Just started getting into raids, training runs on Spirit Vale atm 4 me

Couple of Questions, standard List Style so that you can (hopefully, please, and thank'ye'very'muchly) answer any you have answers to.

1) My favorite class in the game is Necromancer. By far. The theme of death isn't what interests me (it should, I guess?). It's the theme of being able to make huge impacts in bursts- this is especially true in PvP/WvWvW. What is the most raid viable direction to go: Power/Condi and Core/Reaper/Scourge?

2) I have been repeatedly told that Power Reaper is extremely undesirable. Why is that? And why is my Dps always low (I was told I had lowest in group a few times in my training runs)? I have exotic everything except Ascended Dagger, Amulet, Rings, and Earrings ("Trinkets"). My Reaper autos are 8k, 11k, 12k; my charge spin is 10k; my spiral is between 41k (no one gave me might for reasons unknown) and I peaked at 89k (no idea how!!!), and my 5 is basically unused except to pop the big blue bars when my discord guy yells "break or die!". Build is Zerk gear, Eagle runes, Dag/Warhorn with Fire/Leech, and Greatsword with Fire/Air. I can provide more info if needed.

3) Can you make money raiding? How does the loot system work? I killed Vale Guardian and got loot, then I killed him again 12 hours later and got no loot.

4) What's the main reasons to go raiding? Why are people so aggressive even in training runs about what you can bring? I almost got booted from a Spirit Vale training run because I only have a geared Power Reaper.

@"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:Couple of Questions, standard List Style so that you can (hopefully, please, and thank'ye'very'muchly) answer any you have answers to.

1) My favorite class in the game is Necromancer. By far. The theme of death isn't what interests me (it should, I guess?). It's the theme of being able to make huge impacts in bursts- this is especially true in PvP/WvWvW. What is the most raid viable direction to go: Power/Condi and Core/Reaper/Scourge?

Power has a higher dps benchmark than condi, but condi scales better if you have adds, and other condi players.https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/

2) I have been repeatedly told that Power Reaper is extremely undesirable. Why is that? And why is my Dps always low (I was told I had lowest in group a few times in my training runs)? I have exotic everything except Ascended Dagger, Amulet, Rings, and Earrings ("Trinkets"). My Reaper autos are 8k, 11k, 12k; my charge spin is 10k; my spiral is between 41k (no one gave me might for reasons unknown) and I peaked at 89k (no idea how!!!), and my 5 is basically unused except to pop the big blue bars when my discord guy yells "break or die!". Build is Zerk gear, Eagle runes, Dag/Warhorn with Fire/Leech, and Greatsword with Fire/Air. I can provide more info if needed.

What's your build? Post here: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

3) Can you make money raiding? How does the loot system work? I killed Vale Guardian and got loot, then I killed him again 12 hours later and got no loot.

Not alot, just a few gold, 1 exotic, and some greens for the 1st time you kill any boss every week. You can still get the mag shards until you reach the weekly cap (150), and you get to buy ghostly infusions with mags and sell those I guess, but honestly, palawadan will net you better gold/hr

4) What's the main reasons to go raiding? Why are people so aggressive even in training runs about what you can bring? I almost got booted from a Spirit Vale training run because I only have a geared Power Reaper.Legendary armor and ring, along with some unique skins, and some easy ascended armors, along with a few gizmos (white mantle portal, dhuum chair, etc). But mostly presteige for doing the hardest pve content

2) Power Reaper isn't bad. Power reaper is close to 31k now with the latest patch, it is decent enough to be considered viable. A random fractal log from subli: https://dps.report/pMrk-20180828-231729_mama

Subli is top tier of the necromancer players tho.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRolGsmGwxGg9GskLYUlh1QzCKA0AWBxVxt4YE-jhSEwArU/hj2glK/Ot/whTAgkDBAbdAFeCAIUCCwEEZAMHDA-e

That's what I have at the moment. Unsure how to get Zerk backpack. Food wise I'm just confused.

@"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:Couple of Questions, standard List Style so that you can (hopefully, please, and thank'ye'very'muchly) answer any you have answers to.

1) My favorite class in the game is Necromancer. By far. The theme of death isn't what interests me (it should, I guess?). It's the theme of being able to make huge impacts in bursts- this is especially true in PvP/WvWvW. What is the most raid viable direction to go: Power/Condi and Core/Reaper/Scourge?

Current meta builds can be found here: https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/necromancer/reaper/power/as well a guides on rotation and each boss.

@"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:2) I have been repeatedly told that Power Reaper is extremely undesirable. Why is that? And why is my Dps always low (I was told I had lowest in group a few times in my training runs)? I have exotic everything except Ascended Dagger, Amulet, Rings, and Earrings ("Trinkets"). My Reaper autos are 8k, 11k, 12k; my charge spin is 10k; my spiral is between 41k (no one gave me might for reasons unknown) and I peaked at 89k (no idea how!!!), and my 5 is basically unused except to pop the big blue bars when my discord guy yells "break or die!". Build is Zerk gear, Eagle runes, Dag/Warhorn with Fire/Leech, and Greatsword with Fire/Air. I can provide more info if needed.

Download arcdps and have a look yourself (or simply go to the raid training area and give it a shot at the training dummy and see how you perform). First off gear is not everything, class balance does affect a classes performance possibility. That said, the major influence will be rotation execution. If you are simply pressing buttons off cool down, use improper utilities, incorrect traits, etc. expect to perform at maximum 1/3 of what is possible for your class.

Necromancer is currently around 15% below the highest damage class/build on single target. Add to that your very likely lack of execution and you can understand why you might be last in training runs. Remember, being in a training run does not automatically assume others are doing their first raid or have little practice. You might have been lumped into a group where people already invested time into practice into how to play their class.

@"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:

3) Can you make money raiding? How does the loot system work? I killed Vale Guardian and got loot, then I killed him again 12 hours later and got no loot.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/RaidRewards are limited to 1nce per week per boss. Wing 1-4 also reward Magnetite Shard up to a weekly cap of 150. Wings 5+ reward Gaeting Crystals with a weekly cap of 50.

@"StabbersTheThird.6053" said:4) What's the main reasons to go raiding? Why are people so aggressive even in training runs about what you can bring? I almost got booted from a Spirit Vale training run because I only have a geared Power Reaper.

Main reason is legendary armor and now the legendary ring from a reward perspective as well as very easy access to more ascended gear from raid currency.

The challenge and overcoming group content with friends/others from a game play perspective.

The reason people are this aggressive is:

• people try to emulate high end groups and aim for perfect builds to reduce failure rate and improve chance of success (which some times is contrary to each other but people with little experience will not know this)
• people expect others to invest a similar amount of time into preparing. Someone who is well prepared when joining a training run might take offense at some one who 5 minutes ago might not have been aware raids exist
• training runs have different requirements. An all "welcome, let's have a look" training run will be more relaxed than a "be prepared and bring semi appropriate class" training run. This also comes down to how many experienced raiders are helping out

Basically if people go into a training run with expectations of killing the boss, they will gets antsy. People who want to train mechanics for trainings sake might be more relaxed. The later becomes more important when facing more challenging bosses like raid wing end bosses which are often the most challenging.

Dagger's dps is sub par, swap it out for axe. Scholar>eagle dor group content, reason being you have 1-2 dedicated healer so you'll be over 90% hp a majority of the time. Also 1 of those healers will most likely be a druid who is taken not for their healing, but dor their ability to permastack 25 might on 10 people. The dryid makes any might you self generate mostly moot, thus decimate defences>chilling victory, which is an addotional point against eagle runes as you will always have 25 vuln on your target, meaning an extra 50% crit, making precision a wasted stat. As for your sigils, air sigil has a lower icd than fire making it a better choice, add to that your high crit (50% from decimate+spotter+banner+from gear) you are guaranteed to always crit. Also, the common comp has 2 chronos whose main job is to permastack alac and quickness, rage sigil is a waste for the most part, amd you'lll get more dps from force.You can get asc zerk backpack you have several methods of obtaining 1 if you own any of living world season 3https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_back_itemOtherwise, you can buy an exotic one from karma merchants ot craft 1. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Back_item

Watch https://snowcrows.com/raids/builds/necromancer/reaper/power/For the rotation.

your build is just plain wrong with weapon choice, sigils and rotation. the berserker everything is alright, ascended barely increases anything and it's mainly for fracs and the option to put infusions but you won't get infusions on start. you have to get axe warhorn+focus and a greatsword. focus i'd say for dhuum for boonstrip and everything else warhorn. you need to have a warhorn and focus with force sigil. 3 axes: air, impact, night. impact for w3b2, w6b1, w5 statues only at eyes (darkness), rest is air in raid. for night it's for a lot of fractals and dungeons which have night time, day fractals it's impact. same for greatsword. get 3 greatsword with force air, force impact and force night.atm focus only getting the combination of force air, then force impact and only at last force night.you also have to know how to do the rotation.if you want to be really useful you have to get at least 2 builds. 1 is power reaper for burst and power favor bosses with low toughness armor , phases etc. the other is scourge which is full viper and need to grind HoT maps a bit so you can have sustain damage, use of epidemic, and against bosses with high toughness like matthias, cairn, sab etc.

mango pies are not the best food to "increase" your dmg

Also important to know, the numbers you see pop up after attack stack together so an easy way to get a ridiculous number their is druid staff auto which doesn't actually do good dps.

Also the number is damage not damage over time.