Guild Wars 2

Hi ,
am about to convert my gear into condi , which one i should pick for my necro ? sinister or vip , i am mainly doing pve and raids .

I could be mistaken, so don’t take this as law, but I believe Condi Necro would still go Sinister. Here’s why:

This is what happens when it’s 3am and you let strange websites influence your calculations. Coming back to it now with wakefulness in mathematics, I see where I went astray.

yea but what about the chill and fear damage ?

You should definetely go sinister. You can go sinister weapon/trinkets with dire armor for added lf. Then spite,soulreaping,reaper. I went rune of balthazar which does work well with dhuumfire. Sigil of smoldering/bursting for weapon. At 25 stacks might the burning ticks at around 5k, 7k with quickness. For reaper trait you can go augry,deciminate,reaper onslaught. For one rotation of auto attack you can easily go 10 to 15k constant dps. It might go higher if the enemy is below 50% and 33%.

I don’t agree: you should go Viper. Condition Duration is really important because let’s you keep the stacks, which al means more stacks, at the expense of less malice. I think it’s worth the investment (overall you lose very few malice and precision).

Ocosh.5843:

3. Viper gives up Precision. You apply bleed on crit; the higher the better.

Condi Reaper has already 100% crit chance no need to go sinister for more precision because it is useless.

For long fights Condi Duration is always better like high level Fractals and Raids. Cap your Condiduration at 100% and after that go for sinister.

if you’re using scepter you’re most likely going with the curses traitline, the last minor converts 13% of your precision to condition dmg

Viper is better. You dont need the precision on a condi reaper. The extra power is nice. The condition duration more than makes up for the loss of condition damage.

Im not sure sinister has a place anymore. Apart from using them as trinkets for a viper build. Which is a bit of a shame.

Even factoring in the curses precision conversion. Vipers is still better. As Brayzzz says. You want to reach 95-100% condi duration. Then after that the remaining gear can be sinister. I found viper armour and weapons with nightmare runes, malice & geomancy sigils and sinister trinkets to be a good mix. I cant say for sure that its the absolute best mix. Getting the vipers amulet might make it slightly better but that requires some achievement grinding.

is there any site with calculator to see this things ? gw2skill is not updated with viper gear yet.

medo.5790:

is there any site with calculator to see this things ? gw2skill is not updated with viper gear yet.

Look under power. I wish the site designer would have put it under both but… alas.

Regardless, the duration calculation, I think, is off. Everyone says they get around 30-40% from viper armor but that site tells me 13.8%. Even adding in Viper weapons, I only get to 21.7%. It also does not add the global condi duration to your specific ones so keep in mind you have to mentally add the numbers when you look for that 100% everyone worships.

I know my build could use some work since I specifically used runes of Grenth and the sigil of chilling to help chill since, with all sinister, it does 1.1k a tick in addition to all the other damage. But now that I have been making use of Epidemic in open-world PvE, and likely Poison Cloud in Raids, I am agreeing more with the global condi duration over focusing so much in chill. However, once I do that, I will miss those 13-15k ticks of burning I was getting.

I believe that someone has done the analysis to show that Viper > Sinister for any situation, UNLESS you are already capping your condition duration OR the mobs you fight die before your non-viper duration buffed setup conditions wear out.

For example … Vipers is garbage for something like a Risen Chicken, because you don’t benefit from the extra duration.

I think vipers is better and my reason for it is that you barely sacrifice condi dmg for a lot more condi duration. This means that your conditions can damage for longer and at the same time it allows you to stack higher condition numbers.

Viper. Condition duration is tremendously powerful on the Necromancer.

EDIT: Here, math: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Sinister-vs-Viper/

tl;dr: Viper gives better condition damage than Sinister, regardless of Power damage. Sinister is basically always inferior for any content where your enemies lack significant condi clear.

Just curious would the lack of toughness and vit as compared to rabid armor be a huge problem in pve content which have boss hitting quite hard?

You can compensate the lack of defensive stats with a proper use of Shroud, positioning and, survival instinct (or, in short terms: learn how to flee).

Talking/Asking about PvE here:

Condi Necro: Sinister
Condi Reaper: Viper

Or both Viper?

My Condi-gear (mainly used against Husks during TTWurm) is full Sinister (Aristocracy Runes <3) and I was wondering if this still has a spot in HoT. Or is Viper really that much better in the current PvE-content?

Also… Who’s the better option in going Condi: Necro or Reaper?

Cerbeius.7129:

Talking/Asking about PvE here:

Condi Necro: Sinister
Condi Reaper: Viper

Or both Viper?

Both Viper. Viper is a straight upgrade to Sinister for Condi builds. It is also extremely expensive, to the point where you should just go for Ascended Viper gear rather than Exotic.

Increasing your condition damage increases the intensity of the conditions, which raises the damage each condition deals overall, but increasing the length of time the conditions are applied means more damage within a given span of time, so long and only so long as the conditions you apply do not outlast the life of the target. (so if your target is going to die in 40 seconds, any condition lasting longer then 40 seconds will not have it’s full effect felt).

Viper’s (or Trailblazer’s when it becomes available) seems to add something close to 40% condition duration (I know it’s 37%) , and comes at the cost of something like 200-300 condition damage. Now i did some informal calculations in excel to figure out how much +300 condition damage adds to a necromancer if he’s standing at 1600, and for all of the conditions I looked at, it was between 10-16%

Bear in mind also that the relative change in condition damage decreases as the condition damage level increases. So full vipers might cost 300 or so condition damage, but if we have two buffed characters with, say, 2200 and 2500 condi damage, the relative difference in condition damage due to the stat difference is less whereas the condition duration remains equally effective.

The sinister viper trade off would be less if a condition build were only dealing one condition. (Say guardian which can really only apply burning) So with a guardian you could go sinister with balth runes and easily reach 100% burning which is all you need and the rest of your gear would emphasize increasing the damage of your attacks [Condi, precision,

Now what arenanet needs to do is fix rampagers gear, perhaps changing it to a 4 stat combination of power, precision, condition damage, and ferocity. I highly doubt there’s a class out there that could do better with sinister anything that could be done with rampager.

One thing to remember is that vipers is also going to extend the duration of your non-damage conditions as well; something necro has quite a few of whether they are good or not.

I’m doing sinister armor/trinkets + giver’s weapons. When i can afford it / find the recipe, i’m going sinister trinkets + armor/weapons viper.
Both way get you close to cap on dura, but viper gives you more stats overall because giver’s weapons got no condi dmg.

How about… Trailblazer’s? Yes, you do lose a bit of power damage but you can tank and maintain decent condi output.

Oh My God.8423:

How about… Trailblazer’s? Yes, you do lose a bit of power damage but you can tank and maintain decent condi output.

Trailblazer is alright if you like to be “the” tank. Think of it as a dire set with a bit of a bonus added in condi duration.

To the OP: I tried to find a happy medium for my play style so I went with full viper armor with 4 nightmare runes and 2 trappers runes (lots of duration). My trinkets are ascended rabid, but then again I already bought them so I am not going to make a new set. I find my condi duration is very good as is my tankiness. My weapons are also rabid ascended because the extra precision is nice (converts to condi damage for 13% under curses).

I may not get the biggest of numbers, but the build suits me. I can survive quite well in the new maps and can usually res in battle when need be.

My issue now is that crafting vipers equipments are too kitten expensive lol

Blaine Tog.8304:

Cerbeius.7129:

Talking/Asking about PvE here:

Condi Necro: Sinister
Condi Reaper: Viper

Or both Viper?

Both Viper. Viper is a straight upgrade to Sinister for Condi builds. It is also extremely expensive, to the point where you should just go for Ascended Viper gear rather than Exotic.

Well.. guess I’ll be using Sinister as a filler then till I get my Viper stuff.

Oh well, got a new goal to work towards to

I’m running full ascended viper weapon/armor + dire ascended jewels with runes of aristocracy to maintain 25 mights most of the time and I am really enjoying that setup so far.

It’s a great mix of power, condi and tankiness together with decimate defences you get to something like 78% crit chance. Not the highest dps as a reaper but not far from it (and seriously much more than a lot of other professions), this is awesome for both wvw and pve.

Go to gw2skills.net and make the same build on 2 different tabs one with sinister and one with viper. It does the damage calculations for you. I did this myself and it looks like vipers is probably the way to go, unless you are crossing over the 100% durration threshold somehow

You don’t need power in condi spec.

Junkpile.7439:

You don’t need power in condi spec.

Builds with sinister and viper are basically hybrids, not pure condi. A large proportion of your damage will be power-type damage (see the sinister vs viper thread linked above).

Viper + Sinister. Play with the calc before make it. Once you reach 100% condition duration go all in sinister.

Demandred.7930:

Junkpile.7439:

You don’t need power in condi spec.

Builds with sinister and viper are basically hybrids, not pure condi. A large proportion of your damage will be power-type damage (see the sinister vs viper thread linked above).

Really? Tell that to my Scepter Auto attack.