Guild Wars 2

Wintermute.5408:

Blood siphons also do some impressive healing with RS2 and 4, due to multiple strikes and life force tanking damage.

BTW, is chill damage really such a big deal for condi build? Or is reaper taken for RS4 mainly?

A combination of condi chill, decimate defenses, reaper shroud 4, reaper shroud 5 being an ok CC, and all the other possible lines being bad. I guess you could take spite instead, but decimate defenses on its own is better than spite.

Starfall.6425:

Ropechef.6192:

rabid is your highest dps option.

rampager is your alternative depending if you need to manage toughness levels for raids etc.

Care to explain why rabid should be more dps than sinister or viper?

Edit: Go for sinister and viper in a way that you reach around 100% bleed/chill with buffood and sigil. Also geomancy should be better than earth if you can stay close to a boss.

AFAIK there is no vipers or sinister back piece, correct?

I belive the best sigil set up is earth in the secepter, geomancy on the dagger, doom on the warhorn. (Somewhere else on the forums it was proven that earth is better than bursting dps wise). The optimal rotation is use death shroud for geomancy procs, and every 30 seconds swap to warhorn, get the doom proc, use locust swarm, wait 9 seconds, use deathshroud for another doom proc, swap back to scepter/dagger, repeat 30seconds later. If you dont have a warhorn, then earth/geomancy and swap every 10 seconds with scepter dagger. Doing scpter/dagger/warhorn with the other sigils is SLIGTHLY more dps and gives you an extra CC, but you’re spending money for another weapon, and its another place where you can trip up your rotation.

That said, you already have a bursting sigil. You probably dont want to replace it with an earth sigil because … money. You DEFINITELY want to replace that earth sigil with a geomancy sigil, because geomancy is amazing.

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.

Just for quick clarification, this is for longer dps / sustained fights (raids / world bosses) as opposed to shorter fights (dungeons / low fractals) correct?

jim.5041:

I have some questions.

I have seen lots of people claiming that condi reaper have pretty good DPS compared to condi engineer or druid. But, when I try to run my condi reaper in Vale Guardian, I only get about 12k dps in green circle duties. And about 15k dps in Gorseval(including epidemic to clean adds).
As you can see above, an ele can do about 18k dps and it’s 20% more dps than reaper.

I currently use all exotic viper armor, ascended viper weapon, viper amulet, rabid back and sinister accessory and ring. Runes are 4 nightmare/ 2 trappers. It’s an cheaper alternative, though.

Here is the question:
If I upgrade my gear to optimal build(change the runes and get ascended viper armor), would I make comparable dps to ele(less than 10% difference)?
Reaper in Sabatha is incredible, yes. But there isn’t any video to prove that reaper have very good dps on Vale Guardian and Gorseval.

I know reaper is way beyond viable in any raid boss. In fact, any profession is viable. Even all exotic gear is viable in pro raid groups. The question is,however, “Is reaper really a good choice and can do good dps compared to other professions?”
I don’t want to play condi reaper just because I like it and it’s “OK”, but because it is a reasonable choice to pick up a condi reaper when the team have all the group utility.

I like condi reaper very very much and right now consider to invest all my ascended armor box on it. But I also have warrior, ele and chrono that need to be geared.
So, if condi reaper turns out to be not a good choice because lack of dps, then opening my ascended armor box for reaper would be pointless. People will be affected by meta anyway. If the meta says reaper is not good enough to earn a spot in raids, then it will be pretty hard to find a group to fight, especially in hard game mode like raids.

Another quick question, rune of thorns is superior than rune of the berserker?

Thank you for reading.

First of all, i dislike video DPS numbers because they dont show a full fight average usually. I’ve been trying to logic out dps with a friend by spreadsheet/numbers but of course that has flaws too. In that, necros do about 14k dps optimally if you assume the jagged horrors die off naturally (17k if they survive forever) and eles do about 16k ish dps sustained against a small target, and likely close to the 20k’s against a larger target like gorseval (meaning, if you were fighting a target with infinite hp, not its spike, or over the course of a 6 minute fight). I…dont necessarily LIKE posting these numbers because they are LIKELY WRONG, but should be CLOSE ish?

That said, yes upgrading gear will provide some dps boost. Eles are pretty high dps at gorseval because hes a giant hit box, but with two necros, double epidemic adds about 1.5k dps to each necro. So can you close the full dps gap? No, maybe not, but you should get very close. But my point is more that they do good dps, they do bring utility. We shouldn’t play necros as if they are only good for surviving.

Also, I am fully convinced that condi warrior is way more dps than necros or even eles. BUT necros, mesmers, warriors, etc, all have a decent role in raids. Epidemic helps make the raid easier for everyone, and you’re bringing high dps. Warriors bring CC’s and immobilize, and again high dps. Mesmers bring alacrity and quickness, etc. So…in that case, pick whatever you want?

I have NO idea what rune of thorns is, so…sorry? In general, nightmare/trapper, nightmare/black diamond or berserker are the way you want to go.

MoC is amazing for PVE and really weak for PVP and WVW. For example, in PVE you can reliably transfer 3 condis using dagger 4 to transfer (its cool down is less than the cooldown of utilities when traited). Generally, i cast Blood is power, Corrosive Poison Cloud, wait for 1 second while the cripple goes away, and then transfer Weakness, Bleed, and Torment which end up doing decent DPS in PVE. in PVP though, taking damage and having to pause for a second hurts.

So, I suppose, yes i would like to see it be better for PVP, but i really LIKE it for PVE?

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

I am new to this game. I picked this class because it looked like it would be fun to pay. I do not have any baggage towards this class such as you described others having (perhaps including yourself?). I will grant you, before I got elite specializations I was slow, took a long time to kill things, and that was okay with me because I am into exploration, crafting, and events, etc. I do not care if I ever am competitive with other classes, I don’t care about the meta, I don’t care about elitism and dungeons, or PvP. This is just my view on things, if people didn’t want to play with me because of a reputation a certain class has, even though the expansion shifted things quite a bit in this game, I just wouldn’t give a kitten. I haven’t had a problem finding people to play with.

I think this is a very different statement than what you made earlier. There is a difference between saying “I like necros because they can be built to have a play style that I, personally, enjoy” and saying “Necros are good in dungeons and provide good dps because they dont go down.” The first statement is all well and good, if you enjoy playing a tankier necro, you go right ahead and do that, more power two you. The second statement is false and built upon faulty logic.

As for necros not being good, thats also false. Necros, especially condi necros, got a huge boost in both DPS and utility and are now certainly a viable class, if not one of the better classes, in most game play styles. Of course, it will take ppl some time to get used to, and time to learn what builds work well in which situations because a lot of these changes are new.

Bysvyken.6235:

Except if you take decimate defenses you can stack a lot of vitality, with 0 loss to DPS (in fact you can gain DPS with certain runes/food).
Except if you’re a reaper and gain a passive 10% damage reduction from chilled foes.
Except if you take blighters boon to heal as you facetank.
Except if you take Rise! for a 50% damage reduction whilst you’re all up in Axemaster Hareth’s face screaming “BWOOOOAH”.

All context sensitive of course, but being able to facetank and not suffer so much DPS downtime can feel pretty good at times

Except, if you do any of those things, except MAYBE the first one, you lose a lot of dps. You should take vipers if your condi. you should never take blighters boon, the other two options are better. except rise is an awful utility unless you’re actively trying to tank and even then its not very good. None of these options are amazing for pve where DPS is greater than survivability. Survivability is not hard to achieve in this game. Although the Berserker gear meta is dead, the DPS meta lives on.

Ophidia Moonstone.2587:

So many people complain about necro’s DPS. I have a question for those who claim others do more damage per second than we do, how much time do these damage dealers spend on the ground waiting to be res’d? How much time do they spend dodging and not doing any damage at all? Probably a good amount of time. I got to level 80 without becoming an effective dodger. Why? Because I so rarely had to dodge anything as a condi Reaper that it wasn’t a skill that I had to acquire. Now that I am doing HoT (many times solo) I have had to become effective at dodging. If you are laying there in a heap, you aren’t defeating any boss.

I am just starting to play on teams within a guild. I am a very new player. I decided to take everything I heard with a grain of salt and experience things for myself because I don’t care if others decide they don’t want to play with me, I would probably get tired of scraping those people up off the floor because they are glass cannons that constantly get shattered. I experience these people all the time when I am wandering around the open world. I like res’ing people. I like helping people, so I am not saying this with a feeling of superiority – but I rarely ever need anyone to fix me, but I am constantly fixing others.

If a guild expected me to explain any of my gearing choices or my class choices to them, I wouldn’t be in that guild. We are all different in that regard, but the guild didn’t buy my game, they don’t pay my ISP bill, and I spend entirely too many hours playing to have a group dictate to me, your mileage may vary.

This is the WORST argument ive ever heard. Necros arn’t that much more survivable in dungeons and open world. One shots will still one shot you. Except for eles, most classes dont go down that often or easily. We have no blocks, everything that every other class should dodge we should dodge (because its often knock backs which interrupt dps) and if you’re taking not vipers or berzerker gear, your dps is falling so far off a cliff that even if you could dps non stop start to finish on a fight, any other properly geared class will outdps you even if they get knocked down repeatedly. This is the WORST necro mentality. Necro dps IS good now with the recent changes, you just have to gear and work towards DOING DPS as opposed to gearing and working towards w/e it was you just described.

Kuurde.5837:

Starfall.6425:

@OP What you have posted is the Power-Build for the Raid. It is also fine for Fractals. It has the two Minions because they are additional DPS and you nearly never need the actual heal.

I would use the gear and the traits you posted and just switch the heal, ulty and probably signet (for run signet) in the open-world. Beside that your build is (on par with) the best builds.

I don’t quite understand the valkyrie gear, why is it better then berserker? With exotic berserker weapons and armor and ascended berserker trinkets I have ~48% crit. Add decimate defenses and I have ~98%. How can Valkyrie which would hit ~80% compete with that?

In dungeons, with other players, banners + fury would but valk at 100% crit rate. BUT THAT SAID i still prefer berzerker, because you can take dhuumfire instead of the crit chance in shroud trait. Berserker is higher dps, valk is still good dps with higher survivabiilty.

Wintermute.5408:

So which one is more fit for his raid spot – power or condi reaper?

I’m not close to raiding yet, but I consider starting to learn and gear condi, becouse I suck horribly at melee range. Yet my guild keeps saying me that condi reaper isn’t that good.

For me it’s a point of no-return, becouse no way I’m making second set of weapons and gear any time soon. So, which one would you advice?

After talking with some people and doing some rough numbers, condi reaper does way more damage than power reaper. On top of that, condi reaper is bringing better utilities. There are way more situations in which you have to drop and go range or transfer conditions than situations where you stand in place and beat things up. So, my personal opinion is that condi necros are amazing for raids and fractals, power necros not so much.

rchu.8945:

hi,

can some of you condi reapers doing raids successfully share some builds?

thanks!

There was another thread discussing the merits of differnt condi reaper builds https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Condi-reaper-build-for-Raid/first#post5846334

Probably worth checking out.

hotfreak.5907:

This all brings up interesting questions. If you don’t have full Viper’s yet (let’s say you have 5 pieces (4 armor and a sceptre), what’s the best approach? I incline towards the 4 nightmare/2 traveler’s runes, but what about trinkets and sigils?

So I haven’t been running vipers trinkets for the most part because i also want to use the same gear set for fractals. The way I ended up doing it was bursting/geomancy/doom sigils (I will likely swap to earth/geomancy/doom after this thread?) and full vipers gear, the ascneded vipers amulet from story, sinster trinkets for the rest of them, 4 nightmare, 2 trapper. still hit condi cap, but you give up a little damage. Did it to keep AR and not have to carry around a spare set of trinkets / gear.

Azure.8670:

I… didnt even know there were viper trinkets? since when?

Exotic crafted, from Tarir

spoj.3175:

Because malice is better than bursting unless its capped. And berserker adds much more damage than bursting because its a condi modifier (it works differently to bursting).

So it makes more sense to go for malice and berserker than it does to go nightmare and bursting.

Pandabro.8743:

Darwec.3784:

Its only at condi cap because you take malice. If you switch malice with bursting, and take nightmare/black diamond over berzerker, The bursting is a little better than berzerker, is it not?

Also, lingering curses applies condi duration to BASE. So the skill it self changes, then you can still stack 100% condi duration on top of that from food, traits, runes, etc.

Geomancy and Earth are really strong in this build. You can put scepter in one slot and dagger in the other and you have a reliable proc of Geomancy every 9 seconds on weapon swap and Earth can add a bleed every 2-3 seconds because you are essentially crit capped. I haven’t done the hard math on it but I think 3-10 stacks of Bleed roughly every 10 seconds is worth more than 6% condition damage.

Ok, that all makes sense. Thanks for explaining!

spoj.3175:

If you are using sinister trinkets then you will want nightmare runes. If you have viper trinkets then you dont need them and berserker runes are better.

Why would you not need them? You dont cap out on condi duration without them (unless you take a malice sigil which, again, i argue is probably not a good choice over bursting).

Pandabro.8743:

Darwec.3784:

So…a few questions about this build: Why berzerker runes instead of 5 nightmare and a black diamond?

It’s because the build is at condi cap. The best way to get more damage is from the Zerker runes. 5 nightmare + BD can be better if you are still trying to hit condi cap.

I currently use 4 Nightmare and 2 Trapper to get 25% condi duration because it’s much cheaper than making full vipers. Viper’s gear is incredibly expensive right now. I’d say the build I’m running is like 95% of the one in that post which is more than fine for the raid.

Its only at condi cap because you take malice. If you switch malice with bursting, and take nightmare/black diamond over berzerker, The bursting is a little better than berzerker, is it not?

Also, lingering curses applies condi duration to BASE. So the skill it self changes, then you can still stack 100% condi duration on top of that from food, traits, runes, etc.

So…a few questions about this build: Why berzerker runes instead of 5 nightmare and a black diamond?

Also, why no plague sending? You only really have one source of blind.

Finally, why suffer instead of plague signet?

Everything else is spot on.

Edit:

Oh i see, you take a malice sigil. I had assumed the bursting + 5 nightmare would be better than malice. (same duration, similar condi damage, higher % damage?)

Also, just a point of advice, if you put doom in your warhorn, you can get the benefits of both doom and geomancy (by using deathshourd as a sigil proc)

Bhawb.7408:

Darwec.3784:

you should have a trait that transfers conditions, along with 2 skills minimum

This is why its bad. These skills are just flat out not strong enough to warrant extra mechanics to mitigate their downsides. In your example, two skills (BiP/CPC) need to, once transferred, have the power of 3 skills. But they don’t, so they are bad.

This depends? Pvp and wvw, yes, these are weak skills. PVE, I am fairly certain they result in higher condi damage than any alternative setups. Transferring the bleed form blood is power is good damage. As for corrosive poison cloud, weakness does less than it used to, but its still useful to transfer.

Zefrost.3425:

Yeah being blinded by using your healing skill is a nice buff.

A) you dont take the corruption heal, take signet of vamp. b) i was talking about having corrosive poison cloud and blood is power and (possibly) epdemic. c) you should have a trait that transfers conditions, along with 2 skills minimum. If you’re having problems transferring conditions off yourself, that’s player error.

Im sorry, how is master of corruption bad? And how are people not taking curses for condi builds? I don’t understand at all, I was under the impression that corruptions and a condi build taking curses and reaper and a third line results in the highest dps condi necro build? The conditions you gain and can transfer off from master of corruption is still added dps, lingering curses is obvious, increased crit chance and 50% fury uptime from the minors…Curses seems pretty ok as a condi based trait line?

On the flip side, soul reaping is terrible for condi builds, it provides nothing except for dhuumfire which is objectively worse dps than scepter/dagger. So…no i dont think the trait, or soul reaping, is at all a requirement for every necromancer build. It only works well for builds that require deathshroud?

spoj.9672:

Yes. I’ve tanked on gorse with both Condi and power. I used death magic for the toughness. So I lost blood. I could have kept it if I went base necro Condi. But I think even with blood you lack sustain as Condi tank. I was very reliant on our druid. Whereas on power I was completely self sufficient as berserker tank (didn’t use death, just had food or toughness infusion).

I wouldn’t recommend it for anything but well coordinated players and a healer that has the freedom to heal you a little more than usual.

Well, I’d be running this with a guild group, most of whom run phalanx, condi warrior, condi engi, or tempest. Im assuming the problem with a condi tank would largely be that the tempests would end up needed considerable healing as well, leaving me hurting for heals, or vice versa?

Has anyone tried tanking in raids as a condi – vipers necro with rabid or some other semi-tanky trinkets? Do you have any advice / opinions?

AndyJo.8794:

A condi Reaper running full Vipers gear is part of my regular raid group. They keep the DPS high even at range and more or less never die. We don’t have to worry about the reaper. He just exists. If a CC bar pops up, he will break it. If someone dies in a bad spot, he will fix it. Just kind of does his thing, no management needed.

Not a bad class at all.

I take my condi reaper to raids and my guild treats me like that. I do my job, I do decent dps while im ranged so they put me in roles where they need someone running around, because i can run around and still maintain dps where a condi ranger or something would have their dps fall off a cliff…good stuff. can be useful in the right parties. Necro’s really arnt that bad if well played, and are, in fact, the best in certain situations.

I find that condi necros are very good in raids, but i also find power necros much less useful. Sure, you can take them, but if you’re having issues with a boss fight, its easy to replace a power necro with another beserker class. To replace a condi necro scepter necro you would have to replace it with a ranger, warrior, or engi since the other condi builds do less damage than a Condi Necro. It’s hard to find a well played condi engineer since no one wants carpal tunnel syndrome, rangers lose a lot of DPS if they go into range, which makes grabbing green circles difficult, and i dont know a lot of people who play condi warrior. As for the second boss, epidemic is pretty amazing.

darianturner.8096:

Interesting build. Do you have any video or guide for this?

No video, the basic play style is that you stay on scepter, and use grasping dead, enfeebling blood, corrosive poison cloud, blood is power every chance you get. Also enter death srhoud and leave it every time its off cool down (sigil procs). If You can, use soul spiral and infusing terror (for fear/chill) while in death shroud. Use Feast of Corruption to apply tormet if you have enough conditions on the target to apply the full 7 stacks. Use plague signet or deathly swarm to transfer conditions off you. Use lich form to summon jagged horrors, then leave lich form. Signet of vamp is just a good heal and provides added dps and party heals when you use it.

For raids I have been running conditions and that seems to be much better than beserker reaper for raids. Same for higher level fractals. In lower level fractals and open world content, berserker seems better than condi. This has been my build so far http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYRn0ICd2gN3AW3Ac4gFjBbKFEDeBx7wh4RM6nFAOAA-TBzCQBHU9HAcEAkmFEqQTwxeQBUZ/gvZ+5daIeoyv7pHZCnShxoEkUAwssC-e

Taking lich for the jagged horrors. If your team is low on CC’s trade it for flesh golem.

I highly recomend using full vipers over any other set. Failing that, sinisters. Ive been toying with the idea of just getting the vipers ascended neck piece, with sinister acessories, and using 4 nightmare and 2 trapper runes. Either way, a full condi dps build is good and all the surviviability you should need for raids. For me, dying from damage is never the issue, its always dying from mechanics not being executed correctly.

Not that im trying to use this tactic, but i have noticed that I apply chill to targets that i shouldnt be in raids. My current belief is that someone is applying aoe chill, and im getting chilling nova procs off the seekers, but I’m not sure.

Lynnie.7213:

Brayzz.6524:

I can confirm ~12k DPS with my condi Reaper and it is much more better than a power Reaper. With Ranger Sun Spirit(yes it is bugged but who cares, icebow was bugged too) I can reach easily over 15k dps in Phase 1 ,after that it drops because of Boss split mechanics. But I can confirm ~ 20k-25k DPS spikes. It is not the whole time, but Im still doing my 12k dps after that burst dmg.

Look on the 2nd screen. Im not using Dhummfire Reaper and no capped Mightstacks in a random Raid. Im already at 20k “burst” DPS and Soul Spiral CD is rdy with only 20 Might stacks, Soul Spiral will push my DPS in a fire field over 25k “burst” dps.

p.s: Im 99% sure CondiReaper > Gravedigger spam. Power necro is ok for tanking.

Agree with you on condi reaper > power reaper, anytime.
But about your damage, seems pretty good if you can maintain that. For how long you can keep the jagged horrors alive? And after they die how much your dps suffer? What is the average there?

They die after about 20 seconds, so you burst high bleeds but then you have cool down for 160 seconds. It’s really amazing for something like high lvl fractals where you burst dps, its astoundingly bad for raids where you have to maintain dps.

spoj.9672:

Focus 5, traited chilling darkness with deaths charge and deathly swarm. And chilling nova. It shouldnt be an issue. With vipers its very long duration chill.

My problem with chill condi damage is taht it doesnt work if other classes are applying chill, which engineers and rangers do. Otherwise i would always take it. I guess i should change my build based on party comp?

Mega Skeleton.8259:

spoj.9672:

You maintain about 1-2 extra stacks with reapers onslaught? The boost you gain is about 1k dps which is the same as deathly chill. With deathly chill both scepter auto and RS auto with dhuumfire are about equal on vipers. But scepter is significantly easier to maintain. And you will always have access to your DPS increase condi skills immediately.

If you dont need blood then dhuumfire is still good because you can get a few burn stacks after a soul spiral. But you should go back to scepter most of the time.

But then again if you take blood you have dagger offhand cooldown reduction. And the group has vampiric aura.

How do you keep high uptime on chills? In my current build I have almost no chilled, I guess if you have spite below 50% you can keep a pretty high uptime without even thinking about it, which is rad, but above 50% what are you using to keep chilled up?

Why stay scepter if RS burns (and melee range) are available? The base damage of all the reaper shroud + dhuumfires is a lot higher. Does scepter damage scale that much better + the 150 condi damage trait? (I need to see what tooltips say when fully buffed!) Also then, what elite specs are you running? (since I guess you couldn’t have spite, blood, curses and reaper)

As an aside, does anyone know how attack speed stacks? If I’m getting 10% from mushrooms, 15% from Reaper’s onslaught, and 50% from quickness, is it all additive? Is it only up to a point?

For reference, this is generally what I run in raids right now. I occasionally swap traits and some utilities depending on what’s needed (might run focus too) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRhG2JNiQ3mYzNg1NAHOYRbwmCAJgDQcEcDGCpGBpgGFA-TJRBAB+v/QGHEANeAAAcEAAA
With pretty much full vipers set, still trying out Berserker’s on my D/WH though. I think I need to change up my sigils though (i use malice on my OH dagger), energy is mostly wasted with the innate survivability afforded by blood + minions and I should definitely take something like bursting or smoldering (if it effects in reaper shroud). Actually a big fan of geomancy on the d/wh, though. It’s nice that it procs when entering or leaving RS.

Im not sure if this is the best way to handle this, but im running a condi build (since it also works well in higher level fractals). This is my current build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYRn0ICd2gl3AW3As3gFjBbKFEDeBx7whYSM6nFAOAA-TRyCQBHU9HAcEAcmyPqs8Q42B4e6BQ2DAYCnCgxoEEA-e

Quick note: With food it hits 86% condi duration. Note: i only use the greatsword at fight start to boot strap some vuln, or to break break bars when its necessary in raids and take a little dps hit.

I’m not sure if this is the best set up. There are features from spite and soul reaping that i want to take, but i feel like i end up losing too much. What i will say is that this set up doesnt work well in Raids if i have to be running for the green circles, and in those cases i drop reaper and take spite instead.

I have found that in raids, projectile absorb is kind of useless so i take corrupt boons for the bleed instead, since i am a condi transfer necro build?

If anyone has feed back for maximising dps for raids for maximising utility for raids, that would be great.

In raids, I felt in no way crucial to the party, but I also didn’t feel like I was holding it back. I did what i could with boon strips until we got a mesmer into the group and then I focused on doing out right condi damage. We plan to try more strats soon involving blinds to take less damage, so i can help with that with plage, well, gs, but so could a thief or an ele. Essentially: other classes can do as well or better, but necro’s arnt totally useless as of now. They bring condi damage, which appears to be much better than zerker damage in raids. They bring useful things like blinds and boon strips. Running blood magic and taking the grand master that ports downed players has saved a lot of lives since i can pull downed players out of AOE’s. Simple things like that to make yourself useful help the raid out.

As for some other points that were made in the thread.

Flesh golem can take a chunk out of a break bar. So can condi warriors, mesmers, engineers, eles… Taking down a break bar is something every and all classes can and should do, we are not unique in this, it is a simple necessity.

I much prefer the signet heal to the other heals because it helps the group and everyone is taking a lot of damage pretty constantly. Anything to help is nice.

I think the best condi build ive found isnt a dhummfire necro, its a basic scepter necro with corruptions, but thats obviously more preference thananything.

I got tired of playing necro for a second, and then i switched to phalanx warrior and realized that its not that necros are boring, i just played through it and turned the class to muscle memory. I do condi reaper in fractals and zerker in open world. I use every skill as a condi reaper, and a good number of them as a zerker, though far less. On the other hand there are some classes that use maybe 2 or 3 skills.

Sure, I guess engineer is more difficult than necro to play, but i also dont enjoy carpal tunnel.

So it seems that the problem was that Blighters Boon was too strong in team fights, but fairly balanced / possibly too weak in solo play, so they removed the team fight aspect and buffed solo play, which is how necro always gets treated. Instead, they should have buffed the numbers for heals received from self-boons, and nerfed the numbers for heals received from other player boons without fully removing them. It’s not as if the game can’t differentiate the two (they basically did this already, boons received from other sources just result in 0 healing instead of x>0 healing).

I honestly see no reason not to take a dagger/warhorn to pve, cast locust before a fight, and then camp gs and deathshroud. That said…you’re only using the dagger/warhorn for locust precast.

I usually run scepter/dagger condi, where i start a fight with gs, stack vuln and drop a blind field, then camp scepter. I use deathshroud for the geomancy sigil procs.

When i run zerker, i run dagger/warhorn UNLESS i am somewhere that i need projectile destory, then i take dagger/dagger and corrosive poison cloud, and then i just camp gs.

Quarktastic.1027:

Nofaith De Morte.1027:

I’m currently running a more balanced, hybrid approach using Viper’s weapons and Sinister gear. I’m running spite/soul/reaper and I swap my specific traits to exploit whatever I can so I can’t give you a rundown there. Running Greatsword and Sceptor/Dagger because that gives me all the versatility in the world as such I haven’t hit a single encounter yet that I can’t deal with. Point blank some encounters SUCK as melee. Or if I want to be more defensive I’ll swap to ranged. I will eventually start swapping in a staff for encounter specific mechanics but I don’t have an Ascended one yet as it is my least favorite skill set. The only downsides now are not being fully ranged and sometimes generation of life force lags for a bit but I get ranged enough and eventually work up life force in those situations. Rest of the time it’s melt face and outlast everyone.

With all that said

I’ll say that if anyone tells you that this version of Necro isn’t viable is extremely misinformed and further is BSing you.

Viable is a loaded word. GW2 is designed with the approach that every spec/profession is viable. But there’s no such thing as perfect balance, and some professions will always be more optimal than others at certain content.

Necromancers are very self sustaining, but also very selfish. Their lack of group support tends to make them less viable in group content, especially in PvE. Granted, a team of nothing but necromancers can still complete any content in the game*. The issue is: people want to farm content for rewards, and demand it be completed as efficiently as possible so as to not waste time. Certain group compositions will always complete a given content faster than others. Necromancers aren’t currently included in that group composition*.

*Current as of October 31st 2015

I agree with this EXCEPT that necros are starting to have atleast some party utility now with recent changes. Still not nearly as much as other classes, but I think it should be pointed out. Taking the little utility we have should be a requirement for every build.

Things like corrosive poison cloud for projectile destory, well of darkness / plague / night fall (if you have HOT) for blinds, and flesh golem for eating hits and decimating stability bars. Yes, other classes do it better, but there is no excuse for necros to not do so.

Sigmoid.7082:

Darwec.3784:

Warscythes.9307:

Why use dagger/warhorn at all? I thought we math’d it out GS auto is similar dps to dagger dps. So stick to GS and switch to RS when you need it and have the second weapon set to be ranged weapon for melee disconnects.

Dagger and GS auto attack do roughly the same damage, but dagger/warhorn gives the added damage from warhorn so it should end up being more total damage, correct?

IGNORE MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS.

GS#4 > Warhorn#5

Yeah, I rechecked a lot of my assumptions and figured out I was wrong about a lot of things. So I’m sorry about earlier. Reaper isn’t as bad as I thought it was.

Warscythes.9307:

Why use dagger/warhorn at all? I thought we math’d it out GS auto is similar dps to dagger dps. So stick to GS and switch to RS when you need it and have the second weapon set to be ranged weapon for melee disconnects.

Dagger and GS auto attack do roughly the same damage, but dagger/warhorn gives the added damage from warhorn so it should end up being more total damage, correct?

IGNORE MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

It’s actually almost identical. Shroud scales off your equipped weapon damage and 2H weapons have 10% more damage than 1H. So while dagger has a slightly higher coefficient (1.33/second) Reaper Shroud has higher effective power. Dagger does deal slightly more overall but unless you’re already maxed on might it’s not really worth the weapon swap and potentially being unable to switch back to GS in time once the target hits 50%.

I think I’m misunderstanding. My argument is that you should stay dagger/warhorn until 50% then swap to gs and spam grave digger. There should be no real weapon swapping. At best, you play the old dagger/x method where you camp dagger/warhorn and drop into deathshroud to use the #5 skill. Once target is below 50% hp, swap into gs and spam grave digger.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

There’s no way to type out math in a way that doesn’t make everyone’s eyes glaze over. I’ve tried in the past and it’s not worth the effort. Just look at it this way:

1) Decimate Defenses is a kittened amount of crit chance boost. That means that a Reaper will probably always have 100% crit chance even in a pug.

2) Reaper self-stacks might really well, again making it self-sufficient in a pug.

3) Flesh Golem and Shadow Fiend together are worth about 1.2k constant DPS and they no longer die.

4) Gravedigger Loop is probably the highest raw coefficients/second option in the game. You are getting 3.0 coeffs every 2 seconds for 1.5 coeffs/second. That’s basically comparable to staff ele with Persisting Flames.

5) Even without Gravedigger, Reaper Shroud is a respectable 2.4 coeffs every 2.1 seconds due to the high attack rate. Most auto-attack chains are sub-1.0/second for damage, i.e. Warrior GS chain is 2.3 coeffs every 2.5 seconds.

So yes, between high stats, high durability (meaning less time lost dodging or defending, or just plain being dead), high skill numbers, and having minions and lifesteal to boot, Reapers hit hard. The only balancing factor that keeps them from being outright dumb is lack of % modifiers (Reaper only has a couple of +5% traits and a +20% under 50% trait, while elementalist has almost double that).

In fact, without banners + spotter (i.e. Reaper has about 20% more crit chance than ele) they break about even while the Reaper is Gravedigging. Without fury, Gravedigger is actually a fair bit more.

Problems with your assumptions: you can hit close to 100% crit without decimate defenses. IF you’re doing dongunes without a phalanx warrior, then yes, reaper is amazing, but I personally am never in that situation, so reaper might is poor. Grave digger is very high dps, that is correct, BUT reaper shroud is surprisingly bad, its actually attack rate is much lower than the listed in the tool tip (due to after cast) so reaper shroud even with traits is lower DPS than dagger auto attack.

Exos.3472:

The problem with the reaper is that gear stats are never distributed to optimize our dps.

- trinkets do not have a pure valkyrie stat, so we can’t stack the wurm’s rune +7% ferocity from vitaly passive as massively as in pvp. [250% critical damage in pvp]

- there is no Power/Toughness/Ferocity with major Power stat, making Cavalier a dps loss. that’s really bad because otherwise death magic (14% toughness converted in power when in shroud) would go wild with furious sharpening stones (100 toughness & +10% toughness converted into ferocity)

I was having fun with my duumfire reaper :
- zerk armor + scholar runes
- sinister trinkets

I decided to switch death perception for duumfire since sinister gave me enough precision with the new reaper trait. Also Worth saying the precision buff is active in AND out of shroud, so its cool.

On exotic armor / weapons & ascended trinkets i could get around 1.7k to 2k ticks of continuous burn and a burst of 1k poison from my spin2win. If i added the raw damage i would get to 8k dps per target, which I thought was respectable.

Then I discussed my results my a friend using a Sinister Engi.

And I cried… and cried… (20k dps)

PS : I believe necromancer’s selling point has always been its survival and still is. The melee version makes sense in high density opponents getting killed and usually outlasts any other melee professions when it comes to facetanking while wearing no defensive stats. This of course only applies to open pve, since in pvp a melee necromancer is a mesmer’s fav target to moa…

I’ve had similar discussions where my condi necro would do about..10 ish k? So it still falls short by far on damage. My problem with Reaper and “melee” necro builds is the lack of utility, which more what parties i am in complain about rather than DPS. Necro’s, surprisingly, have some unselfish utilities and traits now, so i feel REQUIRED to take them, which means reaper is almost automatically out.

Rennoko.5731:

It isn’t a bug, it is just how the game handles non stacking conditions, and I doubt seriously they will do anything about it as the burning/poison fixes took years to get deployed.

The problem is going to be in large fight situations (raids) where people are doing tiny chills often, which will shove your chills off causing you to get few to any damage ticks as the game is constantly cycling in new chills.

I guess ask nicely for your raid to not use skills that chill.

Sad, but ok

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

This thread, please.

Reaper is good DPS. Maybe even top DPS. And being a glassy staff ele with 10k health isn’t so much fun in high Fractals and probably not raids either.

You’re going to have to back that up with numbers.

Just a few observations I’ve made in the past few days: There is a much heavier focus on fractals rather than dungeons now in terms of instanced content. In fractals, even with the new changes, necros are still likely the worst class in the game in terms of DPS and Utility, but they do have a little of both now.

Condi damage is now acceptable in groups, and condi necro seems to do more DPS than berserk dagger/x necro. More over, condi necro can more safely use corrosive poison cloud (since you can transfer it off and not end up with weakness and nerfing yourself) giving you access to one of the best projectile destorys in the game. Plague gives you a fantastic blind field. Adding in reaper and well of darkness situation-ally gives you way more blind fields than is probably necessary. Vampiric presence, although not a SUPER strong trait, gives something to the party, and list rites has helped out quite a bit when things were going badly and people got downed. So necros are KIND OF useful if played well and everyone knows their roles in a party.

BUT, still the worst. Necro still does less power damage than every other class in the game. Necro still does less Condi damage than ranger, engi, guard. Even though necro has some utility now, Guardians can bring projectile reflects/destory and also bring agis and higher damage. Mesmers can bring projectile destory, portals, invisibility, so much quickness. Thieves and eles can bring blinds with more damage than necros, and thieves bring stealth.

So are they viable? Kind of. As long as you’re running a good build and not brining something silly like…minions? You will still be useful and not ruin a party. But there will ALWAYS be a better class that COULD have been brought.

For reference this is the build I run in pve, http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQnNYzNg1NA/NYxYwmSBxgXQ8OcIeEj+ZBgDAA-TBSCABMcSAgW5nV7HAgFEKr/xZ1fq4JAUmSQSBAzaA-e

Ive been running the same (well..similar) build for spvp and fractals. I dont have reaper unlocked in in pve yet, but when i do….

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQnNYzNg1NA/NYxYwmOaxgXQ8OcIeEj+ZBgDAA-TJRFwAAOKAK3fIxDAIaZAA

Sort of a lie. Ive been using the new Vipers pieces. The main reason being Decimate defenses. Chill dealing damage is…nice but probably not overly necessary.

Ive also been doing something just slightly different as well sometimes.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JNiQnNYzNg1NA/N4AXomjdTsEwBIAWg4W3BjAA-TJRFwAAOKAK3fIxDAIaZAA

Dropping Reaper for Spite and taking signet mastery.

In either case, scepter/dagger scepter/warhorn for condi and a little extra damage from locust swarm. Corrosive poison cloud and plague provide fantastic utility. Torment and bleeding deal ample damage.

Kulvar.1239:

The weakness of this trait is that only your chills deal damages.
Only a rework could solve it.

Example

hide spoiler

I/
Apply to nearby foes Deathly Chill (9s)
Deathly Chill inflict damages every second if chilled
Number of Targets : 5 | Interval 5s | Radius 600 | Combat Only
(Allies Chill do not prevent damages)

II/
Skills that inflict Chill deal additionnal damages
(Ticks are lost, Chill duration do not matter)

III/
Skills that inflict Chill also inflict Burning for the same duration
Two stack if target life is under 50%

IV/
Skills that inflict Chill also inflict 2x Torment (3s)
If target is below 50% life, one more Torment.

maybe, but my argument is that in its current state it should still be considered buged.

I’m not sure if this is a bug, but if another source of chill is applied to a target, deathly chill won’t do damage. This may not be a bug because it functions similarly to how old burning worked (if a target had lower condi damage to you, their burning ticks would keep doing x damage, and your y damage wouldn’t start to tick until their burning stack went away). It still seems worth discussion since its kind of bad given that Deathly Chill is a grandmaster trait.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Edit: A better explanation is do we have ways to avoid damage beyond blind, DS and Dodge? Fixed title to be clearer.

We have blind, Dodge, DS, Unholy sanctuary (you still take the damage, hopefully once they change how DS healing works this will be more viable), dodge, one interrupt, and fear.

We have access to a few skills that give protection, but th is is not a hard counter. You take reduced damage, not avoid the damage. Same arguments go with chill and weakness.

Lich form has a knockback. Plague form has blinds. The flesh golem has a knock down.

There is no access to daze, immune, agis, etc.