I'll tell you after tomorrow's stress test. I got a small taste in the last stress and I think I may run a pure power build at launch. It depends on how I feel after tomorrow, providing Spvp is playable this time. I also need to test whether Healing Power impacts life siphons, which would change my amulet to Shaman at a minimum if so, and it's significant.
I ran this build last Stress:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQA...zOD9kCu1mSh7rD;TwAA0CvosxYjwGrNObk2s4YwxGkJIA
My experience was that I was extremely difficult to kill. I had solid sustainable burst damage, and I felt strong. I pretty much was weapon swapping on cooldown to trigger the #2 ability on Dagger and then axe. Axe would hit consistently for 2500, Dagger around 2800. Both are channeled abilities, hence the +400 toughness while channeling trait. Blowing up the pets would hit for 1900 each, two at a time, for 3800. They were hard to control though as you can't send them in to attack, and they seemingly only have a handful of hit points, so AoE's destroy them. The blast radius is pretty small as well. Lich form was amazing DPS, hitting for 1500+ with the primary attack. Death Shroud was basically the same thing. Lich you want to start at the beginning of a fight when you have a lot of hit points, Shroud is great at any point. Corrupt Boon was still useful because it can swap to non-damaging conditions, and it's just fun to strip off a ton of boons.
I wasn't overly impressed with the 6 Rune of Dolyak. The perma regen is only 30 hit points per second, which is something, but I'm not sure it's worth using all your runes on it. Same with the 10 extra points in Blood Magic. The dagger run speed was okay stacked along with Signet of the Locust, and Locust had a nice emergency small heal as well, but I'm not sure how much I need that tandem. So, this time I'm going to try something different, but I may come back to it. But tomorrow, i'll move ten points from Blood Magic to Spite so I can pick up the Might buff on Life Blast. I'm going to compensate for the lack of the run speed buffs by taking Spectral Walk instead of Locust. I will lose the Vampiric minor trait, but that's locked in at 24 hit points per hit, which, like the Dolyak regen, I'm not sure that's worth it. I'm also dropping the auto-crit runes as they only applied to the first hit in the channel abilities, and thus, I'm dropping the crit boost amulet and jewel.
I feel like that build was very strong and was enjoyable, but it obviously had some fundamental flaws that I needed to test to determine. So, for this stress, I've made the following changes, and come up with this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQA...bqA3gK8eKFubdA;TwAA1CtoyxEkIIrOuck6sAZAyWkpIA
For this build, I'm focusing on a lot more power via Might buffs. I've switched amulet/jewel for greater vitality, though I'm also going to determine exactly what Healing Power does, so I may go to the Shaman amulet if that proves to be useful for the #2 dagger ability. I know Healing Power did not influence the Dolyak regens or the Vampiric trait. Speaking of which, I've dropped both of those with the intent of really stacking Might for massive levels of Power. I took runes which will provide +60% Might duration on top of the +30% Boon duration from the Death Magic line. I added weapon runes which grant 3 stacks of Might upon switching, which I'll do every 10 seconds, that last for 20 seconds, now almost 40 seconds. I took ten points out of Blood Magic and put them in Spite to get the 15 second, now almost 30 second, Might buff every time I use Life Blast while in Death Shroud. Might stacks and is +35 Power per stack. I anticipate always having 10+ stacks, which is an additional 350 Power, a significant amount. That power will just make Lich and Death Shroud more bursty. I'm keeping the Hydro weapon rune for each swap, as it does about 1k damage on top of rooting them for 3 seconds, which is needed for the #2 channel abilities on the Axe and Dagger. The only other changes are my tinkering with the Utlities I take. Corrupt Boon is a must for me. But the other two are up in the air. I do like the Bone Minions, they are just a pain to control. I'll probably go back to them though, especially if Spectral Armor is not really needed. I am taking Spectral Walk because with the max boon increase, it's basically a 40 second swiftness buff. This also frees me up to decide if I want the Focus as an offhand over the War Horn. Spectral Shivers seems more useful than the daze.
So, I'm gaining a ton of Power, especially if you project the Might buffs, gaining a ton of Hit Points which will further improve my Death Shroud and Lich times, I'm losing a little bit of Toughness, the regen abilities, and a significant amount of Healing Power. So, my goals are to see how less tanky I feel this time around, and if it's too much, I'll add back some abilities until it feels right.
I did have more fun playing this type of in your face, high survivability Necro build than any of the Condition builds to this point. I'm not sure it's more effective, as I was very strong with a hybrid condition build in the past, but I want to play a Death Knight, tank-mage type build, and this is exactly that in my opinion.
Feel free to try it out and give your thoughts. It plays vastly different than the normal builds. It's up front, in your face, there are no conditions at all, and its a lot of weapon swapping, dodging, strafeing, and using Death Shroud as an offensive ability early and often.
