Guild Wars 2

Geomancy applies longer bleeding compared to hydromancy with deathly chill. Usually reapers are taken in pairs to bounce epidemics, so chill uptime should be around 100% even without additional help from the sigil.

BUT, for open world/fractals if you dont want to use toxic focusing crystals you can use setup with 4runes of nightmare + 2runes of the trapper. Then you dont need sigil that gives 10% condi duration so you can either take sigil with 10% condi damage OR hydromancy for better chill uptime (helpfull when you have to solo something, when you are the only reaper in the group or when the boss can heal condis).

Tested maximizing chill proc with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJArYjM0QzN2dDW3AHOWKGs4eYRMJGFAGAdLpRQIoDA-TBiHQBaUJIBV+JgTAA50DAgHAgzWYII7DQP1fIEgi5A-e
The bleeds are sick! You can easily start the fight by applying 50+ stacks of bleeding and maintaining perma-chill for nova procs.
So you can start with burst, maintain around 45+ stacks if provided with quickness/alacrity/both and when rs5+4 are off cd, burst again. With no minions it reaches 70stacks. And dont get me started on epidemic bouncing.

Fractals T4 are literally kitten d.

NOTES: I was testing it with death magic instead of blood magic, and with Parasitic Contagion instead of Lingering Curse just for self sustain, or rather self immortality, so those numbers could still be increased.

Tested on Large target golem 1kk hp only 25stacks of vulnerability.
Self buffs: 25might, fury, quickness, alacrity, vampiric presence, banner of discipline, banner of strength, empower allies, spotter and grace of the land.
No ranger spirits, no other condis on golem, no buffs from reve etc.
http://imgur.com/a/3EdYa

Most realistic 5-man scenario you can get. And with not-optimized traits.

Pregnantman.8259:

Edit 2: OanSur, as far as I have tried and seen Roasted Artichokes do not have a cooldown (%36 chance to chill on crit at night) so they might definitely compete with condi duration food. In addition, Well of Darkness might be worth using with Chilling Darkness now. Sigil of Mischief might be even better than Hydromancy, as it has higher range and applies a free blind with chill.

I was wondering the same thing but:
Chilling darkness has internal cooldown of 3s and it is single target use. So well of darkness isnt really such great option especially when it deals 0 damage. Same goes with sigil of mischief. It can only target 4 enemies (compared to hydromancy 5) and the number of snowballs depends on how many of them are around – facing 1 enemy only=only 1 snowball, which can always miss or be blocked, not to mention that only 1 target will proc chill.

Roasted artichoke is good if you are running content set for nighttime, just like ghost pepper popper. And if you use it instead of pizza you lose 18% condition duration and that is a LOT.

Is that with or without rune of thorns 6th bonus ? If without then going nightmare/trapper allows you to take sigil of hydromancy instead of agony which is another 4s of chill on 9s cooldown triggered on tapping shroud.

Lets take lazy version of the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJArIUKGs4e4QMJGFAGAJAA-TBiHQBaUJozWYAAnAAB8AAIneA6p+DBV+Fk9BIEgi5A-e
With capped 25stacks of might your bleed does 173dmg. Bleed and chill duration capped at 100%, poison and torment at 85%, could be lowered by sinister+toxic focusing crystal but lets focus on most simple version.
Now you have 2 sources of chill outside of rs5, sigil having half of dagger4 cd.
Deathly swarm+sigil of hydromancy+chilling nova is already 11s of chill, before it times out you can use sigil and nova again which is uninterrupted 18s just in time to use dagger4. If you take Quickening thirst trait in blood magic it is even better scenario.
So described above combo is at least 3 applications of chill in short time which sums up with 9stacks of bleed for 9s if done correctly (note that Deathly chill gives 5s of bleed instead of 8 ).
So before out initial bleeding from trait expires that’s 9 stacks of bleed at max from just those 3 procs (we could now use rs2 to provide yet another chill but lets keep it simple). Thats 173dmg * 9stacks * 9s = 14013 (1557 per second). And that is without sigil of geomancy.
Old version of the trait with sigil of agony + rune of thorns untriggered gave us 178dmg and only 2 stacks of it (since the bleeding was 16s and our only chill application outside of shroud was dagger4 on 18s cd, it was possible to trigger deathly chill 2 times from dagger4->chilling nova-> nothing… ->dagger4…)
So 178dmg * 2stacks * 16s = 5696 (356dmg per s) same, without sigil of geomancy.

The difference is huge.
If we include full rotation with dagger4->F1->rs5->rs4 we could apply perma chill.

What do you guys think ?

Dagger requires constant autoattack and is only melee range. Staff allows you to range from Time to time in open world, albo when lava font, overloads and meteors are doing their job you can focus on dodging/staying alive. Burning is much easier to maintain and you can equip trait that gives +20%dmg to enemies below 50%hp instead of fresh air.
I prefer staff but keep dagger in stash for occasional use.

WvW – dead. Spectral wall can affect only 5 ppl so It lost its use even in EotM.
PvP – if you are running scepter you can troll People and corrupt their stability. Note that you wilk be primary target of everyone in the enemy team, and the application is too clumsy and random to be considered viable.

So the answer is no.

Remove revenant entirely. Swap guardian’s virtues with glint’s facets.
JK.
I will not speak about pvp cause i’ve lost the idea on what is going on there thanks to the HoT’s powercreep.

-Virtue of courage should have a trait that gives its passive effect to every1 in party. Same thing with virtue of justice. Making it baseline would be too much i guess.
-Redesign all minor traits in Valor line. Seriously. They feel like crap. Maybe even throw some movement speed over there.
-Remove duration limit on spirit weapons. They are crap in all game modes, at least turn them into equivalent of MM necro. That would be at least fun for some new players.
-Remove Radiant Retaliation trait. It was always buggy and even if it wasnt, nobody would use it because of the other GM trait in the same line which is Amplified Wrath that is simply better. It would also give some love to that spec line since it has literally no good GM traits for power build (who the hell is using any other signet than Bane’s passive anyway).
-Reduce cast time and aftercast on hammer skills, maybe not AA chain cause it is already superstrong, but #4 banish and #5 ring of warding are really painful to use mid-fight.
-Redesign signet’s active effects. Resolve is fine, gives large heal and condi clear on fair interval. The rest of them dont really synergize with themselves. Bane gives knockdown on single target which is really lame (make it aoe maybe or turn it into "increase the damage of teammates by X% for 5 seconds). Wrath gives immobilization (guard is not a necro but if i lose a bonus condi dmg then i want to at least trade it for some nasty condi bomb, like Xstacks of burning+something). Mercy should be a 5-target skill to be considered useful and Courage should have either shorter passive interval or instant active.
-Give us ANY KIND OF SYMBOL for underwater weapon. Be it spear or trident i dont care, just throw me ANYTHING and i will take it.

Sorry if i was’nt specific. I use to play with pugs most if the time and we all know How often there is a whole party of pugs that know what to do. If i want to run with hammer (and i do since i crafted juggernaut a few years ago and cant find a proper way to use it- both revenant and warrior feel really meh with It.) im actually almost forced to spec in honor line. Zeal is a musi aswell so its either dh or virtues. When traps used to daze i could steamroll some veterans in a dungeon. Now It require chrono since guard’s only ale stun is his elite trap. That is why im asking what is more important- utility(virtues) or dps(dh) when you cant really count on other teammates.

Aside from some damage buffs what dh brings to the table now when traps no longer have hard cc? Im trying to use hammer mostly in my build with a little of staff/gs and cant find a reason to get rid of virtues line. The utility is just too strong for me to throw It off.
Consecrations, stability, condi removal, damage per buff. I feel like going dh is reaper all over again with selfish dps and no actual party support.

Avigrus.2871:

But according to A-net we’re performing well across the game. I don’t see any buffs in future patches.

That was stated before the minions nerf… you cant trust ANYONE these days

But really. I’m on that ship aswell. I’ve built my necro with so much love and gold. Not so good in wvw and pvp so i feared no nerf or anything. Then a lot of statements like “necromancer is in good spot right now”, “necro in fractals is not broken, we are working on changing fractals so other classes will be just as good”, “we hear your concerns and we are willing to make power build at least equal with conditions”…

And then minion nerf. Not a perfectly expected and reasonable epidemic nerf – minion nerf. Nerf that nobody expected (yes, yes, spanish inquisition etc.), nobody asked for and nobody likes.
I just hope it is not thief’s S/D situation all over again where all core advantages of the build were stripped only to be added back later in form of elite spec.

“Hey guys, this is our new SCOURGE elite specialization for necromancer, it will allow your minions to be more active during the fight and instead of dissapearing after 30s they will lose health over time. That way if you play well you can actually heal them and benefit from your party support. ISNT THAT GREAT CHANGE?! (the elite spec with NEW minion mechanics will be released along with expansion only for 50$-100$ depending on whether you want additional mini that look like crap or not)”

My advice- dont switch the gear- make second necro for Power build. There was no balance update in this patch so there is still hope for minions comeback since the change butchered the class and excluded it from raids\fractals. It is still good and easy to Play viper nec in open world, but you might consider changing death magic to spite or blood magic as i did. As for the elite… Im glad i made my viper nec a sylvari

Would’nt simple “enter story mode/enter explorable mode” solve it ?
Story mode that can be done in a normal party, with toned down difficulty and mechanics, no achievements other than mastery unlocking, and a low value loot (no chance for asc, 3-5 shards per wing) and explorable would be current raid difficulty, rewards etc.
I for example dont care about leg. armor, nor do i care about challenging content. I like to enjoy the game with guilmates, see a bit of story, get hyped for the next expansion…
Many will tell me simply “Git gud” but i dont suppose that was ever the idea behind gw2 community.

PierPiero.9142:

Now Nades don’t work well with condition setup , bombs neither and FT is not that great

I actually like flamethrower, in wvw zerg fights it is wonderful for pushing and puttig pressure on enemy.

Reaper is probably the biggest easy-mode currently in-game. In solo running it just basically steamrolls everything, making /dance emotes from time to time just to show some effort put into gameplay. It is true, that in low-difficulty content (dungeons) it is better to pick a more burst-based class like tempest, berzerker or some other kamikaze, but in higher difficulty (Raids, fractals) i’ve never seen anyone complain about a good condition based reaper.
Wchich brings us to the actual builds. Best reaper ATM is a condi reaper. A viper reaper to be specific which brings us to some problem for OP.
One cannot simply walk into Mordor… Viper armor and weapons are locked behind HoT content, specifically- Auric Basin. If you’re aiming at exotic gear that is all you need to know. Ascended gear is far worse.
First you obviously need to complete your set of ascended armor and weapons (either craft the viper stat which i dont recommend or use mystic toilet to change stats on previously crafted piece), which is either massive goldsink via crafting or even more massive rng via fractals/world bosses/wvw. Next step are trinkets… and you sir, will not be happy to hear about this.
There are 2 possible asc trinket sets. Those are viper and sinister. Viper trinkets are obtainable only in raids (except for amulet but i will also point that out soon) and you will not be friendly welcomed on raids without them (paradox). Sinister trinkets are “easier” to get – you only need to buy Living Story Season 2 pack from gemstore, and finish EVERY **** ACHIEVEMENT to obtain the trinkets. Later on you can buy a copy of those for bandit crests in silverwastes but only if you finished specific meta-achievement. And some of those are extremely painful to get. Same goes for viper amulet – finish all achievements in last 2 HoT story missions (good luck with migraine and avoiding the kitten rocks/orbs while gliding).
Either way, you need to do some content, sometimes hard one if you want to play as a condi (dont bother with rabid/carrion/dire/whatever stats). If what you said about being new at this game is true then i would recommend a power zerk reaper because it is easier to gear up and still great in pve as i stated before.
TL:DR
Start with berserker power reaper and slowly build up your game-breaking condimachine
Link for berserk build with all possible changes/descriptions etc:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Greatsword/X
And here’s one for condi:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Viper_Horror

Afya.5842:

I don’t see the need of that. Power necro is in decent place in dungeon and probably the easiest build in game for HoT. Every classes have builds that isn’t perfect. Condi war is worse. Condi guard is worse. Yes, in utopia, everything is balanced and nice. But this isn’t. We have a viable build for raid and another viable build for dungeon/open world. Yes, build changing sucks in this game but it is what it is.

Wrong. Power necro has too much survi and too little dps. (i can maintain 100% hp in full zerk in fractals 80+, that is not that much helpful even for rezzing (infusing terrror has longer cd now so we cant interrupt fractal avengers so often)
Condi guard is worse, condi war is worse. Exception is, Warr has a viable ps build for EVERY aspect of the game, same thing for hammer guardian, AND they bring so much group support (banners, might, aegis, protection, reflect etc.) necro cant even compete with them (because that weakness, capped vulnerability and pulling condi’s from allies – not included on any build anyway – is sooo helpfull)
And just to be clear, condi on necro isnt so good. Its a broken mechanic, just like it was in case of burnzerker’s fire fields. Keep your horrors from elite alive for massive bleed stack. I wouldnt be suprised if anet finally made them disappear after a certain amount of time like in case of shambling horrors.
Need more proof how bad we are atm ? We need HoT specific gear (viper) to have 1- just ONE build viable for anything group related, while let’s say engi can pretty much do the same in sinister.
Now when deathly chill was changed our class will fall in ranks even more, not mentioning the loss of one of the biggest “flavors” of the reaper (next time you will remove terror because its unfair in pvp or some other bull, while engineer’s putting 10 condi’s at once every few seconds is legit and balanced).

Making other weapons viable and bring some supportive power to the group.

Axe has the same attack type as the scepter (no projectile) so if scepter gets buffs, why axe wouldnt ? At least give us cleave on #2
Dagger worked best with autoattack spam, but since thieves got attack speed increase, its not even good as that. Add some condition to it or add some other bonus. Cleave on #2 should also serve as a good change, the rest of the skills with boon corruption/condi transfer look solid.
Staff need faster autoattack and marks need to pulse at least.
GS need auto-chain speed increase in exchange for shorter chill duration. Gravedigger need to be faster. make it instant and and reduce the cd by 50% when enemy hit is under 50%hp, instead of removing cd entirely.
Focus skills must be casted faster.

Traits: the broken ones
Spiteful spirit – No idea how to make this trait work to be honest. Complete redesign is needed.
Chilling darkness – remove icd. How many blinds do we have anyway? Never used shadow fiend, dagger #4 on 18s cd, crappy well on 50s cd, and Nightfall, which pulses every 2s.
Beyond the veil – grant protection to party members
Furious demise – same a above.
Transfusion – this is part of the blood magic line. Line designed for healing WHILE IN SHROUD, thus this trait should work that way.
Dhuumfire – Here i will post my wet dream. Let it proc on critical hits. EVERY critical hit. Both inside and outside of shroud (okay maybe that one went too far).
Soul eater. Siphon health with all gs skills, not just gravedigger.
Death embrace – remove health treshold, increase damage to foes with vulnerability.
Deadly strength – increase power based on your toughness for all party members.
Skills:
Lower cooldowns on wells of power and darkness. At least by 10s.
Plague signet – swap with unholy martyr trait (WHY IS GM TRAIT WEAKER THAN STUPID SIGNET ANYWAY?)

Oregon.5673:

I did get the Soul River Glider as part of the bundle. I used it for a while thought it was cool, until I noticed the animation. Little dudes running…. when I first got it, thought it was different, thought it looked like waves. But then I looked at really close, I have not been able to use it since, the figures running now distract me. Prefer the classic looking glider, so switched my characters to that one.

Lol, didnt notice them, but i see them as a feature, not something bad Kinda feels like i can use it on my necro now (human souls trying to run through the river of styx into never-coming redemption… guess that was the theme of that glider)

With Ironclad, you offer both outfit and glider as a separate items (bundle offers immortal weapon skin and some additional bonuses so can’t argue about price), and bundle makes perfect sense since both outfit and glider have the same theme. Same thing with Crystal Arbiter – both outfit and glider were crystal-themed, very glint-like.

But Bandit Sniper pack? Cool assasin outfit, i bet the glider is some ninja-like thingy… NOPE
Soul river glider looks awesome, i would buy it, even for cash just to get something fitting on my dragonhunter, but i dont understand why is it bundled to outfit that is completely different themed.

Like many people, i refuse to pay for something i dont want. I’m sure there are people that want that outfit, but the price and glider are scaring them away.

Sinzaku.2980:

Wintermute.5408:

It’s quite easy to transmute ascended items if you need to, so problem isn’t that big.

If you play power build, go for Berserker. If you play condi, build whatever and transmute it into Viper – that thing is painful to craft proper way.

If you aren’t sure what to build, I’d suggest to go for Viper – while not min-max, it’s a pretty decent power set on its own.

Did u really said berserker ? O_o

#https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Decimate_Defenses

What if he did ? Bers allows you to run solo with constant 100% crit chance thanks to this trait, instead of 4% outside and 104% inside shroud. Also you can add burning to the mix which in zerker gear ticks for 1200-1500/s (depending if you use blighter’s boon or reaper’s onslaught) which isnt so bad.

Raid mentality in its prime. Why do you complain about utility skill that is perfectly fine?
It is not supposed to be damage skill, but defensive one. The damage reduction it provides is in fact, the best in-game. When facing 5 enemies you have the buff from horrors PERMAMENTLY. If less enemies are around you have a few seconds gap but again, 50% damage reduction. If i recall this is like having around 3,5k armor which is warrior with full primary toughness gear.

The cooldown is short compared to duration (base 40s cd and 25s duration) and all you do is complain because of the broken alacrity/adrenaline mushroom combo which allows/allowed to spam bleeding from lich form minions. Now when anet removed those shrooms you people start complaining about perfectly fine skills because you want to turn them into yet another broken condition stacking bombgasm.
“remember when in beta we could have 40+ minions at once ? that was cool”
I’d rather finally see some changes to power damage traits/weapons instead of buffing the condi meta again.

echo.2053:

blue, teal, turquoise are the only colors that matter XD

Celestial white. It almost glows in the dark.

Improvised weapons, joke. Plasma, neat for a SW fan. Merciless, mostly realistic, fine. Timekeeper, hard to find a right theme for that, some chronomancers maybe? Soaring weapons, many agreed they look like something that doesnt belong to gw universe.

But those dominator skins ? Absolutely beautiful! Finaly we get something that look like nothing else in the game. GS reminds me of some gundam style (not gangnam), and the staff, especially with a necro “scythe” coming out of it…

I prefer dagger with various offhands depending on situation. Dagger auto damage is still very good, and it triggers might and vulnerability from spite line much better than gs.
As for the offhands, warhorn is best for group content (either when you need to tag mobs or break cc bar), focus provides vulnerability, chill and lifeforce, and suprisingly, knowing that it is used mainly for condition builds, for solo content i use second dagger as a offhand. AoE weakness provides a huge survivability boost, and with skill #4 able to cure 3 conditions every 18s this is a very comfortable weaponset.

As for range, staff for open world (tagging enemies, break bars), axe for… acually i rarely use axe, but i got ascended one in my inventory in case they buff it one day.

As for the gs – too slow for me. If only auto chain and gravdigger were a bit faster to cast i would consider using them. But right now aside from putting blindfield from time to time, i just dont feel like using it.

Best gs class ?
PvP ? Mesmer – best dmg/utility with
PvE ? Warrior – best damage, utility thanks to Phalanx Strength trait (HoT not required), mobility
WvW ? All. Guardian thanks to mobile aoe whirling burst and pull is good frontliner, ranger thanks to block/evade/rush is good backliner (when you get ambushed and need to retreat), Mesmer can pack a punch with phantasms from range, warrior can… run into a zerg, get stunned and die.

If you like to kill fast and be useful – pick warrior. If you want to kill slow and be REALLY useful – pick guardian or mesmer.
If you are selfish kitten who cares only about himself, meaning kill fast and be a thorn in other ppl kitten s causing massive rage about yet another bearbow who cannot die and keeps coming back – go ranger

“I have everything from home instance upgrades to memorabilia from the war with Scarlet—even a few things I’d thought we’d lost forever!”

I wonder is that also means we will get some items that were not originally meant for gemstore (talking about YOU molten jetpack)

I also want a rifle, with a short-barrel skin. Reaper traits have lot of similarities with horror movies (thats what the devs said), so i hope rifle would get some Army of Darkness inspiration
“Groovy…”

For digging this thread after a year:

Nick.6972:

I was primary a WvW and FoTM player with over 1800 ( playing since first open beta ) hours behind my back. I never played open word PvE and neither did I play Living Story, never bothered to even finish personal story beyond level 20 something, futhermore, I never cared about sPvP.

Then simply dont… WvW is dead. New border maps are a disaster, too big, too much PvE oriented. Eternal Batlleground and Edge of the Mists are without major changes.
Fractals are also the same. Sure, you can now purchase fractal weapons for currency, you can get to level 100 but chance to get ascended chest is more pathetic than ever so what is the point ? My experience, after expansion i was doing every possible daily fractal, no ascended drop – while on tequatl i got 4asc weapons in the same amount of time and doing it only once per day.

If you bother with PvE- new maps bring so much grind it hurts to watch. Meta events take 2 hours to complete and even if you find some good quality map (multiserver magic) then you might just get disconnected or kicked out of the map thanks to the infinite amounts of server problems that were not solved since launch.

Gold earning? All new meta maps give less gold than old fashioned silverwastes farming. Dungeon running ? Nonexistent, since gold rewards were nerfed to the ground. I used to enjoy fast run through some dungeons, a little ac, cof, coe… now you cant find a party for any of those cause there is no profit for doing them.

Elite specializations are good, i’ll give you that, but that brought even more inbalance in-game. Some elite specs feel like they should be implemented into core-class mechanic (talking about reaper and dragonhunter virtues) and some feel like they are just buffind already existing things (berzerker is just the same warrior with more damage but less utility). And dont get me started on revenant… For first 2-3 months rev was OP in both pvp and WvW… People in full soldier/knight/cavalier gear were receiving 12-15k hits from a single blow. Then HoT hype ended and arenanet implemented so many bugs the rev cant even use most of his weapon skills. They called it “balancing” again.

I was playing mostly for interesting story and got nothing after HoT launch. (Main story from expansion was so short i finished it 2 days after launch, no living story so far)
If you were playing WvW then HoT has even less to offer for you, since as i said before – WvW exists now only on 1 map. Rest of it is abandoned.

After Season2 of LS i knew devs are busy working on expansion. I was excited with every single news about the story, mechanics, classes and areas. I knew we are going to get a brand new story and i was happy to think the release schedule would be similar to core game LS releases. We had halloween – nothing new except for a grindy shoulder skin, but i never cared, i was busy with HoT story. Then we had a break until wintersday… no lost shores-like update between… sad but still, i never complained – Anet was working hard on expansion so now they need some rest. Wintersday ended, and i remember when we got first Flame&Frost missions introduced in january. And yet, nothing happened except for some Chinese new year celebrations…

Now it’s february 23 – 4 month passed since HoT release. I was telling everyone i met that i purchased HoT because it will bring new living story chapter shortly after release, i and was so happy that i will finally get to enjoy discovering all the answers to the questions from HoT story. And yet, nothing happened. 4 months after core game release we had 4 big updates that expanded the world experience. After HoT release i feel like we all have been thrown away… Here, go grind some more of these activities you already know from previous years, no word about living story, instead we get news that Anet is working on another expansion. Does it mean we won’t get any story unless we pay for it ? No new content for a year and BAM – here is the expansion for 40$ ?

I used to love the free story from the beginning of the game. I purchased gemstore items for real cash many times because i knew it was the way for the game to expand. Now i dont feel like i’m going to spend anything else than gold for anything. It just feels like ArenaNet team abandoned everything the community loved about their game.
Some of the people who will read this will probably think that im just whining and complaining, but i just can’t keep silent about it.

I’m really disapointed in HoT so far. I was playing for 3 years without being bored, now i’m forcing myself to grind some gatherings and i’m done. My big hope for today’s patch just… vanished.

Aktium.9506:

Tho Volcanus is good too. I wish I could dual-wield them

Hillarious when auto-chaining. Greatsword made by burning lava suddenly covering itself in ice… and it still burns.
If we were to reintroduce Flame&Frost LS chapter that would be a nice joke but it still wouldnt make sense.
My call is Jotun’s Greatsword

Obtena.7952:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Obtena.7952:

I went with T3 cultural. Want a Legendary that fit the theme.

For which race?

Of course I would miss that detail. >< Sylvari

Have no fear, we might get Caladbolg finally.

Why do i have a feeling that Anet is already making a new legendary shortbow/longbow that shoots horrors instead of ponies

Minors:
Armored shroud: I think it should be a simple 5-10% damage reduction just like in ranger’s Wilderness survival line instead of adding toughness
Soul Comprehension: Garbage trait. Change to, maybe grant protection when hitting foes below 25% hp. Give it internal cooldown so it wont be op.
Beyond the Veil: That can stay. It makes sense and is imo reasonable

Majors:
Adept:
Flesh of the master: Again, instead of giving you useless stat in useless amount change it so the minions take some of the damage you take into themselves. Kinda like “Rise” but in weaker form, maybe 2-3% per minion so with full minionmancer you will get 11minions (not qounting lich form and death nova) = 22-33% damage reduction
Shrouded removal: Change to decrease duration of damaging conditions by 33% maybe even move it to Grandmaster tier and double the reduction while in shroud (Note: Relentless pursuit does the same thing with movement-conditions so it wont stack with each other)
Putrid defense: 10% is fine with me. Maybe add increased damage to poisoned foes by 5%

Master:
Necromantic corruption: Instead of sending conditions through you minions into your foes increase the damage for every minion in control. Maybe again by 2-3%.
Reaper’s protection: Cause fear to enemy who attacked you with cc. Make it single target, decrease the cooldown to 40s, increase range to 900 or maybe 1200. Poison enemies when you fear them.
Deadly strength: I like it to be fair. Imo i would change it to “give 150 more power to nearby allies, 250 while in shroud” so we can finally bring something useful to raid/fractal/dungeon table

Grandmasters:
Poison nova: Biggest issue i have here is: Why is it called nova if it doesnt explode? Blast finisher on poison field when minion dies. Downed mechanics is useless. Remove.
Corrupter’s fervor: Move to adept and switch with Shrouded removal as i mentioned before. Change to grant Increased damage by 1-2% for each condition on enemy
Unholy sanctuary: Pulse poison while in shroud. Regenerate health for 200/s if you have enemy poisoned atm.

Perhaps these changes are too OP on paper. Perhaps some of the ideas are too much or they need just small adjustments. These are just my ideas, post your feedback and maybe the wish will eventuallly come true.

lordpathos.1425:

What survivability do you lose without Soul Reaping if you have all the lifesteal from Blood Magic?

Blood magic is unfortunately the only way a necro can play to support a team. All the other abilities are quite selfish in use. Even tho healing from life siphon<Healing from reaper’s “Blighter’s Boon”.

Now Soul Reaping, or Soul kitten line provides you with Vital persistance. Lifeforce decreases slower while in shroud. That counts from both natural degeneration and taking damage. Basically you life force pool is now your second health bar with 50% damage reduction on it. Add minions from “Rise” and mentioned above Blighter’s Boon, go Spite-Soul Reaping-Reaper and you will be the last man standing in heavy situations. Some1 calls you a noob for being tanky ? You ping full zerk gear with strength rune and everyone shuts up.

Now to finally answer OP question:
You can run whatever you like. Reaper’s shroud will work anyway. I was defending Death magic like crazy when expansion came out but finally switched to basic spite/soul reaping. 100%crit chance, perma 25stacks of might, perma 25 stacks of vulnerability, tankiness and self sustain from shroud/rise, Blood magic you get only to feel more like a team player. And its bad anyway.

Actually aside from shroud#1 piercing baseline there were no changes to basic shroud. Leeching bolts from dark fields will heal through shroud. Kk, fine… is shroud #1 a projectile finisher ? nope. Are any of basic death shroud skills any kind of finishers ? nope.

This is a slight buff to reaper shroud, which makes it even better.
All boon corruption changes ? Death shroud vs Reaper shroud:
Can use all mentioned skills ? Check & check
Curses line boon corruption on #2 shroud? Single target (1hit vulnerable to aegis) vs Aoe multihit ability that removes aegis before it applies corruption
Death shroud even fails when it comes to condition application. Burning is better in reaper shroud. Poison stacks with Poison cloud + it adds projectiles. Not mentioning aoe chill field.

WHAT exactly did they do to make DS better ?

PS: Before expansion i was laughing my kitten when i looked at reaper shroud #1 chain and saw “pierces” note xD at least this is now fixed

Dont forget about bugs, stopping progress.

flow.6043:

We are Corruptomancers now!

So useful in PvE… no, wait – that dredge fractal will get wrecked
PvP on the other hand…
1050 Power
1050 Condition
560 Toughness
560 Vitality
Mercenary a bit tankier version of sinister i guess. Oh well, nobody will use power in necro builds from now on anyway so we can go full rabid.
Leeching bolts now heal through shroud. Yay ? those rarely hit anything. Any progress on transfusion not healing ? nope.

Condi reapers have fun, me and my power reap gonna Chill and wait till the next balance patch since this one added nothing to the spec im running.

#WeGeelieve
#RobertGeezus

Guess we can’t have vital persistence made baseline so maybe at least fix transfusion to heal through shroud.
Spiteful renewal treshhold 50% amen.
Quickness on soul eater instead of life siphon.
ANY damage modifier in reaper line.

I promise i will go to church for the first time in 15years if any of these will make it to the game.

If you dont care about mechanics and just want to look pretty kitten- go with RoG. It is also a great elite skill for leveling.
When you have the reaper unlocked then go for shout. Especially when traited.

For the love of…
Unbound is’nt supposed to be moving. AD INFINITUM is animated that way. Unbound is just a precursor-like backpack.

If it is moving for some people then it is caused by a bug

Either staff or axe need to be buffed. Staff need higher attack speed and axe need 1200 range. Axe is especially painful to watch as the focus, an OFFHAND has actual 1200 range while all mainhands traited or not can have only 900.

Jimmy.1476:

I think this trait is almost useless,bcs that 25% health threshold and 5 sec cd.
My suggestion is : Make that health threshold 50% like at other similar traits in spite line,or reduce cd from 5 sec to 1 sec.

1: Agree on uselessness. Especially on bossfights having no condition removal 75% of a fight sucks.
2: That would be a nice and reasonable buff. Lets g further and remove the treshhold completely but make it so the trait works only outside of shroud… Bad idea, too OP. Also the death magic would lose the only thing it is good for.
3: 1s cd? Are you kidding me ? Lets just make necro perma invulnerable to conditions.

Seriously i’d rather see a trait that finally gives us resistance. Maybe make it so if you hit an enemy while YOUR hp is below the treshhold would give you 2s of resistance on 5s cooldown ? Still sound OP to me.

They wont move a finger. They dont care as long as people are purchasing gems.
I made topic yesterday about ppl being kicked from auric basin right before last meta event starts and added screenshot of chatbox (all names were blackened by me) to confirm that it was’nt 1-person issue.

What did they do ?

“This infraction serves only a warning. Additional infractions may award Infraction Points which can negatively affect your account. Infraction points may cause loss of privileges, including forum suspension.

The topic was moved."

So they not only ignore the problem, they remove the topic and act like nothing happened threatening you with ban.

I made a topic about it too… and Anet wonders WHY the forums are more and more toxic. Probably the reason is global warming and NOT the 1k+1 issues with their game.

Dungeons are easy and require nothing but dps. Some are doable solo. Anet nerfed gold rewards and its a +
Some highly expensive and rare items had their droprate increased and the price went down (im looking at you, charged lodestones). Its a +
Collections with valuable rewards were released, precursors can be crafted so all TP prices went down to match the costs of the craft. (Pre-HoT dusk ~2,5k gold, now ~1,1k) +

I’m no money kitten, after 3 years of running dungeons i enjoy doing meta events. I salvage all green/blue garbage, gather all wood/flax/ori/mithril and every 3-4 tarir/dragon’s stand runs i go to my bank and sell all collectibles. Profit: around 60-100g

Cant complain.

EDIT: Oh, and good thing is this is’nt mindless tag-farming like Crown pavilon (Grab a guardian with a staff, run around and spam aoe loot picking) or some other staff from the past. You have to actually participate to get better rewards.

A lone reaper walks through the forest
Suddenly, a wild raptor pack appears
Reaper uses Necrocopter [Soul Spiral]
It was super-effective

When expansion was released i was mostly sitting on Verdant brink and Auric Basin, only after 64bit client was released i managed to stay connected in Dragon’s stand. Since then i kept farming the meta event in order to get all leystone skins. Usually i had 1-2 armor chests every 2-3 runs but lately i had 0 drops from last 12 tries.

Does some1 know the % chance to drop specific pieces and is there any kind of diminishing system that locks the rewards if you stay in same map for too long ?

I did whole collection with necro, weaponsmith 400, no artificier on ANY of my characters. GL

First, get 3 reclaimed metal plates (guaranteed from rare reclaimed weapons – you can buy them on tp if you are not lucky) and buy plated staff on succesful DS map to start machined staff collection.
You need total of 700 VB tokens, 400 AB tokens, 400 TD tokens and 50 crystalline ore (found in noxious pods in DS). Machined staff shaft is guaranteed from chest after killing mouth of mordremoth.
NOTE that it will only drop after you buy plated staff in vendor. Same thing with oiled ancient staff head charging.
Masteries needed are glidning 4, nuhoch 4 and exalted 5. Treasure mushroom seem to upgrade only 1 collection per kill so if you have more elite spec weapons collection you might have to find and kill it multiple times. Auric sharpening stone drops from first mithril/orichalcum ore you mine IN AURIC BASIN map after gettinf exalted 5 mastery. 1 node will drop as many stones as you need for all active collections.
NOTE that you cant sell those stones. To remove them you have to type the full name in a special window for each one of them since they dont stack (for me it was 9 stones :/)

Daredevil scarf and map completion are easy in VB. If you have itzel 4 mastery along with the other 3 i mentioned you can solo complete this map. You need help only with Vampiric beast HP in canopy level.

Bugs in branches adventure is near raid entrance. Its easy to get.
Mystic staff is around 20g on tp.
Grizzlemouth fighting techniques is sold for karma by npc in diessa plateu. Meattoberfest location.
Scalawag lucky coin is rng, you can find it with every class, not only thief. Go to gendarran fields and to the island on a middle of a map. Gather as many pirates as you can and kill them. Coin should drop after killing 20-50 of them depending on your luck.
Silencing down feather is dropped by tengu ONLY in auric basin. Go to first wp and glide to the plateu east from WESTWATCH wp. You can pack 3-4 tengu veterans around the tent there. Watch out for champion – he is hard solo and doesnt have increased drop rate. Just like coin, you should get your feather soon after killing around 20-50 tengu (dont worry, they spawn quite fast).

Available stats are Celestial, Marauder and some crap i didnt even bother to remember.

Current problem with toughness is, the more you have it the less effective it becomes.
Reaper has a really one of the best if not THE best defensive skill which is “Rise”. It cuts the damage we get by 50% both in and outside of shroud. If you want to tank you need good condi cleansing and toughness to get aggro from mobs. Death magic is best traitline to achieve that since it can give you 2500 armor in full exotic zerk. Ascended goes even further.

For cc-bar breaking flesh golem is much better than “Chill to the bone”. It takes 2-3 times more from bar.
You didnt take soul reaping line and yet you go with reaper onslaught. If you take this trait then you want to be in shroud for long time and use that dps increase. But if you want to go with tank then BB should be better.

For hybrid dps with tank flavor i would go with something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdu1JzmQNNY3mg7mA7NYxawkCAhsSWcGMEWCpWBxgJFA-TRSGABA8EAO4EAswBBAk9HiT/AgqvIlSwhU+poKEBAOAII8AgWA-e

For the food you can run with Bowl of sweet and spicy butternut squash soup for dps or Ghost pepper popper/Fried golden dumpling for more might (more lf and health thanks to BB trait). Sigil of hydromancy on dagger allows you to enter shroud already with debuffed enemy (-10%dmg from chilled enemies) and get proper mightstack or fast lifeforce gain.
Tested on DS map, 5 enemies around you allow you to heal for 4500-5000hp within 3s upon entering shroud. Enter shroud- trigger ~3s of chill from sigil of hydromancy, go Soul spiral or whatever skill you want- you are not bound to just aa in order to get might.
3 stacks of might from sigil of str, 3 from food, 15 from trait, 3stability stacks from infusing terror thats 24boons in 3s. Every single one of them heals fo about 200 with world bonuses.

Of course you can go for more toughness but then you will lose even more dps. And dont think that you will be able to just land an easy Gravedigger on any of raid bossess.

Dont listen to that. Dagger is more than just good weapon even after reaching 80. It is more the way you like to play.

For me, gs on necro attacks too slow, in order to regenerate as much lifeforce as dagger you have to be fighting 2-3 enemies, and the only thing that makes gs OP is repeatable #2 Gravedigger with +20% dmg bonus for enemies below (trait in Spite line) 50%hp and 100%crit chance (thanks to Decimate Defenses trait in reaper line- unlocked for players with expansion, once they have enough hero points).

Before you run reaper you wont enjoy Death Shroud (maybe #4 and #5 skills for some aoe) but once you go reaper you want that Shroud to last forever. Then, dagger is most effective both in damage and lifeforce generation.

Also, farming in any kind of map where you have to tag enemies by hitting them is nightmare with gs and piece of cake with dagger. Not mentioning enemies can interrupt your gravedigger, run out of range, evade or blind you. Then it goes on full cooldown and all your dps goes Bye Bye.