Buffs...BUFFS....BUFFS EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!! Well mostly for Reaper :P

[Junkpile.7439]

Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

[Sephylon.4938]

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiend

[Junkpile.7439]

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

[Funky.4861]

Only use parasitic contagion if your a desperate necro who needs to lean on the crutch heals to survive (read: no-one uses it except in niche/dire situations). Also, i wish the build editor linked in the vid was in english to save me from logging in to the game just to see the traits (never learned german and choosing the 'english language' option takes me from the build to the homepage). Tbh tho, i can't say that i'm impressed by 29-30k dps in the golem room.

Edit to include the build link in english:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhFakhGapx2awxGYvxSugBFAaArg4qYXcMSVGWDNLA-jhRBABA8kCoU9HzUCin+mHOlCXt/o8LAwBw5Nv5nn5nf+5P/8zP/8z76zP/8zP/8zP/8zLFQEjBA-e

[Nimon.7840]

@Junkpile.7439 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

What?AreYouTalkingAbout?

It's useless in raids.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Junkpile.7439 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

Parasitic Contagion is useless except for Scourge. Especially on Reaper where their condi burst is all done in Shroud, so you don't get any healing from it.

So, yeah, you can 100% use Lingering Curse. For PvE, it's meta even (and has been since long before this patch).

[Sephylon.4938]

@Junkpile.7439 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

Are we talking wvw/pvp?

[Dace.8173]

@Catchyfx.5768 said:Well we still got buffs and Condi was buffed too. Of course we dont break a game but something has change and thats good. For me it is Thank you Anet. We are always salty maybe we should find to way to get out maximum from our class. Soul Reaping Reaper will be awesome in burst scenarios. Blood will still be thing i like that.

This isn't really about being salty for no good reason. Folks have called for buffs for a very specific goal, to be allowed to PUG endgame content. So if the buffs that have been given with this patch don't meet that goal then people aren't so much being salty as they are still pushing for the changes that need to be done in order to reach a desired state. Change is only really good if it actually changes the status quo. If the changes that happened keep the status quo going then what you really have is the illusion of change, you have more buffs and slightly higher DPS but no change in the status quo. The goal for buffs wasn't buffs for the sake of buffs after all. No one is, or has been, asking to break the game.

Also, I dare say that a lot of the folks who aren't happy with the buffs have spent a lot of time trying to get the maximum out of the profession. It is due to the fact that they have been getting the maximum from the profession that they know that the buffs simply aren't enough to achieve the original goal. Though a post like this does support my observation that ANet has conflicting accounts on what the end game is for Necromancer and thus what would actually fix Necromancer.

[Junkpile.7439]

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

Parasitic Contagion is useless except for Scourge. Especially on Reaper where their condi burst is all done in Shroud, so you don't get any healing from it.

So, yeah, you can 100% use Lingering Curse. For PvE, it's meta even (and has been since long before this patch).But you of course leave shroud after condi burst and use epidemic.

[Lily.1935]

@Junkpile.7439 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:

@Junkpile.7439 said:Meh where is condi reapper buffs?

On lingering curses and shadow fiendToo bad you can't use lingering curses because parasitic contagion is best trait that necro have.

I'm going to further beat this dead horse because well, Lingering curse is pretty much the only trait you should be running in PvE condi. And here's why. A good percentage of your damage on condi necromancer comes from your scepter. Without Lingering curse you lose something like 30-50% DPS. Its pretty drastic. Scepter is so important that the scourge build will not use anything else. Scepter/torch with weapon swap for sigil of geomancy or just bursting. Occasionally using dagger off hand, but they always have scepter in their main hand.

As for reaper? its never going to out do Scourge, and even then Lingering curse is required. For much the same reasons.

[Aslakh.3072]

@Lily.1935 Lingering Curses has always been at best a 20% dps loss when people used to calculate it and its single target dps has been lowered since then (looking at you 7 stacks of torment on scepter 3). Admittedly condi damage has been lowered elsewhere but shroud wirl (still) and sand shroud are big dps boosters, combined with torch/dagger skills and utility skills and your numbers are way too large.

I can understand raids and t4 maybe t3 fractals with dedicated groups for team content because you dont need the healing. But for open world or any solo attempts at anything you should be using parasitic contagion. Lingering curses duration is very minor when bursting and the 200 condi damage is merely nice. Meanwhile when your bursting off ~5-6k condition damage thats 500+ healing per second which is more than what many mobs will hit you for. The important thing here though is that it scales based on how many mobs your hitting so if your hitting 5 thats 2.5k healing and if your hitting 10 (dropped all your shades, aoes + epidemics etc) thats over 5k hp per second when you really need it.

Lingering Curses is often better than parasitic contagion and the reverse is also very much true. If i could use any 1 trait in the game on a character that doesnt normally have it, it would be parasitic contagion anyday.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

When you do the sums, we have to admit: We're moving in the right direction. Now a little wiggle here and there and we might be approaching that sweet spot. Cough focus#4. Let's just celebrate the fact they spent more time on us here, than in the last couple of years.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I'm skeptical on Lingering Curses being a large part of our DPS. Whenever I play condi scourge in PVE I rarely ever go through a full chain of auto attacks. There's so many other DPS skills that need to be put on cooldown that mobs are usually dead by the time I've used them all.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:I'm skeptical on Lingering Curses being a large part of our DPS. Whenever I play condi scourge in PVE I rarely ever go through a full chain of auto attacks. There's so many other DPS skills that need to be put on cooldown that mobs are usually dead by the time I've used them all.

In cases like you describe, it's still the best choice due to the extra condition damage. The fight is clearly too short for healing to be a factor, and Weakness likely isn't helping much either.

In longer encounters, Lingering Curse makes up a sizable portion of condi scourge damage. Before food and Might, it's 12.6% of the total condition damage stat on a 2 Trapper/4 Nightmare Vipers build. That works out to approximately a 7% damage increase just from the trait alone before accounting for the condition duration increase.

In those longer encounters, Scepter skills get a lot more use, so a ~45% damage increase on them leads to a pretty large amount of DPS overall.

Of course, you're welcome to test it yourself in the Special Forces area. Run it twice, once with Parasitic Contagion, once with Lingering Curse. See what the difference in DPS is. My estimate is somewhere between 15 and 20% more damage with than without. (Disclaimer: I haven't run this comparison test myself yet, this is napkin math).

[Dadnir.5038]

@dceptaconroy.7928 said:When you do the sums, we have to admit: We're moving in the right direction. Now a little wiggle here and there and we might be approaching that sweet spot. Cough focus#4. Let's just celebrate the fact they spent more time on us here, than in the last couple of years.

I'd say that the general direction is good but the path taken is not.

[dceptaconroy.7928]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@dceptaconroy.7928 said:When you do the sums, we have to admit: We're moving in the right direction. Now a little wiggle here and there and we might be approaching that sweet spot. Cough focus#4. Let's just celebrate the fact they spent more time on us here, than in the last couple of years.

I'd say that the general direction is good but the path taken is not.

Agreed Dadnir.

[Aslakh.3072]

Drarner's esitamate of ~15-20% on bosses is probably accurate. It will be less when fighting many mobs at once since scepter damage is less used their (want to use shade skills because tons of lifeforce + number of targets). It is a great damage trait when the healing isnt needed (organised group content with enough dedicated healers) but otherwise parasitic contagion is a build defining trait. If in an area with tons of mobs or soloing a champion it is invauable since necros have to face tank most of the damage they take (not many evades etc). Parasitic contagion is honestly a better trait as it is stronger for defense than lingering curses is for offense but when you don't need that defense lingering curses is the way to go.