Trailblazer Scourge in Fractals?

I'm currently building a Scourge with full trailblazer armor and trinkets for WvW. What I was hoping to find out whether this would be a strong build for higher tier Fractals as well?

I already know that the Viper's armor is preferred for raids, but was still curious to find out how useful trailblazer armor would be in fractals.

I would imagine the extra toughness and vitality would make the necro targeted more frequently, but help the party composition overall.

Any feedback on this issue would be great. I'm pretty sure that I will eventually be crafting a viper's armor set in the future.

Without the power and precision, would full trailblazer be strong enough for high tier Fractals with condition damage and expertise?

Generally speaking, in fractals you want glass: viper's (for condi) or zerk (for power), with niche exceptions for particular roles. But it can also depend on your goal.

• In a static, skilled team: viper's for sure.
• For frequent PUGging by a highly-skilled player, more support is usually better, i.e. sticking with Viper's and swapping traits or skills.
• If you're less confident about being able to pull extra weight for the team, durability is helpful. But I wouldn't recommend full trailblazer's; that's a lot of precision (and power) to give up.

However... it's a big pain to keep multiple sets. Trailblazer's isn't horrid; it's just inefficient. In most circumstances, it should be fine. Fractals doesn't require 100% efficiency except for those who speed clear, which doesn't apply to PUGs for the most part.

PS speed clearing teams use specific comps, which I'm ignoring, since it seems outside the scope of the OP's question.

Going by how terrible damage is on pugs in T4s, you'll be fine with Trailblazer.

Things to note, the higher toughness will make you a target more often meaning you are getting extra pressure which can be an advantage when playing with random people if you can deal with it.

I will probably be playing in Pugs.

I was also planning on making a second necro with full viper's armors just to have the best armor for a power Reaper sometime in 2018.

I honestly, just want to run the best builds possible for each game mode. I was hoping that trailblazer on the necro would be the exception to the general rule that viper's is strongest for condition damage in PvE content.

Honestly, I have never tried high tier fractals, which is the main reason for asking.

Especially when it comes to putting agony infusions for armor to be used for fractals, it sounds like trailblazer isn't the best option.

I play a lot of pvp and WvW so I can definitely handle extra targetting from enemies due to having more toughness.

Barrier only goes so far of course.

Then go full trailblazer and get a second set of viper trinkets eventually via Living World Season 3 and you should be golden.

DPS loss between trailblazer and viper isn't too terrible considering condi scourge does fairly minimal power based dps. Some people will scoff at it but most pug groups won't even notice your lower dps or simply assume it is you messing up your rotation a bit.

Cyninja had a good suggestion. I should just have another set of viper's trinkets for just Fractals. Which is an easy solution :)

Is it safe to say that full viper's armor and trinkets would be optimal for a condition Scourge in fractals?

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Cyninja had a good suggestion. I should just have another set of viper's trinkets for just Fractals. Which is an easy solution :)

Is it safe to say that full viper's armor and trinkets would be optimal for a condition Scourge in fractals?

Yes. Full viper currently is best in slot for condi scourge damage wise for both fractals and raids.

it really doesn't matter as long as your dps is good. i still roll my wvw gears for my scourge in t4s and i don't think people ever question me nor my dps. if only, there are probably other scourges asking what build i'm running. and i say i'm lazy so i just slap the meta in with my wvw gears. all set. then i link my wvw armor and they give me the big eyes. lol.extra toughness will make you get targetted a bit more. but if you're a wvw player, you can handle it fine with proper positioning.

@OutOfOrder.3719 said:Is it safe to say that full viper's armor and trinkets would be optimal for a condition Scourge in fractals?@Cyninja.2954 said:Yes. Full viper currently is best in slot for condi scourge damage wise for both fractals and raids.

Combining those two thoughts: knowing your class and the fractal mechanics is more important than which gear you're using. I always prefer teaming up with people who know what they are doing over which class or build or stats.

Viper is optimal.

But trailblazer works okay if you can only afford one set for both WvW and fractals. You will lose about 20-30% dps compare to Viper but that won't prevent you from completing T4 fractals efficiently.

However, I highly suggest you use viper if you want to go for raids. It is important to optimize builds there.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Going by how terrible damage is on pugs in T4s, you'll be fine with Trailblazer.

If you play chrono like your avatar suggests, maybe you are the reason for low dps in your pug parties ^^

I am almost exclusively in pugs with good dps. But I don't join "T4 dailies, chill run" groups. Quality of T4 pugs is pretty high in my experience.

Trailblazer costs a condi scourge < 8% DPS. Unless you're playing with a very high performing group you won't notice the damage difference, and may actually perform better from your increased ability to take hits while ressing or otherwise hard carrying.

My experience running both is that in most groups trailblazer is substantially better, and in the groups where viper is better it barely matters because you roll over everything so fast anyway.

Only place it really comes into play is CM100, but you don't want to be playing a Scourge there anyway (very slow ramp and too many phase transitions on Arkk).

@Faaris.8013 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Going by how terrible damage is on pugs in T4s, you'll be fine with Trailblazer.

I don't play minstrel in T4s. I play Minstrel exclusively when PUG raiding and tanking and not when in static or semi static groups.

But yes, minstrel chrono in fractals would be a reason why dps is lower, by around 4-5k (minstrel sits at around 1-2k, normal chrono at around 5-7k depending on encounter). It doesn't explain why some dps don't break 15k on certain encounter where they should be pulling 25+k easy.

I have Dire/Trailblazer combo also from WvW and i only play PUGs in Fractals.

I play Mirage so power and precision aren't all that important and the extra toughness will make you aggro more. As a mirage, i can deal with that and it helps the team too as everyone and their mother is running glass cannon zerker or viper builds and die in 1 hit in T3. Having the bosses target me instead of them means less me running around trying to rez people and more DPS.

I don't know how important power and precision is to a Scourge but if you can live without it, Ttailblazer's is fine for Fractals.

And as others already said, knowing your class and mechanics is more important than gear. You can't DPS if you're downed. :wink:

Viper's is good on HP sponges like certain bosses, but is wasted on fights with a lot of burn interruption (like ark or twilight oasis) or a lot of trash mobs.

hmm you shouldn't be playing scourge in fractals in general, but if you do you're better off with vipers, you will even find it easier to survive.

When you eventually join a very capable group you are almost certainly going to have the highest toughness in trailblazers as most Chronos don't need commanders gear in fractals to get the same boon duration, so that means you'll be taking all of the aggro instead.

@"Ensign.2189" said:Trailblazer costs a condi scourge < 8% DPS.

This is flat out untrue, while it can be debated that scourge has the least to lose by dropping power because of the scaling of scepter, you cannot debate the loss in dps from "barbed precision" and "target the weak." I think you'll find the dps loss to be closer to 20% overall, but that's just my conservative estimate.

It's more than 40%. Just on math values. Who ever said 8% is clearly out of touch with simple math.

The only thing that gets close to an 8% dps loss is marauder vs berzerker in wvw situations. And even then the difference averages out to around 12% in pve asc gears.

@Veprovina.4876 said:I have Dire/Trailblazer combo also from WvW and i only play PUGs in Fractals.

I play Mirage so power and precision aren't all that important and the extra toughness will make you aggro more. As a mirage, i can deal with that and it helps the team too as everyone and their mother is running glass cannon zerker or viper builds and die in 1 hit in T3. Having the bosses target me instead of them means less me running around trying to rez people and more DPS.

I don't know how important power and precision is to a Scourge but if you can live without it, Ttailblazer's is fine for Fractals.

And as others already said, knowing your class and mechanics is more important than gear. You can't DPS if you're downed. :wink:

This is faulty logic. On my condi scourge i can die halfway through a fight and still have more total dps than you simply because of the massive dps loss you take.

T3 is a bad example of anything. Half the people their are not good or just grinding their way to teir 4. The good players are NOT in t3, so why would you bother to mention dying in 1 hit? They're bad. Simple explanation.

As for toughness aggro. Generally doesn't exist outside of raids. Different mobs in the game have a plethora of different aggro mechanics, and the least common one is toughness. Assuming they are all equal in distribution, toughness is 1 of 8 possible aggro generators. Meaning, the chances are your toughness doesn't matter at all for aggro, since its more likely that you are being aggroed due to range, or closeness.

Power and precision are huge for mirage. thats why they run vipers and renegade runes, instead of viper and krait or something similar. Thats why phantasm mesmer maxes out on crit chance in some builds. Knowledge of how phantasms and clones work, should not be something a necro main has to explain to you.

You sound very ignorant on how builds benefit from certain stats.

@FrostDraco.8306 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:I have Dire/Trailblazer combo also from WvW and i only play PUGs in Fractals.

I play Mirage so power and precision aren't all that important and the extra toughness will make you aggro more. As a mirage, i can deal with that and it helps the team too as everyone and their mother is running glass cannon zerker or viper builds and die in 1 hit in T3. Having the bosses target me instead of them means less me running around trying to rez people and more DPS.

I don't know how important power and precision is to a Scourge but if you can live without it, Ttailblazer's is fine for Fractals.

And as others already said, knowing your class and mechanics is more important than gear. You can't DPS if you're downed. :wink:

Then don't take my advice. You don't have to be a dick about it. OP asked a question and I'm just telling my experiences with running trailblazer's. Vipers isn't the only stat combo for condi builds and trailblazer's works fine for mirage.

Run viper's like everyone else then, who cares?

Condi scourge benefits a lot from having precision due to Barbed Precision, giving you a 33% chance to bleed on crit. This makes Viper's superior to Trailblazer's in a PvE scenario. I've personally found the massive amount of barrier (scourge heal, f3, f5) to be more than enough to sustain yourself and stay healthy in t4 fractals.

@Zlater.6789 said:

@"Ensign.2189" said:Trailblazer costs a condi scourge < 8% DPS.

You're right, those two traits are a big part of why you lose 8% DPS from swapping to Trailblazer - without them, you would lose less than 5%.

Target the Weak is the biggest contributor. The 13% conversion on the extra 633 precision on Viper is worth 82 condition damage, which is slightly less than the bonus from stat infusions. This costs you about 2% DPS when swapping to Trailblazer.

Barbed Precision matters a bit less. Viper's gear gives just over an extra 30% crit chance, which is an extra 10% chance to bleed per hit, or 0.6s of bleeding per hit on average. Scourge is a relatively slow attacker, maxing out around 2.5 hits per second with full buffs; multiply it through, and that marginal precision is worth between 1% and 1.5% of your DPS depending on rotation and assumptions.

So together those two traits account for a bit over a 3% DPS difference between Viper and Trailblazer. The difference in power damage is under 5% of total DPS (your coefficients are poor), for a total of right around an 8% damage loss in practice (you make up a bit of the difference with a Corsair Focusing Crystal).

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@FrostDraco.8306 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:I have Dire/Trailblazer combo also from WvW and i only play PUGs in Fractals.

I play Mirage so power and precision aren't all that important and the extra toughness will make you aggro more. As a mirage, i can deal with that and it helps the team too as everyone and their mother is running glass cannon zerker or viper builds and die in 1 hit in T3. Having the bosses target me instead of them means less me running around trying to rez people and more DPS.

I don't know how important power and precision is to a Scourge but if you can live without it, Ttailblazer's is fine for Fractals.

And as others already said, knowing your class and mechanics is more important than gear. You can't DPS if you're downed. :wink:

How about you stop lying about the stat combos and how stats effect builds first? I wouldn't need to correct your bad advice if you did your own research. Blame yourself for speaking out of ignorance, not me, for pointing it out.

Obviously the OP cares, since ya know, he asked the question.

trailblazer works fine for mirage....in wvw. In pve you are unnecessarily gimping yourself, and increasing the chances you will be kicked for under performing. If you need toughness on mirage, you arent dodging enough. If you arent dodging enough, you aren't playing mirage correctly.

Anyone can armchair theorize about stat combos when they are too lazy to do their homework. The fact is you lose more than 8% of your damage, because you lose over 20% in damage stats. And damage is multiplicative in this game, not additive.

@FrostDraco.8306 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:

@FrostDraco.8306 said:

@Veprovina.4876 said:I have Dire/Trailblazer combo also from WvW and i only play PUGs in Fractals.

I play Mirage so power and precision aren't all that important and the extra toughness will make you aggro more. As a mirage, i can deal with that and it helps the team too as everyone and their mother is running glass cannon zerker or viper builds and die in 1 hit in T3. Having the bosses target me instead of them means less me running around trying to rez people and more DPS.

I don't know how important power and precision is to a Scourge but if you can live without it, Ttailblazer's is fine for Fractals.

And as others already said, knowing your class and mechanics is more important than gear. You can't DPS if you're downed. :wink:

Oh, now i'm pruposefully malicious? Great job twisting my words and intentions. I hope you're happy with yourself.