

You need to buy 2 weapons that have tough/prec/cond which alone is basically 10g. Plus the rest for whatever you paid for your gear. Plus the rune of undead to even make it work properly. So you’re looking at like what, 30-35g actually.

42k karma is a lot to acquire, considering that’s all I had up until a couple of days ago. Then again I haven’t been doing wvwvw everyday.

Also, we don’t actually know if going rabid set gives you more overall damage or not over rampagers depending on which traits you go for condition spec.

You could go toughness traits, but you lose power and in doing so you lose 30% condition duration which is huge.

Or you could simply stay power/curses with the toughness set, however that wouldn’t make the rune of the undead all that fantastic, but I guess this would make more sense for more damage. You would have to stay spite/curses for more damage.

alanis.6094:

I love Carrion’s for WvW, and I think you are downplaying how power is still useful for someone focused on conditions.

I think you are mistaken to overlook how much power provides for your weapon swap, which will normally be the staff. Additionally, power is very helpful for WoS. Both the Staff and WoS are staples of my WvW build, and I’d imagine staff is pretty popular with almost every WvW Necro.

That being said, I think that there really isn’t a reason that this set isn’t able to be obtained — though I though I had a piece of it from Grenth for Karma (the legs).

This is correct. Staff actually benefits from power, especially with the 20% reduced cooldown and fear-does-damage. In WvW, you would almost exclusively be using staff for area denial and with the 20% cooldown reduction switching weapons will rarely be needed during combat. Also, while conditions are great in WvW, they do get removed somewhat quickly, which makes power even more important.

I would encourage people to run their own tests using different exotic specs/gear in the mists on the target practice dummies. Not all abilities scale as expected or advertised (check the bug list too).

Like i said i bought my dagger for 2.5g. Use buy orders and such. This 30-35g you are speaking of is laughable. Karma is extremely easy to get in cursed shore and WvWvW.

30% condition duration isn’t huge. You do know you can eat food which gives you 40% condition duration right? Condition damage is such a better stat anyways as most of the necros bleeds don’t last close to the full duration on smart players. I’ve dropped all my duration traits and spite because 40% duration from food is plenty.

Beeceebee.4973:

Like i said i bought my dagger for 2.5g. Use buy orders and such. This 30-35g you are speaking of is laughable. Karma is extremely easy to get in cursed shore and WvWvW.

30% condition duration isn’t huge. You do know you can eat food which gives you 40% condition duration right? Condition damage is such a better stat anyways as most of the necros bleeds don’t last close to the full duration on smart players. I’ve dropped all my duration traits and spite because 40% duration from food is plenty.

You must be dreaming because all of the khils set is 5g each, and weapons 5g each, also if you think getting 42k karma is easy you must be delusional. It would take a week or more to get that much, even playing all day long. I really don’t give 2 craps about how easy it was for you, it’s not that easy at all, so stop playing it down. There’s also the large issue of how we only have 1 decent build which is condition damage and you have to go through all of this to make it better. That’s just dumb and other classes don’t have to go through this much difficulty.

I finally have all 3 weapons (Staff + Dagger off the TP, Scepter crafted in Mystic Forge) as well as 4 out of 6 armor pieces (2 Khilbron’s, 2 for Karma… even just getting the Karma Merchant to spawn is atrocious).

Still, the best earrings are green, and from what I’ve seen there are no fitting items for the amulet, back or ring slot whatsoever.

ITT we cry about not being handed all the best gear within one month of release.

Play the game, see new things, entertain yourself. Fill in maps to farm the karma you need to get karma gear. Do some dungeons (only two are farmable? wut?) to earn the tokens you need. Doing all that will get you some money, which can be used to fill in any gaps in your gear.

The lack of accessories/rings/etc with the right stats is a little disappointing (i took cleric’s backpiece in my story quests because it was the best i was offered) but it gives you a chance to diversify. Take some +healing and build toward a support sub-role. Take some +vitality to get the most out of the +toughness you want on your armor set.

It’s not like we’re being kittened just because there’s a hard to put together set of gear.

I want Soldier.. Power, Toughness, and Vit.. =/

To those stacking Carrion you forget how weak heals are. I used to roll Carrion with a big mighty 28k hp, but my heals were still way too low despite 200 healing power. It was bad to the point that I would actually spend entire boss fights at 50% hp or something despite using corruptions to heal myself for more.

So yeah rabid is pretty much necessary. Personally, I crafted 3 Carrion jewels and 2 rampager rings to go with a rampager back then I am set on picking 6 rabbid armor pieces in HotW. Rampager is pretty good considering we use power/crit for staff and daggers for example. Combined with trait line and Rune of Undead I will pass the 1500 Toughness mark and I know it’s not perfect, but I think it will be a nice balance between my main stats.

@OP – I know your pain but I think you should try to work with what the system offers you instead of trying to stamp your feet and say THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT.

I have FULL Rare trinkets of Prec/Tough/Condition Damage and my guild could have made them exotics if I felt like farming that far. The problem is stacking FULL condition damage is a joke.

No one seems to want to respond to me about this. Once you reach 1100 + Condition damage it basically becomes pointless to go any further.

I have gone from 1000-1450 Condition damage to see only a 30ish (from bleeds hittin for 100-130) increase in DoTs. The amount of stat points invested on your gear is NOT worth stacking this to max. The Necromancer class cannot stack conditions fast enough to make a FULL condition build worthwhile without support.

Power and +Crit Dmg after Condition damage hits about 1050.

I also used Runes of Undead for the added condition damage/

BTW – Twilight Arbor has the gear your looking for and it is very farmable, at least it was.

The reality is you will always be SUBPAR with a full conditionmancer setup. Why? Because you have completely ignored Death Shroud.

Start stacking to 2800-3000 attack/45% crit chance/1100 condition damage

Not exactly easy to do but with:

Berserker Sigil – +250 Power
Food – +200 Power after I kill for 30 sec
Runes of Undead – Highest Condition damage rune setup roughly +250 (depends on tough)

Then it’s all Armor/Trinkets and Weapons

I personally farmed WvW for 160k+ Karma and did a ton of TA for the Nightmare Staff. I bought the Mystic forge Scepter and I bought the Dagger (Power/Prec/+Crit)

Just my 2 cents though

zintair has a point, but i don’t feel the OP is stomping his feet as you say.

i myself use a full khilborn set, but am considering using power/precision/crit damage trinkets to compensate for the lack of raw damage. while i mostly use death shroud as an escape and extra buffer during wvw, you cannot deny that power helps death shroud immensely.

It is stamping your feet when you start the thread off with a “If you disagree with this, this thread is not for you.”

This is a forum where debate takes place, to state you don’t want people who disagree with you to post is childish and unrealistic. Hence stamping the feet.

Doesn’t even scratch the… your doing it wrong aspect of the post.

BTW took me 2 weeks after 80 to hit 1450 condition damage. Hardly a post worthy gear grind.

Uh the point isn’t that it’s hard it’s that it’s much harder than most other classes have it for absolutely no reason except the totally arbitrary choice not to offer Rabid as a craftable armor or to offer decent accessories with rabid itemization.

There is just no reason at all to offer ideal crafted armors for some classes and specs but not for others.

Yukishiro.8792:

Uh the point isn’t that it’s hard it’s that it’s much harder than most other classes have it for absolutely no reason except the totally arbitrary choice not to offer Rabid as a craftable armor or to offer decent accessories with rabid itemization.

There is just no reason at all to offer ideal crafted armors for some classes and specs but not for others.

from chuiu in another thread on THE SAME THING

“I’ve posted about it numerous times, it would be great if you guys could show your support for more jewelry recipes over in this thread:”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Could-we-get-more-jewelry-recipes-please/first#post217469

THIS IS WHERE YOU NEED TO BE POSTING

Necromancer discussion should be Necromancer specific stuff. And FOR THE NECROMANCER… Rabid just is very underwhelming. Makes me wonder if you guys have tried Conditionmancer yet in tPvP or WvW?

It isn’t just an issue with jewels and it clearly effects necros in particular.

I don’t see why you are getting so worked up. You seem to be the one stamping your feet.

What makes you think this is specific to Necros? Other classes don;t use conditions? or want Tough and Prec?

I run 30/30/0/0/10/0, because our vitality 5pt and 10pt bonuses are actually worth something compared to soul reaping and (lol) death magic.

Rampagers doesn’t do as much DPS long term, but stacks up quite a bit faster than rabid. I actually prefer it for soloing.

Uh in practical terms yes rabid gear is more likely to be attractive to necros than any other class. Who else is going to want it? Necros are on the high hp table meaning they have less need for vitality and more value for toughness than other classes with good condition damage options. Ele arn’t going to want to run around with 12k hp to get +toughness. Engi is on the middle hp table, so I guess they might want some rabid gear, but I can’t imagine they’d want a full set.

Warrior maybe? But there are very few sword spec warriors and even sword spec warriors do enough direct damage that they’re unlikely to want to give up power completely.

Bleed rangers? Maybe, dunno enough about them and their direct damage options to know if anyone would want a set without power or would want tough over vit.

zintair, fair enough. i guess i didn’t read it like you did.

so are you using full khilborn, with power, precision, crit damage weapons and trinkets? i believe what you say is correct, in that a necro needs to consider death shroud when picking stats.

i already bought the condition based weapons, so with the trinkets being the only remaining things to upgrade, i am pretty sure i’m gonna buy some power based ones to compensate. will probably need to change out the dagger too.

i hope they make different looking gears not overpowered gears. personally i really don’t like grinding. i never played a grinding game in my life. and i will never playing grind and farming game like diablo 3 and WoW and other cheap poor graphics online games. it makes me just give up the game. i never waste my life on a game. i play various high graphics games and watch movie or TV and study for myself etc. this game is short. but this game has many freedoms and high graphics than other online games. and leveling in pvp is very slower than leveling in pve and wvw. if you like slow leveling, do pvp.