Welcome to our Condition Scourge PvE build guide for Guild Wars 2! This build is designed to provide outstanding damage and utility in actual encounters, making it a go-to DPS build for clearing content. Whether you're tackling endgame content or need to clear some challenging encounters, the Condition Scourge is a must-have build that will make your life in Guild Wars 2 much easier.

 

• Overview
• Scourge Mechanics
• Weapons
• Skills
• Alternative Skills
• Traits
• Gear
• Rotation

 

↖ Overview

The Condition Scourge build excels in dealing with condition damage while offering valuable utility to the team. It has excellent survivability with consistent barrier application, area-of-effect condition cleansing, and multiple ranges revives. Additionally, its damage is primarily focused on ranged attacks, allowing you to consistently attack bosses regardless of the mechanics you need to deal with. The more Scourges you have in your team, the better the overall team performance becomes.

 

↖ Scourge Mechanics

The Scourge loses the extra health bar of the core necromancer and reaper specializations but gains the ability to summon three sand shades simultaneously. It can also access shroud skills at any point during combat. Here are some important skills to know:

• Manifest Sand Shade: Summons a shade that inflicts torment and damages enemies.
• Nefarious Favor: Converts a condition on you and nearby allies into a boon. It has a short cooldown.
• Sand Cascade: Applies barrier to you and your team.
• Ghastly Pillar: Applies fear to enemies around each of your sand shades, including yourself.
• Desert Shroud: Applies barrier to yourself, pulses torment and damage for 6 seconds.

 

↖ Weapons

The weapons for condition scourge are relatively simple. Here are the main weapons for damage and an offhand swap for additional crowd control:

• Scepter: The main condi damage weapon for necromancers. The auto attack chain applies bleeding on every hit and poison on the third attack. Completing the auto attack chain is important for maximizing damage. Scepter 2 is an AoE attack that applies bleeding to up to five enemies.
• Torch: Torch 4 deals damage, applies burning and torment and regenerates some life force for every enemy hit. Torch 5 knocks down the target, grants you might be based on the number of conditions on the target, and applies torment.
• Warhorn: The warhorn is primarily used for the skill Call of the Sandstorm, which applies fear to the target and deals additional damage to enemies with a break bar. Warhorn 5 grants swiftness, regenerates life force, and siphons health from nearby foes, providing healing for your entire team.

 

↖ Skills

The default skill set for a DPS condition scourge offers excellent utility. Here are some important skills:

• Signet of Vampirism: Passively siphons health from nearby enemies, providing you with passive healing. When activated, it heals you and places Vampiric Mark on your target, allowing you and your allies to siphon health from it.
• Blood Is Power: Grants five stacks of might and applies bleeding to both you and your opponent. It is an essential component of your DPS rotation.
• Shadow Fiend: The active skill "Haunt" applies conditions, deals damage, and grants you extra life force, allowing you to use your shroud skills more effectively.
• Signet of Undeath: Passively grants you extra life force periodically while in combat. Its active skill allows you to revive a downed ally from 900 range away, sacrificing some of your health. This skill provides range revives on a relatively short cooldown, adding to the build's support capabilities.
• Plaguelands: Drops an AoE field that pulses different conditions every second, dealing significant damage if enemies stand in it for the full duration.

 

↖ Alternative Skills

If needed, you can swap out some skills depending on the situation. Here are a few notable alternatives:

• Spectral Grasp: Provides crowd control and can group up to five mobs together for your team to burst down.
• Epidemic: Spreads conditions to multiple targets, which is useful when facing multiple enemies.
• Corrosive Poison Cloud: Blocks projectiles and applies conditions to enemies.
• Trail of Anguish: Acts as a stun break and applies stability to yourself and your team while also inflicting conditions on enemies.
• Sand Swell: Portals you and your team over short distances, offering useful mobility.
• Well of Darkness: Provides an AoE blind to neutralize groups of enemies, making it particularly valuable in fractals.
• Flesh Golem: Can be used to block certain attacks or access hard-to-reach spots.

 

↖ Traits

To begin, let's discuss the trait setup for this DPS-focused build. Our primary focus is to maximize our damage output. The traits we choose are geared towards boosting our condition damage, applying debilitating conditions, and enhancing our survivability.

• Curses: This trait line emphasizes condition damage and bleeding duration. The "Cursed Precision" trait grants us a chance to inflict bleeding on critical hits, while "Furious Scourge" transfers conditions from us to our target with our first attack after entering the shroud.
• Soul Reaping: This trait line helps us generate life force and provides access to the "Doomfire" trait, which becomes crucial for our rotation. "Unyielding Blast" applies vulnerability with each shroud skill used, allowing us to stack vulnerability on enemies. "Soul Barbs" offers a simple damage increase for a short duration after entering Desert Shroud.
• Scourge: This trait line further enhances our damage output. "Sadistic Searing" causes our shroud skill 1 to apply to burn enemies with a one-second cooldown. Additionally, this trait line enables us to summon up to three sand shades, providing access to our shade skills at all times.
• Optional: Blood Magic. If your team requires additional support, you can swap out the Soul Reaping trait line for Blood Magic. While this results in a slight DPS loss, it greatly improves your team's survivability. Traits like "Ritual of Life," "Vampiric Presence," and "Transfusion" aid in reviving downed allies and provide sustain for everyone involved.

 

↖ Gear

The gear for Condition Scourge is straightforward—Equip Viper's gear in all slots to maximize your condition damage. Rune of the Nightmare is the recommended rune set, as it increases condition duration and complements the wide variety of conditions this build applies.

 

If Nightmare runes are not available, Rune of the Lich can be a viable substitute, although it may result in a slight DPS loss. For sigils, use Sigil of Torment and Sigil of Bursting to boost torment damage and overall condition damage. When it comes to food, the "Meaty Asparagus Skewer" is the best choice, as it increases torment duration, which is a significant component of this build's damage.

 

↖ Rotation

The Condition Scourge build doesn't follow a fixed rotation but rather relies on a priority list of skills. While this makes it easier to learn, it requires fast button presses on the left side of your skill bar. The following building blocks form the foundation of your damage rotation:

1. Keep three sand shades active at all times. This grants you extra expertise for each shade and reduces incoming damage due to the "Blood and Sand" trait.
2. Pair Blood is Power with Desert Shroud to transfer conditions via Plague Sending. This combination plays a significant role in your condition damage, so it's crucial to land it. Activate Desert Shroud just as Blood is Power is about to finish casting to minimize the time conditions stay active on you.
3. Complete your auto-attack chains. The last hit of your auto-attack chain is more potent than the first two hits, so always try to finish the chain. To avoid wasting auto-attacks, cast your auto-attack between skills, grouping up multiple attacks.
4. Use weapon skills from highest to lowest priority—scepter 3, Torch 4, Torch 5, Scepter 2, and then auto-attack chains. Since Scepter 3 and 2 have the same cooldown, you can cast them together to minimize wasted auto-attacks.
5. Use a shade skill every second to trigger the "Doomfire" trait. This can be achieved by summoning a sand shade or activating any F2 to F5 skill. You can use the timing of a full auto-attack chain or, after using two weapon skills, to help remember when to use shade skills. The priority list for shade skills is Desert Shroud with Blood is Power, Nefarious Favor, Sand Cascade, and Garish Pillar.

 

By following these building blocks, you can assemble the Condition Scourge rotation. Start with getting three sand shades up, then use Blood is Power and Desert Shroud to transfer conditions. Proceed with using Scepter 2 and 3, followed by Nefarious Favor to trigger Doomfire. Finally, utilize Torch 4 and 5 and continue with the prioritized list mentioned earlier. Always ensure three shades are active for the additional stats and damage reduction. Additionally, use shade skills every second to trigger Doomfire and maintain your damage output. Cast Blood is Power and transfer conditions with Desert Shroud whenever it is off cooldown.

 

Conclusion:

Congratulations! You now have all the knowledge necessary to wield the almighty Condition Scourge and carry your team to victory. This build is not only simple to play but also offers immense utility and exceptional damage. While other DPS classes may come and go, the Scourge remains a reliable choice for clearing the most challenging content in the game. Add this build to your repertoire, and your entire squad will thank you for it.