Advice on which stats to invest in for Reaper

I recently purchased GW2 PoF and decided to go with a necromancer for my level 80 character. Later on I decided to start investing my hero points in the reaper elite spec wheel and found the burst damage capabilities of the reaper quite refreshing. After I purchased a set of gear with berserker stats though I've run into the problem of being quite fragile in both PvE and PvP situations. My main question is 'Should I be concerned with getting gear that has stats outside of the typical power, precision and ferocity that berserker gear provides? In other words, should I invest in improving vitality or toughness at all?' Thanks in advance for any input.

For PvE I have mixed in a few pieces of Marauder and Valkyrie on my reaper for a bit extra vitality with everything else being Berserker and it works well for me. As I'm not the quickest player in the world it seems to give me a little extra wiggle room. However, I don't do T4 fractals or raids. Many would probably suggest full Berserker though. I suppose it depends on what you find works for you. So if you are struggling to stay alive a little extra vitality could help with the trade off of a bit less damage dealt. Once you improve at the game you may find you don't need that extra vitality. You won't find many places in PvE where there is a specific "requirement" for certain builds and will usually only run in to that more in T4 fractals and raids from what I understand.

For PvP I can't help there as I only dabble in unranked from time to time for dailys but I'm sure someone will be able to assist with advice.

Welcome to GW2 and I hope you enjoy your in game adventures. :)

Depends on which game mode and role. Eg. Berserker is sufficient for survival and usually the best choice PvE dps. Most of the raid bosses are attracted to toughness stat etc.

For Raids it's full Berserker (snowcrows.com is a good point to start, there is a build and some explanations), however for some Raids you may need a Condition build too. For WvW the typical build uses a mix of Marauder/Berserker and Runes of Durability, for sPvP the Demolisher Amulet seems popular. For the latter two you can find builds on metabattle.com (for a starter). For open world PvE i would use something close to the WvW build, because it has more sustain than pure Raid builds.

Just keep in mind, that the Reaper isn't the best spec for WvW or sPvP ( i don't know much about it's role in Raids to be honest) and that builds can change with every patch. And keep in mind, that Necro is not my main class, i play it once or twice a month when we don't need another guardian ( and then i play usually Scourge).

I hope that helps a bit. GLHF :)

Check out metabattle.com, the open world build section.

Before going all out new gear mode, read up a bit and see if you might be bale to adapt your build. This can already make a huge difference, even more than some gear changes.

Thank you all for the input. I've switched around some of my build specs to provide some more ways to heal myself. I'm now using vital persistence (gives me extra vitality + increasing incoming health), Soul Eater (heals me for some of the dmg I deal at close range), the 'Your Soul Is Mine' shout for a healing spell, along with the Shadow Fiend which siphons some health if I'm not mistaken. People on metabattle.com seem to favor Consume Conditions over 'Your soul is mine' for some reason. I know the former heals for more but the shout has a shorter cool down and also gives me life force. Anyways, I'll peruse the builds under the Open World PvE section on metabattle as well for some more info. Thanks again to all of you!

@Beaches.4186 said:Thank you all for the input. I've switched around some of my build specs to provide some more ways to heal myself. I'm now using vital persistence (gives me extra vitality + increasing incoming health), Soul Eater (heals me for some of the dmg I deal at close range), the 'Your Soul Is Mine' shout for a healing spell, along with the Shadow Fiend which siphons some health if I'm not mistaken. People on metabattle.com seem to favor Consume Conditions over 'Your soul is mine' for some reason. I know the former heals for more but the shout has a shorter cool down and also gives me life force. Anyways, I'll peruse the builds under the Open World PvE section on metabattle as well for some more info. Thanks again to all of you!

If you use Soul Eater then you should just go full damage since the healing from it scales from your damage. If you do less damage you will also heal for less.

If you're just doing open world PVE, the Power Minion Reaper build on metabattle is very good. I do tend to run the Blood Magic version (which is nice because I can heal people around me). The minions add toughness and "Rise!" increases that even more. Reaper is the only profession I've felt comfortable running full Beserker stats on so far.

If you can survive on berserker reaper, then that's all you'll need for a power build. If you want to experiment with other builds, then simply acquire another set of weapons, armor, and trinkets when you can afford them. My necromancer currently has 3 sets using 4-5 builds: full marauder/berserker for all PvE (reaper), full dire for WvW (scourge), full healer set for fractals (scourge).

I recommend MetaBattle: https://metabattle.com/wiki/Necromancer

It has builds for each game mode and is also updated frequently. Check the ratings to distinguish between the best current builds and outdated ones.

The question at had falls off a cliff, and goes into full Meta-Math territory. So its really a question of what you're optimizing for, and good/bad you are at various encounters and executing rotations. You need to have some understanding of that in order to understand how to get away with stuff on various classes. For instance, Raids push for max sustained DPS potential, while WvW and PvP budget between self sustain and burst damage. Open World, despite it being decried as easy mode, allows for yet a completely different type of allocation due to the being no assumption of external support from a group.

Cloning builds off of site like Snowcrow and Meatabattle are also a major detriment UNLESS you understand the buildcraft concepts behind them. IE Glass cannon builds are generally worthless when you don't understand how to maximize a limited defense kit. You can add more defensive skills, stats and traits, but damage trade offs can be catastrophic in some scenarios, or absolutely mandatory in others.

This isn't to turn people away from buildcraft.... merely to make absolutely clear that game competency radiates from, and feeds back into comprehension of the game's buildcraft. Each class and Espec is substantially different in how it can use various stats, how well they can scale them, and which ones can substitute others to maximize stat efficiency. In the case of Reaper, because Life Force scaled off of Vit, and Life force itself acts as both a resource and second HP bar while in shroud, and its accumulation is % based while the damage mitigation is 1:1, Vit can contribute more defensively then Toughness point for point. But you also can't discount toughness, because it has a multiplicative effect on damage reduction, making it more effective point for point against high direct damage. But Conditions ignore toughness, once again leaning the advantage more toward vit. But then when you factor in healing, higher toughness means less damage taken, less damage to heal.... and conditions can be cleared to limit their threat. But condi clears are finite, and the current PvP meta can apply them in spades. So even if you knew the typical damage output of things you fight, what is the ideal balance of stats to avoid getting killed? Unsurprisingly, Meta builds assume you can execute everything perfectly...... and realistically, you will never maintain that perfection for more then a couple seconds at best.

With all that stuff now buzzing around your head, consider the Necro traits in general. For power builds, Necro has a lot of choices that give it free Crit chance. That free Crit chance means you don't need to spend as much on Prc to reach either the comfortable average of 70% or the optimal of 100%. Death Perception gives +33% in shroud, and Devastate Defenses can give another 50% if you can maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability (or avg +25% in solo fights). That comes out to 870 less precision needed to get that same +58% through Prc stats, and easily shifted to something other then Power. That could go to Vit using Valkyries gear (Pwr, Vit Fer) giving you 8700 more HP in total, which translates into another 4350 in life force. But Devastate defenses competes with Soul Eater in the trait lines......

The specifics of Soul Eater introduces other things to think about. Soul Eater heals outside of Shroud, but not when its Active. (It did heal in shroud before, but got changed extremely quick) Since the majority of the Reaper's damage output is tied to Reaper Shroud, that means you want to stay in shroud as much as possible while attacking, and want to recoup life force as quickly as possible when not in it. Soul Eater's Healing factor is based on damage output.... you have notably inferior DPS fueling that trait, and has you being offensive when you're the least effective overall. Dev Def is active both in and out of shroud, contributes to personal DPS, and afford you more damage soaking through Life Force capacity. So the choice between the 2 traits is "HP recovery outside of shroud with a flat damage bonus", or "minimizing shroud down time via Vit + Damage reduction features of Reaper Shroud, in order to leverage it for better damage output and passive sustain".

And thats not even going into Death Magic vs Blood Magic vs Spite, and how each can plays into sustain and damage potential.

If you have power/precision/ferocity gear, you should be darn hard to kill and be able to faceroll pretty much any PvE content. It sounds like your skill build is not optimal. Check the MetaBattle website for a good place to start or search Youtube for necromancer builds. Once you play a few that work you can sort of tune your build to your play style.

Starlinvf brought up a lot of good points on this topic and his post gave me a lot to think about. I really appreciate everyone's input though and I'm surprised that I got so much feedback so quickly. Now that I've gotten more practice in and my response time has gotten shorter I've been faring a lot better in the open world environment. The PvP environment is still a little too fast-pace for me and so I plan to practice in the open world environment some more and learn how to play my character better and then get into PvP.