User:Masel/Builds/Harbinger

Pistol + Torch Condition Harbinger

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	3/5
Sustained Damage	5/5
Utility Options	5/5
Survivability	5/5
Difficulty	2/5

Condition  Harbinger is a very strong choice for instanced content, especially with a simplified rotation. It's also a great pick for solo gameplay, as it can provide itself with good amounts of many essential boons ( Quickness,  Protection,  Fury and  Might) and substantial amounts of self-healing. Through   Elixir of Ambition,  Deathly Haste and  Twisted Medicine, it can also be adjusted to provide  Quickness and a partial uptime on all(!) other boons easily, without larger adjustments to gear.

Link to the Build on the Editor

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Shroud Skills
Pistol + Torch Skills
Utility Skills

  Harbinger Shroud

• Akin to all Necromancers,  Harbinger gains Life force from nearby deaths or by using skills that directly grant it.
• The shroud mechanic on  Harbinger differs from   Reaper's Shroud and   Death Shroud, as it does not shield your health bar while it is active. You will still drain Life force every second.
• Instead,  Alchemic Vigor heals you every second for every stack of   Blight.
•   Blight is a stacking effect that reduces your health per stack by 3%, but it also grants increased  Condition Damage.
• You stack   Blight up by staying in shroud and by casting Elixirs on yourself. In turn, you can consume stacks of   Blight with shroud skills to empower them(e.g.   Voracious Arc applies  Torment only when used with at least 5 stacks of   Blight).

Rotation Concept

•  Harbinger is largely ranged by default (aside from   Voracious Arc,   Devouring Cut and   Vital Draw), making it very convenient for all kinds of gameplay, as you can freely position yourself and still maintain a high damage output. Simply skip the skills listed above when you cannot be in melee and execute the rotation as usual.
• The rotation is very simple, as it involves using almost all of your weapon and utility skills on cooldown. With Pistol on the main hand, you do not even have to keep track of an auto attack chain. If you lack access to Torch, using a Dagger instead is worse, but just fine for starters.
• In order to understand the rotation design, it's important to know that   Blood Is Power applies  Bleeding and  Torment to yourself. For maximum damage output, you want to transfer these conditions to enemies as soon as they are applied to you.
• Always pair   Plague Signet and   Blood Is Power:   Plague Signet immediately transfers the self- Bleeding and  Torment. Try to time it right when the conditions apply to you, as they might get cleansed otherwise.
• The rotation will slowly drain you Life force pool against a single enemy. As soon as something around you dies occasionally, you should not have any Life force issues in the long run. We're using   Vital Draw to make the 1-weapon rotation more sustainable, as it is no dps loss anyway. The only disadvantage is that you might not be able to keep it for Defiance bar damage.

Opener

• Start with precasting   Elixir of Promise and   Elixir of Anguish for initial   Blight stacks.
• After the opener, the rotaion consists of two sections:   Harbinger Shroud and Pistol & Torch.

Section 1:   Harbinger Shroud

• In shroud, you want so use the following skills:

1.   Dark Barrage x3
2.   Devouring Cut x2
3.   Voracious Arc x2
4.   Vital Draw x1

• Start with   Dark Barrage and   Voracious Arc, as they define the duration of the   Harbinger Shroud loop.
• Leave shroud after the third cast of   Dark Barrage.

Section 2: Pistol + Torch

• With the exception of the combo of   Blood Is Power and   Plague Signet, you want to use all skills on cooldown.
• Try to stay in melee range for the Elixirs to apply   Blight to yourself. Otherwise, you might lack stacks for the skills that consume it.
• Since you use all skills except for   Weeping Shots only once pre loop, start with that and squeeze the second cast in at any time later in this section.

CC Skills for breakbar damage:

•   Vile Blast
•   Voracious Arc
•   Oppressive Collapse
•   Vital Draw
• All CC skills will apply  Torment via  Insidious Disruption.
• Since we're not using a second off-hand weapon, you can put on any weapon that brings additional CC, like a Warhorn with   Wail of Doom.

Gear

Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):

1. 65% Condition Duration in the hero panel:  Sand Sage and  Barbed Precision together with Meaty Asparagus Skewer give the remaining 35% for  Bleeding and 30% for  Torment.
2. Maximize Condition damage
3. Maximize Critical chance to trigger  Barbed Precision reliably.

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Shoulders	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Chest	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Gloves	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Legs	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Boots	Viper's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Viper's
Ring 1	Viper's
Ring 2	Viper's
Accessory 1	Viper's
Accessory 2	Viper's
Backpack	Viper's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Pistol (Main Hand)	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Torment
Torch (Off Hand)	Viper's	Superior Sigil of Bursting
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Meaty Asparagus Skewer
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters Gnashblade
Damage	Utility	Toxic Focusing Crystal
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Fractal

• For a budget variant, simply replace all ascended armor pieces and trinkets of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's.
• If you want easy Exotic stat-selectable armor for additional pieces of Viper's, Ritualist or Celestial, take a look at TEID-07 Unified Vendor System in WvW and Bladed armor in PvE.

Traits

Curses
Soul Reaping
Scourge

 Curses

• Bread and butter traitline for Condition Necromancers, as it includes traits that increase  Bleeding output, duration and general Condition damage.
•  Barbed Precision applies  Bleeding with a 33% chance on critical hits, which is why we want to have a decent amount of Critical chance on Condition Necromancers

 Soul Reaping

• The most relevant traits here are  Soul Barbs and  Dhuumfire.
•  Soul Barbs increases damage by 10% for 15 seconds after entering or exiting Shroud. On  Scourge, that's easy to reach by casting   Desert Shroud on cooldown.
•  Dhuumfire empowers your Shades to apply additional  Burning.

 Scourge

• Scourge will empower your  Torment and  Burning via  Demonic Lore and  Fell Beacon, respectively.
• Due to  Sand Sage and  Blood as Sand, you should always maintain 1 Shade to reduce incoming damage and increase both Boon duration and Condition duration.

DPS Rotation Showcase

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Open World Build

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

Link to the Build on the Editor

For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.

Increasing General Survivability

• The first step for increased survivability is to use  Death Magic,  Abrasive Grit,  Desert Empowerment,  Herald of Sorrow and  Parasitic Contagion.
• So essentially, we're playing  Alacrity  Scourge with  Death Magic.
• That way, you obtain massive amounts of Toughness, permanent coverage of  Protection and passive healing at a fairly small damage loss:

Death Magic

•  Putrid Defense &  Corrupter's Fervor stack up Death's Carapace very fast and thus provide pulsing  Protection when you have more than 25 stacks. Each stack of  Poisoned you apply grants 2 stacks! Starting combat with   Manifest Sand Shade,   Weeping Shots and   Vile Blast will stack up 30 stacks within ~2 seconds of starting combat.
•  Herald of Sorrow provides  Protection and pulsing Barrier via   Sandstorm Shroud, which is great to bolster yourself when starting combat prior to stacking Death's Carapace up.
•  Deadly Strength also gives large amounts of Power and Condition damage per stack of Death's Carapace.
•  Parasitic Contagion heals you for 5% of your outgoing condition damage, which is a nice passive heal you get as long as you keep applying conditions.
• In order to increase inflow of Barrier, we use   Sand Flare and   Serpent Siphon. The following skills will apply Barrier to you (and allies):

1.   Sand Flare
2.   Serpent Siphon
3.   Sand Cascade
4.   Sandstorm Shroud x 6
5. With   Desert Empowerment,   Manifest Sand Shade applies Barrier. That way, you can also cover  Alacrity on yourself and allies!

• If all of that isn't enough, use the survivability food and utility item listed above for another -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness!

Boon Coverage

• The coverage of  Protection was explained already.
• In order to cover more boons (on allies too!) and increase Life force inflow, we'll also make use of   Desiccate:

1.  Abrasive Grit,   Desiccate and   Oppressive Collapse provide  Might, also in an rea around you.
2.  Furious Demise and  Desiccate apply  Fury.
3. Through all the Barrier mentionedn above, you will automatically cover  Alacrity.
4. If you can, make use of jade protocols!   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge give 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat. These effects can be pre-stacked by using an Enchanted Snow Diamond Tonic repeatedly when out of combat.
5. In story instances (or if you don't want the hassle of reapplying protocols), you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and   Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of  Aegis,  Resistance,  Might and  Quickness to yourself. It has an internal cooldown of 1 second and thus applies the boons on every hit of   Blast.
6.   Serpent Siphon will apply area  Aegis once and additional  Regeneration, allowing you to maintain a good uptime on it.

Dealing with Conditions and Control effects (CC)

•   Nefarious Favor cleanses conditions in an area with a very short cooldown and without a cast time.
•   Abrasive Grit cleanses conditions on allies whenever you apply Barrier to them, which is... basically always.
•   Spectral Walk cleanses conditions, allows you to cover  Swiftness on yourself and is a Stun break.
•   Spectral Armor grants lots of Life force, provides additional  Protection and is a Stun break.
•   Trail of Anguish grants  Stability,  Swiftness, is a Stun break and applies  Burning. It has the shortest cooldown of the available Stun breaks.