Guild Wars 2

Ive been running a condition build since I made my necro and had a lot of fun and felt like a do pretty good damage. Lately Ive been running a power well build but Im not sure if my well dps matches up to my condition dps, anyone have experiences with either one and maybe a few pointers would be great.

wells are great, but my opinion is conditions > power for necro. I may be wrongly assuming this is for pvp or wvw? but that’s my opinion.

if you practice stacking bleeds on one guy, then epidemic them to spread it to everyone else theres no greater feeling. ive seen 20 stacks of bleed on a target whilst on my power necro and wished I had epidemic equipped.

wells are fun but not as reliable as conditions. getting people to stay in them is problematic at times.

i’ve tried both, and while i felt power/wells were GOOD, i didnt feel like the burst i did with them was sustainable… like i felt like once i popped all my wells n kitten, i was left with just auto stabbing with dagger until cd’s were over. idk, maybe i ddint do it right, but at any rate, i went back to condition build and with the tweaks + new condition we’ve received recently, i havent looked back. love my condi necro

PhaNTaSiZe.4215:

i’ve tried both, and while i felt power/wells were GOOD, i didnt feel like the burst i did with them was sustainable… like i felt like once i popped all my wells n kitten, i was left with just auto stabbing with dagger until cd’s were over. idk, maybe i ddint do it right, but at any rate, i went back to condition build and with the tweaks + new condition we’ve received recently, i havent looked back. love my condi necro

Was this after the last patch, where well cooldowns got decreased?
Wells come of cd pretty fast now, so that feeling might be gone.

Personally, I prefer to run powermancer in all game modes.

In PvE content, you’ll see much better results with a power necro using wells. In PvP, you’ll see much better returns on a condi necro.

PhaNTaSiZe.4215:

i’ve tried both, and while i felt power/wells were GOOD, i didnt feel like the burst i did with them was sustainable… like i felt like once i popped all my wells n kitten, i was left with just auto stabbing with dagger until cd’s were over.

There’s some truth to this, but the thing is, the dagger’s autoattack actually hits really, really hard if you spec for direct damage. I plan my power build around spending as much time as possible autoattacking with my dagger because it’s just so brutal.

I have played wells for like… 700 of my 800 hours as a necro, so i say wells. I just dont think relying on conditions is a good idea for numbers of reasons:

1. Condition removals
2. Bleed cap
3. You have to stack them in order to get the good damage
4. My opponent can turn them into boons (Especially necros) so i might buff them instead of killing them

From the perspective of large group WvW play, Power > Conditions from my experience, primarily due to a lot of condi removal around as well as tons of people running condi duration reduction food and runes.

Homonavn.6348:

1. Condition removals
2. Bleed cap
3. You have to stack them in order to get the good damage
4. My opponent can turn them into something positive (especially Guardians and Eles) so i might buff them instead of killing them

Fixed (seriously we got 2 skills on 20+ cooldowns that do something for us with conditions on use, yes possible transfers but as a necro vs necro fight you just transfer them back with even more condis).

In ST situation: Pwer=Condi but Condi > Wells

In WvW we however never have Necros runanything but Power/Well builds. Power build or re-specc. Conditions get cleansed to easily when we up vs so many Guardians + Warriors. And Soldier Runes aso… to much cleanse and to Little time for effect. Power wins there. Also with the DS boost our Power Necors LT for 6-8k x5 targets cant do that with Condi-Specc.

Alright here’s my take:

Map PvE/Most Dungeons: Power/Well = Condi
Dungeons geared towards Heavy DPS Bursts (Arah, CoF): Power/Well > Condi
Dungeons geared towards Attrition, DoT and large mob groups: Condi > Power/Well
Disciplined/Experienced Zerg fights in WvW: Power/Well > Condi
Everything else in WvW (miss match zergs, roaming etc., Sieges): Condi > Power/Well

The only time I feel conditionmancer is ineffective is heavy Guardian zergs at camps or outside towers. My only condition damage build that actually contributes in those battles is my apothecary support, because i’m using WoB, WoP and WoC.

Everything else, especially anything with 5+ targets, conditionmancer beats power necro on AoE dps overall, over time. That’s using a Rabid 30/30/10 Build with proper food. Each AoE bleed (and torment) skill does about 5K-6K damage, 1300 fear ticks, nearly 800 dmg tick Dhuumfire, plus Epidemic. Easy to maintain 10-17 stacks of 125-150 dmg bleeds. That’s 1250-2550 AoE bleed damage damage per second throughout a fight without Epidemic, Poison, Dhuumfire, Torment, Terror and normal attacks (which pack a small punch with crit chance, might stacks and target the weak).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMaF7pbub07JEpCPD0jeBXAxoHETwYMA-jkCBINERzUAQ0CAEgwUFJLHqIasVTFRjVdDTHjIq2IuIa1SBAxaA-w

Not to mention you do great damage and have 2700 armor. There’s also a 1 minute bleed you can apply and epidemic multiple times (Epidemic nearly 4 times to other foes and reapply 1 minute bleed twice to the original target before it wears off).

I don’t usually worry about the cap to bleeds except in situations where you’re only fighting one target at a time. Sure other classes can stack bleeds to 25 on a single target, but not as well if at all stack bleeds on x5 targets and then some. Reapplication of condition damage is really easy for a necro too, since you can apply area bleeds every 4-6 seconds or so.

As mentioned I still don’t think conditionmancer can match power necro’s burst against one target still.

I only play WvW and my experience is that power is the way to go if you want to be more then an smal annoyance to enemy groups.
All the condi removal and reduction makes epidemic useless and without it its no reason to run a cond build

I’ve been running a hybrid (3k power, 1.2k condi) with 30/10/0/0/30 Axe/focus Sc/D with dhuum and I feel like it’s doing well. I like being able to switch seamlessly between double wells and spite + epi.