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:

TBD

This build was last updated on February 04, 2023 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 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 Deathly Haste 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/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 Elixir of Risk you can maintain permanent Fury and ~13 stacks of Might, but it could be swapped out for other skills if different utility is needed.

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Equipment

Head
Ritualist

Shoulders
Ritualist

Chest
Ritualist

Hands
Ritualist

Legs
Viper

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

• Depending on the encounter, you may swap in viper stats pieces, as long as you can maintain Quickness.

Consumables

Food:

• or ascended versions

Utility:

Usage

Rotation

The rotation assumes use of Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish, but Elixir of Risk 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. Plaguelands - We want to cast plaguelands early so that the Poison expires before you enter shroud. If it doesn't you will transfer the Poison instead of the Bleeding, leading to a loss of DPS.
2. Throw Elixir of Promise, Elixir of Risk and Elixir of Anguish at your feet to quickly build Blight stacks.
3. Devouring Darkness and Grasping Dead
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

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 - make sure to aim them at your allies
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 - make sure to aim them at your allies
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 Elixir of Risk 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.