“Best” build is really a variety of builds that are better suited for different types of content and game play.
Generally, power is most effective. Your defense is primarily shroud. Learn to use it often and very well. Reaper Shroud is better than Death Shroud.
Minions are your easy button. They auto attack and also hold aggro for defense.
Main hand dagger is a fine weapon for short range power. Even if you have greatsword, dagger is still excellent.
Greatest strength: condition management
There are many ways to inflict or transfer conditions.
Greatest weakness: disengagement skills
There are almost no ways to disengage and reset a fight. Only Wurm works and it does so part way, part of the time. It has a long setup cast and is broken by terrain so it requires planning before using.
Second worst weakness is a lack of ranged power.
I agree the profession’s circles can be difficult to find.
Ah, well, if you had no trinkets equipped, that might make it tougher.
Two builds, in particular, do well for me in HoT roaming: shroud optimized power shout reaper and power MM reaper.
Bleeding Necro is only desired vs power resistant bosses in PvE, as far as i know.
There are no people who are happy about the changes. PvP players like to blame PvE players.
Fixed.
Fixed
Penguin wings for the win
I used to have 9 sets of armor. Two sets is not a stretch but they do not need to be ascended. Exotic is fine, as Rirgul has said. Your play skills impact dps far more than the difference between exotic and ascended armor, especially when every thing else you equip is ascended.
Bhawb is an expert so I hope he sees this.
I think the condition removal only works when minions attack and their individual cool downs are up. It may be when a minion lands an attack, though. Each minion should be on its own timer that starts on transfer.
You might verify using only one or two minions at a time while standing in a pulsing poison field.
I would like to see DC changed to apply a long bleed on critical hits to chilled foes with a short internal cool down.
Torment on crit is my second choice with poison on crit the third and burning on crit last.
I generally run power-shroud Reaper with shouts in HoT. Shouts generate LF and provide good defense on an otherwise glassy build.
Greatsword and staff is pretty standard. Lead with marks before switching to greatsword.
Sometimes, I will run axe-focus and Spite in place of staff, if roaming against single targets. Other times, dagger-focus or dagger-horn in place of greatsword.
Soul Reaping, Reaper, and either Spite or Blood Magic.
You can run Viper’s and scepter, if you like, or even axe. Minions will take advantage of vulnerability stacking. Dagger-focus / staff on Berserker-Scholar is my current favorite in PvE roaming, with or without minions, but run whatever you want. In a group, watch your precision as FrostDraco says.
Also, no toughness means your minions will tank for you and they may die so take Death Nova. If you want your minions to live, use toughness, Blood Magic to heal them, and take one of the other two DM GM traits.
It is still too early after the patch, in any case, to expect adjustments. Only outright bugs have a chance to get fixed so soon.
Just keep posting suggestions and reasons for them and be patient.
The dev’s gave only one long bleed per chill. This shows they are nerfing PvP and trying to avoid nerfing PvE.
Not exactly a real-world situation; power Reaper is middle tier for power builds. Condition damage builds are bottom of the top tier, though I am open to criticism.
Where Necro shines is being able to suck up damage and still be viable in either role.
Necromancer should get more benefits for being what it is – last one downed, an emergency tank, and missing the spike heals…
The bleed stack does what (0.06 * Condition Damage) + 22 damage (142 per stack).
Multiply by duration, or at least how long the bleed is expected to persist before being cleared. Burning skills usually have shorter base durations.
That is all.
Necromancer condition damage is based primarily on bleeding. I know poison, Terror, and burning are there but none equal condition damage from a scepter’s bleed stacks due to lower up-time.
Until condition damage dps is possible without nerfing bleed builds, bleed-on-chill at least has synergy.
I would rather it be bleed chilled opponents on crit but we cannot have everything in a dev-nerf, at least not until the dust settles.
Sorry if my rambling looked like a rant. I was responding to a comment about PvE.
My comments assumed players knew to lead with staff and switch back to it when necessary. The weapon swap CD nerfs condition damage dps. It needs a new Sigil that reduces swap CD.
Shroud is very useful but scepter does not generate much LF by itself so I try save shroud for more defensive action.
As Flumek alluded, focus has challenges in PvP because of cast times (5) and projectile speeds (4) but is better in PvE.
I am surprised focus is run on a scepter build, though, because it supports power builds so much better. The only off-hand I consider good for a condition damage build is dagger. I feel like horn is somewhat hybrid with its stun and AoE cripple but it is used on power builds a lot because MH dagger has such short range.
Probably the biggest change in Conditionmancer comes from Viper’s stats on equipment, which increases condition duration. Bleeding, Poison, Terror, and Dhuumfire all get longer.
Reaper Shroud adds a whole lot of welcome new capability to Necromancer, including the profession’s first combat mobility skill, a leap, as well as a whirl finisher, too.
After that is Deathly Chill, Reaper grandmaster trait, which adds a long bleed to every chill.
Finally, Rise!, the new shout is better than having permanent Protection, if shouts are traited. Even if not traited, it is still better than traited Spectral Armor, IMO. Shouts are all short-cast AoE sustain skills.
I was actually on a map that failed. Try Teq on off times of the day
Greatsword and shouts feel, to me, like they were designed for PvE. Greatsword is a slow, melee, AoE weapon and shouts seem like they are all about sustain, not dps. Reaper traits also work well enough in PvE and some are only good in open world events. It is not as if BB is less useful in PvE.
Without shroud and rise, would Reaper be any good in PvP?
Holl, I am honestly not sure condition damage changes enough between power stat’s and condition damage stat’s.
What I mean is that base bleed and poison dps with zero condition damage equipment is not zero dps.
I might as well build for power/crit and use bleeds as the situation calls for it. Dps on a berserker/valkyrie build using dagger focus and scepter focus might still be better than giving up ferocity for a high condition damage stat.
Perhaps I will experiment a bit this weekend and see just how long I need to camp scepter AA with Curses or Spite to equal dps on maining dagger and using scepter in place of staff for ranged. Both using Reaper shouts and Deathly Chill.
Cutting movement speed and skill cool down to 1/3 of normal through perma-chill was too strong. It was taking a big bite out of opponents’ offense and defense, if the condition was not removed almost as soon as it was applied.
I think chill’s soft CC was much more dangerous than the condition damage so durations had to be trimmed.
Also, Necromancer used to be about out-sustaining your bursty opponent so that long bleeds building over time is quite traditional for the profession. Unfortunately, Necromancer still cannot reach condition the levels of condition damage dps other professions can with burn stacking.
If you are intent on leveling Necromancer using a bleed build, I suggest doing so as a MM. The minions will hold aggro so you do not need to kite nearly as much. Minions also do directly damage to supplement your slow condition damage ramp-up. Making them explode is fun, too, in addition to the poison fields.
Thank you. EremiteAngel. It is always good to validate builds after balance changes.
If you want to solo roam, Dire scepter dagger staff corruption may be your best bet against elite specializations.
For WvW, a power staff/wells build is standard zerg support. Just follow the crowd and drop marks and wells for area denial. It is part of the GWEN zerg makeup.
Blood Magic and Soul Reaping
Please try to be reasonable and polite, people. This is the Necromancer forum and we have a reputation to maintain.
Off-the-cuff suggestions
Axe – boon steal on top of vulnerability
Focus – roll Spiteful Talisman CD reduction into base and make Talisman into a condition transfer trait.
War horn – Locust Swarm also bleeds
Off-hand dagger – also transfers conditions from allies to the target
Nice tip on the gloves. Ty!
Staff – long range utility AoE
Axe – ranged power vulnerability stacking
Dagger – melee cleave power siphon
OH Dagger – utility
Scepter – ranged condition damage
War horn – melee AoE power utility
Focus – ranged power
Greatsword – melee cleave AoE power
Necromancer design guide has always been for limited mobility, hard CC and defensive skills in exchange for Shroud, health, and soft CCs.
Weapons that need love are axe, focus, horn, off-hand dagger.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Yeah. (--)’ Let’s nerf Fear, again. It is not easy to position Spectral Wall at just the right moment but it _is easy to spam burning on other professions.
I must be living on a different planet than those that see the chill nerfs as “buffs”.
Chill applying bleed is indeed a buff in PvE, less so in WvW and PvP I’d argue
Bleed on chill is only a buff in PvE team fights against major bosses when running a condition damage build.
Do pve people actually bother to switch to staff/shroud or do they just camp scepter? Thought most of their bleed came through minions and scepter? I honestly don’t know but curious as I thought about gearing my necro for raids instead of WVW.
Staff and shroud are both for defense and tagging in a PvE condition damage build.
One of the problems with Necro/Reaper is that condition damage is overwhelmingly dependent upon scepter’s auto-attack. If you build and trait for condition damage, you want to avoid using shroud, staff, and any skills that reduce bleed application rate. After all, there was a lot of sacrifice in terms of equipment stats to gain high condition damage. Scepter builds just always seem squishier because so much defensive and offensive utility was lost setting up for condition damage.
The patch attempted to fix that by making bleeding possible on a wider range of weapons and utilities. Skills with chill and short cast times that do not interfere with scepter AA are fine, though dps seems nerfed compared to dps with chill damage.
Using focus 5, now, is close to a wash because it interrupts scepter AA. Staff is a straight dps loss even with Chillblains proc’ing a bleed. Suffer and Chilled to the Bone give a single long bleed but then go on cool-down.
Dhuumfire and Terror do more damage than the bleeds from chill. This drives the build toward Curses for scepter and Terror, Soul Reaping for Dhuumfire and to help shroud. If you want to go Reaper, then you cannot take Blood Magic or Death Magic, both of which are useful in condition damage builds so you should consider whether the better Reaper is worth taking for its Shroud, greatsword, and shouts rather than for the bleeds.
Give up Soul Reaping for another trait line, like Death Magic for exploding minions, and you will find yourself perpetually low on life force unless you run all shouts as a Reaper. Dhuumfire goes away, too.
Give up Reaper and be stuck with basic Necromancer, Death Shroud, and no extra bleeds.
The trades to get a single bleed on chill, and develop a chill build, require a lot of sacrifices I weigh carefully.
I must be living on a different planet than those that see the chill nerfs as “buffs”.
Chill applying bleed is indeed a buff in PvE, less so in WvW and PvP I’d argue
Bleed on chill is only a buff in PvE team fights against major bosses when running a condition damage build.
The player inactivity timer could be revisited if afk-farming gets too bad.
Relentless Pursuit, Soul Eater, and Reaper’s Onslaught were all designed to support (PvE) HoT mob train events. Try them in a Dragon’s Stand zerg. They are useful, though not outstanding.
They could use some work to broaden their application.
Spiteful Talisman is nothing more than a CD reduction I feel I have to take. Most of Necromancer’s old weapons could use some functional rebalancing. Scepter and dagger have already had it.
For PvE, I would use Berserker-Scholar, dagger-focus / staff, Soul Reaping, Blood Magic, and either Spite or Death Magic depending on whether I use minions or not.
Avoid Curses unless you are facing husks or in events you need to kite bosses.
Axe (power) and scepter (bleed) are your choices for ranged damage to single targets.
Staff is for tagging in mob train events.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Dhuumfire 2.0
Chill durations broke PvP with perma-chill, not condition damage.
/15 char
why was power reaper then not op?
Little things like trait lines that suck’d, low downed state health, stupid wandering minions, no cleave, stab access, etc.
The two major trait reworks, minion improvements, dagger and axe improvements; Necromancer back then was easy prey, even on the best builds. Top PvP players won with mind-boggling profession handicaps.
Its just too much effort to try to fix DC that you end up losing out on a lot of stuff. Like taking Reaper runes and Shouts dumps on other important parts of the build.
Yes, after trying a number of bleeding Reaper builds, I just was not satisfied with the results compared to various power builds.
I like the concept of bleed damage to chilled foes but the nerf feels like it put Bleeding Reaper below regular Necromancer, which is solidly below other professions both in dps and burst.
This whole thing reminds me of Dhuumfire so much! First, give Necromancer a shiny condition damage build. Then nerf some other condition damage sources like fear and bleed. After that, nerf Dhuumfire into oblivion and leave everything else nerfed turning Necro into a power-based profession.
After trying a few condition damage builds in HoT over the weekend, I just could not get results that equaled a power build in dps or sustainability.
Scepter works far better in 1v1 than in 1Vmany but, except for Epidemic, condition damage utilities, and shroud, do not feel like they work well with scepter.
Epidemic is useless 1v1, though. Maybe it needs to add 3 bleeds to the target regardless of whether any other opponents are around for the cloning.
I played some HoT over the weekend.
Necro Reaper’s condition damage is still entirely dependent on scepter, on staying out of Shroud, on not using an off-hand, not swapping weapons, and not using any utilities, including an elite.
Necromancer’s power and utility weapons are all more flexible in use than scepter because builds are not dependent on auto attack and most other weapons and utilities scale with power. Nothing else scales very strongly with condition damage but scepter AA.
To elaborate, Condi-Reaper felt like it under-perfomed Condi-Necro and I found using Epidemic with its feast or famine usefulness back on my utility bar. CPC does not do much for HoT mobs that move around and I kite too much (frantically) for it to be very good as a projectile shield. Still, shouts did not have as much utility as I needed for kiting with scepter. I only kept Rise for the meatshields.
Overall, condition damage builds in HoT were significantly less effective than a power-shroud shout build. All condition damage builds but bleeding-MM left me with poor sustain due to a lack of synergy with scepter and kiting, save for the meatshields turning my condition damage build into a hybrid.
Keep in mind that HoT mobs have more health. Therefore, scepter’s bleed stacks have a lower DoT as a percentage of health. This forces a longer fight on builds with low sustain.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Dps nerf aside, I still like the idea of condition damage through bleeds more than a unique chill-based condition
On the other hand, Deathly Chill would be better if it applied a bleed on critical hits against chilled foes with a short ICD. That way, Necromancer/Reaper would not need to bring chills and still have an opportunity to add a bleed.
When I posted, I was thinking about only unlocking waypoints, not POIs, hero points, vistas, heart quests, etc. Players would still need to put in time for map completion but would no longer be blocked from joining friends in PvE just because it would take too long to run there.
Some maps might not be for sale, too, like HoT areas.
If players could purchase a map or way point booster that was account bound and a player could select which map areas to unlock on a toon, at least that gives them an option for quick access to far-away areas.
I was frankly surprised Rise! did not get a nerf. It is better than Protect and has more up-time giving Reaper a lot of sustainability.
Patch notes said they were looking at sustain but apparently the balance team thought trimming chill duration was enough.
Does anyone have info on these patch notes?
The following skills and traits have had their Life Steal functionality standardized, fixing several exploits and bugs across the game:
Dark Field Combo Finishers
Projectile
Whirl
Necromancer
Vampiric
Revenant
Enchanted Daggers
Assassin’s Annihilation
Focused Siphoning
Thief
Leeching Venoms
Runes
Rune of Vampirism
Rune of Scavenging
Sigils
Sigil of Blood
Sigil of Leeching
Consumables
All consumables that randomly steal life
Rune of Vampirism: Life stealing now scales properly with power.
Fixed improper life-stealing damage values for consumables, increasing damage by 10.
Has anyone suggested something like a Shade/Chaos Beast/Shadow Fiend? Stretch it into a glider shape and have whispy dark streamers trailing. Make it look like an abused balloon when the glider is activated and have it pop when deactivated. Sound can be the beast’s normal sounds.
Bank, bag, and guild storage is 250 per slot.
Account storage can be increased to 2000 per slot.
I know there are a few players out there that do mostly PvP or WvW and do not have waypoints mapped for many areas of Tyria.
Please consider offering a map booster that will unlock all waypoints in specific maps or regions and nothing else.
——
Edited for clarity
Perhaps only unlock waypoints; not POIs, hero points, vistas, heart quests, etc. Players would still need to put in time for map completion but would no longer be blocked from joining friends in PvE just because it would take too long to run there.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
I can’t wait for the next pvp season, just to watch all the back-pedaling on here as at least one if not multiple reapers using DC make it to the finals. You guys will be giving lessons to politicians on how to do a 180.
If they’re using Deathly Chill, it’s because there is literally no other option for a Reaper Grandmaster. Not because it is any good.
It does not look as if condition damage builds have an alternative. Blighter’s Boon looks solidly in the powermancer camp and Reaper’s Onslaught was designed almost exclusively for open-world PvE. It is very useful, there, but not so much anywhere else.
Necro life-steals may be weak because shroud is so strong. Players are expected to fully utilize shroud and its skills.
Having Reaper Shroud get nerfed in damage is, I think, at least as significant the nerf to Deathly Chill because every Reaper build benefited from shroud skills. I really like Soul Spiral and now its combo’s are cut in half. I have not checked to see how much damage is impacted, yet, but the nerf saddens me.
At the same time, not having any improvements to Death Shroud feels like a nerf, too. Unyielding Blast could be buffed, at least. It does close to nothing for Death Shroud and could be rolled into Decimate Defenses or Relentless Pursuit.