Guild Wars 2

So these are the changes we got today:

I think atm I am just happy that GS and Reaper Shroud power skills seem to have gotten a buff. Whether it’s enough or not, I have no idea.

What are you guys’ thoughts?

Been playing Guild Wars 2 since its release and wanted to get people’s thoughts on improvements that we see may be beneficial. I’m hoping to keep it constructive and non-demanding.

I will be posting two to start off, but I don’t want to provide any solution. If a dev were to see this, I’m sure they’d be capable of coming up with a solution.

• Build Switching: A button that allows for your character to swap traits and utilities while not in combat. If it could be extended to also swap gear/weapon sets that would be amazing. There’s not always time between fights to switch everything manually and not every group is patient enough to wait. I know there have been some complaints of what this could do in WvW, but I’m sure the devs have the intellect to figure out a way to limit its capabilities.

• World Bosses during Day hours: Not anything that directly applies to me, but I know some have issues completed world events because unless its peak hours, there’s not usually enough people. Not sure if this is a major issue, but if so then maybe there’s something that can be done about it.

Let see what else we can come up with!

narcx.3570:

Spite goes hand in hand with a dhuumfire build since so much of spite revolves around making yourself stronger by spamming Shroud 1, which I mean, if you’re set on using dhuumfire for PvE, you’re going to be doing a lot of.

Did some testing on this, and think I found a happy medium.

Spite definitely makes a difference on more solo-oriented PvE content. Between the might-stacking and Blighter’s Boon, it seems to be quite good (at least from what I’ve noticed).

I think in fractal/raid groups – especially if there’s a PS Warrior or another heavy might-stacker – BM tends to work better. The might-stacking doesn’t seem to help as much if you’re already capped on might.

Could still be missing something, but your advice was helpful.

I feel fairly similar (at least as far as PvE is concerned).

I rarely use plague or lich form. They lock me out of utilities and I’ve never found a build that fits them super well. Lich Form #4 was good for awhile, but it got changed and that has hindered its usefulness given the lich form’s high CD.

Chilled to the Bone! Is alright I suppose. Still somewhat underwhelming for me given its an elite skill.

I use Flesh Golem the most and that’s only because the active can decimate a break bar. Plus if I’m traited in DM then I get some free condi removal.

That’s purely from a PvE perspective – haven’t really gone into PvP or WvW with my necro

FrostDraco.8306:

What no spite or blood magic? And Death magic is terrible nowadays since the minion nerf.

To be honest, I haven’t toyed with Spite or BM yet since returning to the game, so that’s my biggest reason. Have to look into the changes since the last time I played.

My biggest qualm with Spite was that it mainly seemed to be there just to stack Might/Vuln, which always ended up useless because I’d get full Might/Vuln from those around me. Spite does have some other flat damage increases that may make up for it, I just have to look into it more.

I do like BM and my pre-HoT build used to use it, but I always felt like the siphoning was underwhelming, unless I was using a dagger and wells (which doesn’t seem as viable with the condition damage build).

Could be totally wrong, however. Like I said, it’s been awhile since I’ve played and I’m not quite as in-tune with what works/doesn’t work as I used to be.

Glad to see so many responses.

After more testing, I find it beneficial to actually use BOTH builds simultaneously. They can both be successful with similar stats (trailblazers) and with the right foods/sigils, my armor can provide 100% duration for poison, bleed AND burn.

It would be more beneficial and do more DPS if I had an armor set for each – but that’s not a major on my priority list – maybe once its easier to swap gear sets quickly.

In general, I always have Reaper traited, but will switch between Death Magic, Curses and Soul Reaping depending upon the situation:

Curse/DM – most Dungeon boss fights where it’s a single target burn and curse does more DPS

SR/DM – Anytime there’s a large group of smaller mobs, Dhuumfire can do some substantial damage. Usually use this when I’m not fighting a dungeon/fractal boss or when I need more survivability than Curse/DM provides.

Curse/SR – Usually use this on world bosses. lets me switch between damage types and works if I’m not going to benefit from pets, like some of the world bosses.

First thing I did was get my exotic gear, which has several different options as far as obtaining it goes. I don’t recommend buying them off the TP, but some other options are:

• If you have the karma, buy the set of gear from a vendor in Orr (roughly 42000 per piece). This highly depends on if they have the stats you need.
• Find the dungeon with the gear you desire and run the paths until you have enough tokens (again, depends on if they have the stats you want).
• Craft them (you need 500 crafting for ascended armor anyway. This allows you to make any stats you want if you have the recipe/mats).

From there, it seems like your general direction is FotM. To do this, you’ll need to get agony resistance. I find the best way to do this is to get ascended accessories, rings, and amulet and load them up with agony resistance. Rings can be attuned AND infused, which allows them to hold three separate agony infusions.

Some options for ascended accessories:

• Crafted (jeweler, takes a while).
• Laurel Vendor (I find this the easiest)
• Pristine Fractal Relics (run the non-agony fractals and work your way up).
• PvP and WvW (don’t know much about these, but know they’re options).

From there, just work your way up the fractal chain, craft your ascended armor, and you’ll get your legendary backpack just from that so long as you make sure you do everything required in the achiev.

As for legendaries/gold, the game’s fairly good at giving you gold proportionate to your playtime – although there’s definitely some methods better than others. Make sure you do the standard things that are recommended, like Teq and maybe your dailies.

I actually working towards using Trailblazers on my Condi necro and so far, it’s worked well in all PvE content.

Viper is the standard for condi necro, but for a condi-based build, the power/precision felt somewhat unnecessary. Yeah, the direct damage is a little better and crits do proc certain traits, but it feels so miniscule when compared to the Vit/Toughness I can gain instead. Sure, I’m down some small fraction of DPS, but the extra 10000 effective health keeps me alive longer – which in turn still leads to more DPS.

Trying to find either amulet or ring (ascended or exotic) that has trailblazers stats but I’m not sure where to look.

I know that the Mordrem Loop ring can have TB stats and is ascended, but requires all achievements from Act 4 of HoT. I also know there’s a jeweler recipe for exotic trailblazer’s accessories, but I can’t seem to find them.

Anyone know of any other places to look, or should I keep on looking as I am?

Thank you all for the ideas and thoughts on the matter.

Like some of you said, I think Reaper Shroud is a vast improvement on the normal Death Shroud. I personally like using RS builds because – like some people said – LF generation essentially counts as added healing and RS1 is much faster than DS1.

I think a big part of the stigma emerges from the fact that many people don’t feel they can use Death Shroud viably within their builds. Many other classes (at least from what I’ve played) can fit their specific “class mechanic” to boost any build they use.

It seems like many Necros – on the other hand – feel that DS and RS are useless to them unless they specifically build that way. Otherwise, all they get is a second health bar with skills that doesn’t fit their playstyle.

You guys think this could have something to do with it?

Vitali.5039:

Take into account Blood Is Power!: it’s not on scepter and gain a lot of damage from capped condition duration.

Bleeding not from scepter:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barbed_Precision (crit 33%> bleed)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilling_Nova (AoE chill)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilling_Darkness (blind > chill)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shivers_of_Dread (fear > chill) ..lol trait
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deathly_Chill (chill > bleed)

Will definitely re-run the tests with the full combo to make sure I’m not missing anything – these are minor details I didn’t look at before.

Lingering curse’s duration boost is only towards the scepter weapons skills and not to BiP and other sources of condis, correct? Does it increase BASE duration (separate from actual duration stacking) or does it now count into normal duration cap increase?

All things I used to know, but being away from the game has robbed me of that knowledge lol

Vitali.5039:

Necromancer’s damage come from bleed and poison, you can easily cap their duration for a dps increase and gain benefits from bleeding based sigil, staying in shroud lower your dps (except for 5-4 combo).

When running Lingering Scepter on curse, bleed/poison duration seem to cap extremely quickly and I think that’s where my biggest damage inhibitor is. I could be wrong though, so I’ll have to re-test when I get back online.

Vitali.5039:

Crit chance is useful for https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Barbed_Precision and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilling_Nova (more and more bleed)
and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Target_the_Weak is good with some precision.

For a condi build once you have capped the condition duration your damage can only increase with extra power/condition.

All valid points I didn’t think about initially. Is this damage increase surmountable enough to offset the 9000ish health and 1000ish toughness gained from switching to Trailblazers/Dire – or is that more for completely maxing damage do you think?

Was thinking about trying a dhuumfire build, but want to make sure my damage isn’t significantly lower than my current scepter-focused build.

Questions I have:

• Dhuumfire hits for about 3.5k fully stacked whereas condis from scepter hit for about 3k fully stacked (one enemy, not multi RS1 targets). This doesn’t include utility skills, since I can switch out of DS and use them on both builds.. Do these numbers sound accurate? I tested it on paper and on an in-game dummy and it seems to be consistent, just unsure if I’m missing something. Should I be including utility damage?

• Given that conditions can’t crit (unless that’s changed?) is there any purpose in taking Viper gear over Trailblazer gear? The extra power/precision seems tiny when I can instead have the toughness/vitality for more survivability.

• Same question as above, but for Sinister trinkets/accessories/rings vs Dire ones.

Last time I attempted a Dhuumfire build was pre-HoT, so I don’t know how much has changed since then.

The stigma has always existed, but it’s never amounted to too much (at least during my 4 years of maining one).

When it comes to dungeons or fractals (even the higher tier fractals) I’ve often found that if a group has that stigma, the group is going to have a difficult time clearing content anyway. My best groups are those filled with people who understand its based off skill level, not class.

Raids are slightly different – not because of any stigma but because necromancers aren’t required. You have the professions that are considered “required” like chronomancer and once those spots have been taking in a 10-man group, the rest are filled with different types of damage. Since necromancer can’t compete as well in direct damage as other classes, they mainly play the role of condition damage, which is competed for with engineer and other condi classes.

TL;DR:
Dungeons/Fractals there’s no stigma if the group is any good

Raids are only hard because you’re not a required class and therefore, you have to compete with other classes that may have more damage/support abilities depending upon which part of the raid you’re completing.

My girlfriend is playing ele and she just finished unlocking her tempest. She normally plays the staff DPS, but has been thinking about switching do D/W because she’s seen others do well with it and she likes the close-up fighting style because attunement overloads require her to be up close anyway (I don’t play much tempest, so idk their mechanics super well).

She is working on getting better game-knowledge, but doesn’t know mechanics all to well and I’m worried she’s going to switch and end up dying way more often. I could be totally wrong about that, though – which is why I’m asking for input here.

What are the pros and cons (damage, survivability, overall play-style) of both and if she does switch, should she wait until she knows mechanics better?

Little bit of background – necro is my main, but I’ve felt the urge to play a bit of a more glass-cannon class these last couple weeks I’ve been back online. Trouble is, I haven’t put time into my Ele since before HoT and I’m not up-to-date quite yet.

I definitely plan on getting the tempest at some point – the overload attunement mechanic, shouts and traits seem good – but the staff builds for tempest don’t seem overly different than base ele staff builds.

I guess my question boils down to this:

Should I focus on getting my tempest first because it has mandatory abilities for dungeons/fractals – or will I be fine getting the elite spec slowly and playing normal staff ele for now?

Depends on what you want from a longer-term MMO.

The biggest thing to note about this game is its lack of vertical progression – which is a staple in WoW. I’ve had my level 80 for four years now and aside from getting ascended gear when that came out, there has been nothing required of me to keep my character up-to-date besides changing my trait/skill setup now and again. In a game like WoW, you have to constantly play to retain the highest-level gear and each expansion practically cleans the slate.

Vertical games (like WoW) tend to have much bigger bulges/dips in player count revolving around new content. Games like Gw2 will likely not have those massive player-count spikes, but also won’t have that big dip either. There will always be a group of people playing this for its decent mechanics and its casual format.

Background: Been playing MMOs since 1999 (EQ1, EQ2, WoW) and have been playing this since release. Want this to be my MMO of choice for the next several years, which means I want to find a good group to settle down in (been a solo player up until now).

What We’re Looking For (TL;DR Version):

• Guild that doesn’t care if I’m not online for a couple months at a time.
• Has some experienced players for high-end content, but nothing super-crazy.
• Doesn’t have the “gotta be meta” mentality.
• Doesn’t mind new players being brought to events to learn.
• Guild that’s big enough to do any guild missions/events, but small-as-possible otherwise (better for actually building friendships).
• Our group is mostly composed of people in the 18-25 range (more a disclaimer than a “what we’re looking for”).

What We’re Looking For:

• My days of hardcore, all-night, be-the-best-like-no-one-ever-was have come and gone. I’m older now, I have life responsibilities and the game is not that high on my priority list. There are times where I won’t touch the game for months because of other things in life.
• That being said: When I am in-game, I’m still very much interested in being able to do the raids and the higher-level content, especially once I am able to get the others in the group to the point where they can do so as well.

• After so many years in the MMO genre, I believe “meta” is a myth. I only admit this because the class I play 95% of the time is my Necromancer and – depending on the day – I don’t always play the “meta” builds. If you’re one of those “meta or trash” types, we won’t mesh.
• That being said: I don’t build anything that I don’t believe to be viable. If my build/play-style at any given time is a true hindrance – not just a perceived one – I will quickly change to be more effective. I have 6 level 80s, all of which are only a day away from having elite specs unlocked, and will play whatever is needed as long as I’m enjoying it.

• Some of the players in our small group are very new and still have a ways to go before they figure out how to be competent in the game. We want a guild that is accepting of new players and brings them along to things with patience and constructive feedback
• That being said (see the theme?): I’m totally aware that there are times when experienced players just want to have a get-together and play without the newbie penalty. If a certain event is one of those times, then I will be sure not to have one of the newer group members tag along.

• In my 18 years of playing MMOs, I’ve been in all different types of guilds in different games. If the guild is too small, we can’t effectively complete missions/events/raids/guild hall stuff. Get a guild too big, however, and it becomes this mess and nobody really builds connections with one another. We’re looking for that good spot in the middle where we’re close knit and always talking in-chat, but can still get-together and kick butt.

If you think we’d be a good fit, let me know and maybe we can talk in-game or you have a guild page I can check out. If things work out, I’m more than willing to give your guild a try!

Zania.8461:

PuGs do not organize based on the highest damage or the fastest complete times. They organize based on the current flavor of the month (FotM pun intended) class that can deliver decent results while being as hard to mess up as possible.

This is pretty much the best way to sum it up I think.

Whether it was the “warriors/guards only” meta, the “heavies” meta, the “zerker” meta, there’s been plenty of these switches. What is basically boils down to is people saying “I would rather wait ten minutes for another [insert current meta here] than have to spend five extra minutes in a dungeon with [insert non-current meta here].”

Don’t get me wrong, there are some builds that just don’t work, but 9/10 times it’s totally based on skill-level, content knowledge and each player’s level of enjoyment. Many people who strive to play whatever is “meta” may tend to do worse if they are only playing it for that reason – not because they enjoy it.

I’ll be the first person to say I have no idea how viable this would actually be or if its something that’s worth doing. This topic is mainly just an idea, whether its good or bad seems to be personal opinion given the people I’ve already talked to.

One of the biggest things I’ve heard about in my four years playing GW2 is how difficult/tedious it is collecting T6 mats, especially for legendaries and other crafting requirements. Some people have figured out ways to do it – some had the gold, some had the patience, some just played the game and it happened naturally – many other have a hard time motivating themselves to do it.

That being said, why not make each dungeon give T6 mats as part of the dungeon rewards? It may not be a big amount – maybe somewhere between 5-15 – but it gives a guaranteed way to get them. Those who don’t need them could sell them and get the gold for them instead.

Also, each dungeon could give a different T6 mat, which means you’d have to do all the dungeons if you wanted to get all of them.

Wondering what you guys think of this. I’ve just started playing Gw2 after quite a long break, so maybe things have changed in my time being gone – let me know if you think this could be a viable idea.

When I leveled my necro to 80 (granted that was over four years ago now) I found minions to be the most fun. They provide some CC and damage-soaking that seemed to help out alot.

Once you get to 80 (if you’re even thinking that far ahead) minions tend to die down in favor of other skills depending upon what you do. I still use Flesh Golem and the Healing pet sometimes, but most others I only use on rare occasions.

Necros have a lot of different builds and combinations from minions to super-tanky to condition/direct damage to total DS usage. I would try them all and find what you like – see if you can combine more than one into some wonky super-build.

Lots of people believe that Death Shroud is one of the more poorly-designed special class mechanics of the game (at least from what I’ve read on here). Given that, I wanted to see what people’s thoughts are on how it could be made better.

I would encourage you to think as far out of the box as possible and give ideas, whether or not they are already common thoughts. Not necessarily every idea will be viable (obviously) but still good to brainstorm.

These are things I’ve commonly thought of/heard people might like with Death Shroud:

1. A alternate death shroud that allows you to keep using ALL of your normal skills/doesn’t replace anything. A lot of people seem to want access to the life Force pool as additional health – but hate that they have to be stuck with the 5 given skills and no access to utility skills.

2. Another variant that is more productive for those who wish to avoid Death shroud switching on/off altogether. Maybe a set of skills that can consume some percentage of the life force bar for added effect without having to actually transition into shroud.

3. Add more skills. Have like 10-15 different alternatives and allowing people to choose which 5 they want to use to supplement their build rather than either being stuck with the 5 from regular DS or the 5 from RS

4. Utility skills and healing usable in DS, although many people have already pointed this out as you all know.

Those are the biggest ones. Obviously not all of them are viable nor may they even be interesting to some percentage of people, but ideas are ideas.

Avigrus.2871:

Yeah, we already tried chill based spec – which was nerfed into oblivion – why would we do that again?

Also, we already have lifesteals and they are terrible.

That’s what I meant. Lifesteal that isn’t terrible. Whether or not they could achieve that…is an entirely different story

Idk if I’d want them to have another elite spec that tries to focus on the chill/frost thing. Reaper sorta kinda tried to do that (though not to the extent you’re going for) and it was meh.

If there were a death knight-style class, I think it’d be cool to have it be one that can siphon life with every attack and just never die. They’d obviously have to balance that somehow, but it would be cool.

You’re idea for Death Shroud, though, I thought was really neat. I know a lot of other necros who just use DS for the added health pool, but hate the change in their skills. Having a 3rd DS that ONLY provides access to the life force without changing skills would be cool.

There’s a lot I’d love to see from the necromancer if I could revamp it.

A larger set of viable builds would be nice. I know that in PvE, almost every necro I come into contact with uses nearly identical builds. I would like seeing viability to more tanky lifedrain builds, or minion builds, or DS/RS-focused builds. On the rare occasions I see someone trying out these new builds, they’re usually shut down by the group which makes it hard.

I’d also love to be able to customize the looks of the pets. They all have that same “fleshy” look. It’d be cool if their was an option to switch them to skeletal versions or demonic versions or something.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Lordrosicky.5813:

I hope the next elite spec is a tanky/support based shroud and the new weapon enables this (like shield or focus).

Isn’t the reaper gs pretty tanky?
We have a blind field, lots of chill, an AoE pull… it sounds tankish for Guild Wars standards.

The shroud as well… pretty tankish.
And when you actually combine two sets of utility skills, like shouts and wells, you can get pretty tanky there as well, even supportish.

Not sure about Reaper GS, but the necro does have the capability to be extremely tanky if used right.

At one point I tried BM/DM/SR for its trait lines. I used Axe/Focus and Dagger/Focus and I found that I never died. The lifesteal from BM, the toughness added from pets with DM and the Death Shroud pool/regen provided by SR was ridiculous.

The main dilemma is that it seems you give up a ludicrous amount of damage doing this, which isn’t very useful in a game where you can survive fine with lower survivability & much higher damage as long as you know where to stand and when to dodge.

So I’ve been working on my Viper build that I use for fractals/raids. I have curses/reaper (obviously) but I don’t know what to pick for the 3rd trait line, I’ve heard much speculation from many guildies/in-game players on each one:

Weapons: S/D

Death Magic: Can make minions transfer conditions (rise/Lich Form 4) and “Flesh of Master” trait allows you to tank if need be.

Spite: Vulnerability/Might Stacking (seems bigger in fractals where there’s less people than raids)

Soul Reaping: Allows for Dhuumfire on AA, which I’ve heard may/may-not be better than standard scepter chain. Also gives quicker LF regen and longer DS for survivability?

Anybody have thoughts on this? I’m sure that it differs between doing fractals and doing raids but I wanted more opinion on it.

Last time I played heavily, I used to run a lot of World Events (nearly every one each day) and got a decent amount of gold/mats from them, however this was quite a bit before HoT and now there’s all the new jungle stuff to do.

So which World Bosses are still worth doing for mats/gold/gear? I’ve been doing karka/tequatl/shatterer (with rework) and whichever other boss is the daily, but I could also be running fractals/raids/HoT meta events so I’m trying to get an idea which ones provide more mats/gold/gear altogether?

Randulf.7614:

For viper…2) by a long way imo

of course, if you have the mats to make fulgurite, then I’d suggest using both methods

That is what I had figured.

Is there a new method of collecting gold quickly? The last time I needed to farm gold was before HoT so I’m not sure if things have changed or not.

I currently am working towards ascended viper gear on my necro (scepter/dagger) and am wondering what a good weapon swap would be? I currently have an exotic staff and GS on-hand just incase, but I didn’t know if there was one that did really well as a weapon swap with a viper build.

I mainly use necro for high-level fractals, raids and meta events.

In my free time, I’ve been working on the ascended gear for one of my alts and I’ve decided to go with Viper stats (one of the new HoT stat combos). I’ve been looking at the different methods of acquiring it and I have a question as to whether it would be easier to:

1) Try to gather all the materials to craft them
2) Craft an ascended weapon that’s cheaper/quicker to make, then change its stats to viper with the exotic inscription and mystic forge.

Kraggy.4169:

Eneldiar.9670:

Make parts of the story that are extremely difficult or require others to do and eventually – at the end – somebody gets their legendary.

No thanks, leave entirely optional stuff out of the core story content. Why anyone wants a legendary is beyond me considering they’re no better than Ascended .. yeah, I know why, ‘bragging rights’ (I’d use the ‘e’ word but it’s censored) .. but I don’t mind as long as it doesn’t affect the core content of the game, which is and always has been the Story, by Anet’s own words and designs.

I wasn’t saying that the story related to the legendary and the actual game story would be interrelated, I was thinking totally separate stories – the core story and then an optional story for the legendary. I didn’t want the legendary to be a part of the core story – but they could design an extra personal story – unrelated to the main game – for legendaries.

Shylock.4653:

Eneldiar.9670:

I was pretty pumped when HoT came out and heard about the collectible legendary items; then I found out it still required a boatload of crafting and mat/gold farming. A lot of people were disappointed because it boiled down to the same grind as before.

I didn’t get that. Anet announced a way which requires the same amount of work/costs as before but doesn’t involves much RNG. How could someone be disappointed because Anet did as they said? Anet always said that the purpose of theses collections is to eliminate RNG and not to devalue precursors.

The RNG of precursors was a separate issue – which I am glad is gone – the issue I was referring to was more just the massive time spent farming gold/mats for a legendary. A lot of people take the “just play and you’ll get what you need” approach to getting materials and gold, which is understandable, but the Personal Story would still be a nice alternative – assuming of course that it was difficult enough and they could do with without devaluing precursor as you said.

That’s akin to how I felt, I thought it would be a cool suggestion.

I’m sure that this has been thought of, but I still want to discuss it.

I was pretty pumped when HoT came out and heard about the collectible legendary items; then I found out it still required a boatload of crafting and mat/gold farming. A lot of people were disappointed because it boiled down to the same grind as before. Maybe this has changed as I haven’t even given any thought to legendary items in several months.

It seems like the personal story would be the perfect tool for making this happen – not the regular story but perhaps one you can start once you’re level 80 or reach a certain mastery level – and the quest brings you through different dungeons/events/raids and as the story branches, you begin to hone down on the specific legendary you desire. Make parts of the story that are extremely difficult or require others to do and eventually – at the end – somebody gets their legendary. It doesn’t require waiting until you have enough gold/materials or anything like that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game and I’m not looking for an argument (although I expect someone to say something that implies I’m an idiot lol) but what are people’s thoughts on this? Do others think this would be a nifty idea or have things changed since the last time I played?

So last time I played heavily was right when HoT and Halloween were around. Got my Reaper Specialization and enjoyed it quite a bit, but took a couple months break to be a fat person for the holidays.

Now that I’m coming back in, where do Reapers stand? Ive read that Scepter got buffed and condition builds are becoming more viable.

So my questions mainly boil down to this?
1. For fractals and raids, are reapers now more wanted as condition dmg than straight power dmg or is it still relatively evenly wanted?
2. Is Viper, Sinister or Zerker the better armor given where the Reaper currently stands?

I enjoy playing both a power-based GS Reaper and a Condition Reaper with Dhuumfire and Scepter and all that good stuff, so I’m just trying to figure out where things stand and move forward from there.

I kinda agree and disagree with the OP’s post…

On one hand, I like that ArenaNet didn’t go for the traditional level-cap, gear-increase method because after playing MMOs for so long it get’s really frustrating. There’s nothing like spending a long time getting gear and then having all that time be totally invalidated come the next expansion. It’s the ways those particular games work and as a player you have to suck it up, but I came to GW2 hoping to avoid that and that has been the case thus far.

On the other hand masteries do feel a bit lackluster considering the XP required to unlock the higher levels. For me, to spend all that time having to do masteries in HoT that only affects me in HoT areas just seems kinda silly. Granted it will be to my advantage when the raids release, but when I leave the HoT areas to go do other things its like all my work’s for nothing. Even something as simple as being able to glide elsewhere would be kinda cool and feel like I earned something I can use everywhere else.

Not really me complaining, but more of an observation. I personally was hoping (way before the expansion was announced) that if they did have an expansion they would raise the level/gear, but the new gear would be partially purchasable with the old gear so those who had put the time in didn’t lose everything. They decided to take the mastery route – which I still think is cool – I’m just hoping they add more to it that’s more interesting than some of the stuff they have now, especially since some people are already almost done all their masteries which seems somewhat crazy to me.

I’m sure this has been asked before, but I couldn’t find it so I’m hoping:

I play a reaper in PvE (no PvP or WvW except on other toons) and mainly use him for fractals and will be using him for the upcoming raids. I like GS and RS, so I’ve been using a build (spite/SR/Reaper) with full zerker gear so gravedigger hits like a truck and my other damage isn’t too bad.

I’ve been trying to figure out whether I should continue with this build, or switch to Viper/Sinister and start using condition damage (maybe switch curse for spite since might/vuln are easy to keep up in groups without it). The biggest thing I dislike is that the GS really doesn’t fit into condition builds all that well compared to weapons like S/D and staff. I do like the condition damage RS1 (Dhuumfire) and RS4+poison field (poison cap) but if scepter does significantly more damage I’m not opposed to switching

TL;DR These are my questions, they pertain to fractals/upcoming raids
1) Is there a significant DPS difference between Zerker and Viper/Sinister or is it negligible?
2) If I should switch to condi, should I take curses instead of spite (for groups)?
3) Damage difference between dhuumfire reaper vs. scepter bleeds? Is it significant enough to warrant not using RS?

Like I said, I like using GS and RS but if the damage difference is significant, I’m fine with switching the builds to make my toon more viable cause I have a good amount of fun either way. I could also have a second set of weapons/armor always available but wouldn’t know the best times to switch between them.

Skoigoth.9238:

^ yup, this

Afaik, Lingering Curse e.g. modifies base duration (if it works properly currently, idk), but the % increases from runes, sigils etc. should all count towards the regular condition cap.

If you don’t mind asking, for which conditions are you trying to max out the duration Eneldiar? I’m tinkering on a PvE Viper’s/Sinister build myself atm and I’m also not really sure about runes/sigil choices yet.

My current build is Sinister’s and I had balthazar runes to bring burning duration to as close as cap as possible (for Dhuumfire) but with Viper gear I can achieve the same sort of thing except I can do so with all conditions, which made it seem like a better alternative. Though I don’t use a scepter yet I am contemplating it, although I don’t know how great it is over the other weapon choices.

So if your trying to max out condition duration, would vipers still be better than givers? Givers has an extra 10% condition duration in weapons, but you lose the power and condition damage.

I’m switching from Sinister to Viper Gear in order to get to 100% condition duration (or try to) but I wanted to double check something.

I know that 100% condition duration is the cap, but does that include condition-specific durations? Ex. If I had 85% condition duration and 35% additional burn duration, would my burns still cap out at 100% or go beyond because the burn duration is specific to burn?

I’m fairly certain I already know the answer, but I would hate to make the gear switch without being fully informed.

This is not a rant or a bashing of ANet in any way.

My friends and I have played GW2 since release and HoT has provided some great new stuff to mess with. Unfortunately even though it’s only been a little over a week, we’re getting to a point where we aren’t sure what to do. Not that there isn’t a ton to do in the game, but we’ve done most of what we like to do and aren’t sure if there’s anything we’re missing; hence the forum posts.

We’ve all done the new story-line and found it quite fun, but after doing the meta events for a few days (1 day per each map) it got boring and other than Dragon’s Stand and getting new characters their elite specs, I don’t see us coming back too often (maybe when raids come out, but don’t know how long that’ll be). None of the masteries gained there work outside of there, so it doesn’t feel like we’re earning much for our time.

PvP and WvW have never been a big thing of our group; sometimes we have the urge to do it, but that only happens a couple times a month if that, so it’s not really a reliable source of entertainment for us.

Fractals and Dungeons have been our biggest go-to and though Fractals have been overhauled, it doesn’t seem like there’s any incentive currently to try to get to the higher level of fractals. Dungeons outside of fractals seem to have been abandoned and though they’ve decided to focus on fractals, they did not add any new ones yet (which is okay, hopefully they will).

Legendary Precursor Crafting was something we were all looking forward to. None of us had the money to obtain a precursor nor did we want to really spend that much for a glorified ascended weapon, but the idea of collecting items through dungeons, quests to build your precursor seemed awesome. Unfortunately, it appears from what I’ve heard that it costs just as much to craft them as it does to buy them outright, which is kind of stupid. Opinions aside, we haven’t really pushed forward in that aspect much.

So we collectively decided to approach our brethren on the forums to see what other content we might be missing? We’re not burnt out, but we just aren’t sure what other things (other than farming/grinding for gold/mats) there is to do. We’ve done map completion outside of HoT and we want to find something to do that’s enjoyable and keeps us playing for a while longer

TL;DR, we’re not sure what to do next, so we’re asking for ideas;.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Not sure where this is supposed to be posted, but since I got the thought from playing the HoT content I figured I’d post it here.

I was running Dragon’s Stand and kept hearing the term “hit like a wet noodle” which I know has been in existence for some time, but I think they should make wet noodle skins for some of the weapons (ie. greatsword, sword, hammer, mace, etc.)

Anyone have thoughts? I know this is a dumb topic but I figured it would lighten up someone’s day and who knows, maybe enough peoiple will like it and we’ll get them :p

Pelopidas.2140:

Just for the sake of the argument what kind of burning numbers could a build like OP’s keep up?
Theoretically we could hit 7-8 burn stacks under quickness, and have say 3,2k condi power (might and banner and furious stacks and corruption stacks if gear is viper), and an extra 25% added to all that from vulnerability.
That means 784dps per stack, so 784×8=6,275k dps, and if the dps of the auto attacks is ~2-4k, then we get ~8-10k sustained AoE DPS in fully buffed mode, with quickness. (Im not sure the math is accurate, maybe someone more experienced can do a better analysis).

Its true though, when life force ends you’re kittened. Unless you cast epidemic and watch everything melt, then you are satisified for the rest of the day;)
Dhuumfire imo is more of a pvp skill to burst more as condi, and it could really use a slight buff

This comes from my in-game tooltip.

Gear Set 1: Full berserker (trinkets, armor, weapons) with ogre runes and force/night sigils (power food/utility). 100% crit with Decimate Defense, 208% crit damage

RS AA does 642 – 642 – 1281 damage and the burn stacks last 3 seconds and do 395 damage. Soul Spiral (RS4) Deals 3204 damage per foe and poison for 3204 and poisons each one for 1600 over 4 seconds.

Gear Set 2: Sinister Armor/Trinkets w/ Balthazar Runes. Giver’s Weapons with night/force sigils. Condition food/utility, 100% crit with Decimate Defense, 150% crit chance

RS AA does 466 -466-930 damage and the burn stacks last 6 seconds dealing 2,103 damage. Soul Spiral (RS4) deals 2328 damage per for and poison for 8516 over 6.75 seconds.

This is without might, vuln or other modifiers and does these are not critical hits. Looking at the numbers, however, even the increased crit damage berserker provides wouldn’t bring it up to compete with the sinister version. However, like it’s been stated, you need a solution for when you aren’t in RS.

Anchoku.8142:

I ran Sinister-Mad King for a while but missed the ferocity.

If you run sinister, you have to trait Deathly Chill. Then build for frequent chills.

Does Deathly Chill stack with condition damage? It looks more like its simply a static damage number per chill stack, but I’ve never tested it to find out.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem with these fancy burns builds is that they are very focused on burn. We only have 1 skill that applies burn, and if you take a large hit and get knocked out of RS your dps essentially drops to 0. You have 0 bleed stacks up, and no more poison generation.

You become dead weight until you can fully recharge RS. This could be devastating in a raid where you take one hit by the boss and lose all your dps for 10-20s while recharging RS.

^^This…it is the biggest downfall of the build.

Not that that makes it unusable, but unless you know the mechanics of a fight by heart and have solid maneuvering skills the downtime will outweigh the DPS gains while in shroud. Since scepters deal bleeding this can be somewhat mitigated, but changing armor sets during new fights wouldn’t be bad for learning mechanics…it doesn’t require much switching in terms of the traits or skills, though.

Rirgul.5302:

I’m trying to build a PvE Condi Reaper build, focusing on RS and burning damage – and I think this is the highest possible burn I can get. I threw Sinister in there for the raw damage too – but I’m thinking that I may need to reconfigure the choices when GW2Skills Updates to the Trailblazer and Vipers gear, so I don’t have to use Givers Weapons.

Thoughts?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRQQNBmWD7kZTomGs2GwcTgeTssLYxPxr4XkKMcGWWQnpEQAA-ThhAABVr+DM7PctyPAeCARfRAdDspEMAwBwu7mu1NY8xHf8xHvd3d3d3d3SBYoyK-e

I am testing out a very similar build and these are my thoughts/critiques to try to help you out.

1. If you’re going to be focusing on RS, you may want to try changing one of your weapon sets to generate a little more LF. WH can generate quite a bit in packs of mobs, but otherwise itll be hard to refill it as quickly as it falls away. If you like the weapons a lot I would stick with them, if they’re just their for extra conditions it may be worthwhile to switch.
2. I would take Close to Death for Spite Grandmaster over your choice. Cripple/Retaliate can be out-done by extra damage in PvE (not sure about others).
3. Stacking to 25 might even with just RS1 is fairly easy (especially if you have Herald or Ele with you) so taking Decimate Defenses over Chilling Victory may be a good alternative. The LF gain is nice, but foes that have 25 vulnerability stacks (super easy in PvE) will get critted on every hit, which I believe carries into conditions now. I don’t know how Decimate Defenses’ mechanics work with Dhuumfire, but if all the ticks crit it seems like it would increase your damage significantly.
4. This is more a personal preference, but I like to keep a stack of zerker/valk gear just so I have higher power-based damage when I need it over condi damage.
5. Giver’s weapons to increase condi duration further? Seems to do more for you (based on numbers) than Sinister and it gives some vitality.

Other than that it looks awesome! I loves Runes of Balth and there’s nothing like watching all your burn ticks do their work! :p

Azzumy.7685:

In here is a spreadsheet for DPS calculations.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Reaper-dps-builds

Is there any reason why you use Shroud skill 4 over skill 1? Instead of skill 4 you can do 4.5 times skill 1. This gives more or similar damage from DoT, more direct damage, 4.5 might stacks, 9 stacks of vulnerability and it also generates 2% to 6% life force depending on the number of targets.

How important is the damage outside of Reaper shroud? The time outside of shroud I normally spend on obtaining life force from all non-auto attack skills, healing my health, boon stripping, reviving allies and resummoning minions. This normally already takes up more then the 10 seconds cooldown, not leaving any time to deal non-shroud damage. The only time when I am outside of death shroud is when I am too lazy to keep track of my life force, which I am for most of my time in the open world.

Also keep in mind that Soldier and Dire more than doubles your shroud uptime compared to sinister and berserker. Which might be a downside if you have to boon strip for your party, as I noticed in the fractals 40 to 50.

Before switching to condition, first think about the armor of the enemies you are going to fight. During the cliffside fractal I notice that enemies have very high armor, making conditions ideal. But during the beta the guardian in the raid has very low armor. There are some objects that can that critical damage, but do not take condition damage.

I find that in group scenarios – especially with heralds or ele/tempests – keeping might and vulnerability at 25 is a cakewalk. In these scenarios where might and vulnerability are already capped, I believe RS4 deals more DPS. Otherwise, the might-building and vuln-stacking might serve better.

The damage outside of reaper shroud is not super-important, but with more and more support-style players coming into the fray (druids, heralds, etc.) I feel like being able to damage to the highest extent is a good goal for me.

I used to main soldier’s gear and though the survivability is crazy, the damage doesn’t didn’t seem to be high enough. The power is similar, but the lack of precision or ferocity seems to limit damage significantly. The higher life pool for RS is nice which is why I’ve liked using Valk gear up until now, but it seems to me like the increase in survivability and increased time to kill things ends up resulting in no net change, therefore going DPS feels better for me. I’m not saying that like an end-all be-all, though, I think that the gear is great just depends on preference.

In higher level fractals the mobs/bosses definitely gain some armor boosts whereas in other areas the armor isn’t that high, which is why I’m seeing how carrying two sets of gear goes.

I appreciate the input everyone has put in and have begun testing forms of it…

vanderwolf.7084:

is there any way to do some sort of hybrid form of it?

I honestly really like power reaper, the way it feels, I like power based builds… I like the feeling of hitting hard without my dps dropping due to duration.?

I know some people are saying dhuumfire is still good even without condi damage built in…

but I feel like tiny bits of +1300 damage isn’t worth it compared to how much you’d get if you actually put in Condi damage.

Although I do see condition damage being utilized with both dhuumfire/spinny attack of doom, especially if inside the staff 3 poison field.

that’s like….18 ish stacks of poison on top of lots of burning which I feel like would hurt an enemy pretty bad.

anybody tried Valk/Sinister?

or even Soldiers/Sinister?

What I’ve found is that each side (power and condi) have their strengths and weaknesses (keeping in mind I don’t play PvP with Necro, this is PvE-related.)

As many of you said and from testing, condi builds seem to wreak havoc on bosses and longer encounters where you can build stacks to their fullest. For cleaning trash and simpler engagements, however, the battles don’t last long enough for you to do decent damage or there’s so many mobs that you need the heavy-hitting power side of things to really get through it. The power side is great for clearing multiple enemies and speeding through and it’s damage is still great, but I think RS1 and RS4 with condi build still deals considerable more damage in those scenarios.

So what I’m testing (we’ll see how well this works) is carrying two sets of armor – berserkers and sinisters – with me into fractals and other PvE situations. When I’m clearing trash or running through non-long content I keep on berserkers armor and when I get to a boss battle, I switch the gear quickly to prioritize the higher DPS on the boss. I still have my valk set with me incase I end up being too squishy and need a bit more survivability.

So far this seems to be working, sinister definitely seems to do more damage than my zerker gear in longer engagements, but I can still have the power-side of things for clearing the trash. Any thoughts on this?

Cam Ron.4170:

I want to take advantage of “Decimate Defense” and “Death Perception” (as well as fury from outside sources) which means I won’t need much precision on my gear. I’m thinking full Valkyrie might be able to provide me with a lot of tankyness while doing similar damage to full zerker gear.

Thoughts? Worth getting a Cavalier/Soldier piece or two? Anyone tried full Valkyrie on reaper?

I’ve played Valkyrie for a while…what I find seems to work best is using berserker trinkets (since I couldn’t find ascended valkyrie ones) with a couple crit chance booster (sigil of accuracy, precision food/maintenance, etc.) you can get close enough to 100% crit with just decimate defenses that you can swap deathly perception to dhuumfire, which raises your damage quite a bit when using shroud 1.

As it currently stands Berserker’s/Sinister’s gear can put out more more damage (Sinister’s especially with Dhuumfire and a lot of shroud usage) but you do gain a lot of survivability without losing too much damage comparing outside of shroud. In the end, if comes down too preference and your survival ability. If you feel you want to worry/die less than zerker but don’t want to go soldier, valkyrie is a very good middle-ground