[PvE] Evil Condi Core Necro guide for newbies

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

(In progress)

THE BUILDS

Carrion Offensive Variant

Blood Magic Variant

INTRO

Dark greetings and welcome to all those who decided to start their journey into the dark arts.
When a new necromancer asks how to build their character they will often hear "Go power!" or "Go minions"!
Both sound and tried solutions.

But I am not here  to guide you down the paths already trodden.
No, I am here to make a real Necromancer out of you. And a challenge is the best way to do so!
Condition core necromancer - for many the exact way to not play a necro in core Tyria. But we're not named "many"!
So buckle up for a guide unlike any other! Myths will be busted, game systems explored and any semblance of decency or conformity thrown out the window!
Welcome, to my Evil Condi Core Necro guide for newbies!

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE CONDI

So, why is condi core necro considered a bad choice for clearing core Tyria you ask?
Well there are three good reasons for that, which are as follows:

1. backloaded damage.

In core Tyria where majority of mobs aren't very durable, frontloaded damage is king.
If you can quickly burst your enemies down at the very start of a battle, having few seconds downtime after using your best skills is not an issue.
The enemy is already dead, and before you start your next battle the big skills will be off cooldown.

Unfortunately, save few exceptions, in Guild Wars 2 "frontloaded" is usually synonymous with "power build".
Most condition builds tend to backload their damage by default. And our condi core necro is an extreme case.

With skills that usually apply less condition stacks than other professions but for longer duration, he takes his sweet time reaching his peak.
This works well in long fights as once you reach your peak damage a build like this will keep a steady, very high damage output.
But in small skirmishes this is a major hurdle. You can't kill a mob fast because your damage starts out weak, and you can't build it up to maximum value, because the mob itself is weak and will die halfway there.
So you're neither efficient nor rewarded with huge damage numbers for your effort.

2. structures

In core Tyria there are certain enemies that make even the most stalwart adventurers shiver in dread.
We call them structures. Road blocks, centaur weapon stacks, swanir banners, corrupted ice formations, gates to fortifications, piles of dirt..
These are completely immune to conditions (in core Tyria that is, in expansions that's no longer a problem).
Only direct damage can hurt them, and even power builds that excel at it don't get off scot free.
Structures cannot be critically hit at all, flushing two out of three attributes used for power damage down the toilet.

3. Expertise attribute.

If there's one clear advantage condition builds have over power builds is that they need only two attributes for their damage.
Condition damage, which is obvious, and expertise. Expertise is converted into bonus condition duration, which caps at 100%.
So caring about your bonus condi duration can literally double your damage output. But there is a catch.
Unlike ferocity for power builds expertise is very hard to come by until you hit lvl 80 and visit black lion trading post because majority of good gear for condi builds comes from expansions and not core Tyria content.
So for majority of your road to lvl 80 you'll be deprived of a crucial attribute needed to achieve your full power.

As you can see there are good reasons majority of community does not recommend going condi to newbie necromancers.
That being said there are good reasons (asides from this awesome guide ofc) to break the mold and go for it:

Condi is the more future proof choice on necro. All of his elite specs excel at dealing condi damage, while power only works well on Reaper.
Necromancer has a deep and varied toolkit for manipulating conditions in various non standard ways. Condition builds will naturally benefit harder from this.
All of above issues are only temporary hurdles on your way to lvl 80. And this guide will help you overcome all three.

 

TERRORMANCER IS THE ANSWER!

If normal condition necromancer just won't do, then we gotta go abnormal!

Necromancer in general is an expert at using fear - both a condition and crowd control effect that makes enemies run away in panic, unable to act otherwise.
A Terrormancer is a necro who builds around fear but most of all selects the Terror grandmaster trait found in curses specialization line (unlockable at lvl 21).
This trait makes fear inflict damage over time, making it the 6th and most unique damaging condition available only to the necromancer.
So let's see how your new terrormancer is gonna kick the living crap outta core Tyrian content:

1. Frontloading your damage.

Terror does not stack in intensity, as it's a damage add on to fear - a condition that stacks in duration.
Therefore it was given strong base damage and reasonable scaling to make up for that flaw.
This means it achieves it's full potential from the very start doing damage roughly equivalent to 12 stacks of bleeding on each tick.
More so it combines hard crowd control (fear) with good damage. Crowd control is usually tied to skills that do no damage or moderate one at best.
But here you get both at the same time. Of special note is Staff # 5 skill, Reaper's Mark that already does very high direct damage. Coupled with Terror
it's quite the bursty opening to a fight!

2. Structures.

This particular part isn't addressed as much by Terrormancer build itself, but simply by your gear selection.
As mentioned before, even power builds suffer here as their critical hit oriented attributes become useless.
All that really matters here is the power power attribute, might boon, traits that increase direct damage and weapons/skills that make good use of it.
Carrion gear will give you a reasonable amount of power to work with, while spite traitline will amplify it with might stacks.
As for your weapons and skills, Staff has surprisingly good power damage coefficients, while flesh golem is a steady source of direct damage.

That being said, the Terrormancer does have 3 cents to add here. Since you get so much damage from fears, while scepter is nearly abandoned in this build,
you may swap out scepter for dagger for some power damage on your second weapon set. Dagger hits very fast and resonably hard if that's your need.

3. Expertise stat.

There's more than one way to skin a cat. Though I shouldn't mention cats given what happened during development of End of Dragons..
Expertise itself may be hard to get and a subject to brutal downscaling if you ever go to low level map on your condi necro. But it is not the only source of condition duration.
Your traits are one as well, especially Fear of Death in Soul Reaping that gives you maximum (100%) bonus duration on all your fears!
So now with terrormancer you have a damaging condition that reaches it's maximum value from the very first second and comes with maximum duration boost as well.
More so, anything that boosts condition or boon duration directly by a percentage rather than add expertise or concentration is immune to any form of downscaling. You can go to level 1 areas and your fear duration will still be at 200% the orignal value!
The same applies to your other condies. Runes, sigils and foods all feature stuff with % duration for a specific condi or all condies (albeit these will be understandably weaker).
And these too will not be downscaled when visiting lower level maps, can be accessed in core Tyria and won't cost you an arm and a leg.

THE BATTLE FOR TIME

So it it's so peachy why you hardly see any PvE terrormancer guides?
There are two good reasons for that.

The first is that majority of guides are not concerned with your first 80 levels and challenges that core Tyria presents.
They assume you're already lvl 80 and with access to expansion gear, elite specs and maps where majority of core Tyrian hurdles do not exist.
Elite specs have much higher condition damage output and it peaks much faster than on core necro. Combined with tougher mobs that can take some pain, the need to frontload your damage via Terror is no longer necessary.

Second is the price of using a Terrormancer.
Maximum condition output is almost always achieved with Ligering Curses trait - a choice that competes directly with Terror.
This trait changes scepter from a trashy weapon into your strongest condi option and adds 200 free condition damage to boot.
In terms of raw damage output it's no contest.

But in core Tyria you don't need tons of damage that can't be easily accessed.
You just need sufficient damage, as long as it's frontloaded and lets you kills mobs in seconds, giving them little time to react.
And that is the main reason for going Terrormancer here.

Your true battle is not of power, minions or condi. It is one of taking time away from your enemy.
The more time enemy has to act, the more they can hurt you or allies you want alive (like NPC you're escorting).
And that can have several nasty repercussions. Like Npc dying and failing the event. Or you having to run more defensive build,
lowering your damage and needlessly extending your battles as result.
Taking too long in battle will only deprive you of rewards. If the guy next to you kills mobs twice as fast he will have twice the drops!

Power, minion and condi are three paths that win the battle for time in core Tyria!

Power builds adhere to dead simple rule of "Death is the best cc!" Kill it before it kills you or generally makes more trouble than it's worth. Simple and effective.

Minion masters take a different approach - deny enemy time by forcing it to spend it on something else. With minions drawing aggro away from yourself and allies, your own damage may not be high, but it is unimpeeded and you can calmly focus on attacking rather than dealing with effects of enemy attacks. Safer than power variant if slower, but non the less effective!

Condi (Terrormancer) denies enemy time through combined effort of damage and control. If terror frontloads your condi damage to kill it fast, that's a win.
And if in it's already shortened timespan to act, it's getting brutally feared that's even more win for you!
This makes this build very potent at all kinds of escort missions. The Blood Magic variant i posted above saw huge success in Orr while escorting groups on NPCs deeper into enemy territory.
Combined power of major fear uptime, frontloaded damage and occasional heals for surrounding allies made a huge difference is such scenarios despite packing rather middling damage.

Edited January 13 by ZeftheWicked.3076