Where to put last 20 points?
I might suggest 20 in Soul Reaping, taking Unyielding Blast and Soul Marks. Life Force should be plentiful (trading Soul marks for Master of Terror can work if you feel you have enough life force), so Life Blast actually makes a decent auto-attack in zerg situations, especially when it pierces. This gives you something to do while you’re waiting for cooldowns.
Alternatively, put them into Spite. While Spiteful Marks may seem attractive, your better option is Chill of Death. Marks don’t do much direct damage, so it just isn’t better than the semi-execute you can get for free every 20 seconds. Chill of Death right now can kill someone outright and even if they survive, they aren’t in a good situation (chilled, sliver of health, and 3 fewer boons). The 10 point trait depends on your weapon choice, but if you run Well of Blood, it may be worth running Spiteful Removal. Between your distance from the front line and that trait, you should almost always be condition-free.
Berserker’s Gear will probably work fine. Runes are a bit more up in the air.
Thank you very much for the great information. This clears up some stuff in my head. I think I will be going with the spite to get extra power and Chill of Death.
You left everything except the traits off of the build which kinda makes it hard to know where you’re going with this. That left me with a lot of blanks to fill. I did my best with what was already there.
I outfitted you with knight’s armor with eagle runes, berserker trinkets with power infusions and curry butternut soup and master oils. Oh, and a zerker weapon with Accuracy sigils.
For the traits, I added 0/5/0/0/15. This gets you Furious Demise (Fury for 6 sec), Unyielding Blast (pierce) and Last Gasp (always handy). These traits get your crit chance up and raise crit damage.
This brings you to 3094 attack, 70% crit chance, 2351 armor, 20371 health and 87% crit damage. With Furious Demise, this brings your crit chance to 90% making a trait like Deathly Perception unnecessary.
I also chose to run knights armor because, given that you began with Ascii’s build, you probably realize that having armor of some kind is a pretty good idea. This will give you a fighting chance should an enemy zerg outmaneuver yours and hammer trains your back line. And, it still provides decent power and crit damage numbers.
I have to mention, as a backliner, you might find wells a bit lacking in range (900). The extra armor I’ve spec’ed for you will help when you need to creep up in the zerg column but it’s not optimal especially with offensive food and runes.
If you find this to be true or you find that the siphon traits in Blood aren’t living up to expectations, as an alternative, I suggest removing all points from that tree and distributing them 0/15/25/0/30 (Near to Death/Foot in the Grave). This brings your stat line up to 3168/70%/2401/18372/102%.
You give up 8 sec of well CD and siphon. You get 70+ power, 50 toughness, 15% crit damage, -30% DS recharge and on-demand stability.
It’s a really good trade, I think.
One last thing: I suggest running Signet of Undeath. It not only passively generates LF in combat (a must for DS heavy builds) but gives the ability to resurrect people like your commander. Every back line DS build should be running this, IMO.
(edited by Nagato no Kami.4980)
Thank you for the input nagato. I am trying to pick the best traits that are going to enhance my staff and wells effectiveness. (Bigger marks less cds etc.) After I’m happy with my traits I’ll start working on my gear.
In terms on gear I’m going to go for 30-70 toughness-power. I’ll get 4 Knights armor and 2 berserker with berserker accessories amulet etc. I might get more or less Knights Armour depending on how I feel after playing a bit. I want some toughness but not as much as Asci since I’m not planning to charge in to zergs.
Wells are fine but be aware that staff doles out its damage from conditions so no matter what traits you choose, without the condi damage, the staff will never go very far. It’s useful but mostly for its chill and fear. It simply isn’t the best expression of the power — none of the necro’s ranged weapons are. (A bit counter-intuitively, if you want to use a staff to its maximum effectiveness with high power stats, it should be used at close range where you can take advantage of its pierce and spread the damage as much as possible.)
Back row builds with their massive power and crits do their best damage in DS or Lich that do 50-100% more damage per auto attack than the staff. It behooves you to play to its strengths. If not, you’ll be running a glass(ish) cannon build with the play style that’s closer to a front liner. Depending on your second weapon, this could become even more pronounced.
AS far as worrying about having too much armor, Ascii’s build has over 3100 armor. This build is nowhere near it. It will, however, keep you from being melted by anyone who so much as breathes on you.
I also forgot to mention, if you really want to do max damage, you can also use Truffle Saute food (25 stacks might). It will lower your precision a bit.
(edited by Nagato no Kami.4980)
I’m really not sure if your intended 4knight rest zerker setup has enough defense. That’s below 2k armor if I’m not mistaken. From my limited experience, that won’t survive anything. Maybe it’s just me. But I dont even know if that can survive AC rain. And I don’t really see much real backline in wvw because commander is always moving. I’m not very experienced in wvw but I just won’t feel comfortable without at least 2.3k armor.