Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been working on my Viper build that I use for fractals/raids. I have curses/reaper (obviously) but I don’t know what to pick for the 3rd trait line, I’ve heard much speculation from many guildies/in-game players on each one:

Weapons: S/D

Death Magic: Can make minions transfer conditions (rise/Lich Form 4) and “Flesh of Master” trait allows you to tank if need be.

Spite: Vulnerability/Might Stacking (seems bigger in fractals where there’s less people than raids)

Soul Reaping: Allows for Dhuumfire on AA, which I’ve heard may/may-not be better than standard scepter chain. Also gives quicker LF regen and longer DS for survivability?

Anybody have thoughts on this? I’m sure that it differs between doing fractals and doing raids but I wanted more opinion on it.

Soul Reaping. The big debate IIRC stems more or less from Spite/Curses as the third, really.

SR is useless becouse condi reaper doesn’t camp shroud – you loose condi damage on everything you apply (lingering curse), becouse RS is a hammer for unknown reason

Death, while nice, isn’t universal (some bosses love to wipe minions, while others wipe you if minions appear at the wrong time), and turns you into tank in unorganized groups. It also requires party member healing your rats to make most of it.

Blood is, IMO, awesome. Extra movement speed, good heals from RS2 and 4, group damage increase with vamp aura, transfusion.

Spite is kinda pointless. Might can be generated from chilling victory/BiP if needed, vuln can come from secondary weapon set (focus).

Choice is usually between blood and death.

Spite is not a really good choice. I don’t feel it really adds anything. Blood adds a bit of group damage and support as well as reducing the cooldown on offhand dagger. Death is nice for those massive aoe poison damage on fights that allow it. For clearing trash in dungeons and fractals Dhuumfire is actually really good. Being able to cleave 3 mobs and 5 on final hit with burning is a lot better then scepter. On boss fights though not so great since you lose all your other conditions to stack a short burn.

So for boss fights it is normally between blood and death while short aoe trash dhuumfire can be worth it.

If you are talking about PvE then spite is rather pointless on a condi build. For PvE you should go blood magic for most stuff. Death Magic is good when constant adds are dying around you (Sabetha).

Blood or Death Magic. Death magic if you have a lot of adds dying in a fight (Subject 6, Archdiviner) or you need lots of condi transfer (Mia) and Blood Magic for everything else.

With Blood try to utilize dodges for DPS by dodging into enemies.

I’d go for soul reaping and change up between death magic and curses…

Why SR? you can get burns on RS1 skill, and when combined with Deathly Chill and the whirls from RS4 and the frost armor from RS2, and the RS2 being a boon converter if you use curses or kitten being a fear that can actually do good damage 1k per tick and often hits for 2 ticks since you should have condition duration increased by armor and trinkets… it will do nice damage.

I change up curses and death magic and blood magic for what the situations I’m going to encounter are.

For me curses is my normal build for the scepter having nice condition damage boost and for blinds also chilling foes, and fears causing damage as well.

I use death magic when I just want to play around with minions or when I need to do something that I can’t easily do myself. Minions often take agro and all from me, which is a plus for solo’ing some things.

I use blood magic when I need to heal others. I know its not meta or anything, but even a reaper’s healing can help druids and ele’s out some in keeping others alive in WvW.

The choose though to all this is yours. I run with curses, soul reaping and reaper most times, but like I said, that curses trait-line can change to anything else but spite. I don’t like spite as its not really helpful it seems unless you’re a power reaper.

KayCee.4653:

I’d go for soul reaping and change up between death magic and curses…

Why SR? you can get burns on RS1 skill, and when combined with Deathly Chill and the whirls from RS4 and the frost armor from RS2, and the RS2 being a boon converter if you use curses or kitten being a fear that can actually do good damage 1k per tick and often hits for 2 ticks since you should have condition duration increased by armor and trinkets… it will do nice damage.

I change up curses and death magic and blood magic for what the situations I’m going to encounter are.

For me curses is my normal build for the scepter having nice condition damage boost and for blinds also chilling foes, and fears causing damage as well.

I use death magic when I just want to play around with minions or when I need to do something that I can’t easily do myself. Minions often take agro and all from me, which is a plus for solo’ing some things.

I use blood magic when I need to heal others. I know its not meta or anything, but even a reaper’s healing can help druids and ele’s out some in keeping others alive in WvW.

The choose though to all this is yours. I run with curses, soul reaping and reaper most times, but like I said, that curses trait-line can change to anything else but spite. I don’t like spite as its not really helpful it seems unless you’re a power reaper.

I understand, build variety and all, but think for a moment.

Curses are mandatory for PVE condi. It’s chill uptime on offhand dagger. It’s extra crit for chilling nova procs and extra blids. It’s ridicolously prolonged scepter conditions. It’s damage boost on all conditions you apply. It’s reduced CD and extra damaging condis for transfer on corruptions – bread and butter of condi build. And no, it’s definetely not damage on fear…

Like, how the hell can you trade all of this for any other line? Burning on RS AA? C’mon…

Probably explains the divide; OP should mention PvE or PvP/WvW, as Soul Reaping is much, much more useful for the PvP formats as two autos can out-DPS pretty much all weapon skills in the short-term when cleanses get involved, as those burning ticks can regularly reach over 1k per stack.

Wintermute.5408:

Like, how the hell can you trade all of this for any other line? Burning on RS AA? C’mon…

Soul reaping grandmaster trait (Dhuumfire) is necessary if you want to use condi builds, you can get 1 to 2k burns in addition to all the other conditions you produce while in shroud.

As for curses, its nice, but its not the best when you need numbers to do something. Then Death magic’s minions is necessary. I prefer that a lot at times. However, I do use Curses for many things.

In raid environments, Spite is useless for condition builds. All it provides you is Might and Vulnerability, which are pretty much always capped anyway.

Soul Reaping is likewise not that great, as current Raid encounters don’t encourage much Reaper’s Shroud time; basically enough just to drop a Soul Spiral and a Death’s Charge (sometimes) for a Chill/Leap finisher.

So, it comes down to Blood Vs. Death. You want at least one Reaper in a raid to have Blood Magic for Transfusion (people still often go down) and Vampiric Presence. The rest usually will go Death for Death Nova.

Now, future raid content may change this drastically. If, for example, you are required to split the party, Spite becomes much more valuable, as with that line, you can solo-stack 25 Might and Vuln.

Blood. I’m like you and tinkered around a fair bit, but Blood. PvP and PvE, being able to AoE put people up when we spin and teleport them away from fire/stomp is simply invaluable. Now add the run speed trait for the dagger (liberating either an utility skill or the the armor runes) and a bit of sustain and damage from Vampiric Aura.

Lets face it, if we’re solo everything is easy and we don’t need the might and vuln. If we’re in a party other people are providing. In either case time spent in shroud should be at a minimum.

As far as Condi in raids go reaper is also pretty dispensable. If I was stacking Condi necros for Sabetha I would have 1 use reaper, curses, death. 1 would go curses, reaper and soul reaping (unsure about this but assuming 100% shroud uptime dhuumfire is slightly stronger than scepter auto and the burns would help with epidemic spreading). And the rest would be curses, blood and death.