Harbinger - Quickness Support Condi DPS

The community gave this build a rating, making it top-tier: Great

Focused on: Condition damage and Support

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required:

Difficulty:

Normal

This build was last updated on September 14, 2023 and is up to date for the August 22, 2023 game patch.

Overview

A condition boon support build for Harbinger that provides permanent Quickness and optionally some Might and Fury too. Unlike other Necromancer specialisations, its shroud offers no defence, and it uses Elixirs to lower its own maximum health to provide boons and 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 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 a good amount of CC.

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

Skill Bar

Pistol/Dagger

Scepter/Torch

Utility

Weapon Variants

• Players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure can just ignore the Torch.
• You could bring a Warhorn on your Scepter set for extra CC, life force generation and a tiny bit of healing.
  • If the rotation is performed correctly, this won't be a DPS loss.

Skill Variants

With you can maintain permanent Fury and ~13 stacks of Might, but it could be swapped out for other skills if different utility is needed.

• offers the highest DPS.

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Equipment

Head
Ritualist

Shoulders
Viper

Chest
Ritualist

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

Torch
Viper

Sigil

Sigil

Rune
x6

Infusion
x9

Infusion
x9

Relic

• This setup provides ~19% boon duration (without a Jade Bot) which is enough to maintain Quickness getting 5 ticks of per shroud loop.
• You can run full Viper stats pieces if you are confident in your rotation.
• If you don't have stat infusions, use (or alternatives) as your food.

Non-SotO Gear

is the best relic for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure. As this adds a lot of condi duration, you should make the following changes to your gear:

• instead of
• instead of
• You don't have access to Torch so leave that slot empty, or bring a Warhorn.

Consumables

Food:

• or ascended versions

Utility:

• • for a cheaper alternative

Usage

Rotation

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

This rotation also uses Torch. Players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure can just ignore any torch skills.

Opener

1. Throw to build some Blight
7. , and on the group for boons and to quickly build Blight stacks - make sure the boon rip has already happened!
14. Weapon Swap

Shroud Loop

3. until is nearly off cooldown
7. - You can this at any point in the shroud loop as long as it doesn't make you delay skills
8. until is off cooldown

Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

3. , and , if available - if you used either of the last two skills, immediately transfer your conditions to your target with
4. , and - make sure to aim them at your allies
6. Weapon Swap
8. and
10. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Scepter-to-Pistol Loop below

Scepter-to-Pistol Loop

3. and
4. Weapon Swap
7. , and , if available - if you used , immediately transfer your conditions to your target with
8. , and - make sure to aim them at your allies
11. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

Rotation Example

Utility

CC

• - if running Warhorn

General Tips

• Both and have aftercasts that can be easily cancelled by using any other skill. If you are following the rotation, the aftercast of should always be cancelled by , but you should manually use or after rather than wait for autoattacks to take over.
• Try to finish the second attack of before using another skill.
• and 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 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 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.
  • 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 and Scepter skills.
• Performed correctly, you should never need to autoattack on Scepter, and only occasionally on Pistol while waiting for cooldowns.
• If you have downtime during an encounter where is not needed, you can repeatedly enter and immediately exit it to build up life force via .