Harbinger - Condi DPS

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

Focused on: Condition damage

Designed for: Raids and Fractals

Expansions required: End of Dragons builds

Difficulty:
TBD
This build was last updated on March 12, 2023 and is up to date for the February 27, 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 Torment, so it prefers long-phased, stationary encounters. It provides very high Vulnerability 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

  • or can be replaced with , depending on which boons you think you might lack.
  • You can swap one of the elixirs out for encounter-specific utility such as or .
    • If you swap out an elixir, you will have less blight generation, so will need to skip in the rotation.


Template Code

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Specializations

  • is a minor DPS loss and will add some additional condi transfer to the build. This can end up being higher DPS if your healers are cleansing condis too fast for you to get the transfer from .


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


Equipment Variants

  • The above setup deals practically identical damage to one using and a instead of the .


Consumables

Food

  • , or ascended versions.


Utility


Usage

Rotation

Opener

  1. Throw , and at your feet to quickly build Blight stacks.
  2. Weapon Swap Weapon Swap


Shroud Loop

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


Pistol-to-Scepter Loop

  1. , and - try to hit both yourself and your target so you deal damage as well as gaining Blight
  2. , , and , if available - if you used either of the last two skills, immediately transfer your conditions to your target with
  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 - try to hit both yourself and your target so you deal damage as well as gaining Blight
  4. , , and , if available - if you used either of the last two skills, immediately transfer your conditions to your target with
  5. Repeat the Shroud Loop, then when you exit proceed to the Pistol-to-Scepter Loop


Video example

Video example (using Plague Sending)


Utility

CC

  • - if running Warhorn


General Tips

  • If you find yourself running out of life force you can adjust in the following ways:
    • 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 in the Shroud Loop.
    • 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.
Log in or register to rate this build.
4 stars
OfficerAndyGentleman gave this build 4 stars • July 2023
Strong ranged damage and a decent amount of CC. Elixirs add a little bit of self-buffing and the majority of damage can be performed at range, which makes it relatively good at handling mechanics. If needed it can also bring some of necro's excellent utility skills.
5 stars
Appo gave this build 5 stars • July 2022
better with tourment cause more damage minion is not usefull

Comments

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