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[Reverse Ghost]

Welcome to my guide!

I will be updating constantly, so be sure to check back

periodically to catch all the new additions!

2 Feb - Latest Update: Updated the Runes section under Gear and Stats

• 20 Jan: Added link to my hybrid build topic
• 10 Jan: Added all the minor traits and a small sample of a build discussion.
• 8 Jan: Added section on Curses minor traits and a special section about Target the Weak. Changed format to include the use of [ spoiler ] tags to make things a little easier to navigate.
• 7 Jan 2013: removed the "legacy" section. Will be incorporating parts of build and trait discussion into the main, and now only, section.

This guide focuses on the Necromancer reaching +100% bleed duration through traits, runes, and consumables. This topic will serve as an analysis of what it means to have +100% bleed duration, and how this affects your play as Necromancer.

Because of the way bleeding does damage, having +100% duration is the only way to ensure that all your bleeds from all sources are never denied some damage because of a fraction of a second.

In this guide I will go into some degree of depth with some ways to achieve +100% bleed duration and what that means for you as a player. There will be math and spreadsheets. I like spreadsheets.

In this section I will explain how bleeding works and how it is affected by doubling its duration.

Spoiler

+100% is the cap for increasing bleed duration. A bleed will not go for longer than twice its original length except when affected by Lingering Curse, which takes effect after all other duration modifiers. This means that Lingering Curse turns a capped 10-second bleed (Blood Curse) into a 13.3-second bleed.

A figure of +100% bleed duration comes with a few key benefits. The first and most obvious one is that it doubles your bleed duration, which doubles your bleed damage (if the bleed ticks for its full duration). Bleeding only does damage once every full second, so a 5-second bleed does damage 5 times. If you increase the duration to 5 1/2 seconds, the bleed still only does damage 5 times.

If you were to increase your bleed duration by 50%, that 5 second bleed becomes a 7 1/2 second bleed. But because of how bleeding works, it does damage only 7 times. You would have to increase bleeding duration by 60% to get the duration up to 8 seconds for that extra tick. Since bleeds have different default durations, the only increase that you can be sure will never leave you with a fractional time on your bleeds is +100%.

+100% bleed duration is also the only way to get a 1-second bleed to tick multiple times. Specifically, the 1-second bleed granted by the minor trait Barbed Precision. Depending on your gear, you should have between 50 and 70% crit chance. 66% of those crits will trigger Barbed Precision, which now ticks twice per application, doubling its damage.

Under normal circumstances, extended bleed duration benefits shorter bleeds more than longer bleeds because shorter bleeds have a higher chance to tick for their full durations. Barbed Precision will almost always tick twice, but fights that last less than 18 seconds will "waste" some of Grasping Dead's extended duration (see the Bleeding Sources section below for a list of bleed times).

In this section we look at what skills the Necromancer can use to put bleeding on its target.

Spoiler

The main point here is to stack bleeding on the enemy, these are all the ways we can do that. Having +100% bleed duration doubles the length of all bleeds and basically allows you to have twice as many concurrent bleeds on your target as you could have before.

Scepter
Skill 1 chain - Blood Curse (1 stack), Rending Curse (1 stack), Putrid Curse (no bleed)
Despite the tooltip, the first 2 skills of this chain apply a 5 second bleed each.
At 100% bleed duration, we're at 10 seconds each
With Lingering Curse - 13.33 seconds

• This is our main source and most reliable way of applying bleeds. In addition to the first 2 skills of this chain which apply bleeds, this chain has a fast attack time which means more chances for crits and thus more chances for bleed-on-crit procs.

Skill 2 - Grasping Dead (3 stacks) 7 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 14 seconds
With Lingering Curse - 18.62 seconds

• This skill is a great opener in a fight. It cripples and applies 3 long stacks of bleeding.

Dagger
Skill 5 - Enfeebling Blood (2 stacks) 10 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 20 seconds

• 2 more looooooong stacks of bleeding and some weakness. Basically use this on cooldown.

Staff
Skill 2 - Mark of Blood (3 stacks) 8 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 16 seconds

• Similar to Grasping Dead's 3 stacks, but these last longer and are on a shorter cooldown. This skill should be spammed when using Staff.

Blood is Power (2 stacks) 30 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 60 seconds
Self bleed (2 stacks) 10 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 20 seconds

• Not only does this apply 2 stacks of bleeding that last a full minute and 2 stacks of self-bleeding that last 20 seconds that can easily be immediately transferred to your enemy, it gives 10 stacks of might! That's an additional 350 Condition Damage (+17.5 / bleed tick) for 12+ seconds. Incredible skill.

Signet of Spite (1 stack) 5 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 10 seconds
Not recommended to use

• A 90-second cooldown for 1 stack... The passive Power gain is tiny, but it could be useful for a quick Blind if you can time out the 3/4 second cast time.

Barbed Precision (1 stack) 1 second
At 100% bleed duration - 2 seconds

• This minor trait is the whole reason this thread exists. It normally has a 1-second duration. The only way to get this to tick more than once is to have +100% bleed duration.
  
• Because of its short duration, this proc will almost always tick for its full length, which cannot be said about longer bleeds

Sigil of Superior Earth (1 stack) 5 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 10 seconds

• Similar to Barbed Precision, this Sigil has slightly less of a chance to proc but does a much longer bleed. 30% of your hits should proc this.

Sigil of Geomancy (3 stacks) 7 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 14 seconds
Not recommended to use

• This one loses out because there are better options. 9 second cooldown. Interferes with sigils of Earth and has a radius of only 240.

Rune of the Krait [4th set bonus] (1 stack) 10 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 20 seconds
Not recommended to use

• You don't want to be getting hit anyway.

Death Shroud!
Dark Path (3 stacks) 5 seconds
At 100% bleed duration - 10 seconds

• Well you've got access to it no matter what, and the chill can be nice for kiting

In this section we look at exactly how to go about increasing your bleed duration, and gear synergizes well with a focus on bleed duration and damage.

Spoiler

There are 4 main ways to achieve +100% bleed duration: trait points, major traits, runes, and consumables.

1. Every point in the Spite traitline increases condition duration, called Expertise, by 1% -- up to 30%.

2. The major trait Hemophilia in the Curses traitline increases bleeding duration by 20%.

3. The pizza consumables increase condition duration by 8, 16, 24, 28, 36, and 40%.

4. Your Rune choice should be your starting point (focusing on 2 main options) and they deserve their own special section:



There are a few set bonuses from runes that increase bleeding damage by 15% and these will play an important role and should be your starting point. The three runes I'll be focusing on here are Afflicted, Krait, and Centaur.

With these 4 things in mind, we can plot out some different ways to get to +100%. Keep in mind that these are just some suggestions I have laid out here. There are other runes that increase bleeding / condition duration.

(Expertise is Condition Duration from putting points into the Spite tree)

On the left, signified in blue, are some sample setups using 3 Runes of the Afflicted and 3 Runes of the Krait for +30% bleed duration. On the right, in red, is 2 Runes of the Afflicted, 2 Runes of the Krait, and 2 runes of the Centaur to achieve a +45% bleed duration bonus. Please note that incorporating Runes of the Centaur results in a loss of 110 condition damage, which equates to a 5.5 bleed damage per tick loss (20 points to condition damage equals 1 more bleed damage per tick).

In the above table, I used the lowest level pizza possible to get to (or slightly above) 100% bleed duration. However, it is advisable to use the highest level pizza you can reliably afford because it also adds a Condition Damage buff.

First let's do the Blue Side
The only differences in this side are the amount of points put in to Spite, as you can see, which leads to different pizza minimum requirements. 30 is the most you can put in, and lets you utilize the cheapest type of pizza you can get on this side.

The middle box is included because it is the setup I'm currently using in my hybrid build.

10 points in Spite the minimum you can get by with here unless you use a Superior Sigil of Agony in one of your weapon slots. Using that Sigil allows you to completely forgo Spite, however you must still purchase the most expensive pizza.

As far as this side goes, you can basically add any amount of Spite you want (of course multiples of 5 are best for other reasons) and there will be a pizza you can use to suppliment that choice.

The Red Side
The extra +15% bleed duration from this Rune setup allows for some more interesting variations. As you can see, the 3 examples are headed by the aspect no longer required.

The top box shows a no-Spite setup, the middle frees up a trait slot, and the bottom shows a combination that requires no pizza whatsoever, so long as you equip a Sigil of Agony. This eliminates the need to spend money and constantly re-apply the consumable buff, but it does require a heavy investment into Spite. If you do go this route, you can use Bowl of Truffle Risotto for your food buff, which boosts Condition Damage and Precision.

This side results in a loss of Condition Damage from Runes, but allows for a higher variety of builds.



After you have achieved +100% bleed duration, I recommend you look at Critical Hit Chance, i.e. Precision. Critical hits are important for condition Necromancers because of Barbed Precision and Sigils of Superior Earth. You will already be investing 30 points in Curses which comes with +300 Precision. At level 80, all professions have a base crit chance of 4%, and every 105 points of Precision added increases crit chance by 5%.

After achieving your personal crit chance goal (I suggest between 50% and 60%), the next step is to boost Condition Damage as high as possible so those bleeds hit as hard as they can. When it comes to increasing Condition Damage, we basically have 3 main options: Carrion, Rabid, and Rampager's.

Carrion gear gives Condition Damage, Power, and Vitality.

• Primary boost to Condition Damage, which is good, but has no precision. This gear works best in a hybrid setup because of the increase to Power.

Rabid gear gives Condition Damage, Precision, and Toughness.

• This is a very popular choice for Condition Necromancers. In addition to having both the stats we're looking for, it also increases Toughness, which works well with a build trying to go for max Condition Damage, but not necessarily duration ( it synergizes best with Runes of the Undead). This set leans more toward Condition Damage boosting rather than Duration. See Lopez's excellent guide.

Rampager's gear gives Precision, Power, and Condition Damage.

• Like Carrion gear, this setup works best with a hybrid build. Because its primary stat boost is to Precision and not Condition Damage, I recommend only using this gear to reach your Crit Chance goal and then supplementing it with gear with a primary boost to Condition Damage (like Carrion).

Bolded is the line to reach 50% crit chance, a great baseline to shoot for. As you can see, we need to add 966 Precision, and we already have +300 Precision from filling out the Curses line, so we need only 666 (teehee) points from gear.

You can decide for yourself how high of a crit chance you like. Remember, Barbed Precision has a 66% chance to proc a (now) 2-second bleed on critical hits. Additionally, Sigil of Superior Earth has a 60% chance on critical hits (2-second cooldown) to apply a 5-second bleed, which becomes a 10-second bleed because of our increased duration.

Here is an example of my Exotic gear setup for 50% crit chance which uses Rampager's and Carrion gear:

Note that the above setup is for a hybrid build. If you choose to go full Exotic Rabid gear you will end up with 697 Precision, which gets you 51.48% crit chance.

I started by seeing the stats from full Rampager's gear, which put my Precision higher than my goal of 666. Then I began replacing Rampager's gear with Carrion until I removed exactly enough Precision.

Precision is slightly more important for hybrid builds because they gain the additional benefit of the direct damage component of crits, whereas straight condition Necromancers need it only for triggering Barbed Precision and Sigil of Earth.

With Superior Sigil of Corruption fully "charged" (+250 Condition Damage) and a 60 Condition Damage buff from Super Veggie Pizza, both of which should always be up, I have 1571 Condition Damage from this setup, which gives me a 121 damage bleed tick. By using Blood is Power and gaining 350 Condition Damage, I get up to 1921 which results in 138 bleed tick damage.

You can find more information about gear numbers here.

In this section we will go over some select minor and major traits. Let's take a look at each trait line individually and see what benefits we can get from investing our points.

Spoiler

Spite boosts Power and Expertise (condition duration). A lot of Condition Necromancers ignore this line because it does not synergize very well with pure condition builds, aside from Expertise.

Spoiler

Minor Traits
Adept Minor - Parasitic Bond
Approximately 950 healing at level 80, and it affected by Healing Power. If you go a little further into Spite you get:

Master Minor - Death Into Life
This increases Healing by 5% of Power, which increases the healing done by Parasitic Bond (as well as your healing skill, of course). Together, these two minor traits provide some decent automatic healing. If you also grab III - Spiteful Removal, you can take on many enemies with some degree of ease.

Grandmaster Minor - Siphoned Power
This trait is kinda bad. You get 1 stack of Might that lasts like 4 - 5 seconds. Unlikely to have too great of an effect. In the rare event that your health gets down that low, 1 - 2 extra bleed damage per tick probably isn't gonna save you. I expect this to get buffed at some point.

Major Traits
Coming Soon!

Curses is the trait line that you will almost invariably be filling out completely, so we get access to all 3 minor traits and the Grandmaster Major trait, though you'll probably end up choosing Lingering Curse for that one anyway. This line gives Condition Damage and Precision.

Spoiler

Minor Traits
Adept Minor - Barbed Precision
At this point, do I need to further deify this trait? You already know how amazing this one is. You get it for free and it gives back a sick damage boost.

Master Minor - Furious Demise
5 seconds of 20% increased critical hit chance synergizes very well with the Curses line which boosts Precision. Increased crit chance means more Barbed Precision and Sigil of Earth procs. If you don't find Death Shroud too useful otherwise, pop in and out every so often to get this boost for your main weapon.

Grandmaster Minor - Target the Weak
I want to make special mention of Target the Weak and how I believe it makes a strong case for hybrid Power / Condition Damage Necromancers.

Target the weak increases direct damage only by 2% for every condition on an enemy. It is located in the Curses line. Remember the Curses line also increases Precision, a trait normally associated with direct damage. Of course, we can take advantage of Precision to stack more bleeds, but most Condition Necromancers use it only for that purpose.

The Spite line increases Power and Expertise (Condition Duration). So by maxing out 2 trait lines we get Power, Precision, Condition Damage, and Condition Duration.

The biggest complaint a Condition Necromancer usually has is the bleed cap. No more than 25 stacks of bleeding can be on any one target. When are you most likely to reach that bleed cap? Fighting bosses or champions with a lot of attackers. And in those situations those bosses or champions usually have quite a few other conditions on them, because there are a lot of attackers.

So a pure Condition Necromancer, whose primary source of damage comes from stacking bleeds, finds itself out of luck. The minor trait Target the Weak means, however, that a Necromancer can do more direct damage in this situation, up to 22% more! There are 11 conditions that can be applied to an enemy.

Being a Hybrid Necromancer allows us to still be viable when the bleed cap is reached, do more than pitiful damage to world objects, and take advantage of the unappreciated synergy of the Spite line's 2 boosts.

I have maintained for a while on these forums that I believe it is better to be versatile in this game than to max out a single aspect of your character. The latter may make you great in some situations, but the former means you will always be useful.


Major Traits
Coming Soon!

Death Magic gives Toughness and Boon Duration. Unfortunately, all the minor traits revolve around minions. You're most likely in this line to get the Staff major traits.

Spoiler

Minor Traits
Adept Minor - Reanimator
This trait is infamous. Forces you to spawn a useless minion after a kill.

Master Minor - Protection of the Horde
If you're in this line for the 2 Staff skills then the only time this will probably come in to play is because a Jagged Horror has spawned or if you use Flesh Golem for your elite. Either way it is not a significant boost to Toughness.

Grandmaster Minor - Deadly Strength
If you have a lot of Toughness already from your gear then this adds a little bit of Power, but as a Condition Necromancer you're probably not going to go deep enough into Death Magic and Spite to really take advantage of this.


Major Traits
Coming Soon!

Gives Vitality and Healing Power. This line is about health and daggers. This line doesn't necessarily have any direct synergy with a conditions build, but it does offer survivability in any situation.

Spoiler

Minor Traits
Adept Minor - Full of Life
The 30-second cooldown is reasonable. Keeps you topped off for health somewhat. Not great, not terrible. Meh/10

Master Minor - Vampiric
25 HP per hit at level 80. Does not trigger from condition damage. Not great. You probably will not even notice it. There are major traits in this line that make this a little better or offer more functionality, but its still nothing game-changing.

Grandmaster Minor - Blood to Power
Decent trait. Your health should be above 90% the vast majority of the time, so it's almost a permanent direct damage boost (does not affection conditions). However, the investment cost is very high, taking us 25 points into the trait line.


Major Traits
Coming Soon!

Gives Critical Damage and increases Life Force Pool.

Spoiler

Minor Traits
Adept Minor - Gluttony
Recently buffed from a 5% gain to a 10% gain. A little more noticeable but still lackluster. A pure Condition Necromancer will be using Death Shroud only sparingly anyway, and even hybrid builds try not to go under 50% Life Force.

Master Minor - Last Gasp
6 seconds of Protection is great, and it also gains some Life Force, both of which can save your life in a tough fight that isn't going well.

Grandmaster Minor - Strength of Undeath
Another +5% damage when in X situation. Again, direct damage only. All these direct-damage-only-boosts are really only good in hybrid builds (or just straight up Power builds, but you're in a bleed duration topic!).


Major Traits
Coming Soon!

More trait stuff
Coming Soon!

In this section I want to talk about some basic build templates you can use to take advantage of your new-found extra bleed duration. These are my suggestions for build ideas and are really just templates. Use them more as a jumping-off point than something set in stone.

Spoiler

Spoiler

This build focuses on improving your conditions while providing good solo survivability.
20/30/20/0/0

Spite
We go into spite for +20% condition duration and to cause our Flesh Golem to do 30% more damage.

Curses
As always, a full 30 points into Curses. Hemophilia and Lingering Curse are standard here, especially if you need Hemophilia to get your bleed duration up to +100%.

I prefer VI - Terror for my Master slot because of the recent buff to the skill, but there are 2 main choices here that most people use: VII - Master of Corruption and IX - Focused Rituals. These are chosen based on what Utility Skills you take. If you take some Well skills, Focused Rituals is wonderful.

The choice is yours based on your utilities and playstyle.

Death Magic
The Staff's 2nd skill Mark of Blood can be spammed to great effect when coupled with II - Greater Marks and/or V - Staff Mastery.

However, I prefer to add survivability to the Flesh Golem in place of Staff Mastery. I tend to only use the Staff skills to start a fight and then finish off with Scepter / Dagger, so reduced cooldown isn't a big deal for me.

Alternatives

If you do not wish to use the Flesh Golem as your Elite skill, an easy set of replacement traits is simply VII - Spiteful Marks in Spite and V - Staff Mastery in Death Magic.

Spoiler

See this topic for my Hybrid Necromancer build that incorporates +100% bleed duration.

• Finish the Traits section
  
• Add some build suggestions and ideas
  
• More pictures!

Thank you so much for reading. If you have any comments or suggestions please feel free to leave them below, I will try to respond to all of them! Remember this guide is constantly evolving, and your contributions help shape it.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 13 February 2013 - 06:40 AM.

[OChunx]

Great and simple guide. I'm actually really surprised a guide on this build didn't come out earlier, considering that the vast majority of necromancers are conditionmancers, and the fact that people had gotten the 20/30/20/0/0 or 30/30/10/0/0 trait distribution (with bleed duration runes) figured out by like the first week gw2 was released. Like theres been tons of dungeon builds, some wvw builds, but no one ever bothered to make a PvE build...

Anyway, as an alternative for those that don't like taking the golem because of its aggro-magnet abilities and getting into fights you don't want, might I suggest Staff Mastery and Spiteful Marks to replace the minion traits? This maximizes the abilities of the staff as far as traits go and makes it great for tagging mobs in events and zergs (for the few zergs that are even left in PvE). It just seems sort of paradoxical that you take Signet of the Locust to get you around the map faster, but then also use Flesh Golem who draws a lot of fights (even if he is the most optimal in terms of damage).

And Ive never seen someone use Terror over Master of Corruption. Hows the damage on Terror? Based on the wiki formula, would it hit for around 1000 each time? Just curious what your experience has been with it.

Also, I see a lot of people use Corrosive Poison Cloud as a third utility. I'm personally not a huge fan of it, and would much rather use Signet of the Locust, but for those that do use it, maybe you should address your thoughts on it?

Edited by OChunx, 31 December 2012 - 10:23 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

Thanks for posting, Chunx! I updated the OP with your suggestions.

As for Terror, since it does more damage the higher your condition damage stat (30% of the stat), I was getting 779 and 1169 (with a condition on the foe) damage from terror at 1389 condition damage. This scales with the Pizza, the Sigil of Corruption stacks, and the might from Blood is Power.

With a base of 1389 condition damage, from the Mists tests, you get:



Now I just started working with Terror (well, since the update that made it possibly good) but so far I'm liking the numbers I'm seeing. It gives another incentive to use a fear and has some of the best "burst" we can do as condition Necros.

[Reverse Ghost]

Topic has been revamped / updated and will be moving in a new direction from here on forward. I'm going to treat this less as a build suggestion thread and more as a guide / analysis of playing a Necromancer focused on having double bleed length (and how that affects play).

[ZCKS]

Great guide.

Though I am wondering how different the damage would be if you went with rune of the afflicted x4 & rune of lyssa x2 for +25% duration to bleed & poison.

I know the idea here is to keep up as many stacks of bleeding as possible but that extra poison uptime could help quite a bit.

[MisterB]

Exotic Rabid armor and weapons may be obtained in Caudecus's Manor, Twilight Arbor, and Honor of the Waves in addition to Arah.

That's a neat trick on Blood is Power for applying Might without a target; I didn't know that.

On Signet of the Locust and Flesh Golem, if the golem's up, it runs with you or engages on its own, and you can still drop aggro by running further. The golem eventually breaks off its attack, and runs after you if you run far enough. It definitely takes longer to shake aggro when the golem's around.

Edited by MisterB, 04 January 2013 - 07:19 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

ZCKS, on 04 January 2013 - 12:01 PM, said:

Great guide.

Though I am wondering how different the damage would be if you went with rune of the afflicted x4 & rune of lyssa x2 for +25% duration to bleed & poison.

I know the idea here is to keep up as many stacks of bleeding as possible but that extra poison uptime could help quite a bit.

Thanks for posting! Dropping the 3rd bonus from the runes of Krait equals a loss of 55 condition damage, which causes a loss of 2 damage per tick (every 20 points in condition damage increases bleeding ticks by 1 point). So, not a huge loss at least.

I'm going to get in the Mists and do a little testing with the Poison duration now but it's important to note that, like bleeding, poison only does damage every full second.

MisterB, on 04 January 2013 - 06:53 PM, said:

Exotic Rabid armor and weapons may be obtained in Caudecus's Manor, Twilight Arbor, and Honor of the Waves in addition to Arah.

That's a neat trick on Blood is Power for applying Might without a target; I didn't know that.

On Signet of the Locust and Flesh Golem, if the golem's up, it runs with you or engages on its own, and you can still drop aggro by running further. The golem eventually breaks off it's attack, and runs after you if you run far enough. It definitely takes longer to shake aggro when the golem's around.

Ah, thank you for the info! Can't believe I forgot about the other dungeons that provide Rabid gear

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 04 January 2013 - 07:29 PM.

[ZCKS]

Reverse Ghost, on 04 January 2013 - 07:28 PM, said:

Thanks for posting! Dropping the 3rd bonus from the runes of Krait equals a loss of 55 condition damage, which causes a loss of 2 damage per tick (every 20 points in condition damage increases bleeding ticks by 1 point). So, not a huge loss at least.

I'm going to get in the Mists and do a little testing with the Poison duration now but it's important to note that, like bleeding, poison only does damage every full second.

True.

I'm mainly looking at increasing poison uptime for 2 reasons

1: Given the way it scales its almost = to 2 stacks of bleeding
2: it reduces healing the target gets by 33%.

So assuming I can get close to 100% up time without loosing 2 or more stacks of bleeding I would call it an overall gain in damage.

The scepter trait in curses gets me close but I still need to get at least 20% from somewhere. I would consider death magic but there isn't really any traits there that I want so I've been wondering about runes.
(I wish they made a gem that gave + condition duration, I would put it in my accessories if they did)

Edited by ZCKS, 04 January 2013 - 09:28 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

ZCKS, on 04 January 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

True.

I'm mainly looking at increasing poison uptime for 2 reasons

1: Given the way it scales its almost = to 2 stacks of bleeding
2: it reduces healing the target gets by 33%.

So assuming I can get close to 100% up time without loosing 2 or more stacks of bleeding I would call it an overall gain in damage.

The scepter trait in curses gets me close but I still need to get at least 20% from somewhere. I would consider death magic but there isn't really any traits there that I want so I've been wondering about runes.
(I wish they made a gem that gave + condition duration, I would put it in my accessories if they did)

You could do something like this:

30 Points in Spite, Rare Veggie Pizza buff, Hemophilia, and 4x Runes of the Afflicted and 2x Runes of the Orrian



That gets you +100% duration in both without Lingering Curses. This would also help your poison applications from other sources besides just the scepter.

A trait setup like this lends itself to Nemesis' Hybrid build/tutorial seen here on Youtube.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 04 January 2013 - 10:32 PM.

[Sephus]

I'd been getting tired of playing my Conditionmancer build while leveling up and was looking for a Dagger/Power build to try out.  After reading your post on +100% Bleed Duration -- Barbed Precision? I switched over to a Crit based build that focuses on the two tick Barbed Precision bleed while applying Weakness and gaining Fury/Retaliation from double tapping Death Shroud on cool down.  I use some food to make up for the cheaper rune and sigil options I've been using and haven't tested if the life steal is even marginally useful since I haven't hit 80 yet.  I tore through levels 60-70 and look forward to tinkering with the build as I head up to 80.

Thanks for your research and posts.  When making builds I had always focused on the traits and skills but now I see how much runes and secondary attributes can open up some cool new build options I hadn't considered.

[ZCKS]

Ty for all the work & I'm really lovin the pure condition build.

That being said I have swapped out the "Terror" trait in curses for "weakening shroud".

The 10 seconds base weakness is nice for keeping me alive (especially when paired with the dagger off hand for constant weakness on enemies) & the 2 extra bleed stacks for 10 seconds base ups the damage quite a bit.

[OChunx]

Reverse Ghost, on 04 January 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

Wait, bleed (or is it condition duration?) has a cap!?

Also what do you think of the +15% bleed duration from rune of the centaur? Not worth the trade off of (I think) 80 condition damage? Or is 100% bleed duration the critical point beyond which bleed duration is inferior to condition damage? (this view seems to suggest that condition duration would just always be inferior to condition damage, with the only use of having 100% being the extra Barbed Precision proc).

I highly doubt that the diminishing returns of stacking condition duration outweigh the diminishing returns of stacking more condition damage, even in general. An extra 15% condition duration seems like it would be increase overall damage by like 5% (obviously different depending on how much duration you have) while an extra 80 condition damage would add 3 or 4 points at max (?) to a bleed of about 110 per tic. The only argument I can see for condition damage over duration is that fights should not be lasting >15 sec. If bleeds were to tick for their full amounts, however, condition duration seems to always win over condition damage.

Edited by OChunx, 06 January 2013 - 05:49 AM.

[Reverse Ghost]

OChunx, on 06 January 2013 - 05:48 AM, said:

Wait, bleed (or is it condition duration?) has a cap!?

Also what do you think of the +15% bleed duration from rune of the centaur? Not worth the trade off of (I think) 80 condition damage? Or is 100% bleed duration the critical point beyond which bleed duration is inferior to condition damage? (this view seems to suggest that condition duration would just always be inferior to condition damage, with the only use of having 100% being the extra Barbed Precision proc).

I highly doubt that the diminishing returns of stacking condition duration outweigh the diminishing returns of stacking more condition damage, even in general. An extra 15% condition duration seems like it would be increase overall damage by like 5% (obviously different depending on how much duration you have) while an extra 80 condition damage would add 3 or 4 points at max (?) to a bleed of about 110 per tic. The only argument I can see for condition damage over duration is that fights should not be lasting >15 sec. If bleeds were to tick for their full amounts, however, condition duration seems to always win over condition damage.

I've heard from a few people on various forums that bleed caps at +100%. The only way to get higher being Lingering Curse. Not sure if this applies to other condition durations. Have not tested it myself yet.

Working on the assumption that there is a bleed cap of +100%, we find:

Using 2x Afflicted, 2x Krait, and 2x Centaur to get 45% bleed duration leads to a loss of 110 condition damage vs 3x Afflicted and 3x Krait. That results in a loss of 5.5 bleed damage per tick. So 5 or 6 depending on your existing condition damage stat. Using the Centaur setup does lead to some more versatility in builds, however. So I think in the end it would be up to the player, what he or she wants to do with the build.

For example, I have a little graph here that outlines some of those options:



(Expertise being condition duration from Spite)

Now, here I've used the lowest level pizza required to hit +100% bleed duration. As you can see, in the bottom right square, the trait Hemophilia can be removed entirely if a higher level pizza is used. This frees up a trait slot.

The secondary benefit of pizza is of course condition damage, so it's advisable to use the highest level you feel like you can reliably afford, even if it goes way over the cap, if you happen to be built as such.

So, basically, depending on what kind of pizza the player can afford and whether they want to put any points into Spite should determine their Rune setup.

You want to hit +100% bleed duration first, then go for your desired crit chance:



Then pump everything you can into condition damage (and power if hybrid build).

For example, I've made a Google Docs thing to plan out my own armor, going for 50% crit chance with a hybrid build:
https://docs.google....ZUo1YzZLQ0FvSUE

lol spreadsheets

(I'll be adding all this information to my first post within a day or so.)

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 10 January 2013 - 07:05 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

Reverse Ghost, on 02 January 2013 - 01:58 AM, said:

Topic has been revamped / updated and will be moving in a new direction from here on forward. I'm going to treat this less as a build suggestion thread and more as a guide / analysis of playing a Necromancer focused on having double bleed length (and how that affects play).

Well, I followed through. The original post has been overhauled. I encourage you to read it again because most of it is new. Also I put up some pretty pictures.

In due time I will probably remove a lot of the "legacy" section of this topic since I've moved away from build suggestions, plus the original post is getting massively long. In the future I'm going to add an analysis section for some traits, specifically in regards to using a hybrid build. Thanks to all who have posted so far, you've all helped me make the original post better for the readers and I've learned some new stuff as well!

[Balthor]

Lots of great info here. But I just am curious, due to the bleed cap, why go for cond duration over damage?

[Reverse Ghost]

Balthor, on 14 January 2013 - 05:53 AM, said:

Lots of great info here. But I just am curious, due to the bleed cap, why go for cond duration over damage?

Thanks for posting!

Consider this topic part thought experiment, part theorycrafting, and part actual application.

Depending on your Condition Damage stat, just 1 extra second of bleeding can make up for the loss in damage per tick. If a boss mob is at the 25 stack max, and you manage to squeeze in a bleed, you may end up doing more total damage via duration (assuming the mob stays alive for the entirety).

I have made a spreadsheet concerning Condition Damage vs Duration, but I'm not 100% sure it's accurate, so I haven't added it to the first post. Take a look at it and let me know if I'm not making a mistake somewhere: https://docs.google....RlVZX253V0lCbUE

The spreadsheet compares 100 per tick to 120 per tick. That is a difference of 200 Condition Damage. Those numbers can be changed and the whole sheet will update to compare the new data. The spreadsheet shows a comparison of a 5-second bleed and a 2-second poison (default) vs a 10-second bleed and a 3-second poison. Just auto-attacking with the Scepter (an attack every half-second) shows that after 7.5 seconds, the duration will outdamage the damage.

As you saw in my build topic, I'm of the opinion that a hybrid build is best for a Necromancer. And one way to get a lot of damage out of your bleeds as a hybrid is to increase duration rather than damage. One can never get the kinds of bleed ticks that Lopez is showing in his guides without devoting everything to Condition Damage, but I feel too limited focusing on just one aspect with a character (conditions).

So, when we sacrifice some of our Condition Damage stat on gear in order to incorporate Power, we try to make up for that loss by improving duration. This is further compounded by the actual extra damage done by the addition of Power, mostly via Life Blast from Death Shroud.

The actual answer to the question of which is better is very situational and the factors involved are many. Far too many for me to work out completely

I should add a bit to the first post concerning the bleed cap. Reaching +100% bleed duration is best for solo PvE play and works best in group play with a hybrid build.

[Dralnu]

At the start of my Necro's career, I made a build similar to yours, with Condition Duration with Carrion/Rampager gear since was craftable and I didn't have the Karma/Tokens for get the Rabid gear.

I play with IRL friends and couple more from the guild, so I have an arranged team for FotM. Our most common setup is Guardian, Warrior, Engineer/Thief, Elementalist and Necro. The Condition Duration build at the start, when we were doing easy dungeons, was great. But as the people geared up, the bleed cap started to being a problem: the Warrior and Engineer started to put a lot of bleeds from crits, the Thief at some time tried P/P putting bleeds too, and we reached to the bleed cap. We were losing damage since I was sustaining too much stacks of bleed with "not maxed" damage and cutting other's bleeds. So I changed to full Rabid's gear, Undead runes and sustaining less bleeds but with more damage each. It turned to be a party DPS gain at the cost of my personal DPS, but I gained survival (from Toughness) and utility (freeing Spite's points for Blood&Death Magic for better wells).

TL;DR: For starting in dungeons this build is king, but for harder stuff like FotM then full Rabid/Undead is better, more party damage and utility.

[Switchback]

Currently running 100% Bleed and Fear duration and very satisfied with the results.

Anyway, nice thread, but I want to mention something very important related to this build. Sigil of Earth is extremely bugged if not outright broken for many weapons.

I had Earth Sigils on all my weapons, before doing some extensive testing and realzing that it almost always bugs out on Staff once you switch weapons one time, and will rarely ever fire off. Testing this is tricky because unless you go to the mists and remove Barbed Precision, you can be tricked into thinking the the Sigil is working.

Thankfully, it does seem to work fine on Scepter, its biggest beneficiary, and you can even use two Earth sigils on your Scepter and Dagger off hand to get your chance to fire on a crit up to 84%.

The Earth Sigil also does not appear to work on underwater weapons, which is a shame since it would synergize well with Trident. I also found other proc sigils to not work underwater such as Fire and Lightnting. But primary importance one is the Staff, and I ended up going with Superior Sigil of Battle here, as 3 stacks of might for 20 seconds will really boost your damage through an entire rotation of Staff/Scepter/Death Shroud. Might is really good for us since it boosts both DD and Condition damage unlike all the other "increase damage" traits and abilities in the game, which just affect Direct Damage only.

Important to note on the Sigils, if you only have Earth on your Scepter, or Scepter/Dagger both, make sure to have your Scepter on when you go into Death Shroud, as Life Transfer hits 9 times, and will use the weapon and sigil of the current weapon set your character is holding while in DS, so this a good skill to ramp up bleed procs on.

Some other random tidbits. My testing in the mists vs Golems and the sPVP veteran mobs, revealed that as much as 60-70% of my damage is coming from conditions, primarily bleeding. Golems have about 14k health, Svanir/Chieftan 26-28k as far as I can tell. Killing the latter, a heavy condition build will only show 5-6k from direct damage. That means that as many as 150-170 individual bleed ticks have gone in contributing to the mobs death (a bit less as some is poison, but also condition damage).

The truly difficult choice I struggle with in maximizing this style build is Condition Damage vs Precision (say for jewels or on kill sigils such as corruption/accuracy). They seem about even to me. If bleeds run their entire course, condition damage is better, but of course any time a a condition build kills a mob, or downs a player, all those existing bleeds still going will never be finalized. As well as especially in WvW/PVP, you can expect your conditions to be cleansed routinely several times in a combat, negating your total ticks applied by perhaps as much as 25-50%, at that point precision is more favorable as it adds to your front end damage more, while still giving you bleed procs if they do manage to run full length.

Edited by Switchback, 18 January 2013 - 08:00 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

Switchback, on 18 January 2013 - 07:37 PM, said:

Sigil of Earth is extremely bugged if not outright broken for many weapons.

I had Earth Sigils on all my weapons, before doing some extensive testing and realzing that it almost always bugs out on Staff once you switch weapons one time, and will rarely ever fire off. Testing this is tricky because unless you go to the mists and remove Barbed Precision, you can be tricked into thinking the the Sigil is working.

Thankfully, it does seem to work fine on Scepter, its biggest beneficiary, and you can even use two Earth sigils on your Scepter and Dagger off hand to get your chance to fire on a crit up to 84%.

This is some really interesting stuff!

I did notice some problems with staff attacks proccing the earth sigil when I was in the Mists. If what you say is true then it does seem like a sigil of battle would be best for the staff.

I'd like to hear more on your thoughts about running 2 sigils of earth vs 1 earth and 1 corruption. The earth sigils share a cooldown as far as I know. Such that, if one procs, they both go on cooldown and neither can proc for 2 seconds.

At full stacks, corruption gives 250 extra Condition Damage, which equals 12.5 more damage per bleed tick. But if your numbers are right, and with 2 earths every crit has an 84% chance to trigger a 5 (10) second bleed, that could potentially be more damage overall, even with the cooldown problem.

Obviously it's tough to get too conclusive, given that not all bleeds will tick their full duration.

Also, what's your setup to get both +100% bleed and fear duration? It sounds like it would be a lot of fun to use.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 19 January 2013 - 03:57 AM.

[Lopez]

I just tested it for a bit, and Superior Sigil of Earth on staff is working fine for me. I tried both marks and the No. 1 attack, and both were triggering the extra bleed on 60 percent of my critical hits.

[Switchback]

Lopez, on 19 January 2013 - 07:16 AM, said:

I just tested it for a bit, and Superior Sigil of Earth on staff is working fine for me. I tried both marks and the No. 1 attack, and both were triggering the extra bleed on 60 percent of my critical hits.

Did you switch your weapons numerous times and go into and out of a battle. I have gone into a zone (say Orr) and saw the Earth Sigil work fine on staff for like the first mob, and then after that literally not fire once in 100 auto attacks, which is outside any random variation when you have 50% crit. And again, Barbed Precision is still firing, but it is only a one second or two second bleed, if the Sigil is procing for staff it should be 5 seconds mininum. And oddly actually seems to gain duration when used on scepter. I have tested this with multiple different staffs and even spent an extra gold to get a new Earth sigil to put on my staff as I figured that might fix it, but no luck.

Unless it is a bug specifically related to my build or trait setup it fails for massive periods far too often for me to use it on staff. I have also seen mesmers complain about the same problem with this sigil on their greatswords.

https://forum-en.gui...tsword-Glitched

Edited by Switchback, 19 January 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Switchback]

Reverse Ghost, on 19 January 2013 - 03:45 AM, said:

I'd like to hear more on your thoughts about running 2 sigils of earth vs 1 earth and 1 corruption. The earth sigils share a cooldown as far as I know. Such that, if one procs, they both go on cooldown and neither can proc for 2 seconds.

What you say is true, one sigil firing will put both on cooldown, *however* in the event you get a crit and the first sigil does not proc (which is 40% of the time), if you have a second one, then you have another second 60% chance to proc it from the 2nd sigil. This is diminishing returns true, however the added damage is still too much to pass up to me. Let's assume you make 20 attacks in a combat, which is about what it takes me to down Chieftan. Let's say crit rate is 50% for ease of math. With one Earth Sigil you will get 10 crits in those 20 attacks and 6 will proc bleeds from the sigil. Now if you have two Earth Sigils, slightly over 8 of those crits will proc. Those additional two procs will account for over 1000 (maybe up to 2000) damage if they fully run their course (which of course they will on mobs).

I don't consider these sigils to be in competition with on-kill sigils, because I actually carry a second weapon that stacks up precision on kills. Typically when farming or extended WvW (where I spend most of my time) I will stack up precision via kills with my secondary staff and when they reach the cap, will switch back to my staff with Superior Sigil of Battle. You do not lose the stacks!

Quote

Also, what's your setup to get both +100% bleed and fear duration? It sounds like it would be a lot of fun to use.

Krait x2, Afflicted x2, Lyssa x2, Hemophilia, 40% Pizza (yes can be costly if you use it all the time), and Master of Terror.

[Reverse Ghost]

Switchback, on 19 January 2013 - 07:54 AM, said:

What you say is true, one sigil firing will put both on cooldown, *however* in the event you get a crit and the first sigil does not proc (which is 40% of the time), if you have a second one, then you have another second 60% chance to proc it from the 2nd sigil. This is diminishing returns true, however the added damage is still too much to pass up to me. Let's assume you make 20 attacks in a combat, which is about what it takes me to down Chieftan. Let's say crit rate is 50% for ease of math. With one Earth Sigil you will get 10 crits in those 20 attacks and 6 will proc bleeds from the sigil. Now if you have two Earth Sigils, slightly over 8 of those crits will proc. Those additional two procs will account for over 1000 (maybe up to 2000) damage if they fully run their course (which of course they will on mobs).

I don't consider these sigils to be in competition with on-kill sigils, because I actually carry a second weapon that stacks up precision on kills. Typically when farming or extended WvW (where I spend most of my time) I will stack up precision via kills with my secondary staff and when they reach the cap, will switch back to my staff with Superior Sigil of Battle. You do not lose the stacks!

I'm liking this! It's really getting me thinking.

For example, with a 60% crit chance and 2 Sigils of Earth, fully one half (50.4%) of all attacks will result in a proc (ignoring the cooldown for now). Also at 60% crit chance, Barbed Precision will trigger on 39.6% of all attacks. That adds up to exactly 90% of all attacks resulting in a bleed proc of some sort. Madness. (At 67% crit chance, the total proc rate is just over 100%.)

But of course the Earth Sigil's cooldown is there. Depending on how fast you are attacking (Scepter auto-attack is every half second) you could potentially trigger the Earth Sigil every 2 to 2.5 seconds.

Barbed Precision doesn't appear to have a cooldown, but I haven't tested it extensively.

- - -

Now, I've made up a Spreadsheet comparing full Rabid Exotic gear vs a Hybrid setup with +100% bleed duration.

https://docs.google....SV81QXF6MFc1R2c

The bottom numbers can be a little confusing, but the basic idea is this:

Full Rabid does 142 damage per bleed tick assuming full Sigil of Corruption and 2 consumable boosts (I did not include any points in the Death Magic line, but an extra 200 toughness only equals 1 extra damage per bleed tick anyway). The hybrid setup does 122 but the bleeds will last twice as long.

Looking at just those 2 bleed sources, the sheet shows that full Rabid will do 142 damage on a Barb proc (1 sec) and 710 damage on an Earth proc (5 sec).

The hybrid setup with +100% bleed duration will do 224 (2 sec) damage on a Barb proc and 1,220 damage on an Earth proc (10 sec).

The sheet also shows how much more damage Rabid does than the hybrid assuming identical bleed times, for comparison.

This isn't taking in to account the increased chance of the procs going between 51.52% crit chance to 60% chance because my math is not that good. But if someone's is I would love to see how much of a boost that ~8.5% crit chance ends up giving.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 20 January 2013 - 03:54 AM.

[Switchback]

Reverse Ghost, on 20 January 2013 - 01:49 AM, said:

But of course the Earth Sigil's cooldown is there. Depending on how fast you are attacking (Scepter auto-attack is every half second) you could potentially trigger the Earth Sigil every 2 to 2.5 seconds.

This is why I wonder about precision vs condition damage. As your precision gets higher and higher, you are going to get more crits that are wasted due to the sigls being on cooldown. It's just hard to figure where the cutoff point is at where you have enough crit and after which point you should pile all into condition damage when given the chance.

Quote

Barbed Precision doesn't appear to have a cooldown, but I haven't tested it extensively.

Right. This can be tested easily just with Life Transfer or Ghastly Claws, which attack 8 and 9 times in a few seconds, take off all sigils, hit golems with either of these skills with a high crit chance and you can commonly see 3-5 bleeds stack up from Barbed Precision when you have it at 200% duration, you wouldn't get that many if it had an internal cooldown. Which is why hitting that extra 100% number is so important and worthwhile.

Edited by Switchback, 20 January 2013 - 05:16 AM.

[Ara]

TL;DR: precision is overrated for conditionmancers.


Scepter auto attacks hit 3 times in 2.5 sec (*) so if we crit and it triggers the earth sigil, the next 2 hits are ignored due to the 2 sec ICD (**).

So let's get the effective sigil proc rate per scepter hit (replace 0.60 with 0.84 if you use 2 earth sigils, but I would advise against it ):

- for 60% crit rate: (0.60 * 0.60) / (1 + 2 * 0.60 * 0.60) = 20.93%
- for 51.52% crit rate: (0.5152 * 0.60) / (1 + 2 * 0.5152 * 0.60) = 19.10%

Which gives:
0.2093 * 710 + 0.6000 * 142 = 234 bleed damage from BP+sigil per hit
0.191 * 1220 + 0.5152 * 244 = 359 bleed damage from BP+sigil per hit

Now if you compare that to scepter base bleed + poison damage over 3 hits it should represent roughly 20% of the overall conditions DPS (not negligible but not worth investing in precision).


(*) 60 sec of auto attacks resulted in exactly 24 rotations.
(**) If there's more than 2 sec between the poison hit and the 2nd bleed hit of the next rotation, numbers need to be tweaked a bit. To determine the exact formula, exact time between each attack is required. Someone with a chronometer ?

Edited by Ara, 20 January 2013 - 12:19 PM.

[Lopez]

Switchback, on 19 January 2013 - 07:44 AM, said:

Did you switch your weapons numerous times and go into and out of a battle. I have gone into a zone (say Orr) and saw the Earth Sigil work fine on staff for like the first mob, and then after that literally not fire once in 100 auto attacks, which is outside any random variation when you have 50% crit. And again, Barbed Precision is still firing, but it is only a one second or two second bleed, if the Sigil is procing for staff it should be 5 seconds mininum. And oddly actually seems to gain duration when used on scepter. I have tested this with multiple different staffs and even spent an extra gold to get a new Earth sigil to put on my staff as I figured that might fix it, but no luck.

I made sure it's a longer-duration bleed. It's not bugging out for me.

Do you have Sigil of Battle on your off-hand dagger? Sigil of Battle shares a nine-second inner cooldown with Sigil of Earth, which has a two-second inner cooldown.

In general, it's not a good idea to mix proc-based sigils.

Either way, it's not bugging out for me at all.

Ara, on 20 January 2013 - 12:17 PM, said:

TL;DR: precision is overrated for conditionmancers.


Scepter auto attacks hit 3 times in 2.5 sec (*) so if we crit and it triggers the earth sigil, the next 2 hits are ignored due to the 2 sec ICD (**).

So let's get the effective sigil proc rate per scepter hit (replace 0.60 with 0.84 if you use 2 earth sigils, but I would advise against it ):

- for 60% crit rate: (0.60 * 0.60) / (1 + 2 * 0.60 * 0.60) = 20.93%
- for 51.52% crit rate: (0.5152 * 0.60) / (1 + 2 * 0.5152 * 0.60) = 19.10%

Which gives:
0.2093 * 710 + 0.6000 * 142 = 234 bleed damage from BP+sigil per hit
0.191 * 1220 + 0.5152 * 244 = 359 bleed damage from BP+sigil per hit

Now if you compare that to scepter base bleed + poison damage over 3 hits it should represent roughly 20% of the overall conditions DPS (not negligible but not worth investing in precision).


(*) 60 sec of auto attacks resulted in exactly 24 rotations.
(**) If there's more than 2 sec between the poison hit and the 2nd bleed hit of the next rotation, numbers need to be tweaked a bit. To determine the exact formula, exact time between each attack is required. Someone with a chronometer ?

It's not the best stat for sure, but precision is still the best secondary stat. Power scales horribly with scepter and off-hand dagger.

Obviously, someone shouldn't take precision over condition damage, but that's not part of the equation, anyway, since rabid gear prioritizes condition damage.

Edited by Lopez, 20 January 2013 - 09:54 PM.

[Ara]

Lopez, on 20 January 2013 - 09:53 PM, said:

It's not the best stat for sure, but precision is still the best secondary stat. Power scales horribly with scepter and off-hand dagger.

Obviously, someone shouldn't take precision over condition damage, but that's not part of the equation, anyway, since rabid gear prioritizes condition damage.

More and more, I see posts and videos that tell to specialize because it is not really viable to mix. And, unfortunately, it is true for most direct damage builds where your DPS doesnt scale linearly with stats, but exponentialy.

And I don't want necros to think that precision synergies so well with condition damage that you don't have a choice but to go full rabid/rampage or face failure. So, if you want to spice your scepter/dagger epidemic build with some apothecary gear and throw in some wells, rejoice ! you're not a failure !

Anyway, I'm excited at the revamp arena.net is working on to increase build diversity, and sorry for being off-topic.

[Switchback]

Lopez, on 20 January 2013 - 09:53 PM, said:

Do you have Sigil of Battle on your off-hand dagger?

Nope, only problem is on the Staff (and water weapons). But if it is working fine for you, then perhaps it is a specific trait conflict, I don't really know. But I would urge those those interested in min/maxing to test all the same and make sure its not buggy for them. As in the link from the mesmer board, this has been repeated elsewhere.

Assuming it correctly working on Staff I'm not sure it outcomepetes the Sigil of Battle anyway. Considering unlike Scepter, you will rarely ever be spamming staff auto attacks, most often its just 4 marks and then off to weapon switch so only 4 attacks to proc that bleed. Probably around 800 damage per staff rotation (60% of a 5 sec bleed on each crit @ 50-60% crit), while 20 seconds of 105 might and condition damage should yield well over a 1000.

Edited by Switchback, 21 January 2013 - 07:21 AM.

[Lopez]

Ara, on 20 January 2013 - 11:09 PM, said:

More and more, I see posts and videos that tell to specialize because it is not really viable to mix. And, unfortunately, it is true for most direct damage builds where your DPS doesnt scale linearly with stats, but exponentialy.

And I don't want necros to think that precision synergies so well with condition damage that you don't have a choice but to go full rabid/rampage or face failure. So, if you want to spice your scepter/dagger epidemic build with some apothecary gear and throw in some wells, rejoice ! you're not a failure !

Anyway, I'm excited at the revamp arena.net is working on to increase build diversity, and sorry for being off-topic.

I didn't consider that, but yes, healing power is an alternative for builds that don't want to emphasize damage. The gain in healing is as little as precision's increase in damage, though.

[Dominox]

So you gotta use consumables to get to +100% - correct?

EDIT: Funny no one talked about Sigil of Agony.

My calculation:

25% from  25 points in Spite
20% from Hemophilia
45% from Runes
10% from Sigil of Agony

Total: 100% without Pizza

Edited by Dominox, 30 January 2013 - 02:41 PM.