34 replies to this topic

[Reverse Ghost]

As you may have noticed, I've been doing some work lately with the idea of doubling bleed duration. Through this work, as well as the often inadvertent contributions of several other members of the community, I came up with this build. I hope you find this information helpful, even if you don't end up using this exact setup.

This build offers little in the way of defense. You will get a little bit of extra Vitality and a pretty decent boost to your Life Force Pool by way of 25 points in Soul Reaping. Other than that, you must rely on kiting and absorbing big hits with Death Shroud. Don't forget that Doom (2 seconds with this build) can be used nearly any time. During a roll, when you're knocked down, while channeling another skill, etc.

• More gear choices - now with more flexibility and defense!

• Added Ascended gear
  
• Various formatting changes + changed graph in Gear section
  
• Added a Weapons section
  
• The Gear section - now with 10% more crit chance!
  
• The Sigil section - now with double the Sigil of Earth!
  
• The Traits section - now with more alternatives!

(Gear not properly represented)

Spoiler

• Versatility
  
  • Condition Damage and Duration for great bleed stacking
    
  • Power for destructable objects and viability when bleed stack limit is hit
• Death Shroud
  
  • Utilize DS for more than just the taking a big hit or the occasional fear or Life Transfer

By using a hybrid build, you are sacrificing the min-max potential of just focusing on one aspect (like going full conditions or full power). This means that your conditions will not tick as hard as they possibly could, and your direct damage will be lower than the absolute max possible. But what you gain is versatility.

A full condition Necromancer has great difficulty when it comes to destroying objects and suffers from the bleed stack cap, which hurts group play.

A full power Necromancer must constantly be attacking to maintain maximum damage, they cannot benefit from currently ticking conditions to keep damage going while busy or incapacitated. Additionally, direct damage is reduced by the opponent's armor, unlike condition damage.

Finally, a hybrid setup can take advantage of Death Shroud's bipolar disorder. More about this in the Death Shroud section.

Spoiler

Primary - Conditions: Scepter & Dagger

Scepter
This is the weapon set for conditions. Scepter #1 stacks constant bleeding and a 3-second poison*, #2 is a great opener because of the cripple, and #3 does solid direct damage because this is a hybrid build.

Dagger
Dagger #4 blinds and transfers up to 3 conditions to up to 3 foes (1 condition per foe). Pairs well with Corruption utilities. #5 has a big long bleed and offers some protection in the form of weakness.

* With my proposed duration setup, which you can read more about in the Bleed Duration section, all non-bleed duration is increased by +50%, meaning the 2-second Poison from Putrid Curse will now last 3 seconds.

You now have two choices for your secondary weapon set:

(Death Shroud can act as your "Power" weapon set in a pinch, especially when equipped with a Staff)

Secondary - Power: Dagger/Axe & Focus

Dagger
Dagger hits hard and fast. The auto-attack scales really well with Power and generates Life Force. #2 is a good multi-hit skill, stealing some life and generating crits, which means bleeds. Finally, #3 can be used to create some distance.

However, this build has little defense, as I mentioned at the start of the guide. Being in melee range is not always advisable. Caveat emptor.

Axe

Axe as a weapon choice is now seriously worth considering. The recent buffs make it quite viable in my opinion.

The auto-attack will stack a decent amount of Vulnerability: because we have +50% non-bleed duration, each attack puts a stack on for 10½ seconds (default duration recently buffed to 7 seconds, up from 5). The skill attacks twice, so we get 2 stacks per use. This skill does not do amazing damage, but it really isn't supposed to. It's there for stacking large amounts of Vulnerability to unleash Ghastly Claws:

#2 attacks 8 times, which means lots of crits and extra bleeding from those crits, generating 1% Life Force per hit. The damage of this skill was recently buffed pretty nicely (+10%). #3 is an interesting skill. You gotta be careful you don't pull extra mobs but the cripple and retaliation can help you get away.

Focus
Focus #4 puts on vulnerability and gives some regen. #5 drops a 7½ second chill and can strip boons in the event you run across a mob that has any. The chill can be popped right before switching back to Scepter / Dagger to help kiting. The skill now does more damage based on how many boons it rips off, up to +150%!

Secondary - Utility: Staff

The Staff is a great utility weapon. It's got good AoE conditions, a combo field and finisher, and a fear. The auto-attack and Putrid Mark scale with Power we well.

However, the cooldowns are pretty damn long unless traited, and in this build we do not go into Death Magic at all. Get ready for spamming auto-attack (which does scale pretty well with Power) and Mark of Blood while waiting for your weapon swap cooldown. Or just pop into Death Shroud when your marks are all on cooldown -- Life Blast does more damage when equipped with a Staff than a Scepter.

Spoiler

This build unlocks the full potential of Death Shroud!

We have Power to make Life Blast hit nice and hard. With this build, each attack slaps down 15 seconds of 2x Vulnerability and 1x Might, so it basically hits harder every time you use it (until you reach <50% Life Force, at which point you should stop using Life Blast and should probably pop out of Death Shroud immediately).

We have Condition Damage and Duration to make Dark Path's bleeds and chill do solid damage and last a long time. 3 stacks of bleeding that last for 10 seconds!

With my proposed traits, Doom does a 2-second fear and thus does damage twice. That's about 2.5k bonus damage every use.

Life Transfer will hit for a lot of direct damage and its crits will of course have a chance to proc Barbed Precision and the Earth Sigil(s). At 60% crit rate, an average of 5.4 of the 9 hits should result in a critical.

Just remember that the game updates Life Transfer's total damage with each tick. What it's showing is not damage per tick. For example, if it said 900 damage on tick 8 and 1,000 damage on tick 9, the total damage the skill has done is 1,000; you don't add up the individual ticks.

Spoiler

Healing
My healing skill for this build is Consume Conditions, a fantastic choice for most situations, and the standard for most Necromancers. Can also be used to eat up self-inflicted conditions from Corruption utility skills if you are out of transfers. This skill is unaffected by Poison's debuff, and in fact heals for more when you are afflicted.


Utility Skills
Most of the time, I use Signet of the Locust, Blood is Power, and Epidemic for my utility slots.

The Signet is a great speed boost, but the activated ability is lackluster. This skill can be replaced if you are not like me (I can't stand default movement speed).

Blood is Power and Epidemic are standard here. Blood is Power gives might, which benefits both direct and condition damage; great for our purposes. Epidemic is an incredible AoE skill for any Necromancer that uses Conditions or plays in groups. Epidemic hits all targets in its radius, it is not limited to 5 targets like other AoE skills.

Utility Alternatives

For alternatives I recommend Well of Suffering, Well of Darkness, Corrosive Poison Cloud, Spectral Armor, or Spectral Walk.

The Wells work well even when un-traited, especially when using MH Dagger, and the Spectral skills can utilize Spectral Attunement to generate decent Life Force on command.

It's a good idea to not get locked down by your Utility choices. They can (and often should) be changed between fights. The same goes for major traits. Adapt!

Elite
For my Elite I use Lich Form most of the time. Because we have Power in our build, and because it looks amazing, Lich Form is my choice here. It does real solid damage, can lay down good Vulnerability, and Grim Specter has nice utility in groups. The Jagged Horrors aren't the smartest, but you get enough of them and they do good damage.

If you know you're going to be fighting large groups, Plague has good utility, mostly in the form of its AoE blind. One thing to note, when you have +100% bleed duration, like you do in this build, you can maintain 8 stacks of bleeding from Withering Plague.

Flesh Golem. Well, you know. Minions. This Elite is not that bad, though. It gives you an interrupt in the form of the Golem's activated Charge ability, and the Golem basically functions as a long-term DoT as long as it is alive.

Spoiler

To achieve +100% bleed duration with this build, I use 15 points in Spite, Hemophilia, 3x Runes of the Afflicted and 3x Runes of the Krait, and some Super Veggie Pizza.

As you can see, this setup gives just over +100% bleed duration (+100% is the cap, however) and just over +50% to all other condition duration. +50% Other Condition Damage duration will show itself to be quite important when it comes to Poison and especially Fear (as you will see in the Traits section).

For more information on +100% bleed duration, please see my other topic, particularly the Bleeding Sources section.

Spoiler

Spite
15 in Spite gets us +15% condition duration and some bonus Power. The condition duration bonus is vital to the build for achieving +100% bleed duration and +50% to all other condition duration. If you can afford to be constantly consuming Rare Veggie Pizza, you can get away with only 10 points here. I'd put those extra 5 points into Soul Reaping, personally.

Minor Traits
Parasitic Bond and Death into Life pair decently with each other, giving an automatic heal when we kill something and making our healing a little better. Death into Life boosts the healing of Parasitic Bond.

Major Traits
Major trait choice is Reaper's Might which makes Life Blast hit harder and increases the damage of all conditions currently on the target. For a more defensive approach, Spiteful Removal is a fantastic choice. It basically means that ending a fight always takes you out of combat, instead of sometimes being stuck with a lingering cripple or a bleed that takes ages to end, and it can really save you in big group fights.

Curses
30 into Curses gives us Precision and Condition Damage, 2 major aspects of this build. Score.

Minor Traits
If you've read my other guide you know that Barbed Precision will tick twice with this setup, which a very solid damage boost. Furious Demise temporarily increases crit chance by 20%(!), which causes more bleed procs. Target the Weak increases direct damage only, so it synergizes well with a hybrid build. Chances are, if the bleed cap is reached, the mob you're fighting is a boss or a champ, so it should have a lot of other conditions on it, which means more damage! Up to 22% more damage if the target somehow has all 11 conditions on it.

Major Traits
Hemophilia and Lingering Curse are incredible. Hemophilia is required to hit +100% bleed duration, and Lingering Curse is just icing on the cake, even if it only affects 2 skills.

I prefer Terror in the master slot: at 1,600 Condition Damage, Terror deals 842 damage per tick. But it deals 1,263 per tick if the enemy has a condition on them, which they always should. And with another trait from the Soul Reaping line, we can get our Fear to tick twice, which means double that damage.

Soul Reaping
25 points in Soul Reaping gives us +25% Critical Damage and some extra Life Force Pool. Critical Damage is a big boost to our direct damage attacks, especially considering we're at 60% crit chance in this build (80% on occasion).

Minor Traits
Gluttony is a decent passive, since we will be using our Death Shroud regularly. Last Gasp can really come in handy when a fight goes poorly. It soaks up some damage and gives extra Life Force. Going almost all the way to the end of the line, we get Strength of Undeath, a flatout +5% direct damage boost that should always be up because you should try to stay above 50% Life Force pool at all times.

Major Traits
Unyielding Blast further improves Life Blast, making it hit harder every time it's cast. Master of Terror is great with this build. The combination of +50% non-bleed condition duration and this trait means your Fears will last 2 seconds, which causes Terror to essentially do double damage (around 2.5k total with this build).

Spoiler

There are a few ways to go with gear here. Actually, as long as you understand the main stats of the build, you can make your own armor choices.

The main stats are Precision, Condition Damage, Power, and Crit Damage. We get big boosts to Precision, Condition Damage, and Crit Damage from traitlines, and a decent boost to Power.

So when it comes to armor, we want to push further the advantages we've gotten just from the traitlines, and potentially add some defense to round out the build and make it less of a glass canon.

The following charts and information are based on maximizing damage at the cost of defense.

In picking out my gear, the first thing I looked for was reaching my crit chance goal. In this case that goal was 60%, which means adding 1176 Precision on top of the base 916 at level 80. We get 300 Precision from going 30 points into Curses, so we only need 876 from gear.

What 60% crit chance gets us is:

Fully one half (50.4%) of all attacks will result in a Earth Sigil proc (when using 2 Sigils of Earth. Has a 2-second cooldown). Further, Barbed Precision will trigger on 39.6% of all attacks. That adds up to exactly 90% of attacks resulting in a bleed proc of some sort. Madness. More details on this can be found in the Sigil section.

50% crit chance is perfectly acceptable, especially if you're dropping that extra 10% because you want to add more defense.

To start, we're looking for gear that gives Power, Condition Damage, and Precision. Rampager's (red) gear does just that. But a full set of Rampager's gives too much Precision, it puts us above 60% crit chance. By replacing some items of Rampager's with Carrion (blue) we lose Precision and gain Condition Damage.

This setup uses a back slot item gotten from a quest everyone will do in their Personal Story. Depending on your choice of Order, the quest will be different but you always get three choices of reward. In our case we pick the Rampagers Spineguard of the Rampager. It's only of Masterwork quality, but comes with an Exotic jewel.

Ascended gear is a bit tricky here. I've crunched some numbers and basically you have to take a loss to either Condition Damage or Power. The available prefixes are just not very conducive to this build (yet). At this point in time, your best choices are Rampager's and Berserker's. By using a mix of the two you can split the difference, but it's still not perfect. Now I fully expect more prefixes and affixes to come (I'd love me some Carrion), so until then you can either hold off on Ascended pieces or just get whichever you like.

Right now I'm liking this setup the best (subject to change over time). It loses a bit of bleed damage but gains quite a bit of Crit Damage and some Power. I'm even considering switching a ring over to Berserker as well. Because Ascended trinkets incorporate jewels into their stats, they have really high Crit Damage boosts.

You should decide for yourself if you want to boost the Condition side or the Direct side of your Necromancer. These days I'm leaning toward boosting the Direct side, since having +100% bleed duration can really make up for the loss in individual tick damage in most circumstances.

Of course, to add Toughness you will need to incorporate gear like Soldier's or Knight's / Cavalier's. Rabid is a good choice as well if you wish to maintain a high Condition Damage stat.


Runes
3 Runes of the Afflicted and 3 Runes of the Krait to get +30% bleed duration and 166 Condition Damage. You can use only 2 of each of those to still gain the +30% bleed duration and use any 2 other Runes you like, but you will take a loss to your Condition Damage stat.

A word of advice
I strongly recommend placing a Rune of the Krait in your head slot item instead of Afflicted. To maintain the benefits of the runes in water you must also place one in your underwater breather and Krait is much cheaper than Afflicted!

Sigils
This build uses 2 Sigils of Earth simultaneously on the Scepter and the Dagger. Yes, they share a 2-second cooldown, but what you receive from using 2 at once is a higher chance to proc on each attack. One sigil has a 60% chance to proc on a crit. In the event that the sigil does not proc ( which is 40% of the time), the second sigil takes over. The total is an 84% chance on crits to proc a Sigil of Earth (60% of 40 is 24).

With 60% crit chance, this translates to a Sigil of Earth proc every other attack. 50.4% chance to proc on every single attack. The 2-second cooldown will likely mean that you won't actually get a proc every other attack (depending on attack speed), but this isn't a problem specific to using 2 Sigils of Earth, the cooldown is there even if you use only one. Using 2 simply gives you a higher overall proc chance.

To compensate for "using up" 2 sigil slots on identical sigils, we must now find a place to put a Sigil of Corruption in order to get that extra +250 Condition Damage stacked up (it's a "free" bonus of 12.5 damage per bleed tick).

Switchback has tested and found that putting a Sigil of Superior Earth on the Staff weapon can lead to a bug that causes the sigil to not proc properly. Lopez has done some testing and hasn't run into the bug, however, so you may wish to try it out for yourself.

So to get a Sigil of Corruption into our rotation we should either put it on our other weapon set or carry a second Dagger with the Corruption Sigil on it, then switch to the Earth Sigil dagger once the 25 stacks are hit.

With the Staff, you only have 1 slot, so using the Dagger-switch technique allows you to use something like a Sigil of Battle on your Staff, giving some bonus Might.

If you use Axe/Dagger & Focus for your other set, you have 2 slots to work with, so it's easier to squeeze in a Sigil of Corruption. Because the Axe and Dagger attack pretty fast, it is hindered more by the Earth's 2-second cooldown so having 2 Earths isn't as useful. I prefer to use 1 Earth and 1 Corruption here.

Spoiler

Thank you, the reader. For reading.

And here are some people who have, through their topics and posts, helped me in some way with this build:

• Lopez
• Nemesis
• Grim Lich
• Switchback

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 04 March 2013 - 12:27 AM.

[Balthor]

Awesome write up! It looks effective, though mainly at max level. Would this work at all for leveling?

[Reverse Ghost]

Balthor, on 14 January 2013 - 06:13 AM, said:

Awesome write up! It looks effective, though mainly at max level. Would this work at all for leveling?

I don't have any actual experience attempting to level with something like this (I had hit level 80 before coming up with it), but it looks like it would hold up in theory. You certainly won't be able to reach +100% bleed duration until pretty late in the leveling experience, but you can still benefit from the combination of whatever duration boost you can get at the time and the Power.

The problem is that this is a 3-stat approach: Condition Damage, Power, and Precision, and you don't get access to triple attribute gear for a while. Potent gear gives Power and Condition Damage early on, or you can go with Ravaging, which gives Condition Damage and Precision. I would recommend Potent, since it really helps make destructible objects less annoying and precision doesn't become a huge factor until its relatively high.

The Curses traitline is the first priority followed by Soul Reaping and finally Spite.

[Reverse Ghost]

Updated / changed the build:

• Increase from 50% to 60% crit chance
  
• Changed Sigil section
  
• Lots more on Traits
  
• Clarified some important bits

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 20 January 2013 - 04:44 AM.

[Elrathan]

This looks like a great build. I've always thought that hybrid builds were under appreciated. The only thing that it's missing for me is 10 points in death magic to get Greater Marks. I don't think it would be wise to move anything out of curses and although I'm not a huge fan of the spite traits I'm not sure if I could keep the condition duration at 100 without it. Do you think it's possible to shift some points from anywhere?

Edited by Elrathan, 21 January 2013 - 12:18 AM.

[Reverse Ghost]

Elrathan, on 21 January 2013 - 12:16 AM, said:

This looks like a great build. I've always thought that hybrid builds were under appreciated. The only thing that it's missing for me is 10 points in death magic to get Greater Marks. I don't think it would be wise to move anything out of curses and although I'm not a huge fan of the spite traits I'm not sure if I could keep the condition duration at 100 without it. Do you think it's possible to shift some points from anywhere?

One thing you could do is switch from 3x Afflicted and 3x Krait to 2x each of Afflicted, Krait, and Centaur. That would increase the bleed duration from gear to 45%, eliminating the need for any points in Spite. You'd lose some Condition Damage, however (110 condition damage, which equates to 5.5 bleed damage per tick).

Basically, any points moved to Death Magic is going to be a loss in damage, that's just the nature of the trait lines, but you could take 10 points out of Soul Reaping. You lose the static +5% damage and 10% crit damage from doing that (as well as a major trait slot).

If you have mad cash resources, you could upgrade the most expensive kind of pizza, Rare Veggie, which would allow you to pull 5 points out of Spite and still maintain +100% bleed duration, then you'd only need to take 5 points from either Curses or Soul reaping.

So your choices are: lose condition damage, lose direct damage, or lose a bit of both.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 21 January 2013 - 12:34 AM.

[Elrathan]

Reverse Ghost, on 21 January 2013 - 12:31 AM, said:

One thing you could do is switch from 3x Afflicted and 3x Krait to 2x each of Afflicted, Krait, and Centaur. That would increase the bleed duration from gear to 45%, eliminating the need for any points in Spite. You'd lose some Condition Damage, however (110 condition damage, which equates to 5.5 bleed damage per tick).

Basically, any points moved to Death Magic is going to be a loss in damage, that's just the nature of the trait lines, but you could take 10 points out of Soul Reaping. You lose the static +5% damage and 10% crit damage from doing that (as well as a major trait slot).

If you have mad cash resources, you could upgrade the most expensive kind of pizza, Rare Veggie, which would allow you to pull 5 points out of Spite and still maintain +100% bleed duration, then you'd only need to take 5 points from either Curses or Soul reaping.

So your choices are: lose condition damage, lose direct damage, or lose a bit of both.

Thanks for that. I think I'll go with the alternate ruin setup so I can put an extra 5pts in Soul Reaping to pick up Near to Death http://intothemists....JG6fgm06ZH97FG. The increased uptime on fury provided by this should be quite useful. Also, what do you think of Withering Precision for when the bleed cap becomes problematic? Weakness is a fairly powerful condition and with both this builds high crit chance and Enfeebling Blood it should have a decent uptime.

[Switchback]

This should be a very good dps build and versatile for PVE with the high power AND condition, but it is very squishy, under 1000 Vitality and Toughness, and under 20k health, I would not recommend it as a WvW build unless you are permanently in a zerg or just very good defensively. The 2 second fears will help buying time but burst classes will likely be able to drop you fast. You have some LF but will remain squishy while in it.

Nice addition to the cannon of builds though.

[Rocky Balmoa]

Would you recommend this build for leveling? If so, which traits should i focus on first?

[Reverse Ghost]

Switchback, on 21 January 2013 - 07:31 AM, said:

This should be a very good dps build and versatile for PVE with the high power AND condition, but it is very squishy, under 1000 Vitality and Toughness, and under 20k health, I would not recommend it as a WvW build unless you are permanently in a zerg or just very good defensively. The 2 second fears will help buying time but burst classes will likely be able to drop you fast. You have some LF but will remain squishy while in it.

Nice addition to the cannon of builds though.

Yeah this build is definitely made for Player vs AI

Rocky Balmoa, on 21 January 2013 - 07:52 AM, said:

Would you recommend this build for leveling? If so, which traits should i focus on first?

As I said in this post, I don't have any experience in trying to level this exact build, but I really do feel that leveling up in Guild Wars 2 is an experience. I attribute much of my love for the Necromancer profession to my time spent experimenting with different builds or styles while leveling up. The PvE in this game is easy enough that you can get by with basically anything.

However, if you do intend to level as a hybrid, Potent gear has power and condition damage, and Ravaging gear has condition damage and precision. I found that prioritizing Curses and then Spite early on was helpful. Soul Reaping is more helpful at later levels than early ones.

[Wladimir Wronski]

Thanks a lot for this build and your explanation of the details.

One question: Would you recommend putting 2 Earth Sigils into each of your underwater weapons?

[Reverse Ghost]

Wladimir Wronski, on 28 January 2013 - 12:34 PM, said:

Thanks a lot for this build and your explanation of the details.

One question: Would you recommend putting 2 Earth Sigils into each of your underwater weapons?

I haven't tested it myself, but Switchback mentioned this in one of his posts in my other topic:

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

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.

[BlueDragoon]

Where do you get the Exotic backpiece? It seems it's Burntclaw's Brace but I can't seem to find where it's from. Any advice? http://www.gw2db.com...urntclaws-brace is the link I had found on it, no info on it though.

[Reverse Ghost]

BlueDragoon, on 06 February 2013 - 06:49 AM, said:

Where do you get the Exotic backpiece? It seems it's Burntclaw's Brace but I can't seem to find where it's from. Any advice? http://www.gw2db.com...urntclaws-brace is the link I had found on it, no info on it though.

Nice eye. I had meant to switch that graph out earlier but I forgot! The old graph was just pure theorycrafting by the numbers, even if the items weren't feasible or even available in game. After making that graph I made a new one using more attainable items. I'll switch it out in the OP but describe it a bit here as well.

This setup uses a back slot item gotten from a quest everyone will do in their Personal Story. Depending on your choice of Order, the quest will be different but you always get those three choices. In our case we pick the Rampagers Spineguard of the Rampager. It's only of Masterwork quality, but comes with an Exotic jewel.

One thing to note: if you're gearing up in Rare to get started with this build, you can just go full Rampager's (with the same Order backpack). It will get you up to 59.90% crit chance.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 07 February 2013 - 04:24 AM.

[Azalore]

How is this build's dps compared to standard condition build?

[Wicklow]

Do you know if sigil of agony effects the duration of barbed precision procs, I know it doesn't effect the duration of bleeds from utilities, I can do some testing myself if you don't know.

[Reverse Ghost]

Azalore, on 13 February 2013 - 07:41 PM, said:

How is this build's dps compared to standard condition build?

A completely pure Condition build like full Rabid and Runes of the Undead is definitely going to have bleeds that tick for more damage, around 20 more damage per tick, which is considerable. A direct DPS compassion is difficult, especially since this build has that +100% bleed duration figure. In longer fights and fights with many players, I believe this build will do more damage total, but in shorter fights where the +100% bleed duration suffers because your bleeds don't last their full duration, a full Rabid / Undead kills faster. Then again, since this build has good direct damage, it might be able to compensate for that. Haha, honestly I don't have an answer . There's just so many factors.  

A pure Condition build will, in all likelihood, do more damage per second because those bleeds hit so damn hard, unless the user of my build is constantly switching between condition and direct damage in an attempt to compete. My bleed ticks will never hit as hard. But this build's damage is easier to sustain because of its longer Condition Duration. You can drop some bleeds on the opponent, then do other things, and those bleeds will tick for ages. I like to think of it as more true to the attrition concept. Plus the versatility of being able to do direct damage if and when the bleed cap is hit.

Wicklow, on 13 February 2013 - 09:08 PM, said:

Do you know if sigil of agony effects the duration of barbed precision procs, I know it doesn't effect the duration of bleeds from utilities, I can do some testing myself if you don't know.

I haven't really used the Sigil of Agony myself, I just included it because Dominox suggested it as an alternative to using pizza. The description on the Sigil would lead me to believe that as long as you have the weapon with that Sigil equipped, all bleeds you apply should last 10% longer, but we all know the GW2 tooltips can't always be trusted . However, if you are right that it doesn't affect bleeds from utilities, that is a little disconcerting.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 14 February 2013 - 05:05 AM.

[Wicklow]

Th reason I ask is that I use a build that incorporates both bleed duration and maximum condition damage.  The basic of it is 30/30/10/0/0. I the spite tree I use traits that increase my minion damage, give me retaliation and increase my damage by 20% to mobs under 50% which I know is terrible but I really want the condition duration from the tree and I don't see there is a better option. Then the standard curse tree, with hemophilia, master of corruption, and lingering curse.  In death magic I go with greater marks.  The idea is I get 30% duration from spite, 40% from my pizza, 20% from hemophilia and 10% from sigil of agony for a total of 100%. This allows me to use runes of the undead with and a master tuning crystal with full rabid gear.  My bleeds hit for a lot and they last for a long time. Also the flesh golem is pounding away about 80% of the time, which I saw crit for 2400 the other day.

Anyways some feedback would be nice.

Also I have a question that I've been wondering about that maybe you know something of.  If you apply a bleed that has 10.5 seconds of durations know it will only tick  10 times but does the debuff stay on the mob for .5 secs of time at some point at the beginning or end of its duration where it doesn't tick?  If it does then my thought was that since the stack amount dictates the number of ticks per sec, if you somehow had 10 stacks all applied simultaneously for 10.5 seconds of duration will you do an additional 5 ticks of damage during the .5 seconds?  The idea came to me because not all stacks tick independently of when they were applied.  If you have 3 stacks you see a tick every third of a second and 4 stacks every quarter of a second etc.  just some food for thought

One more thing, I read somewhere someone did some testing on bleed duration and concluded that lingering curse causes the bleeds inflicted from you scepter to round up to the next highest integer of ticks.  For example if you have enough bleed duration and lingering curse to get a bleed to have a 13.6 duration it will actually tick 4 times because of lingering curse.  Likewise if you have a situation where it will be 13.1 seconds of bleed it will still round up to 14. http://www.guildwars...d-vs-6x-undead/ the guy was unknowndomo a bit down the page.

Also sorry for any grammar errors I missed I'm writing this on a tablet on a train.

Edited by Wicklow, 14 February 2013 - 04:45 PM.

[Reverse Ghost]

Wicklow, on 14 February 2013 - 04:44 PM, said:

Also I have a question that I've been wondering about that maybe you know something of.  If you apply a bleed that has 10.5 seconds of durations know it will only tick  10 times but does the debuff stay on the mob for .5 secs of time at some point at the beginning or end of its duration where it doesn't tick?  If it does then my thought was that since the stack amount dictates the number of ticks per sec, if you somehow had 10 stacks all applied simultaneously for 10.5 seconds of duration will you do an additional 5 ticks of damage during the .5 seconds?  The idea came to me because not all stacks tick independently of when they were applied.  If you have 3 stacks you see a tick every third of a second and 4 stacks every quarter of a second etc.  just some food for thought

The bleed "debuff" will stay on the target during fractions of seconds, but you will never be able to get a remaining .5 seconds to gain any extra damage. Each stack has its own duration, so you cannot "pile on" two half-second bleeds to make a 1-second bleed. Those half-seconds are always wasted. If you applied a 10.5 second bleed and then a 1.5 second bleed on top, you would still only deal 11 ticks, not 12 since each bleed stack is counted separately.

The bleed tick numbers tick constantly only for aesthetic purposes. Behind the scenes, all the damage goes off at regular intervals (1 second). So even though we see numbers constantly flying off the target, the damage is actually only being applied in one lump sum every full second.


That is some interesting information about Lingering Curse, though. If it's true, that Lingering Curse always rounds up, my 13.3-second bleed from Scepter 1 is actually a 14-second bleed. Very nice.

[Wicklow]

I'll do some quick testing tonight to see if the bleeds from my scepter, specifically the barbed precision procs benefit from the sigil of agony, and I'll let you know one way or the other.  I'll also provide some more specifics on the build I'm currently using that perhaps you could provide some feedback on, since you seem knowledgable of the class.  Also anyone else please leave feedback as well.  Personally I think my build will allow you to do the most amount of bleed damage without using the epidemic trick after using AOE bleeds to double stack on the focus target. Not to be confused with damage per tick.

[Madi]

Now that the ascended accessories are available, which one/s do you prefer?

[Reverse Ghost]

Madi, on 28 February 2013 - 11:13 AM, said:

Now that the ascended accessories are available, which one/s do you prefer?

Right now I'm working on the math for this setup:

As always: Red = Rampager's, Blue = Carrion, Yellow = Rabid

Subject to change over time (and if they add more back items), but I really like that it elegantly works out to exactly 60% crit chance by just replacing 2 items, and while it lacks any boost to Crit Damage, it is an increase to Condition Damage and health over my Exotic setup. Power stays almost the same.

Problem is, it only adds 3 damage per bleed tick over full Exotic. I'd really like to see Carrion Ascended gear. I think that would help this build a lot.

I'm also toying with the idea of dropping the whole must have 60% crit chance thing to see what options that opens up, and if those options are worth it.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 28 February 2013 - 09:02 PM.

[wtfus]

For doing high lvl fractals 30+, is it a problem trying to stay alive? I saw a full glass cannon build on youtube and i did not like the idea of getting downed a lot.

So yeah, before i transfer to this build i would like to know if staying alive in fractals 30+ is an issue. Of course i know it depends on the players awareness and skill, but like generally is it able to just stay alive for an average player?

[Reverse Ghost]

wtfus, on 03 March 2013 - 10:12 PM, said:

For doing high lvl fractals 30+, is it a problem trying to stay alive? I saw a full glass cannon build on youtube and i did not like the idea of getting downed a lot.

So yeah, before i transfer to this build i would like to know if staying alive in fractals 30+ is an issue. Of course i know it depends on the players awareness and skill, but like generally is it able to just stay alive for an average player?

Unfortunately I can't answer that for you; I haven't done any fractals with this build.

This build is pretty heavy on the glass side of things, aside from the Necromancer's naturally high HP and increased Life Force pool. However, you can do whatever you like with the armor as long as you keep the Runes I've laid out. You can add more defense that way if you wish.

Some armor suggestions: Soldier's, Valkyrie, Knight's, Cavalier's, Carrion, and Rabid all add defense in the form of Toughness or Vitality, but obviously at the sacrifice of damage (either Condition or Power).

As long as you maintain at least around 50% crit chance you should be fine.

The 3 main stats that this build focuses on is Condition Damage, Precision, and Power (and some Crit Damage). Precision is really important because not only do crits do good direct damage, but also apply bleeds.

For a more defensive build you would lower one or all of those stats to add Toughness most likely. The choice is pretty much up to the user: http://wiki.guildwar...riple_attribute

It's personal preference if you want to lose Condition Damage or Power, or a bit of both.

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 03 March 2013 - 11:20 PM.

[Phenn]

To the point of condition duration over damage, I've realized in general PvE that duration makes using Epidemic easier. If I'm pulling a bunch of trash mobs with CD that hits hard, my target mob usually dies before I can get Epidemic off to spread the bleeds. If, on the other hand, the bleeds hit lower but last longer, it's easier to stack them, spread them, and keep them up on all the other mobs.

So for leveling, I ALWAYS prioritize duration over damage.

[Lopsang]

Awesome build, I was going to use one from Nemesis until I stumbled upon this.

I just have one question, in your "Gear Rune and Sigils' section, the first image outlining the gear shows 75% crit damage total, however it only looks like you're getting 25% from the trait line.  Where does the other 50% come from?  Am I reading it wrong or is it just a mistake?

Again really an awesome build, can't wait to try it out.

[Reverse Ghost]

Lopsang, on 14 March 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

Awesome build, I was going to use one from Nemesis until I stumbled upon this.

I just have one question, in your "Gear Rune and Sigils' section, the first image outlining the gear shows 75% crit damage total, however it only looks like you're getting 25% from the trait line.  Where does the other 50% come from?  Am I reading it wrong or is it just a mistake?

Again really an awesome build, can't wait to try it out.

The default crit damage bonus is 50%, meaning that crits do 50% more damage than regular hits. So I just added that so I could see my "total" bonus. Like, I'm only adding 25% extra crit damage, but that causes critical hits to do 75% bonus damage.

[Lopsang]

So now that the giver's weapon set is fixed, does the +20% condition duration trump the condition damage from the rampager's weapons?

[Reverse Ghost]

Giver's weapons are an interesting choice.

To use them you cannot have a Staff in your rotation and still maintain +100% bleed duration, since 2-handed weapons only give a 10% bonus.

Swapping to Giver's over Rampager's means a loss in Condition Damage, Power, and to a lesser extent Precision. You gain, obviously, +20% condition duration. This means you can drop bleed / condition duration from other places because we have too much now.

1. The most obvious thing would be to use a lower-level pizza, but that also results in a Condition Damage loss. Like I said before, it's best to use the highest level pizza you can reliably afford. Plus in my current build the pizza / Spite combination gives a 2-second Fear. Very important.

2. You can drop the Hemophila trait. Reaper's Precision is probably the best choice here, but there isn't anything amazing in this slot.

3. You can lose points from the Spite line. You can drop them all and still be 5 over the max. But I really like at least 10 in there for Reaper's Might. So if you go down to 10 in Spite (also a loss in Power, remember) you end up being 15 over the max bleed duration. This frees you up to go all the way into the Soul Reaping line for an extra 5% crit damage, which is nice. You can also drop either 3 Runes of the Afflicted or the Krait (probably Krait) and either go full Afflicted or choose another combination.

4. You could forgo pizza altogether by getting +45% bleed duration from Runes, but again you lose the 2-second fear.

I haven't had a lot of time to think about this yet, but it seems like the 3rd option is the best of this bunch. Still, though, overall we're looking at not just a loss of Condition Damage (some of which can be gained back by going deeper into the Affliction runes), but also of Power and Precision. Gain of a little Crit Damage.

I'll mull it over for a few days and see what I come up with. Thanks for posting and bringing this to my attention

Edited by Reverse Ghost, 31 March 2013 - 03:56 AM.

[Xenomortis]

Why do you want +100% bleed duration?
Is there some extra benefit that I'm missing, or is that the goal in itself?

I ask because the obvious change I'd make to this trait setup is to knock back Spite to 10 and put 30 into Soul Reaping for the 'Near to Death' trait (-50% DS recharge) for potentially 100% Fury uptime.
Hell, I might even suggest cutting the Spite spec completely (I am uninterested in the Might from the slow-as-hell Life Blast) and going 10 into Blood (or Death, but the traits are less useful). Of course, if you don't have any survivability issues, then you might as well keep the Spite spec.