Harbinger - Condi DPS

Part of the current metagame

Our curator decided this build is in the current metagame regardless of rating. The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

TBD

This build was last updated on August 10, 2022 and is up to date for the March 19, 2024 patch.

Overview

A condition DPS build for Harbinger. Unlike other Necromancer specialisations, its shroud offers no defence, and it uses Elixirs to lower its own maximum health in order to gain higher damage. This makes it very much a glass cannon, and while its weapon skills are all ranged, it needs to be in melee for maximum damage from its Shroud abilities so it can feel very squishy. Fortunately, you are not denied healing while in shroud.

It has a slow ramp-up of damage and focuses mostly on Torment, so it prefers long-phased, stationary encounters. It provides very high Vulnerability uptime, and Elixirs offer decent self-buffing options too.

As a Necromancer, it has a lot of valuable utility options, though it must trade damage to bring them.

Skill Bar

Pistol/Dagger

Scepter/Dagger

Utility

Weapon Variants

• If extra CC is needed, you can run a Warhorn on the Scepter set for theoretically no DPS loss.

Skill Variants

• Elixir of Anguish can be replaced with any of the 25s-cooldown elixirs, depending on which boons you think you might lack.
• Summon Shadow Fiend can be replaced by Signet of Undeath if the minion might die, or there are long periods where there's nothing to hit for life force.
• If you have an excess of life force, you can swap Summon Shadow Fiend out for another elixir. This would enable you to use Devouring Cut and/or Voracious Arc in Harbinger Shroud and then quickly regain the lost blight.
• You can also swap Summon Shadow Fiend out for encounter-specific utility such as Epidemic or Spectral Grasp.

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Equipment

Head
Viper

Shoulders
Viper

Chest
Viper

Hands
Viper

Legs
Viper

Feet
Viper

Backpiece
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Accessory
Viper

Amulet
Viper

Ring
Viper

Ring
Viper

Pistol
Viper

Dagger
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Scepter
Viper

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x18

• This assumes no power core from the jade bot. As you get higher tiers of power core, you can swap Spiteful infusions for Malign ones.

Equipment Variants

• The above setup deals practically identical damage to one using Rune of Superior Rune of Tormenting, (or ascended alternatives), and full Malign infusions.

Consumables

Food

Utility

Usage

Rotation

The rotation assumes use of Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish, but either could be replaced with Elixir of Bliss if it is deemed more valuable. See the General Tips section if you are not running 3 elixirs.

Opener

1. Throw Elixir of Promise, Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish at your feet to quickly build Blight stacks.
2. Plaguelands
3. Devouring Darkness
4. Weapon Swap
5. Weeping Shots
6. Blood Is Power - We cast this just before shroud so that the self-conditions are immediately transferred via Plague Sending
7. Harbinger Shroud

Note: This opener should leave you with one stack of Poison. However, if you do not have the buff from Banner of Strength, you will instead be left with Bleeding, because reasons. This is a fairly notable DPS loss as you want to transfer it to your target. As such, if you are playing without a warrior you may wish to use Deathly Swarm immediately after Plaguelands in the opener.

Shroud Loop

1. Dark Barrage
2. Voracious Arc
3. Devouring Cut
4. Tainted Bolts until Dark Barrage is off cooldown
5. Dark Barrage
6. Tainted Bolts until Voracious Arc is off cooldown
7. Voracious Arc
8. Devouring Cut
9. Dark Barrage
10. Exit Harbinger Shroud

Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

1. Weeping Shots
2. Vile Blast
3. Enfeebling Blood, Plaguelands and Blood Is Power, if available - if you used either of the last two skills, immediately transfer your conditions to your target with Deathly Swarm
4. Elixir of Promise, Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish - try to hit both yourself and your target so you deal damage as well as gaining Blight
5. Weeping Shots
6. Weapon Swap
7. Devouring Darkness and Grasping Dead
8. Blood Is Power
9. Harbinger Shroud
10. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Scepter-to-Pistol Loop below

Scepter-to-Pistol Loop

1. Devouring Darkness and Grasping Dead
2. Weapon Swap
3. Weeping Shots
4. Vile Blast
5. Enfeebling Blood, Plaguelands and Blood Is Power, if available - if you used either of the last two skills, immediately transfer your conditions to your target with Deathly Swarm
6. Elixir of Promise, Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish - try to hit both yourself and your target so you deal damage as well as gaining Blight
7. Weeping Shots
8. Blood Is Power
9. Harbinger Shroud
10. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

Rotation Example

Utility

CC

• Voracious Arc
• Vital Draw
• Vile Blast
• Wail of Doom - if running Warhorn

General Tips

• When running three elixirs, the rotation above is not sustainable (you use more life force than you gain each loop). Many encounters have extra sources of life force gain, or are short enough that you don't run out of life force, but if you need to you can adjust in the following ways:
  • Using Vital Draw during step 4 or 6 of the shroud loop gains you the equivalent of ~2 more seconds in shroud, and so is a DPS increase if you would otherwise be forced out.
  • Swapping one of your elixirs out for an extra source of life force (or utility) will make the rotation much easier. However, as you won't have the Blight stacks needed to consume for extra damage, you will need to skip one use of Devouring Cut in the Shroud Loop.
  • Though the rotation will still be unsustainable, the extra vitality from higher tiers of Jade Bot Power Cores make you take a lot longer to run out.
• Both Voracious Arc and Devouring Cut have aftercasts that can be easily cancelled by using any other skill. If you are following the rotation, the aftercast of Voracious Arc should always be cancelled by Devouring Cut, but you should manually use Tainted Bolts or Dark Barrage after Devouring Cut rather than wait for autoattacks to take over.
• Try to finish the second attack of Tainted Bolts before using another skill.
• Voracious Arc and Devouring Cut are only worth using if you are above the Blight threshold for each skill (10 and 5 respectively). If for some reason you are not at high enough Blight, skip these skills.
• Leaving Harbinger Shroud during the cast of Dark Barrage can cancel some of the hits, so be careful not to leave too early.
• Most of your weapon skill cooldowns are longer than your loop, meaning that you can pretty much cast them in any order, with a few exceptions:
  • You want to cast Weeping Shots twice each time you end up on Pistol. Delaying the first use will therefore delay your entire rotation so it should always be used first.
  • Enfeebling Blood is a fairly low priority skill, and this means that its effective cooldown is slightly longer than your loop, causing it to drift backwards in the rotation. This shouldn't be a problem if you're good at pressing it off cooldown, but if you're a little slow it can end up delaying your rotation (or need to be skipped). You can offset this by prioritising it over Vile Blast and Scepter skills.
  • If Plaguelands is not available at the expected point in the rotation, but comes off cooldown before entering shroud, you can use it alongside Blood Is Power at step 8.
• Performed correctly, you should never need to autoattack on Scepter, and only occasionally on Pistol while waiting for cooldowns.
• There is a bug with Elixirs whereby they will not provide you with Blight stacks (and in fact can even remove them) if you are stood within your target's hitbox and aim the elixir directly at your feet. As such, either stand back from the boss slightly or throw them a little further away.
• If you have downtime during an encounter where Harbinger Shroud is not needed, you can repeatedly enter and immediately exit it to build up life force via Corrupted Talent.