I once wiped my entire party with tablet while trying to projectile block cheese everyone’s way up the laser-death-staircase in Uncategorized Fractal… Haven’t much touched it since then.
I preface by saying that I am the biggest minionmancer hater… But!
Viper Minionmancer + Passive Plague Signet (Death/Blood/Reaper) is really good for Fractals with the Afflicted Instability if you’re pugging..
You can maintain group cleanse for your party (who trust me, do not have enough) and the viper’s condi dmg/duration applies to the conditions your pets are transferring back to the enemies.
Plus, your pets can keep up some slow but steady dps while you’re busy running around res’ing your pugged party members.
If I’m running with guildies, of course this is unessecairy, but you can really save a failing pug by swapping to it—especially in Thermanova.
Full Thorns with a Sigil of Agony here. The reason metabattle suggests this is because it achieves max duration on bleeds/pretty close with poison while giving you an extra (pretty consistent) 150-300 condition damage from thorns 6.
They aim for bleeds and poison instead of general condi duration because torment’s damage is real weak—even if the mob is moving—and in most PvE settings you don’t need to worry about things like chill/weakness/fear duration, as raid bosses aren’t even affected by a lot of these outside of traits that deal increased damage based on the number of conditions on a target—but even if they were, you’re going to have the rest of your raid hitting him with these conditions as well, so they’ll end up having a 100% uptime anyways.
I guess an argument could be made for general condition duration in fights where you’re using a lot of Epidemic, as it’d scale with burning and confusion, but, like, 90% of your damage output is coming from bleeds/poison, and metabattle is usually all about min/maxing your dps, with very little focus on utility.
Long story short, you seem to be aiming for condition duration > condition damage up to 100%, so you’re doing it right! The actual dps increase from Thorns over Nightmare/Trapper isn’t game changing or anything…
I’m not sure what you’re trying to ask here… But if you mean that enchanted daggers isn’t stopping people from bursting you, it’s never going to no matter how you use it. You’ll just want to chain it in offensively as part of your burst and rely on Glint/Shield 5 to handle the bulk of your self-healing.
I like your idea for PvP, but I’d hate to lose transfusion from the tree as it’s super handy in fractals.
Greatsword Spite/Blood (zerker/valk gear) is super viable in most PvE… Actually outshines condition in open world, most world bosses, old-world dungeons, and lower tier fractals (although they supposedly adjusted the toughness/hp scaling across fractals, so not too sure since I’ve only played condi since the change.)
Love my rev, everyday he’s becoming more and more my #1.
Even though I do understand the negativity in the forums, because when you put rev side-by-side with the other classes, they do have some serious and glaring weaknesses. But, when I die on my rev, I truly know that it’s my fault. It has that feeling of, “Well, yeah, I don’t have nearly enough cleanse and that sucks, but I shouldn’t have let that mesmer bomb me in the first place.” And while the same could be said for any class (play better!), I like that you really feel it on the rev and it inspires you to become a better and more aware player.
Also, having permanent access to swiftness without the use of a utility skill/weapon is the greatest thing ever for WvW and Open World PvE bumming around. Seriously, spoils it for all my other characters who feel so slow now.
That’s just not true. Condi warrior is probably the easiest duel to win with this build. Corrupt their resi/stab, and they are as good as dead. You can also fling every one of their condis back to them. You can easily stack 25 might, which means you are also sitting on 750 condi damage. The further the fight goes on, the bigger your advantage is.
The build in question has one condition transfer every 20 seconds (staff 4) that can be avoided with a lucky evade, but even if you transfer their conditions back to them they have two sources of resistance. You’re probably not going to win the RNG lottery and keep getting your limited boon removals on Axe 3/Focus 5 to hit their resistance/stability, and even if you do, their stability is pulsing, so it just gets instantly reapplied. (I don’t mention the well’s corruption, because if the warrior is just STANDING in your well throughout its entire duration, he’s horrible and it doesn’t count.)
I think I’m gonna try this out today since it feels like every game I play has 2 condi-mesmers in it these days, but two questions on this build:
- How necessary is Retribution? It seems like having so much access to resistance sort of negates a lot of what you’re getting from Ret, unless this is mainly just to help stomp/rez people. Devastation with your Sage’s amulet seems interesting since I think traited life siphoning scales off 10% of your healing power?
- Sort of similar note, but since you’re still using Glint, why not Elder’s Force?
Maybe some blocks built in for the power weapon sets… Like say, GS 5, instead of just being a grasp, have it instead be a 2 second block that can be activated a second time to shatter and grasp targets.
(I won a 1vs1 against they’re reve as a necromancer without LF, just to say how they was bad…).
If you’re condition/corruption you should almost always beat a rev 1v1.
Edit: Didn’t see the no LF part at first, carry on.
Basically, you just have to learn to live without stability unless you want to take Retribution or Jalis. It’s not really a big deal in PvE though, you have lots of blocks/evades and most things that knock you back or down come with big orange telegraphed hit boxes.
Make skills like Spectral Armor or Walk grant you LF when you’re struck but also a x% every secon can be a really good solution, but still not a way to really fix the problem.
Personally, I wish they’d make spectral armor’s life force generation work somewhat like a Revenant’s Facet of Light. As in, when you activate SA, any incoming damage is instead converted into life force. Of course it would need a similar/shorter duration, like 3 seconds. I know good players would know not to attack you during this time, as they do with Rev’s, but I’d certainly take 3 seconds of “Don’t hit the green glowy guy” over the abysmal state of our current defense skills.
The problem with Jalis is that, with the exception of chains, none of the abilities are really impactful in a sPvP situation. Stability/Weakness from the Dwarven Road are both easily obtained elsewhere. Hammers is a waste of energy and more of a liability than a boost due to reflects/the on-block traits of other professions. Cleanse on heal is nice, but not a reason to take Jalis—if conditions are giving you trouble you can just take Mallyx and be done with it. And Rite of the Great Dwarf is tempting, but not super great… Most teams will be focus firing, so the group effect is wasted, and you’re still open to condition bombs. It’s only really dominating if you take Retribution for the condi-reduction, but if you take retribution, you gain traited Rite and access to Stability, so you don’t really need to take Jalis in the first place.
I think even in a situation where it’s not ideal—or even when it’s impossible—to melee, I’d still take Reaper over Vanilla Shroud for the Stability, Death’s Charge, Decimate Defenses, Chilling Nova, and Deathly Chill.
I normally run Viperhorror with Blood instead of Death Magic…
Only real variant is if I’m in a particular bad pug in late t3/early t4 with the Afflicted instability, I’ll swap to Death/Blood/Reaper and run passive Plague Signet to handle the group cleanse. Noticeable loss of dps, but my group doesn’t just wipe themselves to torment and confusion and my pets can handle some dps while I’m running around res’ing the downed people.
(It’s also a pretty solid build for Thermanova Reactor’s last boss, as running from beams/bombs usually leaves me out of scepter range for a good chuck of the fight.)
It seems like you are passionate about this build… And that’s good! You should play what you like and let the haters hate…!
But can I give two quick suggestions? You should really drop Death Magic for, I dunno, I guess Blood? The thing is, your death magic traits are not giving you very much of a boost. Deadly Strength and other such abilities scale off your base stat, so it doesn’t factor in any toughness that you’re getting from other skills or allies, and you’re not running any base toughness aside from the base base. Unholy Sanctuary’s healing is abysmal (Blood would fulfill this gap even when yer not in shroud) and the auto-shroud will definitely get you killed at least as often as it saves you. I guess the cleansing your getting from Shrouded Removal is really all your utilizing from the whole trait line. I dunno, prolly worth swapping to Blood for the movement speed alone.
Second, you should try out Valkyrie’s Amulet… You say that you like to spend as much time in shroud as you can, and the hp on Valk will let you stay in shroud a lot longer and since you’re already getting 50% crit from Death Perception, it’s not a super huge loss by losing the Precision.
ok,i’ll try) but what advantages has sw/sw over sw/sh?
I had thought about taking retri instead of invo, but I like that stun break.
I also use sw/sw… I’d say the biggest pro in my eyes is that your sword block costs less, has a shorter cooldown, AND YOU CAN MOVE while doing it. Granted it doesn’t last as long and doesn’t heal you… But give and take. Plus with sword you also gain access to immobilize and the sword 5 pull is handy to get people out of position/open a burst.
This was fixed yesterday… But this morning’s build brought back the issue.
bump
I’d sugggest giving it a stunbreak as a sort of counterpart to Spectral Armor to justify taking it as an aggressive tool for LF generation and pulls or a defensive one to negate a single CC.
I like that idea… Just make them into one skill. Activation = normal spectral armor, second button press during the duration shatters your armor and the shards swirl around your target pulling them into you and crippling them or something.
Here’s the thing with power necros…
I’ve been seeing quite a bit more of them as this season goes on, and I will admit that they seem to not be as much of a free kill at mid… But the thing is, you don’t really have to kill them ASAP because they’re not contributing to their team in an especially dangerous way like a condi-necro does. All they’re focused on is single target burst dps, and with that, they don’t do it as well as the other professions.
I think a lot of the power necro’s survivability comes into play after the first fight when he’s revealed his spec and doesn’t become the number one priority target. Which, again, could definitely equate to being a more fun build for a casual player. I mean, getting trained all day gets annoying and can be frustrating (dr00d entangle spam, thief dazes, etc.)
If I see a lot of mesmers/warriors I’ll take Mallyx instead of Shiro… It’s not as completely useless in a power build as you might think. Having a spammable boon strip can go a long way towards making up the dps you lose from not having daggers/quicness.
See topic… Even crashes at end of game when it automatically tries to open the score window.
Playing on Mac client.
Another interesting solution could be to reduce the cooldown on shroud so that it could be better utilized as a damage shield/pseudoblock—although they’d definitely have to address a lot of the trait lines so people couldn’t just flash it for boons and aoe condis.
1) Aside from the vastly more useful Reaper Shroud, you’re taking Reaper (at least in fractals/raids) for Decimate Defenses, which is basically a free 50% crit chance to boost your bleed stacking via Barbed Precision.
3) Although solo, I usually take Chilling Victory as the might/life force is more useful.
2) As for food, you’re mainly using it to top off your condition duration… But that sort of min/max’ing is really only important in raids.
Everything Dr. Patrik said is way on point… I would add that Phase Transversal is super useful against Guardians/Warriors/other Revs when paired with an immediate staff 5 and that Impossible Odds is great for cleaving downed enemies—especially if you’re using Invocation and have no stability for your stomps.
Also, you might wanna mess around with sword instead of shield, you lose healing, but your block becomes mobile which is great for setting up bursts/escaping behind pillars, costs less energy, and has a lower cd.
(edited by narcx.3570)
That makes dagger, greatsword, and reaper shroud all of dubious usefulness.
I’d say dagger is still worth it for the heal, the root, and and the traited move speed. But I agree, GS seems like a suicide mission in WvW.
It’s great for PvE, in sPvP tho we simply don’t need another transfer and Warhorn has far more utility.
I dunno, I find the transfer super useful in signet spec since you lose the traited plague signet by not taking Curses. Also, you regain access to weakness, which once again, you lose by not taking Curses.
I think that was the OP’s original point—although they did’t directly say it—is that the OH dagger can help regain a good deal of what you’re missing out on when you drop Curses.
Male Norn’s scepter 2 actually uses their chest hair instead of corpse hands to cripple their foes.
As reaper staff 5 and WH 4 are your best friends, they interrupt our block. Other than that just keep dumping boon corruption and conditions, rev’s are terrible against those.
Seems crazy that everything in this build seems to be there to apply vulnerability and you’re opting out of having Decimate Defenses… But if it works for ya, it works for ya.
If they run through my teammates to get to me, I’ll usually spam chills, drop target, and do a stability Reaper 2 through them to get back to behind my teammates.
Me =( (My Teammates) Them >=)
Them >>=\ (My Teammates) Me =)
Hopefully having to run through them twice gives my team enough opportunities to punish them accordingly. Especially if we have an obligatory trap guardian or 2.
I don’t get the hate on staff 2, it’s pretty devastating in pvp when you hit someone with a staff 5 and then immediately give them weakness so they can’t evade away. I mean you switch to sword after that, but still… Weakness rules.
I’ve been using it with signet chill and don’t think I’ll go back… Having the third condition transfer is awesome when you’re being trained (aka, all the time) and having access to weakness outside of curses helps so, so, so, so much.
You just have to be extra stingy about what you use your staff 5 on tho. =(
- Not directly a block, but could be another path towards more survivability: Well of darkness (currently essentially useless) while your well is active, you can activate it for a a second times, teleporting to it and destroying it, fearing nearby foes. The second activation counts as a blast finisher.
I like this… This should be the trait instead of pulsing protect/life siphon (although it doesn’t fit in the theme of Blood, it fits a million times more with the theme of Necro.)
I use it in my viper’s/sinister spec instead of staff or WH for octovine, triple trouble, and other fights where you only have small windows to dps. (GS4-2/Shroud spam/GS 2 for 100-51%, GS 4-2 spam for 50-0%.)
In a perfect world I would carry around a set of zerkers/valk gear, but that’s not gonna happen and using the GS is better that just sceptering away on those bosses .
Isn’t this just corruptionmancer with a a some extra boon-corruption from the well?
I would add that it’s a good change though, as one of the biggest areas where signet spec really outperforms corruptionmancer is being able to chain corrupt someone’s boons during a burst.
If you use “Your Soul Is Mine!” as your heal, you can pop reaper, do a reaper 2 (dash), drop reaper, cast “Your Soul Is Mine!” and never run out of life-force. That and the +25% move speed in Blood are how I get around since I hate having spectral walk on my toolbar outside of octovine looting. Warhorn swiftness if nice, but tagging ambient creatures when farming is sort of annoying. =(
You’re definitely right that one of the biggest reasons is Decimate Defenses, which in every raid and most fractal groups comes to an extra/free +50% crit chance. While it is a condition build, you still deal a good amount direct damage in Viper’s gear and this really adds to that.
As others said, you’re taking Reaper mainly for Soul Spiral, Executioners Scythe, and your chills adding a stack of bleed (which in Viper Horror means that your blinds also apply an extra stack of bleed via Chilling Darkness.) The reason this is important and worth dedicating an entire trait line to is sort of two fold. Soul Spiral (12 stacks of poison + whatever condition applying field you can get yourself into) is a ridiculous upgrade over the access to condition damage that you would get from Vanilla Shroud (the torment beam, which is barely worth mentioning). Now, you could easily say, well just don’t go into shroud form… But there are times where you have to in fractals to avoid damage/pulse stability and it’s nice to be able to put out some good damage while doing so. The second reason is that Soul Spiral covers a good chunk of the time where you’d just be sitting there auto-attacking with the scepter. As previous posters mentioned, combing Executioners Scythe into your Soul Spiral is good because it adds a ton of extra bleed via chilling bolts, and if you can do this great—but Scythe is much better used for wrecking break bars (which is notably much harder to do as a necro without it)
Also, if you want to take Blood, you should (Curses/Blood/Reaper)… In my experience, the only time Death Magic has really outshined the utility of Blood in fractals is in late tier 3 and early tier 4 when you get the Afflicted singularity (especially if you pug a lot.) A lot of times my group won’t have the proper cleansing and it’s nice to be able to run a passive Plague Signet to alleviate their condition pressure without worrying about overloading yourself. Also, it allows for you to spend your time running around res’ing your group if you have to, while your pets keep up some decentish dps.
(edited by narcx.3570)
Wait, this was bugged for me today, so I did a google search and it came here. This can’t STILL be bugged from two years ago… Can it?
You need these events to get the last PoI for map completion. Has every legendary I’ve ever seen in the game really been built with Gifts of Exploration from two years ago?
@frostdraco
“There is no stun break in curses or death magic, the two trait lines I advised against. Are you even reading my words?”
does plague signet trait not count?
But, but, in order for the traited plague signet to proc you have to deliver a critical strike… I guess conceivably this could happen if you got stunned while a scepter bolt was in the air already, but that’s not exactly a reliable stun break.
Wouldn’t you prefer this scenario…?
The cruel warrior’s pressure was almost too much for the noble druid. He had dug deep, evading as many of the warrior’s mindless sword blows as he could, and even the vigor that his pet inspired in him was not enough to keep up with the relentless warrior’s barrage. But then, the the druid wisely remembered to stowe the gnarled tree staff he was wielding and draw his sword and dagger, allowing him to quickly evade even more of the warrior’s strikes while he regained his endurance.
The problem with using Curses in a Power Build instead of Spite is that you’re taking it mainly for Path of Corruption and Weakening Shroud… Great. Except now every single one of your trait points is only active when you’re in reaper form.
At least spite will give you some increased damage/boon corrupting options for the other (majority of) the time that you’re not in shroud.
I feel like spectral walk making you immune to cc for those 8 seconds would go a LOT further towards our QoL than a bubble would… And it’d probably go over with the other profs a little better than giving us a full immunity.
As a necro I really only feel the fight is in my favor against Revs and Eles and feels sorta fair/doable agains DHs and Scrappers. Everything else… They need to be baddies.
Hmmm, it counts starting in Emerald as a crossed division after you play your first game and unlock all the rewards…
You’re messing up because you’re counting going from nothing into Amber as a crossed division—getting to Legendary counts as FIVE divisions crossed, not six.
To get Ascension you need to cross ten divisions, so that means since you only played two seasons you would have needed to gone Legendary both seasons. Or, in your case Ruby (3 divs) the first season and Legendary+2 (7 divs) this season.
I was hoping to get some clarity on what “season 1 match making” is, as I didn’t play then but keep hearing people talk about it. If it’s based on pip range, why am I queueing mostly with sapphire and ruby players as an emerald player? Just because of my hidden MMR?
As a signet necro I am loving all the guardians queueing solo this season…
I forgot what life blast was and had to look it up. kitten elite spec broke my brain.