Guild Wars 2

Not to mention the day they added Tainted Shackles. What a great buff!

When I first started playing I didn’t use Death Shroud much, and didn’t use it well when I did. I was an idiot.

btw, thinking back, what I like about thieves class mechanic is their initiative as a resource, I had actually completely forgotten about Steal :x

Too true, Andele. Shame they still get enough right to make it worth playing!

And yes, it’s implementation has certainly been far too clunky, I remember it in beta as well the problems were even worse…does protection even work in DS?

I just made this topic after realizing how fun it was making suicide missions with no defensive gear and succeeding.

I know some Necros don’t like to talk about it because people use it as a justification of why Necros are OP, but after playing some other classes, Necro has one of the best class mechanics, imo (I think Thief is up there too).

There’s something so satisfying about running into a suicide situation, dropping to 10% and popping into DS to make your great escape. Much moreso than it would be having more mitigation or big piles of bonus health. I think it comes from a lot of things, the “skill” aspect (even if it’s just hitting F1) of getting out of dangerous situations, the very real danger of death if you mess up, and the resource mechanics of life force itself.

I like the idea of my life bar as a resource, this was true with GW1 necros as well (I played a Warlock in WoW, who could tap their HP for mana, as well), and I think that mechanic is somewhat preserved with Death Shroud, although life force feels more like bonus health, as opposed to taking directly from your health pool.

Maybe GW2 would benefit from more resource management systems, I think that’s why I like thief and necro class mechanics best. Warriors is also a resource but feels more lackluster.

I’m seeing this issue too, particularly on Svanir Shaman Boss and Taida Covington.

I’ve recently been slotting Well of Suffering and Poison Cloud instead of Spite/Epidemic and loving it.

What do you want in a class? Knowing the types of things you appreciate might help.

I’ve always wondered what a support build would look like, but I think spoj nailed it. It should focus more on Wells and some offensive condition support. I think renewing blast would be too difficult to use to a point where it’s worth the investment. I love the life transfer heals though.

The justification was being tired of sacrificing other portions of my build to make up some movespeed. I find movespeed essential for all aspects of the game, the benefits of 25% MS are dramatic (as an aside, I find MS underrated in most games). Otherwise options are warhorn, spectral walk, signet of the locust, quickening thirst, speed of shadows all of which have their own set of sacrifices. I figured I lost the least and retained the most flexibility with my builds with this set of runes.

25% Movement speed is good in PVE for not standing in kitten, skipping packs and generally moving…quickly. Other stat gains are still solid, though I wish it was more condi duration than boon. That said, +15% boon duration is still very handy for keeping might on there, means I have a 47.9% uptime on Blood is Power.

What would you use? Sure Rune of the Scholar grants more damage output, but you’re unlikely to keep the +10% bonus on truly challenging content, when you need your bonuses the most (Also why I’m not keen on the “on kill” sigils, getting downed…happens)

Here’s mine, nothing crazy but I like the teal/pink theme to go with my sylvari. I don’t even remember picking a glow color…but I’m down with red.

Here are my current stats, ascended trinkets, ascended weapons, exo gear:
1962 power
59% crit
175% crit damage
890 condition damage
15% boon duration
40% condi duration

(sigils):
20% bleeding or 20% vuln duration

Out of curiosity, what happens in the case of extended duration condis, like poison/burning? Is the lowest damage duration tacked onto the end? Is it just applied in the order it’s applied?

A fair point, and one that makes me understand how things can be suboptimal, because in those scenarios my build is flexible enough to not rely on bleeds, but then I’m using suboptimal gear- I guess the perfect idea is to carry two sets of gear in my bag!

I don’t purport to be an expert or a top player, but I’m trying to play to the top of my intelligence and I think it offers quite a bit to the group. As been mentioned, I think there is a class who can do each of those individual things better (therefore I guess rendering the class useless in a min-max setting…or at least, it means you have to build a team around the necro) but I think the sheer number of conditions (15-20 bleed stacks, vuln stacks, weakness, some poison, torment and chill across all targets if played perfectly) and strong direct damage besides (scepter 3, axe 2 and DS1 pile up single target damage and can be rotated intelligently so you’re not caught in low DPS states)

I wouldn’t be surprised if some other opinions could improve the build, hence why I posted the thread asking for them. If I’m being frank, I really only claim to know necros in PVE, I have other 80s but am nowhere near as knowledgeable in other classes capabilities, nor can I claim to be playing with experts of other classes.

imo people are playing necros wrong.

just did a write up of my hybrid build here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Hybrid-Necro-Build-Tips-Tricks/first#post4074272

Plenty of excellent single target and AOE damage, if nothing else, can bring large bleeds, vuln, weakness, and some chill and EPIDEMIC. Epidemic is like nothing else in the game.

If people say weakness is useless, by the same token so is protection (though less so, as it mitigates a little more damage)

I know Necro in the past has gotten a lot of kitten for their traits being suboptimal (each offensive traitline has one condi and one power enhancing stat boost, and many traits that enhance one side for another (specifically Curses, Barbed Precision, Target the Weak, benefit the other side, Scepter 3 is perfect for hybrid as well), so decided to make a build around that. The advantages of this seem especially present when you realize that Might grants both power and Condi damage, thus enhancing your output more. Here’s my build I’ve been using, and I think I’m rather successful, but it’s tough to compare since I haven’t tried any other necro builds in PvE:

The Build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRAnd7Yjc00Yb3NW3wfbiaBB6EBmF9nRvoaOA-TpRAABY8AAA4gAU4+DIcCA84IAoWZAA
EDIT: I’ve recently been slotting Well of Suffering and Poison Cloud instead of Spite and Epidemic, and loving it.

My gear is probably a 60-40 or 66-33 mix of Rampagers/Zerker’s gear, to be sure I’m still getting a lot of damage out of my crits, but bleeds and other conditions are still racking up significant damage, due to my ability to spread them rapidly. I found Traveler runes to be a perfect fit for me, a perfect mix of offense, personal utility and group utility.

Purpose of build:
-Offer extensive offensive condition support (namely Vulnerability, Bleed Stacks, Weakness, but decent options with chill and whatever else you can get everywhere with Epidemic, an old combo when I was still using dagger/dagger was AoE immobilize- great fun)
-Take advantage of necro’s hybrid nature, to deal significant single target and AoE Damage
-Increase uptime of might stacks as high as possible to gain the dual benefit of might stacks power + condi

Rotations:
-For single target I often do Axe 4, Axe 2, Swap, Scepter 3, DS 1, 1, 2, 1 (or so), Scepter 3, swap, repeat. Very powerful single target abilities.
-For AoE situations, it’s mark my target (to get other party members to pile conditions on), Scepter 5, scepter 2, Signet of Spite, Epidemic, Blood is Power, DS 5, DS 4, then adjust as needed, needless to say, pretty insane conditions everywhere.

Other Notes:
The double whammy of the 10 might stacks from corruption as well as the -20% to corruptions means a very high uptime for might stacks, and epidemic is just the supreme necro skill in PvE, I find. But in scenarios where there is no need for adds, I found poison cloud to be a great alternative. Boosts up your capacity for weakness greatly.

Considerations for optimization:
-I haven’t extensively done the math on whether this build should fly, but the amount of synergy between my skills screams to me that it makes sense. I can get more accurate stat distributions later to see if anyone else wants to weigh in on the soundness of the DPS, I think I’m at about 1800 power, 60% crit and 177% crit damage with like 600 condi damage? Maybe less condi.
-Is superior sigil of energy worth it? I recently had the +10 Condi damage on kill but found it not granting immense benefit most the time, since you get downed frequently on more challenging content, thus getting less from the sigil when you need it most. Considering the total lack of vigor from necros, it seemed to make sense to patch a hole in our survivability with such a rune. Thoughts?
-I’ve been considering what using dagger mainhand instead of axe or scepter. I’m skeptical because I think it weakens the build overall, I’d only really be doing it for a reliable dagger 1, but does it bring much to the table? Given my single target rotation (above) Life force gain is no issue, considering every non DS spell in that rotation grants significant life force. I do find myself sometimes in spots of suboptimal play in my rotation, which dagger could remedy.
-Is signet of spite the right fit? If so, should I enhance my signets over the focus? Perhaps if I DID do dagger instead of axe, I could drop axe mastery, and keep the -20% focus recharge (for reapers touch), and put in something like well of suffering or poison cloud instead. I just LOVE Spite -> Epidemic too much.

Final Thoughts
I find this build very effective, and offers enough plenty of single target and AOE DPS while even enhancing the DPS and surviability of the rest of the party. Thoughts?

I’d argue that it’s underrated because the effect is difficult to notice. A ~25% reduction in incoming direct damage is pretty substantial for any boss that hits with regularity, but tough for players to detect a difference with, so I can’t imagine it’s a particular priority. It’s a poor man’s Protection, I’d say, which I think most will agree is very valuable. I play hybrid necro so it’s relatively easy to fit weakness into my build with the Curses Grandmaster trait.

I haven’t tested it to ensure it works as it says on the tooltip, but on paper it seems quite good, and something people rarely take so I go for it.

Indeed. I just feel it seems like an efficient use of time.

Yeah and clearly a lot of work has gone into some of them, it’s wasteful to just leave those dungeons gone forever, and players miss out.

I really hope you guys at ANet already have plans to implement this.

I really do like the idea behind the temporary content in making it feel like the world is changing, but something feels seriously off about how a dungeon will only be open for 2 weeks. It makes so much sense to add the temporary dungeons that get removed into Fractals, perhaps modified if necessary. The more dungeons in Fractals the better and better fractals get. Wasting all the programming that has gone into those dungeons seems terribly inefficient, and it gives people a small taste of what it was like to be a part of some of the events.

It still maintains the specialness of being there when it actually happened because you lack the context given to the event, but still keeps the largest chunks of those content patches in the game in some capacity.

Here’s to hoping we see the
Mad King’s Realm
Tixx’s Infinirarium
Molten Facility
Canach’s Lair

among other new dungeons in fractals sooner than later. The more fractals the better. It seems like such an obvious thing to do, fractals is the perfect platform for these types of dungeons.

That said, probably tune the dungeons up a bit before re-releasing them, new bosses if necessary, making sure their difficulty and flow is in tune with other fractals.

Does name calling make you better than him too?

Still worth making Orichalcum runs at Orr though. Nomnomberries and Ancient Wood too.

I think a good tip is seeing what each item you gather is worth on TP, then you instantly know if it’s worth the effort when you see a node on your map.

But harvesting as unique or interesting? Not particularly, you find it on map and harvest. No levels required or anything. But you can learn where good spawns are, a lot of guaranteed rich veins are hidden behind some obstacle or another.

Vs Dredge:
333333333333333333333333333333333333333

but seriously, in PvE my key clicks during plague look something like this:
211221112111121112111211121112111211211

Oh. Thought you were referring to auto attacks because you said “the only thing that consistently generates conditions” which all of our weapons but dagger mainhand does.

You saying power benefitting from crit doesn’t constitute any basis of hybrid synergy is silly when half the trees stat gains and all the trees minors benefit both power and condition.

The mandatory traits all benefit hybrids more than a singularly focused condition build. How is that grasping at straws?

It occurs to me you were probably referring to base damage on abilities, not on weapons available. And sure, that’s fair, but that’s what weapon swap is for. Axe is regarded as a power weapon but no one is writing home about the axe’s auto attack. There SHOULD be a condition option, and undoubtedly scepter fills that role. But I think viewing it as only a condition weapon is limiting to build potential.

Scepter’s status isn’t largely relevant since you don’t need to use it curse specced. You don’t need Axe for Spite spec either.

Also addressing feast of corruption, your wording is misleading. It’s damage IS based off of conditions, but it’s the number of conditions on it. Condition damage as a stat will never affect the damage it deals. Power does.

Actually all level 80 exotic axes, daggers and scepters have the same median base damage of 952.5.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ghastly_weapons if you want to run the math yourself. (axe actually has lower base than scepter but a wider range)

Staff doesn’t generate conditions, axe does. Not sure if typo.

For Curses being a hybrid tree, 300 precision obviously benefits power builds. Other traits in tree that come to mind: -20% damage to corruptions cooldowns, grants you greater might uptime with Blood is Power, enhancing power ability (as well as condition uptime). Ground Targeted wells are power enhancements exclusively. Life force gain traits from V and X tend to benefit power builds than condition (since deathshroud is mostly power damage). Furious Demise benefits power as well, which goes hand in hands with the trees emphasis on critting for both conditions and innate power bonuses.

And to fulfill my selfishness:

‘ifs’, ‘ands’, ‘buts’

Well actually, the Barbed Precision trait is notably worse than the Sigil as it’s 1 second of bleeding vs 5 seconds. (I still like it though)

Personally, as I was arguing in another thread I think the Curses tree is totally designed with condition/power synergy in mind. Prec/Condition damage stat gains, traits that benefit both power and condition builds throughout. Saying it’s “primarily a condition tree” doesn’t make it totally true. Even the scepter has condition/power synergy built into it’s abilities, with Feast of Corruption. And if you say “oh it’s bad” that’s not a synergy issue, that’s a numbers issue.

Well, if it helps I was testing this the other day and I had +10% condition duration from 10 in spite, 20% condition from 2 piece mad king and 2 piece Lyssa, 20% from the trait, 10% bleed from my weapon sigil and it all stacked appropriately. I think I was getting somewhere between 45-50 seconds on my blood is power.

I think that’s just conjecture.

My conjecture in response is that I’m sure the devs care about all the classes and try to give them all the love they can, but I’m sure the process is a lot more complicated than we know. Perhaps some broken things are technically a lot more complicated than just tweaking numbers, and getting the resources across multiple departments to fix that is no small request. (Design teams, balance teams, codemonkeys, QA for starters on ANY changes, I’ll bet.)

To think they “ignore” forums because they “treated the class badly” seems a ridiculous notion for any company taking themselves seriously.

Sounds like a similar build to what I decided when I was first leveling. Not saying it’s a bad build at all, I just got bored and wanted to try different things. The great thing about your Megadrain (albeit slightly compromised) is that it’s viable with most specs, since Well of Suffering is a top tier utility.

I really like Dagger/Focus for PvE, gives you a lot of powerful single target debuffs, the thing is, depending on how much you like ground targeted wells that that you could move some points around there, to get more effectiveness out of your build overall. I feel as a necro you’re pretty up in people’s faces most the time anyway that ground targeting wells is a little redundant.

While the prec/condition damage stat gains are great for your spec, it might be fun to think about where you could free points up in your build to try other things. Something that comes to mind is dropping 10-20 points in curses and seeing what you can do with it. For example, if you moved those into death magic you could pick up greater marks or 20% staff recharge, to really get a lot more out of your staff usage since you already have some traits supporting that.

Personally 15 points in Soul Reaping has become hard to compromise for me because the spectral armor at 50% health is an amazing ability. I’m not sure how you use DS, but having the points specced into it may be a nice way to start becoming more well versed in how to be effective with it. I’m not sure what I like better for first tier traits, but there are solid buffs for it. 15% reduced cooldown is a powerful addition making you able to pop into Death Shroud for your abilities more often, Life Blast piercing/vulnerabiltiy is just great for farming. Move 15% faster can be a good niche one if you don’t have any other swiftness in your build. But certainly not ideal for a min/max build. More for quality of life.

But that’s just food for thought, it may be more or less effective (stat gains on death magic and soul reaping are more meh than Curses/Spite), but my primary advice, is to just encourage experimentation, you’ll learn things about the class regardless, and it will probably be good for your sanity to try different builds. You may discover aspects of the class you didn’t realize you liked.

Not to mention an addition 20% chance to crit while doing it from the 5 seconds of Fury gained from the 15 pointer in Curses.

I don’t find that very useless.

Yeah it’s actually pretty commonly accepted that Necro minions are generally broken and unviable as a build focus. People tend to have more success ignoring the minion aspect of the class. Flesh Golem isn’t too bad but only because the other 2 elites are transforms so if transforming isn’t your style, it’s the best option. (his damage is decent, when he decides to hit something)

Don’t play the victim here. Hope you can learn a few things about Necro’ing. Seriously.

Garo.5304:

Going deeper into trees the taste of points get more bland for the value. In the end your better just traiting for just the extra stat points, I’m not joking either.

Your dream traits:

Then you have warriors which have that 40 precision per signet trait

Nice, your thread is very clever.

Doesn’t sound like you know the class very well. I’m coming off aggressive because this topic was made (based on your OP) to kitten on necros.

PowerCat.5738:

Can necros provide team buff? Maybe some regen to team mates because of vampiric traits, but that’s very low.

I heal 9 ticks of 250-300 healing over 3.5 seconds to a huge AoE with my 10 point Transfusion trait to Life Transfer. Fairly significant team heal and you could get more heals if you wanted. And that’s just defensive team buffs, I’m not even gonna get into condition coverage necros provide.

PowerCat.5738:

Apart from plague signet, which isn’t working at peak efficiency, any condition removal?

Well of Power, Light Combo Field from Well of Blood, Gathering Plague underwater.

PowerCat.5738:

Speaking of damage, how can your necro’s DPS compare to warrior? Provide trait config, armor setting, weapon set and skill set.

Don’t have a warrior, but huge stacks of vulnerability spread across the whole group with Well of Suffering, Spectral Wall or Epidemic I’m sure helps yours.

PowerCat.5738:

Sure, my necro has 1800 condition damage, I can pop bleeds that will bleed for 10000 damage… over a minute. One “thousand sword” from a warrior does over 10k damage.

My Necro isn’t so condition focused, we’re not the best bleeders. I have about 750 condition damage.

PowerCat.5738:

Yeah necros are cute and all, but they don’t bring anything to the table that other classes don’t do better.

Disclaimer: I am speaking purely on a PvE standpoint, as I’ve never PvP or know anything about it.

Individually, specced for it, sure. But Necro is 5 of those individually specced guys rolled into one, albeit less effective at those singularly focused roles. I think Necros offer exceptional support in PvE especially.

Yukishiro.8792:

Those are in trees where you’d actually benefit from the +direct damage.

A defensive tree and a utility tree.

Yukishiro.8792:

The main problem with 25 curses is that it gives a direct damage boost to what is pretty clearly a condition-focused tree and the trait itself is based on applying a large number of conditions.

I understand what you’re getting at but when you word it like this it doesn’t sound like too awful design. A condition trait in a condition tree encouraging you to use conditions.

Yukishiro.8792:

I mean part of the problem is that pretty much ALL the necro minor traits are garbage. But this trait is certainly one of the garbageish traits.

I respectfully disagree. I’ve focused my build around split power/condition and it synergizes excellently. I don’t think any direct damage dealers would mind the 250 precision. I think the tree was designed with that in mind. Condition dealers still benefit from crit thanks to crit related traits, and direct damage benefits from all the precision and fury you get, alongside the 25 pointer. I think the tree designers certainly had that split build in mind. If they wanted curses to be purely conditionmancers they probably would have made stat gains condition damage/condition duration, and thrown away the crit traits.

Yeah it’s called a ramp up time. Once the debuffs are flowing they keep flowing.

Futuro.8036:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Did I mention I run epidemic? I can keep bleeds, vulnerabilities and chills up on most enemies at most times, so 6% by myself, not including all the times I damage targets while they’re weakened, crippled, immobilized, feared, blinded (this is quite often). Then throw on all the other times targets are confused, burning or poisoned along with any other classes who apply the same conditions I do. I’d imagine it’s considerably higher than the 2% you seem to think. Or maybe I’m playing my class wrong.

So what your saying is you first have to get chill on the target THEN you have to get poison on the target THEN you have to get weakness on the target THEN you have to get your bleeds on the target for you to get 8% extra damage THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get burning on the target THEN you have to rely on ANOTHER class to get confusion on the target for the 12% damage increase

OR a warrior just needs to auto attack to get 10% extra damage

It sounds so much harder when you put all those "THEN"s there.

Point is, it’s not a bad minor trait. Curses easily has the strongest overall minor traits, and that one is probably the best Grandmaster minor trait. Why do you have such a bone to pick with this trait? What about the other grandmasters like
You do 5% more damage if you have more than 50% life force.
or
Deal 5% more damage while your health is above 90%.

Those get you way less damage than this one will most the time.

Dredlord.8076:

these 2 abilities are so far apart its stupid
the only time its going to be better is on a long boss fight and the only builds that are speccing up that high are condition builds looking for cond dur on the GM trait making the extra damage that applies to direct damage only pretty underwhelming.

I’m 30 curses and don’t use scepter. I am split condition/power build, with axe and dagger, the most typical power weapons. It is useful on more than boss fights. Although once again, I think spending all this time on the differences between these two similar traits isn’t even really appropriate for this thread, and doesn’t even scratch the surface of why necro’s are so often considered “broken”. Curses is one of the better trait trees, I’d say.

KirinDave.6451:

Dredlord.8076:

yeahhhhh…….I think I’ll just take the 10% for one bleed if I had the choice

I actually think they’re about even.

I think that’s a pretty fair evaluation. 10% for one bleed is going to provide more damage the majority of situations, but the damage potential of the Necro’s is potentially quite a bit higher, and encourages a higher skill cap to get the most out of it. I think they are both very good minor traits, regardless.

Hardly a major issue in the scale of class balance, though.

Well by “group situations” I was referring to group PvE, not PvP/WvW. That’s what I’m using 25 Curses for.

Well, it does, sorta. + Healing increases the healing from your Life Siphon moves, which unfortunately is limited to Dagger 2, Signet of the Locust (pretty trashy), Downed 1, and Trident 3. The passive siphoning on hits and crits traits though, is a flat value, but is affected by the Bloodthirst (+50% to siphons) trait.

It’s not as effective as you want because healing is toned down in this game to be mostly restrictive outside of your heal button. It’s still viable to get sizeable healing, but it’s difficult.

I think you’re underrating necro weps, the conditions at a necros disposal as well as dismissing the power of Death Shroud (judging based on your complete lack of mention of it). The siphons are not true siphons, I assume for a few reasons (messes with gearing. Suddenly your offense is your defense. That could create…problems from a developer standpoint).

I think you should experiment more and go outside your comfort zone of your expectations of a necro, and you’ll be surprised what you’re capable of. But I’m a relentless optimist. It is a real shame about minions, but I’ve never been keen on letting AI do all my dirty work, so no big loss for me.

I think you missed the sarcasm his post was dripping in, sorry. :\

My build is a split power/condition, focused on debilitating enemies as much as possible with conditions (not necessarily bleed stacking only, but I do that too.), reducing the damage the group takes significantly, while dishing out lots as well. Since I run Axe/Dagger Dagger/Focus I’m also in range to soak up hits quite a bit.

Currently I’m playing
10/25/0/15/20, but I think I’ll move 5 points from soul reaping into Curses to try it out. I think I lose the least by that.

As far as other justification:
10 in Spite mostly for the condition duration and power gains, but the first tier trait isn’t half bad. Reaper’s Might is probably the most practical, since I get to double dip with might stacks (35 condition/power each stack).

25 in curses, initially gunning for 20% reduced corruption CDs for Blood is Power and Epidemic Spamming, both very powerful abilities. Only shaves off a few seconds each but very easy to shoot them off whenever they’re up. Normally try to prep a few seconds in advance with my most powerful single target conditions when I see epidemic coming off it’s 12 second CD. Focus 4/5, Dagger 3 is a great combo (AOE immobilize!) before epidemic, I also like to hit dark path if I can before it too.

15 in Blood for Life Transfer heal on allies, and for Vampiric trait, 25 hp per hit per target hit adds up fast and contributes significantly to survivability in my experiences.

20 in soul reaping for the boost to Death Shroud, and mostly for Spectral Armor at 50% hp. I pick up Adept Traits only and neither is ESSENTIAL to my build, which is why I think these points will be the easiest to sacrifice.

I have 50% crit rate.

This sounds encouraging though, I think I’ll definitely have to try it when I get home. Currently my only weakness comes from Dagger 5, which while I use it lots, as I indicated is lower priority (than it probably should be for me).

Nope, working as intended! I love it when it bounces like that and I can just pop focus 5 and epidemic and spread it to everyone. Gotta love that focus.

Did I mention I run epidemic? I can keep bleeds, vulnerabilities and chills up on most enemies at most times, so 6% by myself, not including all the times I damage targets while they’re weakened, crippled, immobilized, feared, blinded (this is quite often). Then throw on all the other times targets are confused, burning or poisoned along with any other classes who apply the same conditions I do. I’d imagine it’s considerably higher than the 2% you seem to think. Or maybe I’m playing my class wrong.

Has anyone experimented with this? I’m 25 points deep in Curses for my group PvE build currently and am considering dropping some points elsewhere to pick it up, but 25% proc on crits for 3 seconds seems a little low. I mean, the 66% on bleeds can stack up pretty quickly even with their short duration so I have no doubt that it will have a noticeable impact, and I believe that weakness is underrated, though I am unsure on NPC crit chances. I can imagine that popping into death shroud for Life Transfer (since you will have fury) will stack up weakness big time on everything around you, which is great. I’m sure the damage reduction will be palpable, but I’m just wondering of other people’s experiences with it.

sorrow.2364:

Mega Skeleton.8259:

@Kiriakulos
Yeah, well I’m sure Arms would rather have Barbed Precision over their 5 pointer (33% chance to bleed on crit). Also 2% damage per condition is legit if it works as 2% per stack, not by type. But I suspect it’s type of debuff, which is still a solid damage increase in groups.

Why would a warrior prefer to have a trait which gives you 1s of bleeding on a 66% chance on critical while Sigil of Earth gives you 60% chance to inflict 6s of bleeding on critical?

Because it’s twice as good as theirs. I figured that would be obvious.

Either way, making class comparisons such as that aren’t totally fair, for a lot of reasons. Not saying your judgments are invalid, but it’s worth taking it with a grain of salt.

If target the weak works with other’s conditions, then in group situations you can get it a lot higher than 10% a lot of the time.

@Kiriakulos
Yeah, well I’m sure Arms would rather have Barbed Precision over their 5 pointer (33% chance to bleed on crit). Also 2% damage per condition is legit if it works as 2% per stack, not by type. But I suspect it’s type of debuff, which is still a solid damage increase in groups.