I've quietly decided my reaper will use pistol and dagger alongside the greatsword...but I feel I need to test out the pistol idea first before i settle on such.
Pistol for Necromancer is more condition damage than strike, whereas Reaper focuses more on strike than condition. Pistol 2 is multiple shots, and 3 daze. Though, you can make pistol work for strike damage ; I use the specialization Death Magic to have as many Carapace stack as possible with every condition I cause.
My ranger is now SoulBeast and has daggers for one weapon set but retains the long bow.
My Soulbeast uses a hammer, and has a warclaw and lightning wyvern pet. I always merge with them to gain access to their skills. Hammer 3 dazes the target twice, and 5 stuns them. The beast skills of warclaw and wyvern also have a lot of crowd control. Combine all of them with the trait "Carnivore" from the Survival specialization, and I have a ton of health steal. I use Berserker equipment and I can survive a lot of the titanspawn in Janthir thanks to the crowd-control and health steal.
Dagger for sure as my mesmer was going to be Virtuoso but...what works with dagger?
I might suggest pistol with dagger, to keep the long range. Pistol 4 has good burst damage, and 5 has crowd control (stun and daze). Though, I find spear a lot better at stacking up blades and pressing damage. Use 2 first to get the Clarity buff and stock a blade, then 5 to stun and get close (which also fully recharges 2) ; use 2 again to get the buff again and stock another blade, then 4 to have 2 phantasms (which would be 2 blades). Combine this with the trait "Infinite Forge" and you'll constantly have blades to spam.
But, I seriously struggle with Guardian.
Update (yet again) : I finally figured out how to do this, with Willbender condition damage.
So, after reading up on wiki, I finally understood how Willbender virtues work : the passive is only enabled WHILE they're active.
For example, normally F1 would automatically trigger after every 5 attacks, to cause burning. However, with Willbender, you have to activate F1 first ; DURING the time F1 is active, the passive burn triggers every 5 attacks.
So, what I do is... spam as much as I can while F1, F2 or F3 is active. For this, I use axe/pistol, with AOE skills with multiple hits and cause burning, like the consecration "Purging Flame", the spirit weapon "Sword of Justice", and the physical skill "Whirling Light". After activating F1, F2 or F3, my combo is to put down the AOE attacks, then spam like hell.
- Purging Flame
- Sword of Justice
- axe 2 (symbol)
- Whirling Light
- pistol 4 (multiple shots)
- axe 3 or pistol 5
- repeat
