Guild Wars 2

So I’ve crafted the damask for an ascended set for my reaper but can’t decide what stats to pick. Currently I’m using marauders (basically metabattle midline build) with ok results so I’m leaning toward that but would like to see what others opinions are.

I only play in wvw and I don’t roam and only rarely run with a zerg. I like to jump in where needed in what ever fight is going on as well as running supply and refreshing siege.

I know there is a lot of debate over condi vs. power any input on this also would be helpful.

tia

Condi is better roaming, power better in zergs. Marauders is nice, but with decimate defenses and Death Perception you have quite a bit of crit chance on hand and might be better with Valkyrie. Either or really, personally I run my PVE power setup and do well with that (squishier but slightly more damage)

I mostly roam with my guild, and my gear is trailblazer armor with rabid/dire trinkets and rabid weapons. Crit chance is 25% which I am finding works well for me to proc bleeds and sigil effects.

Thanks for the replys. I think I’ll try crafting a Valk and a Trailblazer exotic set and try them out.

Any thoughts on runes, currently using runes of the pack?

Marauder’s is way better than Valkyrie. Valkyrie is horrible for overall stats when you do the math.

Trailblazer’s is very expensive to craft, start with Dire and if you like Dire, you can go Trailblazer’s. If you don’t like Dire, you’re throwing away a lot of money on Trailblazer’s. For the cost of lillies, you might as well just make ascended since it’s only like three times the price of exotic. You might consider mixing in some rabid because many useful things require crits to activate.

Rune of the pack and rune of durability both work in power builds. For condi builds durability still works, but you could also consider undead, krait, or perplexity depending on goals and budget.

Pack is decent for power builds. Again I just use my PVE set so Scholar is what I have, makes for a nice initial bomb. I know some are using Chronomancer runes so they have a few seconds of quickness after their well drop. Strength and Hoelbrak are also decent options.

Anything damage oriented will work nicely. For condi you’re going to be looking at a whole different set, krait maybe, Nightmare/trapper combo, lots of options as well.

I’ve tried Dire, but I liked Rabid better. I got better survivability but it didn’t seem like I was doing much damage. Marauders gives me damage, but health is a concern. I guess you can’t have it all. I was thinking of getting durability runes but they would use up most of my proof of heroics.

What about ascended marauders set with durability runes? I see a lot of people saying there “cheesey?” I’m not going to be starting any 1v1’s out there, it would be just as defense. My thing is I want to be able to get from point a to point b without getting ganked and still be effective defending objectives. I don’t really play the game as the majority of players do.

Golden rule on competitive play: the more people complain about something, the better it must be.

Don’t use Pack Runes. Use Holl’s build for zerging. It’s magic. You can self-stack 25 might and have around 10-15 might almost all the time. Really easy to build up lifeforce too. If you’re low hp and get lucky, drop wells on the zerg, pop into DS and spam #1 or #4 if you’re in range. You don’t need any runes with swiftness duration. With the 20% boon duration from food and Spectral Walk/Locust Swarm, you have perma swiftness.

I personally run full zerk.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vid-Power-Reaper-Bruiser-WvW-Roaming

Usagi.4835:

Don’t use Pack Runes. Use Holl’s build for zerging. It’s magic. You can self-stack 25 might and have around 10-15 might almost all the time. Really easy to build up lifeforce too. If you’re low hp and get lucky, drop wells on the zerg, pop into DS and spam #1 or #4 if you’re in range. You don’t need any runes with swiftness duration. With the 20% boon duration from food and Spectral Walk/Locust Swarm, you have perma swiftness.

I personally run full zerk.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vid-Power-Reaper-Bruiser-WvW-Roaming

:D google’s translate option for the Deutsche is quite hilarious. “if your opponent inflicts a cool, you also caused vulnerability”, “adds an opponent back to shower when you attack them” I need to brush up on my Deutsche though

Sorry for unrelated post, but hey, it’s funny!

Jerus.4350:

Usagi.4835:

Don’t use Pack Runes. Use Holl’s build for zerging. It’s magic. You can self-stack 25 might and have around 10-15 might almost all the time. Really easy to build up lifeforce too. If you’re low hp and get lucky, drop wells on the zerg, pop into DS and spam #1 or #4 if you’re in range. You don’t need any runes with swiftness duration. With the 20% boon duration from food and Spectral Walk/Locust Swarm, you have perma swiftness.

I personally run full zerk.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vid-Power-Reaper-Bruiser-WvW-Roaming

:D google’s translate option for the Deutsche is quite hilarious. “if your opponent inflicts a cool, you also caused vulnerability”, “adds and opponent back to shower when you attack them” I need to brush up on my Deutsche though

Sorry for unrelated post, but hey, it’s funny!

Sehr geil!

For power base, you should try to stat balance towards 2400 power, 40% crit chance, 23,000 hp, 2300 armor, and 220% crit damage. It’s good to be moderately tanky to be capable of eating damage, since you inevitably will, and you don’t need to dump fully into precision like other classes because of the number of modifiers we have for it.

For condi base, the sweet spot that I have found for balancing Rabid and Dire is exactly 33% crit chance. After that, make the rest of your pieces Dire. When playing a “slow burn” build like condi, durability stats go a long way, and by the nature of conditions only scaling off of two stats, you get a lot of leeway in where you put your additional points.

Maybe you should first buy a few cheap exotic sets and try some setups until you find something you are comfortable with. Condi vs Power is often a matter of taste to be honest. You can also play condi in bigger groups and be useful. For condi i can recommend Trailblazer gear to you, the survivability and the damage output is insane, but unfortunately rather expensive.

For reaper, I go zerk armour and weapons, cav trinkets, scholar runes, sigil bloodlust/accuracy, superior sharpening stones, +10% seaweed.

I don’t like pure Valkyrie because it locks you into Death Perception (or you somehow have to stack large amounts of vulnerability on all of your opponents to use Decimate Defences).

For WvW I’d much rather take Foot in the Grave over Death Perception because WvW is stun central and a stunbreaker and stability on 10 second cooldown is kinda nice.

I swap out cavalier trinkets for zerker if things are going easy and swap more cavalier if the groups we’re fighting are tough.

I tried marauder but I think it’s a waste as we already have so much vitality. I think Marauder is better suited to classes with a low initial health pool but want to run almost glass cannon builds.

For small scale, I prefer Rabid or Rabid/Dire mix. Don’t bother with condis in a blob situation.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

I don’t like pure Valkyrie because it locks you into Death Perception (or you somehow have to stack large amounts of vulnerability on all of your opponents to use Decimate Defences.

In a Zerg setting, conditions are flying around so you can bet, particularly with WoS, that you’ll Get some mileage out of Decimate Defenses. More so if you’re using axe (AA stacks vuln fairly quickly). Also consider the minor master trait and Bitter Chill in Spite. Though, as you pointed out, Valk leaves you in a position where critting is conditional. If more vitality is a must, one might be better served by going with Marauder’s.

In my experience, Metabattle offers the barebones of ‘meta’ builds but the gear suggestions on there are god awful (for WvW at least). Sometimes I wonder if it’s deliberate. Necro is fortunate enough to share the highest base hp with warrior. Coupled with DS, honestly, I don’t think vit is really necessary. Seriously consider Holl’s build. You’re self sufficient in that you can maintain perma swiftness, essentially perma 10-15 stacks of might (easily self-stacked to 25 might) and can build up life force very easily and very quickly with Blighter’s Boon. Wells and RS4 can also produce some respectable healing ticks.

Aileras.9460:

So I’ve crafted the damask for an ascended set for my reaper but can’t decide what stats to pick. Currently I’m using marauders (basically metabattle midline build) with ok results so I’m leaning toward that but would like to see what others opinions are.

I only play in wvw and I don’t roam and only rarely run with a zerg. I like to jump in where needed in what ever fight is going on as well as running supply and refreshing siege.

I know there is a lot of debate over condi vs. power any input on this also would be helpful.

tia

Hi

I run default sinister armor with dire weapons, trinkets, back and amulets. Rings I switch out to whatever suits me for any given situation, sometimes carrion sometimes even shamans.

For runes I use cheap kitten old fashioned runes of the krait. Sigils, I use sigil of generosity + corruption in my staff, earth on my scepter and tormenting on the off-hand.

spec is reaper, soul reaping, curses. works great and is very flexible. i can adjust for more offense and utility skill swap for roaming, more tankiness and utility swap for group play real quick and easy, which is largely why I like this build.

Actually, here’s a little something that may help too…

I use Trailblazer’s gear, Trailblazer weapons and a mix of Trailblazer and Dire/Rabid trinkets. I’d recommend using krait runes if you are going to use scepter and focus, and deathly chill trait. However, runes of nightmare and runes of the afflicted would be my main choices instead.

Afflicted runes because they increase poison and bleed durations and you can literally get 100% on bleeds with like 75% on chill and poison from it if you trait right. Nightmare runes mainly for the extra condi removal that you rarely even notice proc’ing.

For a usual condi DPS build I’d go Reaper, Soul Reaping, and Curses like Tongku said.

However, I find that I maybe placed in a party without any guardians and therefore I have to use my own stab and damage mitigation. When this happens, I use Death Magic in place of Curses and it ups your sustain a lot but at the coast of some condition damage.

If you really are in a bad group situation then you may need Blood magic, in place of Death Magic or Curses, but this is very rare and isn’t a choice I expect you’d need to use.

Also be prepared to swap up your utilities and elites as situations may call for Epidemic, while other commanders and situations may call for wells. And while others like throwing disable may call for the use of spectral wall.

So TL;DR…

Use Trailblazer’s gear with Dire/Rabid trinkets. Use Soul Reaping and Reaper spec. trait lines. Change out Curses spec trait line to Death Magic when you need more sustain. Use Curses spec line when you are more worried about condi DPS. Learn what situations you will encounter will require what sort of utility or elite skill and set it up accordingly. A.k.a. if you going to roam you would likely not use wells, but if you’re going to be in a zerg/blob you will likely end up using them.

Thanks for the replies, very informative and helpful.

Update: having much better a time after changing my trinkets to rabid over dire/rabid.

Recap: Trail armor
Rabid weapons/trinkets

Famine.7915:

Update: having much better a time after changing my trinkets to rabid over dire/rabid.

Recap: Trail armor
Rabid weapons/trinkets

What runes are you using?

Traveler for the sake of speed and an open util slot. Haven’t found that I need more powerful runes as of yet.

Famine.7915:

Traveler for the sake of speed and an open util slot. Haven’t found that I need more powerful runes as of yet.

The 25% movement speed is worth so much <3

Think I have travellers on my rabid set. We’re so freaking slow anything helps. I keep locust signet and give up the slot with the intention of switching when needed, but I always forget.
I use warhorn on the off chance it works for a quick escape but it almost always fails. If I’m running in a zerg speed isn’t really a problem but I usually run around alone. Would be nice if we had more mobility.

Might as well ask here as well, what is the benefit of seaweed salad? Someone told me it was the 10% damage while moving, doesn’t seem like that would be that great an improvement. I use saffron bread because I really, really hate being stunned.

Any thoughts on food and also utility buffs?

Well for condi you would just use the highest pizza and crystal you can get your hands on. As for power that can vary depending on what you are looking for. Seaweed salad at least back in the day when we used it on our thieves was one of the most expensive foods, so we wouldn’t get much of it. You keep up the damage boost by never stopping your character from moving. You may even see thieves strafing left and right even while attacking a stationary target. At the time, 10% damage boost was quite significant, but the price was as well. This was all before you could earn decent coin in WvW though.

Thank you for that explanation. I see how that works now. I’m a chef so cost isn’t too much of a big deal.

I run berserker gear, traveler runes in our melee tanktrain. I counter the frailty with Death Magic’s defensive traits (most players seem to go Spite instead). It’s a Power Wells hybrid. I get kicked into Shroud when it gets hairy and as long as I’m not being focused I can usually hit stability (Shroud#3) and Shroud #2 to get out of trouble and back onto our tanks.

It works ok.