Guild Wars 2

In organized groups, obviously. Full zerk with Decimate Defenses puts you at over 100% crit chance, and fury is just even more wasted stats. I often hear people say that valk (with zerk trinkets) is acceptable, but zerk is better, but what is the actual benefit of full zerk over that, when the only stat difference is wasted crit vs extra health? Is it just for that one or two attacks at the start of the fight when vuln isn’t capped? you don’t even need Death Perception to hit 100%, zerk trinkets and fury with DD is more than enough.

full zerk with decimated defences means you can maintain like 100% crit in all forms, not just shroud, and take dhuumfire for extra damage. you might not be condi build, but burning does nice damage even if you have no condi stats. going that way means you crit like, all the time. or you can take foot in the grave for that cc break which can be helpful sometimes

valkyrie gives you a bit more survivability with the vitality and you dont necessarily sacrifice crit by taking that. death perception keeps you at 100% crit for shroud, and you maintain a nice 50% crit in all other forms

that is like, the only difference

edit: oh also, going valkyrie means youre funnelled into decimated defences all the time. this slows down your solo damage quite considerably and your critting isnt dependant on the mob having vulnerability stacks.

that and dodging is better than vitality anyway

Reknarok.7582:

full zerk with decimated defences means you can maintain like 100% crit in all forms, not just shroud, and take dhuumfire for extra damage. you might not be condi build, but burning does nice damage even if you have no condi stats. going that way means you crit like, all the time. or you can take foot in the grave for that cc break which can be helpful sometimes

valkyrie gives you a bit more survivability with the vitality and you dont necessarily sacrifice crit by taking that. death perception keeps you at 100% crit for shroud, and you maintain a nice 50% crit in all other forms

that is like, the only difference

edit: oh also, going valkyrie means youre funnelled into decimated defences all the time. this slows down your solo damage quite considerably and your critting isnt dependant on the mob having vulnerability stacks.

that and dodging is better than vitality anyway

i mean…thats 50% crit without banners, spotter, or fury. ~80% in an organized group with all those things. That said, everything else is pretty spot on. It lets you more easily maintain 100% crit chance out of death shroud, allowing you to take better skills while in death shroud.

If you are planning on doing raids you shouldn’t even consider taking soul reaping in the first place, blood magic is way better for group support and even dps. This is of course if you’re the only reaper in the group, if someone else is already providing Vampiric presence then feel free to pick up soul reaping. Currently though dps-wise seems like condi reaper is better than power reaper, you should only be power reaper if you’re the tank of the raid. There’s different variations of condi builds flying around, even depending on the boss fight you have to swap out some traits/utilities.

Well, you don’t even need Death Perception to hit 100%, even outside of shroud. 30% from trinkets, plus DD and fury gets you 100%, so you can still take Blood or Dhuumfire.

Valk gives no gain over zerk if you are using budget consumables. Zerk is better on the split phases for vale and gorseval. Also better for cannons if you are doing that (no idea why you wouldnt play condi on sabetha though).

Valk is only worth investing in if you plan to use furious maintenance oil and have an organised group that will keep you fully buffed at all times. Very few groups fit this criteria. Hence it is a rather silly idea to recommend that most players take valk gear just because precision is wasted some of the time.