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: End of Dragons builds

This build was last updated on March 06, 2023 and is up to date for the February 14, 2023 game patch.
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Overview

A condition boon support build for Harbinger that provides permanent Quickness Quickness and optionally some Might Might and Fury 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 Torment, so it prefers long-phased, stationary encounters. It provides very high Vulnerability 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/Dagger
Utility


Weapon Variants

  • 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 Fury and ~13 stacks of Might Might, but it could be swapped out for other skills if different utility is needed.


Template Code

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Specializations


Equipment

Head
Ritualist
Shoulders
Ritualist
Chest
Ritualist
Hands
Ritualist
Legs
Ritualist
Feet
Ritualist
Backpiece
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Accessory
Viper
Amulet
Viper
Ring
Viper
Ring
Viper
Pistol
Viper
Dagger
Viper
Sigil
Sigil
Scepter
Viper
Sigil
Rune
x6
Infusion
x15
Infusion
x3
  • This setup provides ~28% boon duration (without a Jade Bot) which is enough to maintain Quickness Quickness getting only 4 ticks of per shroud loop.
  • You can swap in extra Viper stats Viper stats pieces to lower your boon duration as low as 18% if you do a longer shroud loop that gets 5 ticks of .


Consumables

Food:

  • or ascended versions


Utility:


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.

Opener

  1. - We want to cast plaguelands early so that the Poison Poison expires before you enter shroud. If it doesn't you will transfer the Poison Poison instead of the Bleeding Bleeding, leading to a loss of DPS.
  2. Throw , and at your feet to quickly build Blight stacks.
  3. and
  4. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap
  5. - We cast this just before shroud so that the self-conditions are immediately transferred via


Shroud Loop

  1. until is off cooldown
  2. until is off cooldown


Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

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


Scepter-to-Pistol Loop

  1. and
  2. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap
  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
  5. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Pistol-to-Scepter Loop


Rotation Example


Longer Shroud Loop
By slightly re-ordering skills you can stay in shroud an extra ~second, which is sufficient to get an extra tick of . Use instead of the regular shroud loop if running lower boon duration.

  1. until is nearly off cooldown
  2. until is off cooldown


Utility

CC

  • - 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 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 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 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 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.
    • If is not available at the expected point in the rotation, but comes off cooldown before entering shroud, you can use it alongside at step 8.
  • 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 .


Ratings

This build has a rating of 5 stars based on 2 votes.
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4 stars
OfficerAndyGentleman gave this build 4 stars • November 2022
Impressive damage for a boon support, and provides more might than most options too - which opens up the alacrity slot for more variety. Unfortunately held back by the very small AoE of its shroud quickness and cannot bring much utility without a significant damage loss, making it harder to justify bringing over a firebrand on many encounters.
5 stars
Böjömö gave this build 5 stars • August 2022
Current meta for Harbinger. Permanent Quickness, high damage. The butterfly rotation requires some time to get used to, but the build is top tier.

Comments

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