Guild Wars 2

Still looking for players.

Hey everyone, I’m looking to put together a group dedicated to clearing the challenge motes for Samarog and Deimos. I am aiming to start attempts by Monday, August 7, and go from 6 PM – 8 PM Eastern Time Monday through Thursday as needed until the challenge motes are cleared. Exact times may be up to discussion depending on availability, but the goal is to meet regularly and often to finish the CMs as soon as possible.

The following are strict requirements:

• Kill experience on both Samarog and Deimos
• Knowing the CM mechanics
• Patient attitude

For the second requirement, all this means is that you are aware of the differences between normal and challenge mode. This does not mean you need to have experience doing the actual CM. Just don’t be surprised if you are locked in place when you have to choose your allies wisely or Saul does not appear to shield you from a certain attack.

Right now, I am still looking for all roles for both bosses. DPS professions should be condi rangers/engineers, and a reaper is needed for Deimos as well as a hand kiter.

Please comment below with questions or interests. You can contact me in game at chunx.9521. Party compositions may have to be adjusted if necessary, so multi-class is preferred but not required. Thanks.

Hi, I’m looking for other players interested in joining or forming a static group for the goal of learning, progressing, and clearing wing 4 with the ultimate objective of completing all the challenge motes. I’m a returning player who has generally pugged and finished all of raid wings 1, 2, and 3 and has completed challenge mote fractal 100. I have the following builds properly geared in ascended gear and meta runes/sigils:

• Condition PS
• Staff Elementalist
• D/W FA Elementalist
• Condition Reaper
• Hammer Dragonhunter
• Power Herald

If forming a group, raiding times will be subject to people’s availabilities, but will likely be evenings on all weekdays or weeknights that a majority of players are ready to raid. Multi-class members are preferred, as is actual raid experience, but the only requirements are as follows:

• Patience and willingness to learn and adapt
• Use of discord and mic
• Proficient class knowledge for your role with “meta” build

Out of all of these, the first is definitely the most important. A meta build may not be a skill for skill copy of the guides qT posts, but will either highly approximate them or deviate little from the main essence. E.g. Bringing Rebound or changing a trait to help survive a bit better is okay. Changing into soldier armor or swapping traitlines is not.
You can either comment below if interested or message me in game at chunx.9521. Thanks for reading.

Hey, I would be very interested in joining your raid group if you are still looking for a member. First off, I’d say I share a very similar mindset in that I value both my time and others’, and as such would do my best to keep focused during raid nights and treat the time seriously.

In terms of raid experience, I stopped playing shortly before Wing 3 release, but have cleared Wings 1 and 2 multiple times with 40 Legendary Insights currently. I’m also similarly looking to learn Wing 3.

Finally, I can play all the meta builds and have experience doing so in raids for necromancer, warrior, guardian, elementalist, and revenant. Although they are not raid ready, I do also have level 80 thief and ranger with full elite specialization unlocked, and a level 80 engineer.

All builds I run are the proscribed meta with ascended gear in armor, weapons, and trinkets.

Let me know if you guys are interested! I look forward to joining you guys soon.

Thanks for the help. Sorry to make the thread go off topic, but hope this was useful to whoever sees it in the future. Was just trying to learn more about stuff to add things to the metabattle page for a reaper build and make sure the information is correct. The recent addition of HoT has seen a flood of new build creators who are frankly, sort of lacking in quality and understanding, and I just think its important to make sure when people mindlessly copy from that site, they mindlessly copy the right stuff.

There’s still plenty of people for instance who believe dagger auto is highest for above 50 HP, and pure Gravedigger spam is best for below 50.

spoj.9672:

Yeah if theres a fire field or dark field then soul spiral is a dps increase. Its potentially a dps increase even without. But its very minor. Leeching and burning bolts make it a good skill. Which is always going to happen in raids.

I didnt want to include it in the main rotation because its one of the low priority dps skills. But you are right about your suggestion. And you are also right about them being unreliable to hit. However on big bosses like Gorseval thats not really an issue.

However the reason for gravedigger before nightfall at the start is simply because of the 8 second cooldown. So you can get 2 gravdiggers off as soon as possible before weapon swap. Technically you probably could swap them round which would only result in a very minor difference.

Executioner Scythe is always a dps loss assuming its aftercast is as high as it feels. The only time that might not be the case is below 25% health. But im not confident on its aftercast at all so i wouldnt recommend using it for anything other than chill and CC if i were you. And chilling bolts dont do damage. The field should already almost cap chill so those short duration bolt chills wont really add much due to the 5 stack cap.

Perfect answer. Thanks dude.

So what would be a rotation if you can take advantage of the Leeching Bolts? I was thinking:

Well of Suffering -> Gravedigger -> Nightfall -> Well of Corruption -> Soul Spiral -> Death’s Charge -> Grasping Darkness -> Gravedigger -> Swap for dagger and everything else is basically the same as your rotation above.

This way you won’t ever be stuck using GS autoattack, which it is my understanding is just slightly inferior to dagger auto? The logic of putting the dark fields in that order is just using whatever does the most damage first, as even if Nightfall is used first, there’s still about three seconds before it comes off cooldown when you swap back to GS, so there’s no use placing it earlier in order to combo again with the leeching bolts.

EDIT: actually, I’m sure there’s a way to use nightfall first, combo with a whirl, and then drop wells, and have nightfall back on cooldown from weapon swapping from dagger.

spoj.9672:

Ill try and update my guide this weekend. So i plan to record the rotation for that.

Basically above 50% its as follows:
gravedigger > Nightfall > both wells > grasping darkness > deaths charge > gs auto till gravedigger > swap to dagger > focus 4 > dagger auto > deaths charge > dagger auto > swap to greatsword > gravedigger and repeat.

Obviously your larger cooldown skills wont be available for every swap. But im sure you understand the concept. You are using gravedigger as frequently as possible and timing it with weapon swaps. Using both dagger and greatsword auto as inbetween skills. And using reapers touch every time you go dagger and deaths charge once every swap.

Below 50% its much simpler. Gravedigger spam and use nightfall and wells on cooldown.

What do you think of putting your dark fields down (like Nightfall, wells) before using Gravedigger for the Leeching Bolts (they do around 250-270 I think, though I’m not sure). Did you already account for those in your rotation? Would the addition of leeching bolts make Soul Spiral worth using or would it still be a DPS loss?

I’m not sure on average though how many of the bolts actually hit because they don’t seem to appear in the combat log unless I’ve got something turned off. Is it realistic that all of them hit? Only half? In either scenario, would it be smarter to put down the fields before the finisher and/or include Soul Spiral in the rotation?

I guess a similar question would be, what is the effect of Chilling Bolts if we use Executioner’s Strike + Soul Spiral? Still DPS loss?

No, it does not matter what weapon you are wielding outside of shroud. Reaper shroud weapon damage uses that of an exotic hammer.

You can test this by equiping an ascended weapon and an exotic weapon before going in shroud, and notice that there is no difference on tooltip damage (or single digit difference in the case that the weapons you are using are, for example, berserker, and the ascended version would have a few extra points of power) to show that weapon quality does not matter.

Now there are two ways of showing it uses hammer values. The first is that when you kill something, it will progress the hammer master achievement or whatever its called that tracks your kills on a weapon. The other way is to take the tooltip damage, and backwards derive the coefficient for that attack using an exotic hammer damage value, and you will see that the coefficient will approximately match the one listed on the wiki.

Nice work. I think in the first build, a viable alternative for longer time fights might be Rending Shroud + Augury of Death (depending on how many shouts you bring), depending on what your situation with vulnerability is.

But yea, that spike of Chill of Death and Chilling Nova will certainly help in those short fights, though by short, I mean for fights that I can’t imagine being any longer than a veteran kill, though I don’t have any math to back up this statement. Great in the open world jungle though I feel as enemies are dangerous but shouldn’t last long.

Instead of a tanky variant that swaps out the zerker gear, what about one that drops Soul Reaping for Blood (vampiric presence, vampiric rituals)? This would preserve your Gravekeeper damage while simultaneously boosting the efficacy of your wells, providing group support, and accomplish the goal of being more “tanky”. Plus, you can take Blighter’s Boon without sacrificing significant damage. I feel like this is the much better alternative to substituting in the valkyrie gear, as the latter option means you still have no group support. Also dagger autoattack damage at max might and vuln does even more than reaper shroud auto with onslaught, max might, and max vuln, and it’s only with dhuumfire that reaper shroud pulls ahead.

Therefore, the drop in damage by going with blood has got to be even smaller than going for valk/cavalier.

Orr’s Fall for the Twilight Collection isn’t bugged. There’s an event that runs at the top of Vizier’s Tower, and it respawns just like any other event. Like many other events, it also has a trigger; the opening of the chest at the top. And like many other events, if the event was recently finished, the trigger will take some time to respawn (hence the chest is already open).

When the event has respawned and is ready to be triggered again, then the NPC “chest” can be interacted with, which spawns a veteran risen wizard or something at the top of the tower that you must defeat. After the risen is defeated, a “splendid chest” will spawn, which is different from the original chest used to trigger the event. Looting that splendid chest will give you Orr’s Fall.

So if the chest to trigger the event is already open, either you need to wait for it to respawn, or change maps/overflows to one that already has the trigger ready.

The chest is NOT a chest that is lootable once a day like those of jumping puzzles or open world chest. It is a trigger for the start of an event, which is why it may not always be available for you to interact with.

Matt Stacey.7415:

Posts like these are equal to that of the “20k DPS ele” posts: they are useless. They are misleading and false. Not only is that number not achievable in any realistic scenario, the numbers aren’t even close. Because of these falsified posts people look at 10k DPS as weak compared to other classes, when other classes DPS is actually much closer to 10k DPS than these “theorycrafters” make it out to be. It seems people don’t truly understand how utterly incorrect they are claiming something like engi does 20k+ dmg/second. I don’t agree with everything Nemesis says, but I definitely agree with the fact all these imaginary numbers are pure bullkitten.

They aren’t useless, they provide a theoretical starting point. He doesn’t try to mislead either because he states his assumptions as well, and so of course the number isn’t achievable in your “realistic scenario” because such a scenario doesn’t conform to the assumptions which he adopted and qualified for. His numbers may be right or they may be wrong, but there really is no conflict between his claim that reaper DPS is 18k under ideal conditions, and someone else’s claim that reaper DPS is under 18k in realistic conditions. The only conflict that could arise is through misinterpretation when people try to compare numbers that don’t use the same assumption.

And as a side note, optimal reaper DPS is pretty easy to achieve. It’s literally just reaper shroud 1 spam until 50% hp, and then gravedigger spam until the target is dead. Not even close to the player inefficiencies that come with playing engineer in which it is extremely hard for a mistake-prone person to perform the optimal rotation. And so, at least for reaper, theoretical DPS will be a lot closer to actual DPS than for many other classes.

Gravedigger damage (or any attack value for that matter) can become arbitrarily large for enemies with low armor. Because armor value is one of the sole divisors in damage calculations, for enemies with close to 1 armor, any build’s theoretical DPS would be in the tens of millions.

DEKeyz calculates her spreadsheets assuming an armor value of 2600 (see where she describes perfect conditions in here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Guide-DPS-Elementalist-for-PvE/first#post3436702) and so for the DPS numbers people are throwing around from DnT, we have to remember the 2600 armor assumption. It would be absolutely silly to compare hits on a light target and a heavy target. A build that has 10k DPS on heavy targets (assuming all power) would have be almost 12k DPS on light. This means that with the max Gravedigger Azzumy calculated of 26k would be reaching 30k+ on light, but such numbers are meaningless because the “standard” for DPS calculation is 2600 armor. If those 30k+ gravediggers are to be relevant, and you want to use those numbers to compare reaper DPS, then all classes must have their DPS calculated with lower armor values.

Therefore claims of 30k -40k Gravediggers are absurd and unhelpful. Yes they can happen when your enemy has like 2000 armor instead of 2600. No you cannot use that number to compare to other classes when we say something like “engineer has 18k DPS” because the DPS of the engineer was derived with the assumption of 2600 armor, and for the comparison to be fair, you must recalculate the DPS of other classes with those same assumptions. And then you’ll find that engineer has (making up arbitrary numbers to demonstrate a point) 23k DPS when readjusted, making your 40k gravediggers look a lot less impressive with its 20k DPS.

Your calculations look about right at a cursory glance. If there even are errors, they are probably minor ones that doesn’t change your conclusion that reaper DPS is around 11k maxed.

I hope this puts to rest some of the insane claims around here of 20k+ DPS. I’ve seen people claiming to reach 30k -40k gravediggers on targets not named Operative Brie and that 30k gravediggers must have a DPS of 25k because they don’t understand aftercasts.

Please, we don’t need anymore of these threads. The only reason a lot of us feel Reaper is really strong right now is because we are mainly all necromancer mains who haven’t experienced what it’s like to be powerful by playing other classes. Because necromancer was so bad before, now reaper feels so strong. The reality is that it is great solo, but is still mediocre in group damage when fully buffed, and still offers no team support.

Additionally, if everyone proclaims that “reaper is so strong” and “please don’t nerf,” a nerf is going to happen because of all the awareness and public sentiment that seems to falsely conclude that reaper is relatively stronger than other classes (especially other elite specializations).

It’s called the Streisand Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect) whereby by bringing attention to something you don’t want, you make it more likely to happen. It also sort of explains the mechanism behind “there is no such thing as bad publicity”. Regardless of if reaper is strong or deserving a nerf or not, all these posts that keep implying that a nerf wouldn’t be unreasonable (such as this one) will precisely perpetuate that sentiment and in time lead to a nerf if sentiment is strong enough.

I know by posting here, I’m bumping up this thread, but I’m hoping that anyone who genuinely does not want reaper nerfed (because it seriously does not need to be) will read this comment and refrain from bring any more attention this this (non)issue and let the topic and thread die.

This also happened to me and someone else I was doing this with. Killed Ulgoth and looted the chest, but got “Overlord’s Defeat” (the one for killing the Overlord in Kessex Hills) instead.

This was before the October 24 patch that just went through. It wasn’t listed as fixed in the notes, but I haven’t tested it yet since the patch.

Kneejerk reaction to WoodenPotatoes’ video meant purely for entertainment, followed by an equally kneejerk reaction by a minority on this forum that has resulted in this…

Like you guys have already said, it’s a shame. I do appreciate that we didn’t get any equally kneejerky, ill thought out suggestions by the community for nerfs on gravedigger though.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Zerk isn’t really any better than Valk’s offensively for reaper, though, and Valk gives a ton of defensive stats without actually sacrificing any offense due to decimate defenses. Valk armor/weapon with Zerk/valk trinkets and Wurm runes seems to be best.

You also trade off Dhuumfire if you rely on Death Perception for that 50% critical rate. With 25 might stacks, which is achievable in about eight seconds of autoattacking even with an enemy above 50% HP, you get 750 condition damage which scales incredibly well with the ~5 burn stacks you’ll be maintaining.

And this isn’t even considering the possibility that the optimal damage rotation may be dagger autoattack and gravedigger instead of reaper shroud 1 and gravedigger. Then Valkyrie + wurm damage would pale in comparison to berserker + scholar/strength.

No one knows what HoT will bring. We only have two pieces of evidence to build from right now: (1) the meta for the last three years and (2) ONE raid boss encounter from a limited weekend with beta builds.

In both cases, you want full Berserker gear. No defensive stats. Berserker has been overwhelmingly dominant in PvE for the last three years. Out of the two Vale Guardian kills by The Sickest Guild and Legion of Doom, only Legion of Doom I believe used a necro, and the necro was running full Berserker gear.

Based on the examples we have right now, there is no need for defensive stats, especially on necro. The Sickest Guild had one rabid engineer, and Legion of Doom had one celestial guardian, everyone else was full zerker/sinister.

Also this implies of course that both reaper and base necro prefer berserker.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This is very random… I loved reaper in BWE3… I also loved Necro in the final BWE before the game launched.

Then they nerfed necro in literally every aspect. Before launch necro was one of the best classes and wanted in most beta runs. It wasn’t until launch where it was neutered and stripped of all its power that it became “useless”. It took us nearly 3 years to recover from that, and we STILL struggle to convince people we are worth a slot in a party.

Reaper is now following the exact same pattern. Got better and better in all 3 BWE’s and is considered one of the better specs prior to launch… then radio silence… Just don’t be surprised if you see things like: gravedigger given 20s CD and damage reduced by 90%. That’s what happened at launch with necro and it looks like it is going the same way so far for reaper.

Why is Reaper considered one of the better specs prior to launch again? Okay, probably because it improves upon necromancer in many significant ways while having an awesome theme and being extremely fun to play.

And then you realize that it only seems good because base necromancer is so bad. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most underwhelming base classes (necromancer, ranger, perhaps mesmer) got what most people considered the most attractive elite specializations, and then the good base classes (warrior, elementalist, and guardian) got pretty underwhelming elite specializations to most people. There simply was that much room to improve, and the perspective you come from matters.

And then when you look at Reaper’s bottom-tier group DPS and its lack of group support (by today’s PvE meta standards since we don’t have anything else to base off of), and compare it to existing classes and what we have now, there really is nothing going for reaper except that it’s fun. Certainly, being fun is an incredible plus, but I really wish that people wouldn’t exaggerate their gravediggers and claim upwards of 20k DPS, because it propagates misconceptions and prevents problems from being identified and fixed.

If we as a community keep going on about how “OP” reaper is or feels to us, and keep referencing nerfs out of a false feeling of complacency and self-righteousness (admitting that our class is “OP” and feeling mature about suggesting “reasonable” tone-downs), we are actually going to get nerfed as a result of knee jerk reactions. I mean, come on, the game isn’t even out yet and I see a ton of necros advancing theories about what will be and should be nerfed. How can anyone confidently make those suggestions when neither analysis of the facts or empirical testing (because the game isn’t even out!) can support them?

Also not directing this at you, because you aren’t the one saying “Reaper OP, must nerf”. Just addressing the general complacency, and those who sometime don’t look at things in perspective.

What makes you think that Reaper is too powerful? Have you tried out the other professions yet?

I’ll agree that Reaper feels powerful, but that’s in comparison to base necromancer, which has objectively been, on average, the worse profession in PvE through this game’s life.

And even now as HoT nears, Reaper DPS is to my knowledge still towards the bottom of the list. In groups, I can only see Reaper out-DPSing perhaps mesmer and druid, and then when you look at those professions they add so much extra group DPS that the fact that their personal DPS is a bit lower than Reaper is irrelevant.

Bottom line is, because Reaper is so self-sufficient and so high personal DPS, it is balanced out by the fact that it has terrible group support and has terrible group DPS. Why would you ever think that Reaper is too powerful unless you haven’t had experience outside of necromancer? More likely what I think is going on to people who think Reaper is strong is being misled by framing effects/money illusion effect where we see big numbers and mistake them for high DPS.

Kitty La Boom Boom.4065:

I’m one of those that actually appreciates Healing Power. I always have Blood slotted for support and survivability, and RS 4 seems to be even more effective than DS 4.
I also love to set things on fire, so Dhuumfire is also always slotted.

What I’m looking for is gear that will serve me well, regardless of what type of build I feel like playing on any given day.
Burning down mobs is fun, but so is rushing into the middle of melee to provide an AoE heal, or quickly rez downed players.
It’s also a blast to run around with my own little Army of Darkness, lol.

While I do want to emphasize again that no one knows for sure what is coming, and that if content continues as it has right now full offense is the best, if there is ever a need for survivability, celestial would be my number one choice and it sounds like you’re pretty set on it as well.

Probably should start charging those quartz crystals every day then. If I remember correct it takes a month of time gated materials to craft a full set of celestial.

The truly honest answer is that no one knows for sure and we can only speculate about the usefulness of gear types. There really is no right answer anyone on this board can offer you.

If you just want the opinions of people, then I can offer mine at least. In PvE as we know it in the current game right now, there is no incentive for any stats other than Berserker or Sinister, so I’m assuming the only reason you would not choose one of those two combinations is for the added survivability for the expected needing of that survivability for raids.

And in that regard, I would definitely put Celestial stats as the next best set of gear after Berserker and Sinister. Simply due to the fact that Celestial has the overall greatest number of added stats (total number of stats ascended celestial gear adds is 4473 as compared to 3302 of any other stat combination), it is by far the most efficient stat combination when trading additional power for additional survivability. Even if you discount the value of healing power (as people sometimes do for some reason) and considered it as literally worthless, celestial still gives about 500 more stat points than other sets. Condition damage is easily utilized with Dhuumfire, which is optimal to take anyway as you will overkill on critical chance otherwise.

I only boost Celestial up so much because almost everyone who is not planning on running zerker/sinister is touting Valkyrie as the new go-to set, with the argument that taking two traits will max out your crit chance and so after that, it’s best to take an additional defensive line, because there’s no more meaningful way to boost their damage.

What they fail to realize is that taking Death Perception forgoes Dhuumfire, and they either fail to account for this opportunity cost, or they fail realize just how powerful Dhuumfire is. With 0 condition damage and 25 might/vuln stacks (which is easily reached in reaper shroud) and reaper shroud 1 spam with onslaught, you can maintain 5-6 stacks of burning indefinitely, resulting in about 1500-1700 extra damage per second. And so if you are looking to maximize damage, it makes no sense to take Valkyrie with Death Perception because (1) your Gravediggers will not hit as strong as often and (2) you lose Dhuumfire. And so Berserkers w/ Dhuumfire >>> Valkyrie damage.

Then the only rationale is that Valkyrie is an optimal tradeoff of damage for additional survivability, which is clearly also false because Celestial exists as a clear winner in terms of total stat points and usage of every stat point (because you can efficiently utilize condition damage with Dhuumfire) even if the usefulness of healing power is discounted (meaning, you don’t value healing power). You could point out that vitality synergizes well with with life force, because more vitality increases your life force pool, therefore increasing the “life” you have while in Death Shroud. This should be a “duh” thing instead of a feature of vitality; vitality is the stat that increases your life pool, whether its a round red orb or a green bar. That argument literally works with every single stat – “Death Shroud benefits from toughness because additional toughness increases your toughness in Death Shroud!”, “Death Shroud benefits from power because additional power increases your damage in Death Shroud!”, etc. The other thing is that life force decreases and increases at a percentage rate, so the total is largely irrelevant for how long you can stay in it. More vitality will allow you to stay in Death Shroud longer due to a larger life force bar, but so will toughness because toughness will decrease the damage you take… Therefore there is no special synergy between Death Shroud/Reaper Shroud and vitality that other stats don’t also have.

I would even go as far to say that Celestial + Dhuumfire outdamages Valkyrie + Death Perception, but I don’t have right math to back it up right now. But just a feeling either way.

tl;dr: No one knows for sure, so it’s a waste of time asking until the game is released. If you value maximizing damage above all, your best bet right now is Berserkers. If you want some more defense, definitely Celestial with Dhuumfire. Valkyrie is entirely overrated.

As a lot of people have stated, shambling horrors even in huge numbers aren’t powerful at all and wouldn’t make necromancer overpowered even if you had like 10 up in WvW or PvE. Yes, to hypothetically constantly have 10 up in PvP would be pretty strong, but that is an unrealistic possibility.

The simple reality is Rise isn’t that strong, and even when you have 6 constantly rolling isn’t that strong. Why are we suggesting nerfs on a profession that is already at the bottom and is still struggling to maintain relevancy? Honestly, this is all just an overreaction to Wooden Potato’s video and the situation that allowed him to get such a large number of minions literally cannot happen anywhere else in the game but in the PvP lobby. Minion masters have also been able to maintain 6+ jagged horrors for a while now in full clerics, and only now is there this hype over having more than 5 minions.

Terra.8571:

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Narenek.9085:

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So a few clarifications:
1. For celestial and sinister, I used superior runes of Balthazar as I found that they were better than flame legion for builds that more emphasized conditions damage . That’s why a rune modifier is missing for those calcs. For Valkyrie I assumed the use of death perception instead of dhuumfire as you really need that 50% crit if you’re not getting it from your armor.
2. The burning damage underneath each of the attacks is NOT the amount of the burning tick. Those are the burning damage applied per attack, and since each attack is faster than a second, the actually burning ticks are higher than those listed.
3. I have to emphasize again that I assumed a solo situation. Therefore, because RS buffs you, the DPS from it is higher than dagger auto. If you are in a party, and they can provide full vuln and might, then dagger is preferable.

Also, further disclaimer about optimal group damage with max buffs, I have no idea what the mac DPS is and was basically just randomly guessing in my last post.

I’ve actually done some math, and can share my results here I suppose.

First off, my calculations apply for solo situations only. Also disclaimer: they are definitely wrong right now but are nonetheless a good approximation to get an idea of the numbers. Here is a link to the album of my calcs: http://imgur.com/a/B17C7

So first, several assumptions I make:
1. I assume 25 might and 25 vulnerability for all reaper shroud attacks – In here, I am trying to find long run DPS, that is, the sustained DPS once reaper has been attacking for longer than about 15 seconds. It only takes about 8-9 seconds for reaper to fully buff itself and debuff its enemy, so I ignored ramp up time in my calculation and just assumed a long run case where we’ve been attacking and now we’re fully buffed.
2. I spend equal amounts of time above 50% life force and below 50% life force, and the enemy spends equal amounts of time above 50% hp and below 50% hp. Thus I assume that Close to Death is a flat 10% modifier and Strength of Undeath is a flat 2.5% modifier.
3. Because I am assuming a long run scenario, the same amount of burn stacks tick for each second.
4. The damage coefficients I am using are .58, .58, 1.161 for the RS chain and 2.91 for gravedigger (these might be wrong, especially gravedigger).
5. The rotation I test is RS autoattack until 50%, and then gravedigger spam. For builds that rely more on conditions, I just assume RS autoattack.
6. The build I test is spite/soul reaping/reaper, with spiteful talisman, rending shroud, close to death, unyielding blast, dhuumfire, decimate defenses, and onslaught.
7. I assume full buffs for gravedigger (though this is unrealistic)

Known errors:
1. I apply 10% Close to Death bonus to both RS and gravedigger, where as it should apply 0% to RS and 20% to gravedigger.
2. My sigil of air calcs are just totally wrong. How much damage itself should be okay, but my assumptions about how often they trigger are just wrong.

So there’s a bunch of stuff for me to fix still, and my spreadsheet is honestly a mess right now, though you’re welcome to take a look at the images. RS DPS calculates the DPS of RS autoattack. The number next to RS + GD calculates the DPS of RS autoattack and then gravedigger spam.

As a cursory and very very rough estimate so far, reaper DPS in a SOLO situation with ascended gear and NO FOOD is:

~ 8500 (Berserker – Reaper Shroud autoattack until 50% hp, then Gravedigger spam)
~ 8400 (Sinister – Reaper Shroud autoattack)

Note that I assume the full buffs for gravedigger, so the actual number is definitely lower. Also note that for practical purposes, you may not be in RS 100% of the time, and so this would lower the estimated DPS for the sinister build.

So yea, my final estimating puts Reaper DPS at about 8500 solo. If I were to guess, I’d say that at max, with banners, spotter, frost spirit, empower allies, fury, food, all that stuff, the number wouldn’t go any higher than 10k – 12k, assuming an absolutely perfect scenario.

Huh, totally forgot about Corrupt Boon that Cogbyrn brought up. Probably better than Spectral Wall in most situations actually, especially while actually fighting. I’m gonna edit the build in my post, but just putting this here to give him credit and agree with it.

Now about disengaging/mobility, this is a kittene. I would personally never take Spectral Grasp on land. It’s a one-shot use skill with a high cooldown that has a relatively easy to recognize animation that can be dodged. Granted, it’s payoff is very high and probably means that whoever got caught running away is very likely going to die. Unfortunately, people who run away are usually leaping away at great distances or going invisible so it’s very unlikely Spectral Grasp could even be used in most cases. In the case that they aren’t stealthing or greatsword leaping away, you can simply chase them down with Spectral Walk, Signet of the Locust, or just continually autoattacking and running (Chill of Death trait in Spite helps). Instead of focusing on offensive mobility, I feel it’s more important to think about defensive mobility and disengaging. Granted, necromancers are terrible at both, but its a little more feasible to run away than it is to chase down an invisible foe with swiftness. In both these cases, anyway, I’d recommend Signet of the Locust and/or Spectral Walk. If you want to be super safe, take both. If you don’t really care about giving chase to fleeing foes, just take Spectral Walk. If you don’t really care about living when you realize you have to get away from being stomped on by 5 dudes, just take Signet of the Locust. Taking both, however, diminishes your ability to fight a bit in combat. Also with an honorable mention here is Spectral Wall, staff marks, and Plague. Spectral Wall and the marks can act as zoning hazards, and if someone gets hit by a fear, virtually guarantees your safety. Also if someone gets hit by a fear, it’s useful offensively. Plague just straight up increases your toughness and health (and provides stabilty), and the AoE fear temporarily shuts people down. It’s mainly only useful for retreating back to allies though, as there’s no way to run faster and just delays the inevitable if you’re being chased by a mob.

It’s really not worth going into the Death Shroud line just for a measily few seconds of stability, especially if you’re not even running a power/DS build. Zerkers is so bad in WvW; players aren’t mindless monsters that just hit hard and overfilled with fat. They’ll rip you apart if you have no defenses. Not to mention in zerg fights, your fast and generally guaranteed death will cause dozens of rallies for the opposing zerg.

So for build I’d recommend (assuming you still want to play conditions): http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMax7tbKb07JEoHuHuAiRKOmghSh7kOA-jECBYLIINDakkWQjKAJHqIasVTFRjVdDTHjIqGA-w

Change Epidemic to Spectral Walk or Spectral Wall (taking along Spectral Mastery trait instead of Vital Persistence) when you’re not with a zerg. Signet of Spite is also a viable variation, though it’s much more risky and you really have to watch out for when your opponent has a block up or not. If you do choose to use the signet, take Signet Mastery in the Spite Line instead of Spiteful Removal. As to the second sigil on your dagger, take a Major Sigil of Bursting as I believe the Major and Superior versions of the same sigil do stack (at least they did when I tested the Minor and Major versions). Condition damage matters much more than duration as lots of players bring ample amounts of condition removal. Koi Cakes and Toxic Focusing Crystals for optimal food.

(Splitting into two posts since post is too long)

I know feel your frustration with warriors and their seemingly permanent stun-locking, stability, and condition immunity. The simple answer is that, if you are set on a condition build, there’s simply no way to counter condition immunity or stability. You simply have to recognize when those skills are up and make sure to not burn all your cooldowns. That may mean just kiting back and forth for a good ten seconds not doing anything, but there’s literally nothing you can do if they’ve got condition immunity up (same with stability, don’t use your fears in desperation).

A major, major weakness of the necromancer is the lack of or difficulty in attaining stun breakers, chase skills, or stability without a major inconvenience or damage hit to a build. Unless I’m forgetting something, the only things that you can use to counter warrior stun locking is Spectral Armor, Spectral Walk, and Well of Power. In addition, all three you can use even if you are currently stunned/knocked down to break the stun. Well of Power grants stability too while you are in it. The bad thing is, all these skills are on relatively high cooldowns in comparison to how many stuns you are likely to get hit by (since necromancers have zero sources of vigor outside an extremely unreliable Well of Power condition conversion ). Still, even breaking a stun lock once can make the difference between going down or not. I’d take one (Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk) if you intend on roaming and aren’t confident enough in your dodging skills. The downside of course is that one of your limited utility slots are going to be taken up by something whose main job is to break stuns. I’d take Spectral Armor or Spectral Walk over Well of Power because overall, they have more uses. Spectral Armor provides some defense and can still aid you in the rest of a fight. Spectral Walk is very useful for running away from right situations, and chasing to a lesser extent.

DougTheSlug.3920:

I just don’t understand why karma armour can’t be salvaged. Anet clearly knows which armour is karma. Why not give karma back when you salvage a karma item? Jugs, Kegs, swigs, thimbles… this is a perfect use for them instead of just saying “No Salvage!”

Brother Grimm.5176:

Salvaging karma items would be a direct method to turn karma into gold. Something ANet does not want and the in-game economy would be damaged by the influx of materials, upgrades and gold.

Why don’t people just learn to read things more carefully? DougTheSlug clearly suggested that karma is returned from salvaging karma armor and it wasn’t even edited in later. Not needlessly bringing up the topic of turning karma to gold could have avoided about seven off topic responses (which ironically does include mine). Also it is even arguable if the economy would be damaged. Sellers would lose from lowered prices of materials and upgrades, but consumers would gain. And there is no influx of gold unless you’re telling me that every time you salvage an item, you’re also somehow getting gold out of it. Of course, you’re right that anet likely wants prices to be high and would not want influxes of material so that gem conversion rates to gold are higher and that it would be more appealing to buy gems (though your apparent worry that they don’t want influxes of gold contradicts this…).

And to answer OP’s question. Like others have said, the best and most affordable option is simply to re-purchase those runes. The gem store options for extracting/transmuting to transfer the runes far outway the costs of the runes themselves. If you already have some fine transmutation crystals lying around, I suppose you could use those, but then there’s the opportunity cost of not using it another time, which may translate to the cost in gems anyway if you have to repurchase another crystal another time.

Short answer: re-buy the runes.

The mere fact that warriors can be considered as facerolling when compared to the necromancer shows that there is at least a substantial difference between the two.

The simple truth is that necromancers offer very little support to parties, while being outclassed by almost all other classes in terms of damage as well. In addition, conditions are just overall in a weak spot right now, having a cap that directly limits how much damage a party can do in conditions. If you choose to run a power build, engineers simply stack much more vulnerability than you, and warriors/thieves just plain outdamage you no matter what.

Almost everything a necromancer can do, another class can do better essentially. In fact, I would even go so far to say that necromancer is arguably the worst class in the game right now for fractals. Warriors offer support (might, shout heals, banners) while dealing some of the highest damage in the game. Guardians heal parties and keep boons up while dealing decent damage. Engineers stack a lot of vulnerability (maybe even maintain 25 stacks), and can at the same time do a decent amount of damage and perhaps even better damage through conditions than necromancers, though they have better builds to run than conditions. Elementalists are the king of AoE damage and put down a lot of fire fields for combos. They also stack might (probably the best might stacker in the game) and can heal parties through water attunement. They also have turrets and healing kits to support the party. Mesmers offer utility to the group, through portals and time warps and stuff. Thieves deal a ton of damage, on par with or sometimes even more than warriors, but admittedly their group support is weak as well, only being able to occasionally stealth allies in sticky situations. Rangers (melee ones that is, not talking about bearbows) deal okay amounts of damage (still more than necromancers) but can support parties with their spirits (traited Frost Spirit increases the entire party’s damage output by 7%). What can necromancers really do that others can’t? The only thing that comes to mind is the AoE blind through Plague and Well of Darkness, and can remove conditions from allies. Then again, guardian shouts remove conditions much more reliably, and elementalists/guardians/engineers heal better than necromancer wells.

What necromancers are good at is PvP and WvW where the broad range of conditions offers a lot of constant pressure on people and great crowd control. Unfortunately, crowd control is near useless in fractals and PvE, especially since many of the boss monsters are straight up immune to crowd control (“Unshakeable”, “Defiant”, lol).

Feel free to correct me if anythings wrong, my experience has been 90% just necromancer and guardian. I made a guardian purely to do dungeons with cause I didn’t want to be a burden to my party.

I finally got it today. It gives you the achievement right after you kill Chomper instead of after you kill both (I killed Chomper first). I literally didn’t do anything different and still have no idea why I didn’t get the achievement the first seven times I denied Chomper any meat.

I think Meatless Murderer is bugged. Has anyone gotten this achievement? I’ve stopped Chomper from getting to his meat and killed the pair about four times now, and I still haven’t gotten it.

Same for me. I thought that maybe I let a meat get passed me, but after about 4 times where I could’ve sworn I stopped Chomper from not getting it, I still didn’t get the achievement.

EDIT: Went back and did the challenge 3 more times. Every time, I made sure to watch Chomper’s status bar to make sure he had no buff from eating the meat under his bar. I also tried having no stacks of the meat buff on myself before starting because they can accumulate over from previous attempts to see if maybe that was the problem. Still no luck. I still have yet to try killing the two without eating any meat myself.

Bhawb.7408:

Minions stay alive very well on their own without healing. It isn’t your job as an MM in GW2 to babysit your minions, it isn’t like GW1. You summon them, make sure they do their damage, then let them die for the poison and resummon them. If you are using a power build with minions you will have enough survivability on your own anyway.

I think you have GW1 and GW2 mixed around, in GW1 the only good minion master was the minion bomber, and so you never bothered to use Blood of the Master to heal them.

You can’t do the same in GW2. Why not? Well for one thing, the recharge time of bone minions in GW1 was 5 seconds, compared to 16.66 seconds in GW2 (assuming you went into the death magic tree for some reason with a power build). You could also have up to 11 minions, whereas you have 6 in GW2, and that’s not even taking into consideration the much longer recharges of the other minions. Death Nova doesn’t even do damage in GW2, it’s just a stationary poison cloud that last for three seconds, which won’t even hit half the mobs/players in this game because they’re ranged or won’t run into your stationary 3-second poison cloud. You rationalize the usefulness of a minion with the effects of its death, but a minion that’s dead is effectively a wasted slot for the duration of the (long) cooldown. Do you really want to trade skill slots for the possibility of a 4 second poison on a 20 second cooldown?

There are much better utilities to take if you want to focus on a power build. The point of taking minions is to utilize them to their potential, not to use minions to enhance your own build because chances are, there are better alternatives. Is your suggested build better than the one OP has right now? Very possibly. But does it make effective use of its minions or its utilities? That point I highly doubt.

These suggestions really aren’t going to work if you want to be a minion master. Axe/Focus with Berzerker gear? Why not just drop the minions at the point and focus on a full power build? There’s no way the minions can stay alive without healing, and for the 20+ seconds that they are down, you are very vulnerable.

And as to your original problem, Fenirian, it seems more of a question of how viable is the vulnerability stacking ability of axe/focus is in conjunction with minions. Just because you use staff most of the time (I’m assuming this from your post) doesn’t mean you can’t take axe/focus along as your secondary set. Throw down a few marks of blood on your minions, and you can switch to axe/focus once you’re comfortable enough with maintaining regen on your minions (can be helped out by boon duration increasing runes). Your single target output as a necromancer using an axe is really not that much; it is the minions who in conjunction with the vulnerability that deal the majority of the damage, so there’s no reason for you to become glass cannon when the minions are supposed to be doing the damage. Going full Berzerkers gear to specialize in the axe is also a poor choice because it gimps not only your ability to heal and maintain your minions, but also your AoE damage. It matters not that you don’t have Epidemic or Blood is Power on your bar; the fact is that staff benefits much more from condition damage than from power, and between the combined DPS of you and your minions, power won’t help your axe enough either. Keyword: enough.

You do also specifically ask about WvW in your post. I stand by my above recommendations. Play to the necromancer’s (and minion master’s) strengths. You excel at surviving and doing damage over time. Your minions and staff skills provide knockdowns and crowd controls. You have the toughness, death shroud, and multiple meat shields to avoid getting bursted down. Don’t suddenly try to go glass cannon and burst as an axe Necro. There will be very few times when a glass cannon necromancer will be able to overcome the hundreds of glass cannon thieves and warriors that roam WvW.