205K+ Stamina Necromancer 12 Man PvE Build Guide

Flex Slot One: Carve

Carve is our primary flex slot simply because it’s one of our weakest abilities. While its DPS isn’t far behind Barbed Trap or Skeletal Archer, it provides no additional buff utility and requires a relatively long fight for the DoT to reach its full value. If you need to slot a heal, shield, or other utility skill, Carve should generally be the first ability you replace.

Flex Slot Two: Barbed Trap

Barbed Trap becomes a flex option when Minor Force is already covered by another source, such as a Werewolf's Feeding Frenzy synergy. We still want reliable uptime on that buff while building toward the 125% Critical Damage cap, so make sure the replacement source is actually covering us before removing Barbed Trap. In this scenario, Barbed Trap’s only remaining value is its damage, which is stronger than Carve, but not by a significant amount. This makes Barbed Trap our second-best option to replace.

Flex Slot Three: Skeletal Archer

Skeletal Archer is one of our most valuable abilities. It deals strong single-target damage while also providing Major Brutality, our Weapon and Spell Damage buff. However, its damage is only valuable if the Skeletal Archer reliably attacks our primary target, which is something we can’t directly control. Additionally, if a DK in group is providing Major Brutality through Igneous Weapons, that portion of the skill becomes redundant.

Because of this, Skeletal Archer becomes another flex option in single-target fights with smaller, irrelevant adds that it can get distracted by, provided Major Brutality is already being supplied by the group.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca

Update 50 introduced an enormous increase in Weapon and Spell Damage through Class Masteries. Whenever our offensive stats become this inflated, proc sets gain tremendous value because their damage scales directly with those massive stat pools, often outperforming sets that simply provide more raw stats.

For sustained single-target damage, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is our strongest proc set, and we benefit from it passively while performing the rotation. When you deal Critical Damage, you build stacks of Sliver. At 3 stacks, you fire the Null Arca Proc. The frequent activation, combined with the Weapon and Spell Damage scaling, results in roughly roughly 14,000 DPS from the set: a TON of DPS. Your actual result in content will depend on the setup and encounter of course, but it's currently the strongest option for Single Target in Update 51.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

(Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain from gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

How to Choose an Alternate Set

All of the alternate set options that we’ve given here are very strong, but it can be difficult to know exactly which sets to pair together, and more specifically, which set should go on the body and which set should go on your weapons and jewelry when replacing one of our main options. There are a few rules that we need to follow.

Minor Slayer

The first and most important rule is to make sure that we always have a Trial set equipped. The third stat line on every DPS-oriented Trial set in the game gives Minor Slayer, a buff that increases our damage done to all PvE enemies by 5%. This is the strongest third-piece stat line in the game. If we analyze only the value of a set’s five-piece bonus, compare something like (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca to Aegis Caller. The damage from the actual five-piece procs aren't too far off from one another, but the key factor that makes (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca so much stronger on a one-to-one basis is that Minor Slayer bonus on the third line.

Medium Armor

Our next consideration is that, regardless of which sets we pair together, we need to run a Medium Armor set on the body. We could take a set like (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths, for example, which is very strong, but if we run it on the body, it’s going to be a significant DPS loss compared to even most dungeon sets, regardless of that third-piece stat line. The primary reason for this is that, in the Update 51 meta, we run Medium Armor primarily for Critical Damage and Light Armor primarily for Penetration. There are tons of sources of Penetration in the game, and it’s a lot easier to reach the pen cap than it is to reach the Critical Damage cap. So most of the time, we’ll need to run Medium Armor on the body to make sure that we’re at the Critical Damage cap in 12-man encounters.

Sets that give Stats

Once we have a Trial set equipped and a Medium Armor set on the body, our next priority is to put whichever set gives a stat bonus from its fifth piece on the body so that the bonus remains active on both bars. A set like (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment gives us a 7% damage increase, for example, but that bonus is worth much less if the set is only active on the front bar. Compare that to a set like Aegis Caller, where we simply have to Light Attack to proc it, and the summoned Lesser Aegis lasts 11 seconds regardless of what bar we're on.

Proc Sets

When we're choosing between two proc sets, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is a good example of a set that's easier to manage on the body. The third Sliver stack fires the crystal, then there's a four-second cooldown before we can build stacks again. This cooldown is very short compared, again, to a set like Aegis Caller. So, by running the set with the shorter cooldown on the body, we are likely to have much higher uptimes without having to aggressively micromanage the set.

Alternate Set info

(Perfected) Arms of Relequen

The first alternate set option is (Perfected) Arms of Relequen. This set comes from Cloudrest, and every time you Light Attack, you apply a stack of Harmful Winds to the target. This stacks up to 10 times and deals a ton of damage. Historically, (Perfected) Arms of Relequen was meta for single target for a very long time, but it received a nerf a few patches ago that gave (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca a slight edge. A lot of people have forgotten about this set since then, but it’s still extremely strong and is only worth a little bit less DPS than the current meta single-target setup. (Perfected) Arms of Relequen can be run on the body as a Medium Armor set, or it can be run on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using (Perfected) Arms of Relequen to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, you should run it on the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, you should run it on the weapons and jewelry. Just remember that if you run (Perfected) Arms of Relequen on the weapons, you have to swap back to your front bar and Light Attack once every four seconds, otherwise, all of your Harmful Winds stacks will drop.

(Perfected) Mora Scribe's Thesis

(Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis⁠ is a Light Armor set from the Trial Lucent Citadel. This set increases your Critical Chance for every Major buff active on you and your Critical Damage for every Minor buff active on you. In a 12-man raid scenario, (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is very competitive with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, although it’s slightly worse for the Necromancer. This set is particularly strong on classes that get random extra sources of Major and Minor buffs that we don’t specifically try to prioritize in a raid comp. The Sorc is a good example because Hurricane gives it Major Resolve and Minor Expedition. Major Resolve contributes to (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis Critical Chance bonus, while Minor Expedition contributes to its Critical Damage bonus. (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is also pretty strong in unoptimized groups, especially groups that might be lacking Critical Damage. So in newer groups or pug scenarios, you might even want to prioritize it over (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca. Because this is a Light Armor set, we should run (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis on weapons and jewelry and keep the paired medium set on the body.

Aegis Caller

Aegis Caller⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the dungeon Unhallowed Grave. It’s one of the strongest proc sets in the game, and it deals its damage in an AOE radius, making it valuable for AOE encounters as well as single target ones. Its raw damage is a little bit lower than (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca’s, but still comparable. This set procs whenever we deal critical damage with a martial melee attack, which means that it will proc from our front-bar light attacks. The proc lasts for 11 seconds with a 12 second cooldown⁠, so we can get effectively near 100% uptimes. Because we can proc the set by simply light attacking, it’s extremely easy to run on the front bar. If you’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca with Aegis Caller and pairing it with Corpseburster, I would run Aegis Caller on the body. If you’re pairing Aegis Caller with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, I would run Aegis Caller on the weapons and jewelry instead.

(Perfected) Whorl of Depths

(Perfected) Whorl of the Depths⁠ is a Light Armor set from the trial Dreadsail Reef. Whenever you deal damage with a Light Attack, you apply a DOT to the target that deals Frost Damage over eight seconds. When that effect ends, a five-meter whirlpool is created underneath the target for six seconds, dealing a ton of AOE damage. Because of that AOE damage, (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths is a great option for both single-target and AOE encounters. The entire effect can occur once every 18 seconds, leaving a pretty short window of downtime between procs. As a Light Armor set, you only ever want to run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, keep (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca on the body and run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry.

Advancing Yokeda

Berserking Warrior is a Heavy Armor set from the trial Hel Ra Citadel, and it gives us a ton of one of the most important stats in the game: Critical Chance. With five pieces active, Berserking Warrior gives us 986 Critical Chance at base⁠. Whenever you deal Martial melee damage, your Critical Chance increases by another 298 for five seconds, stacking up to five times. To keep those stacks from dropping, make sure that you Light Attack on your front bar at least once every five seconds. Advancing is historically considered an exclusively single-target set, but if you can maintain all five stacks in an AOE situation, that Critical Chance will also increase the Cro’s already remarkably strong AOE damage. So while it’s primarily considered a single-target option, Berserking Warrior can work very well for AOE on the Cro too. Because it’s a Heavy Armor set, we only ever run Berserking Warrior on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, Berserking Warrior fills those weapons and jewelry slots while (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca stays on the body.

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge. At base, it increases your damage done to monsters by 7%. Whenever you interrupt a target while in combat, that bonus increases to 21% for 30 seconds. Because that proc condition is rarely something that we’re going to be able to activate in an organized raid, we primarily consider (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment for its reliable 7% damage-done increase. That baseline is still very strong and makes (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment one of the best options for overall raw AOE damage on the Cro by simply increasing the damage of the class’s already remarkably strong AOE toolkit. (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment should be run exclusively on the body.

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set from the trial Cloudrest, and this is another classic. With five pieces active, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria gives us 200 Weapon and Spell Damage passively. Whenever you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you create a ring of fire beneath you for eight seconds. Standing in that ring increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by another 44 for five seconds, stacking up to ten times. That gives us 440 Weapon and Spell Damage at max stacks, or 640 total when we include the passive portion of the five-piece bonus. Because this is a stat increase that buffs our entire toolkit, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is very strong for both single-target and AOE damage. This set can be a little tricky to maintain though. You need to recreate the ring as often as possible and make sure that you stand inside it at least once every five seconds to refresh your stacks. Because (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set, we only want to run it on the weapons and jewelry, regardless of whether we’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster. We can get away with front-barring a set that gives a stat increase here because that buff is provided off of a Proc, which means the buff will last regardless of what bar we're on as long as we're tracking and maintaining our stacks.

Tide-born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker⁠ is a craftable set found at the Tide-Born Foundry in Solstice. It increases your direct damage done to monsters by 15%⁠, which is a huge buff and makes Tide-Born Wildstalker one of the strongest craftable sets in the entire game. If you don’t have any of the previously mentioned options, you can run Tide-Born Wildstalker with very similar success to our meta options. Tide-Born Wildstalker should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Highland Sentinel

Highland Sentinel⁠ is the next-strongest craftable set, and its crafting station can be found in West Weald. This set gives us a ton of Critical Chance, which is one of the most valuable stats in the game, but its proc condition is very odd. With five pieces active, the set gives us 986 Critical Chance passively. Then, every second that you stand still in combat gives you a stack of Sentinel’s Eye, adding another 443 Critical Chance per stack, up to three stacks. Every second that you move removes one stack. This condition can be very tricky to maintain, especially for newer players, so I don’t necessarily recommend Highland Sentinel as a go-to replacement. But if you’re okay trying to min-max with the tools that you have, you can pair Tide-Born Wildstalker with Highland Sentinel and have very good success. Generally, I would use Tide-Born Wildstalker first. If you choose to use Highland Sentinel, though, it should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Order's Wrath

A slightly weaker but much easier option to maintain is Order's Wrath⁠. This set gives us a little bit less Critical Chance than Highland Sentinel, but it also gives us Critical Damage, making the set very strong and versatile for newer players, unoptimized groups, or even solo and four-man situations. This set can be crafted at Steadfast Hammer and Saw in the High Isle and Amenos region. Order's Wrath should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca

Update 50 introduced an enormous increase in Weapon and Spell Damage through Class Masteries. Whenever our offensive stats become this inflated, proc sets gain tremendous value because their damage scales directly with those massive stat pools, often outperforming sets that simply provide more raw stats.

For sustained single-target damage, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is our strongest proc set, and we benefit from it passively while performing the rotation. When you deal Critical Damage, you build stacks of Sliver. At 3 stacks, you fire the Null Arca Proc. The frequent activation, combined with the Weapon and Spell Damage scaling, results in roughly roughly 14,000 DPS from the set: a TON of DPS. Your actual result in content will depend on the setup and encounter of course, but it's currently the strongest option for Single Target in Update 51.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

(Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain from gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

How to Choose an Alternate Set

All of the alternate set options that we’ve given here are very strong, but it can be difficult to know exactly which sets to pair together, and more specifically, which set should go on the body and which set should go on your weapons and jewelry when replacing one of our main options. There are a few rules that we need to follow.

Minor Slayer

The first and most important rule is to make sure that we always have a Trial set equipped. The third stat line on every DPS-oriented Trial set in the game gives Minor Slayer, a buff that increases our damage done to all PvE enemies by 5%. This is the strongest third-piece stat line in the game. If we analyze only the value of a set’s five-piece bonus, compare something like (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca to Aegis Caller. The damage from the actual five-piece procs aren't too far off from one another, but the key factor that makes (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca so much stronger on a one-to-one basis is that Minor Slayer bonus on the third line.

Medium Armor

Our next consideration is that, regardless of which sets we pair together, we need to run a Medium Armor set on the body. We could take a set like (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths, for example, which is very strong, but if we run it on the body, it’s going to be a significant DPS loss compared to even most dungeon sets, regardless of that third-piece stat line. The primary reason for this is that, in the Update 51 meta, we run Medium Armor primarily for Critical Damage and Light Armor primarily for Penetration. There are tons of sources of Penetration in the game, and it’s a lot easier to reach the pen cap than it is to reach the Critical Damage cap. So most of the time, we’ll need to run Medium Armor on the body to make sure that we’re at the Critical Damage cap in 12-man encounters.

Sets that give Stats

Once we have a Trial set equipped and a Medium Armor set on the body, our next priority is to put whichever set gives a stat bonus from its fifth piece on the body so that the bonus remains active on both bars. A set like (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment gives us a 7% damage increase, for example, but that bonus is worth much less if the set is only active on the front bar. Compare that to a set like Aegis Caller, where we simply have to Light Attack to proc it, and the summoned Lesser Aegis lasts 11 seconds regardless of what bar we're on.

Proc Sets

When we're choosing between two proc sets, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is a good example of a set that's easier to manage on the body. The third Sliver stack fires the crystal, then there's a four-second cooldown before we can build stacks again. This cooldown is very short compared, again, to a set like Aegis Caller. So, by running the set with the shorter cooldown on the body, we are likely to have much higher uptimes without having to aggressively micromanage the set.

Alternate Set info

(Perfected) Arms of Relequen

The first alternate set option is (Perfected) Arms of Relequen. This set comes from Cloudrest, and every time you Light Attack, you apply a stack of Harmful Winds to the target. This stacks up to 10 times and deals a ton of damage. Historically, (Perfected) Arms of Relequen was meta for single target for a very long time, but it received a nerf a few patches ago that gave (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca a slight edge. A lot of people have forgotten about this set since then, but it’s still extremely strong and is only worth a little bit less DPS than the current meta single-target setup. (Perfected) Arms of Relequen can be run on the body as a Medium Armor set, or it can be run on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using (Perfected) Arms of Relequen to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, you should run it on the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, you should run it on the weapons and jewelry. Just remember that if you run (Perfected) Arms of Relequen on the weapons, you have to swap back to your front bar and Light Attack once every four seconds, otherwise, all of your Harmful Winds stacks will drop.

(Perfected) Mora Scribe's Thesis

(Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis⁠ is a Light Armor set from the Trial Lucent Citadel. This set increases your Critical Chance for every Major buff active on you and your Critical Damage for every Minor buff active on you. In a 12-man raid scenario, (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is very competitive with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, although it’s slightly worse for the Necromancer. This set is particularly strong on classes that get random extra sources of Major and Minor buffs that we don’t specifically try to prioritize in a raid comp. The Sorc is a good example because Hurricane gives it Major Resolve and Minor Expedition. Major Resolve contributes to (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis Critical Chance bonus, while Minor Expedition contributes to its Critical Damage bonus. (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is also pretty strong in unoptimized groups, especially groups that might be lacking Critical Damage. So in newer groups or pug scenarios, you might even want to prioritize it over (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca. Because this is a Light Armor set, we should run (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis on weapons and jewelry and keep the paired medium set on the body.

Aegis Caller

Aegis Caller⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the dungeon Unhallowed Grave. It’s one of the strongest proc sets in the game, and it deals its damage in an AOE radius, making it valuable for AOE encounters as well as single target ones. Its raw damage is a little bit lower than (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca’s, but still comparable. This set procs whenever we deal critical damage with a martial melee attack, which means that it will proc from our front-bar light attacks. The proc lasts for 11 seconds with a 12 second cooldown⁠, so we can get effectively near 100% uptimes. Because we can proc the set by simply light attacking, it’s extremely easy to run on the front bar. If you’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca with Aegis Caller and pairing it with Corpseburster, I would run Aegis Caller on the body. If you’re pairing Aegis Caller with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, I would run Aegis Caller on the weapons and jewelry instead.

(Perfected) Whorl of Depths

(Perfected) Whorl of the Depths⁠ is a Light Armor set from the trial Dreadsail Reef. Whenever you deal damage with a Light Attack, you apply a DOT to the target that deals Frost Damage over eight seconds. When that effect ends, a five-meter whirlpool is created underneath the target for six seconds, dealing a ton of AOE damage. Because of that AOE damage, (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths is a great option for both single-target and AOE encounters. The entire effect can occur once every 18 seconds, leaving a pretty short window of downtime between procs. As a Light Armor set, you only ever want to run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, keep (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca on the body and run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry.

Advancing Yokeda

Berserking Warrior is a Heavy Armor set from the trial Hel Ra Citadel, and it gives us a ton of one of the most important stats in the game: Critical Chance. With five pieces active, Berserking Warrior gives us 986 Critical Chance at base⁠. Whenever you deal Martial melee damage, your Critical Chance increases by another 298 for five seconds, stacking up to five times. To keep those stacks from dropping, make sure that you Light Attack on your front bar at least once every five seconds. Advancing is historically considered an exclusively single-target set, but if you can maintain all five stacks in an AOE situation, that Critical Chance will also increase the Cro’s already remarkably strong AOE damage. So while it’s primarily considered a single-target option, Berserking Warrior can work very well for AOE on the Cro too. Because it’s a Heavy Armor set, we only ever run Berserking Warrior on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, Berserking Warrior fills those weapons and jewelry slots while (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca stays on the body.

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge. At base, it increases your damage done to monsters by 7%. Whenever you interrupt a target while in combat, that bonus increases to 21% for 30 seconds. Because that proc condition is rarely something that we’re going to be able to activate in an organized raid, we primarily consider (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment for its reliable 7% damage-done increase. That baseline is still very strong and makes (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment one of the best options for overall raw AOE damage on the Cro by simply increasing the damage of the class’s already remarkably strong AOE toolkit. (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment should be run exclusively on the body.

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set from the trial Cloudrest, and this is another classic. With five pieces active, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria gives us 200 Weapon and Spell Damage passively. Whenever you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you create a ring of fire beneath you for eight seconds. Standing in that ring increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by another 44 for five seconds, stacking up to ten times. That gives us 440 Weapon and Spell Damage at max stacks, or 640 total when we include the passive portion of the five-piece bonus. Because this is a stat increase that buffs our entire toolkit, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is very strong for both single-target and AOE damage. This set can be a little tricky to maintain though. You need to recreate the ring as often as possible and make sure that you stand inside it at least once every five seconds to refresh your stacks. Because (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set, we only want to run it on the weapons and jewelry, regardless of whether we’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster. We can get away with front-barring a set that gives a stat increase here because that buff is provided off of a Proc, which means the buff will last regardless of what bar we're on as long as we're tracking and maintaining our stacks.

Tide-born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker⁠ is a craftable set found at the Tide-Born Foundry in Solstice. It increases your direct damage done to monsters by 15%⁠, which is a huge buff and makes Tide-Born Wildstalker one of the strongest craftable sets in the entire game. If you don’t have any of the previously mentioned options, you can run Tide-Born Wildstalker with very similar success to our meta options. Tide-Born Wildstalker should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Highland Sentinel

Highland Sentinel⁠ is the next-strongest craftable set, and its crafting station can be found in West Weald. This set gives us a ton of Critical Chance, which is one of the most valuable stats in the game, but its proc condition is very odd. With five pieces active, the set gives us 986 Critical Chance passively. Then, every second that you stand still in combat gives you a stack of Sentinel’s Eye, adding another 443 Critical Chance per stack, up to three stacks. Every second that you move removes one stack. This condition can be very tricky to maintain, especially for newer players, so I don’t necessarily recommend Highland Sentinel as a go-to replacement. But if you’re okay trying to min-max with the tools that you have, you can pair Tide-Born Wildstalker with Highland Sentinel and have very good success. Generally, I would use Tide-Born Wildstalker first. If you choose to use Highland Sentinel, though, it should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Order's Wrath

A slightly weaker but much easier option to maintain is Order's Wrath⁠. This set gives us a little bit less Critical Chance than Highland Sentinel, but it also gives us Critical Damage, making the set very strong and versatile for newer players, unoptimized groups, or even solo and four-man situations. This set can be crafted at Steadfast Hammer and Saw in the High Isle and Amenos region. Order's Wrath should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment is a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge that adds a ton of Critical Chance through its two-piece bonus and the additional Perfected five-piece stat line, while also increasing our damage done to monsters by 7%. Whenever we interrupt an enemy while in combat, the set gives us an additional 14% damage done to monsters for 30 seconds. This is a particularly strong set for AOE damage because it increases the damage of our already naturally strong AOE toolkit: skills like Detonating Siphon, Corpseburster, Blighted Blastbones, and Boneyard. As opposed to running a proc set, we gain more value by simply increasing the damage of all of these already incredibly strong sources. (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment should always be run on the body.

The Velothi UR-Mage's Amulet

The Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is our strongest Mythic for this AOE setup. It gives us Offensive Penetration, which helps when single target debuffs like Crusher aren't covering everything we're hitting, and Minor Force, which adds value when we're not already receiving that buff from the group.

The biggest reason we run it is the 15% damage-done bonus against monsters. We lose 99% of our Light and Heavy Attack damage, but this is an easy trade in AOE encounters. The raw damage done of an ability numerically doubles when you're attacking two targets, triples when you're attacking 3, and so on: if Unnerving Boneyard ticks for 20K against 1 target, 20K times 2 targets is now worth 40K total damage done. Light Attacks can only hit one target at a time, so the more targets there are, the less raw DPS value the Light Attack is worth.

As an IMPORTANT NOTE just because you have Velothi equipped DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP LIGHT ATTACKING. Light Attack Weaving still procs enchants, which do decent damage on their own, help proc status effects which do very good damage, and help maintain ult gen. They're still incredibly important.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

Even in AOE situations, (Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build, a huge portion of which is Detonating Siphon and Corpseburster. Even if the Stampede AOE isn't hitting everything, the direct damage increase is still a net gain.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain for gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

How to Choose an Alternate Set

All of the alternate set options that we’ve given here are very strong, but it can be difficult to know exactly which sets to pair together, and more specifically, which set should go on the body and which set should go on your weapons and jewelry when replacing one of our main options. There are a few rules that we need to follow.

Minor Slayer

The first and most important rule is to make sure that we always have a Trial set equipped. The third stat line on every DPS-oriented Trial set in the game gives Minor Slayer, a buff that increases our damage done to all PvE enemies by 5%. This is the strongest third-piece stat line in the game. If we analyze only the value of a set’s five-piece bonus, compare something like (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca to Aegis Caller. The damage from the actual five-piece procs aren't too far off from one another, but the key factor that makes (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca so much stronger on a one-to-one basis is that Minor Slayer bonus on the third line.

Medium Armor

Our next consideration is that, regardless of which sets we pair together, we need to run a Medium Armor set on the body. We could take a set like (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths, for example, which is very strong, but if we run it on the body, it’s going to be a significant DPS loss compared to even most dungeon sets, regardless of that third-piece stat line. The primary reason for this is that, in the Update 51 meta, we run Medium Armor primarily for Critical Damage and Light Armor primarily for Penetration. There are tons of sources of Penetration in the game, and it’s a lot easier to reach the pen cap than it is to reach the Critical Damage cap. So most of the time, we’ll need to run Medium Armor on the body to make sure that we’re at the Critical Damage cap in 12-man encounters.

Sets that give Stats

Once we have a Trial set equipped and a Medium Armor set on the body, our next priority is to put whichever set gives a stat bonus from its fifth piece on the body so that the bonus remains active on both bars. A set like (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment gives us a 7% damage increase, for example, but that bonus is worth much less if the set is only active on the front bar. Compare that to a set like Aegis Caller, where we simply have to Light Attack to proc it, and the summoned Lesser Aegis lasts 11 seconds regardless of what bar we're on.

Proc Sets

When we're choosing between two proc sets, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is a good example of a set that's easier to manage on the body. The third Sliver stack fires the crystal, then there's a four-second cooldown before we can build stacks again. This cooldown is very short compared, again, to a set like Aegis Caller. So, by running the set with the shorter cooldown on the body, we are likely to have much higher uptimes without having to aggressively micromanage the set.

Alternate Set info

(Perfected) Mora Scribe's Thesis

(Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis⁠ is a Light Armor set from the Trial Lucent Citadel. This set increases your Critical Chance for every Major buff active on you and your Critical Damage for every Minor buff active on you. In a 12-man raid scenario, (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is very competitive with (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment, although it’s slightly worse for the Necromancer. This set is particularly strong on classes that get random extra sources of Major and Minor buffs that we don’t specifically try to prioritize in a raid comp. The Sorc is a good example because Hurricane gives it Major Resolve and Minor Expedition. Major Resolve contributes to (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis Critical Chance bonus, while Minor Expedition contributes to its Critical Damage bonus. (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is also pretty strong in unoptimized groups, especially groups that might be lacking Critical Damage. So in newer groups or pug scenarios, you might even want to prioritize it over (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment.

Aegis Caller

Aegis Caller⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the dungeon Unhallowed Grave. It’s one of the strongest proc sets in the game, and it deals its damage in an AOE radius, making it valuable for AOE encounters as well as single target. However, because Aegis Caller is a dungeon set, it doesn’t include Minor Slayer, which is why a Trial set like (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment is more valuable on a one-to-one basis. We can run Aegis Caller on the body because it’s a Medium Armor set, but more optimally, we’ll usually run it on the weapons and jewelry. This set procs whenever we deal critical damage with a martial melee attack, which means that it will proc from our front-bar light attacks. The proc lasts for 11 seconds with a 12 second cooldown⁠, so we can get effectively near 100% uptimes. Because we can proc the set by simply light attacking, it’s extremely easy to run on the front bar.

(Perfected Whorl of the Depths)

(Perfected) Whorl of the Depths⁠ is a Light Armor set from the trial Dreadsail Reef. Whenever you deal damage with a Light Attack, you apply a DOT to the target that deals Frost Damage over eight seconds. When that effect ends, a five-meter whirlpool is created underneath the target for six seconds, dealing a ton of AOE damage. Because of that AOE damage, (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths is a great option for both single-target and AOE encounters. The entire effect can occur once every 18 seconds, leaving a pretty short window of downtime between procs. As a Light Armor set, you only ever want to run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, keep (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment on the body and run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry.

Advancing Yokeda

Berserking Warrior is a Heavy Armor set from the trial Hel Ra Citadel, and it gives us a ton of one of the most important stats in the game: Critical Chance. With five pieces active, Berserking Warrior gives us 986 Critical Chance at base⁠. Whenever you deal Martial melee damage, your Critical Chance increases by another 298 for five seconds, stacking up to five times. To keep those stacks from dropping, make sure that you Light Attack on your front bar at least once every five seconds. Advancing is historically considered an exclusively single-target set, but if you can maintain all five stacks in an AOE situation, that Critical Chance will also increase the Cro’s already remarkably strong AOE damage. So while it’s primarily considered a single-target option, Berserking Warrior can work very well for AOE on the Cro too. Because it’s a Heavy Armor set, we only ever run Berserking Warrior on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, Berserking Warrior goes on the Weapons/Jewelry while (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca stays on the body.

(perfected) Mantle of Siroria

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria⁠ is a Light Armor set from the trial Cloudrest, and this is another classic. With five pieces active, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria gives us 200 Weapon and Spell Damage passively. Whenever you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you create a ring of fire beneath you for eight seconds. Standing in that ring increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by another 44 for five seconds, stacking up to ten times. That gives us 440 Weapon and Spell Damage at max stacks, or 640 total when we include the passive portion of the five-piece bonus. Because this is a stat increase that buffs our entire toolkit, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is very strong for both single-target and AOE damage. This set can be a little tricky to maintain. You need to recreate the ring as often as possible and make sure that you stand inside it at least once every five seconds to refresh your stacks. Because (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set, we only want to run it on the weapons and jewelry, regardless of whether we’re replacing (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment or Corpseburster. We can get away with front-barring a set that gives a stat increase here because that buff is provided off of a Proc, which means the buff will last regardless of what bar we're on as long as we're tracking and maintaining our stacks.

Tide-Born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker⁠ is a craftable set found at the Tide-Born Foundry in Solstice. It increases your direct damage done to monsters by 15%⁠, which is a huge buff and makes Tide-Born Wildstalker one of the strongest craftable sets in the entire game. If you don’t have any of the previously mentioned options, you can run Tide-Born Wildstalker with very similar success to our meta options. Tide-Born Wildstalker should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment or Corpseburster.

Highland Sentinel

Highland Sentinel⁠ is the next-strongest craftable set. Its crafting station can be found in West Weald. This set gives us a ton of Critical Chance, which is one of the most valuable stats in the game, but its proc condition is very odd. With five pieces active, the set gives us 986 Critical Chance passively. Then, every second that you stand still in combat gives you a stack of Sentinel’s Eye, adding another 443 Critical Chance per stack, up to three stacks. Every second that you move removes one stack. This condition can be very tricky to maintain, especially for newer players, so I don’t necessarily recommend Highland Sentinel as a go-to replacement. But if you’re okay trying to min-max with the tools that you have, it ends up being very strong. If you choose to use Highland Sentinel, it should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment or Corpseburster.

Order's Wrath

A slightly weaker but much easier option to maintain is Order's Wrath⁠. This set gives us a little bit less Critical Chance than Highland Sentinel, but it also gives us Critical Damage, making the set very strong and versatile for newer players, unoptimized groups, or even solo and four-man situations. This set can be crafted in the High Isle and Amenos region. Order's Wrath should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment or Corpseburster.

Skeletal Arcanist

In AOE situations, it’s going to be more worthwhile to run Skeletal Arcanist over Skeletal Archer. It continues to grant Major Brutality, our Major Weapon and Spell Damage buff. Though it deals a little less damage per tick than Skeletal Archer, it deals that damage in an AOE radius, and once an ability is hitting multiple targets, it will always deal more total damage than an ability that can only hit one.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

Azureblight Reaper

When it comes to AOE damage, no set in the game comes close to Azureblight Reaper. Whenever you deal damage with a damage-over-time ability, you apply a stack of Blight Seed to the target for five seconds. At 20 stacks, Blight Seed explodes, dealing Disease Damage to the target and nearby enemies, and that damage increases by 150% for every additional monster hit, up to 600%.

Historically, Azureblight Reaper was so strong that it was worth stacking and running on as many players as possible in a variety of situations. These days, because its explosion can only occur once every second, the set is really only good on one player, and on classes running a lot of damage over time effects in fights with three or more high health enemies. When those conditions are met though, having one player run Azureblight Reaper is an absolute must. Its damage value is unlike anything else you’ll see in this game.

The Velothi UR-Mage's Amulet

The Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is our strongest Mythic for this AOE setup. It gives us Offensive Penetration, which helps when single target debuffs like Crusher aren't covering everything we're hitting, and Minor Force, which adds value when we're not already receiving that buff from the group.

The biggest reason we run it is the 15% damage-done bonus against monsters. We lose 99% of our Light and Heavy Attack damage, but this is an easy trade in AOE encounters. The raw damage done of an ability numerically doubles when you're attacking two targets, triples when you're attacking 3, and so on: if Unnerving Boneyard ticks for 20K against 1 target, 20K times 2 targets is now worth 40K total damage done. Light Attacks can only hit one target at a time, so the more targets there are, the less raw DPS value the Light Attack is worth.

As an IMPORTANT NOTE just because you have Velothi equipped DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP LIGHT ATTACKING. Light Attack Weaving still procs enchants, which do decent damage on their own, help proc status effects which do very good damage, and help maintain ult gen. They're still incredibly important.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

Even in AOE situations, (Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build, a huge portion of which is Detonating Siphon and Corpseburster, and in this setup, Azureblight Reaper. Even if the Stampede AOE isn't hitting everything, the direct damage increase is still a net gain.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain for gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

Mystic Orb

In regular AOE boss situations, Mystic Orb can be used as a flex skill. When running Azureblight Reaper however, it becomes a must-have. Mystic Orb is a decent damage-over-time effect, but its primary value in an Azureblight Reaper setup isn’t necessarily its raw damage. It lasts ten seconds and ticks once every second, so it builds additional Azure stacks extremely quickly compared to dots that tick once every 2 seconds. A couple of other skills may be just as strong or even stronger on a skill to skill basis, but because Mystic Orb will proc Azureblight Reaper more often, it becomes the preferable option.

Skeletal Arcanist

In AOE situations, it’s going to be more worthwhile to run Skeletal Arcanist over Skeletal Archer. It continues to grant Major Brutality, our Major Weapon and Spell Damage buff. Though it deals a little less damage per tick than Skeletal Archer, it deals that damage in an AOE radius, and once an ability is hitting multiple targets, it will always deal more total damage than an ability that can only hit one.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

Mechanical Acuity

In burst fights, Mechanical Acuity is the absolute strongest set that you can run. Whenever you deal non-critical damage, you gain a stack of Mechanical Acuity for four seconds, granting 20% Critical Strike Chance per stack. You can gain one stack per second, up to five stacks, and each new stack refreshes the four-second duration. Once you reach five stacks, or if the effect expires before you do, Mechanical Acuity cannot activate again for 25 seconds.

Because each new stack refreshes the duration, we use Sundering Burst to guarantee non-critical damage even after our Critical Chance climbs above 100%. Theoretically, this allows us to remain inside Mechanical Acuity for it's full potential duration. In practice, the first few stacks usually apply very quickly, while the fourth and fifth take much longer, resulting in roughly eight to ten seconds of uptime on average. For the Necromancer, in fights that last around 12 to 15 seconds or less, reaching 100% Critical Chance throughout that burst window makes Mechanical Acuity the absolute strongest option that we can run.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

(Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build.

Balorgh

Mechanical Acuity brings our Critical Chance to practically 100% during its active window. That makes another line of Critical Chance from a set like Slimecraw less worthwhile than a set like Balorgh that offers a line of Weapon and Spell damage.

Sundering Burst

Sundering Burst is relatively weak on its own. We primarily run it to get the maximum possible uptime out of Mechanical Acuity. To create it, spec Soul Burst with the Physical Damage Focus Script, the Anchorite’s Cruelty Signature Script, and an Affix Script of your choice. Anchorite’s Cruelty is the important part. It consumes a Soul Gem to deal 2.8% of the enemy’s Max Health as Oblivion Damage every two seconds for ten seconds.

That damage is relatively weak, but Oblivion Damage cannot critically strike. This guarantees a non-critical hit on every tick, even after we’re well above 100% Critical Chance, allowing us to continue building Mechanical Acuity stacks and refreshing their duration for as long as possible. That extension lets us get significantly more damage out of Mechanical Acuity.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

Tide-Born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker is the set we're using in place of (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca when we don't have Trial gear. It gives us 15% more Direct Damage against monsters, which fits the Cro extremely well because Direct Damage is our primary damage type. We keep Corpseburster as the other five-piece set, so Tide-Born Wildstalker is increasing the damage of those explosions alongside our Direct Damage skills. Run Tide-Born Wildstalker on the body to keep its bonus active on both bars. It's a craftable found at the Tide-Born Foundry in Solstice.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

(Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain from gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

Tide-Born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker is the set we're using in place of (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca when we don't have Trial gear. It gives us 15% more Direct Damage against monsters, which fits the Cro extremely well because Direct Damage is our primary damage type. Ideally, we'd be pairing Tideborn with Corpseburster, the absolutely essential set for damage on the Cro in Update 51. Infinite Archive is a soloable piece of content, it should be of the upmost priority to get this set as soon as possible.

Orders Wrath

In the meantime, you can pair Tideborn with Order's Wrath. This set can be crafted at Steadfast Hammer and Saw in the High Isle and Amenos region, and though it's not the next strongest crafting set in the game technically speaking, it's the best bang for your buck in terms of practicality. It offers a solid DPS increase as well as some passive Crit Damage, a stat that's extremely valuable in solo and even optimized group content.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Merciless Charge

(Perfected) Merciless Charge is the strongest arena weapon for boss damage in the game. It boosts our direct damage by 12%, and Direct Damage is the most common damage type in this build.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain from gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca

Update 50 introduced an enormous increase in Weapon and Spell Damage through Class Masteries. Whenever our offensive stats become this inflated, proc sets gain tremendous value because their damage scales directly with those massive stat pools, often outperforming sets that simply provide more raw stats.

For sustained single-target damage, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is our strongest proc set, and we benefit from it passively while performing the rotation. When you deal Critical Damage, you build stacks of Sliver. At 3 stacks, you fire the Null Arca Proc. The frequent activation, combined with the Weapon and Spell Damage scaling, results in roughly roughly 14,000 DPS from the set: a TON of DPS. Your actual result in content will depend on the setup and encounter of course, but it's currently the strongest option for Single Target in Update 51.

The Huntsman Warmask

Huntsman's Warmask is our strongest Mythic for a single-target parse. A Bash or fully charged Heavy Attack marks the dummy for 60 seconds, giving us 15% more damage against it as well as Minor Berserk while active. This does come at a cost though. We deal 50% less damage to every other target without the mark. This makes the mythic optimal for Single Target encounters, and truthfully, most fights in the game these days are best played with single target setups anyway, so we will rarely use any other mythic even in content.

(Perfected) Caustic Arrow

(Perfected) Caustic Arrow is our strongest arena weapon for single-target damage in this Bow/Bow setup. It comes from Dragonstar Arena and gives us 330 Weapon and Spell Damage against enemies affected by Poison Arrow, which is why we're running Poison Injection on the back bar. The Perfected version also adds a separate line of Weapon and Spell Damage. That makes Poison Injection more valuable than its own DOT: it keeps the weapon's bonus active against the boss. For AOE, we can instead consider the Maelstrom Bow, (Perfected) Thunderous Volley, which puts its arena-weapon bonus into Endless Hail and increases its damage against every target inside it.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain from gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

How to Choose an Alternate Set

All of the alternate set options that we’ve given here are very strong, but it can be difficult to know exactly which sets to pair together, and more specifically, which set should go on the body and which set should go on your weapons and jewelry when replacing one of our main options. There are a few rules that we need to follow.

Minor Slayer

The first and most important rule is to make sure that we always have a Trial set equipped. The third stat line on every DPS-oriented Trial set in the game gives Minor Slayer, a buff that increases our damage done to all PvE enemies by 5%. This is the strongest third-piece stat line in the game. If we analyze only the value of a set’s five-piece bonus, compare something like (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca to Aegis Caller. The damage from the actual five-piece procs aren't too far off from one another, but the key factor that makes (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca so much stronger on a one-to-one basis is that Minor Slayer bonus on the third line.

Medium Armor

Our next consideration is that, regardless of which sets we pair together, we need to run a Medium Armor set on the body. We could take a set like (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths, for example, which is very strong, but if we run it on the body, it’s going to be a significant DPS loss compared to even most dungeon sets, regardless of that third-piece stat line. The primary reason for this is that, in the Update 51 meta, we run Medium Armor primarily for Critical Damage and Light Armor primarily for Penetration. There are tons of sources of Penetration in the game, and it’s a lot easier to reach the pen cap than it is to reach the Critical Damage cap. So most of the time, we’ll need to run Medium Armor on the body to make sure that we’re at the Critical Damage cap in 12-man encounters.

Sets that give Stats

Once we have a Trial set equipped and a Medium Armor set on the body, our next priority is to put whichever set gives a stat bonus from its fifth piece on the body so that the bonus remains active on both bars. A set like (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment gives us a 7% damage increase, for example, but that bonus is worth much less if the set is only active on the front bar. Compare that to a set like Aegis Caller, where we simply have to Light Attack to proc it, and the summoned Lesser Aegis lasts 11 seconds regardless of what bar we're on.

Proc Sets

When we're choosing between two proc sets, (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca is a good example of a set that's easier to manage on the body. The third Sliver stack fires the crystal, then there's a four-second cooldown before we can build stacks again. This cooldown is very short compared, again, to a set like Aegis Caller. So, by running the set with the shorter cooldown on the body, we are likely to have much higher uptimes without having to aggressively micromanage the set.

Alternate Set info

(Perfected) Arms of Relequen

The first alternate set option is (Perfected) Arms of Relequen. This set comes from Cloudrest, and every time you Light Attack, you apply a stack of Harmful Winds to the target. This stacks up to 10 times and deals a ton of damage. Historically, (Perfected) Arms of Relequen was meta for single target for a very long time, but it received a nerf a few patches ago that gave (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca a slight edge. A lot of people have forgotten about this set since then, but it’s still extremely strong and is only worth a little bit less DPS than the current meta single-target setup. (Perfected) Arms of Relequen can be run on the body as a Medium Armor set, or it can be run on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using (Perfected) Arms of Relequen to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, you should run it on the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, you should run it on the weapons and jewelry. Just remember that if you run (Perfected) Arms of Relequen on the weapons, you have to swap back to your front bar and Light Attack once every four seconds, otherwise, all of your Harmful Winds stacks will drop.

(Perfected) Mora Scribe's Thesis

(Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis⁠ is a Light Armor set from the Trial Lucent Citadel. This set increases your Critical Chance for every Major buff active on you and your Critical Damage for every Minor buff active on you. In a 12-man raid scenario, (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is very competitive with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, although it’s slightly worse for the Necromancer. This set is particularly strong on classes that get random extra sources of Major and Minor buffs that we don’t specifically try to prioritize in a raid comp. The Sorc is a good example because Hurricane gives it Major Resolve and Minor Expedition. Major Resolve contributes to (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis Critical Chance bonus, while Minor Expedition contributes to its Critical Damage bonus. (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis is also pretty strong in unoptimized groups, especially groups that might be lacking Critical Damage. So in newer groups or pug scenarios, you might even want to prioritize it over (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca. Because this is a Light Armor set, we should run (Perfected) Mora Scribe’s Thesis on weapons and jewelry and keep the paired medium set on the body.

Aegis Caller

Aegis Caller⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the dungeon Unhallowed Grave. It’s one of the strongest proc sets in the game, and it deals its damage in an AOE radius, making it valuable for AOE encounters as well as single target ones. Its raw damage is a little bit lower than (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca’s, but still comparable. This set procs whenever we deal critical damage with a martial melee attack, which means that it will proc from our front-bar light attacks. The proc lasts for 11 seconds with a 12 second cooldown⁠, so we can get effectively near 100% uptimes. Because we can proc the set by simply light attacking, it’s extremely easy to run on the front bar. If you’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca with Aegis Caller and pairing it with Corpseburster, I would run Aegis Caller on the body. If you’re pairing Aegis Caller with (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, I would run Aegis Caller on the weapons and jewelry instead.

(Perfected) Whorl of Depths

(Perfected) Whorl of the Depths⁠ is a Light Armor set from the trial Dreadsail Reef. Whenever you deal damage with a Light Attack, you apply a DOT to the target that deals Frost Damage over eight seconds. When that effect ends, a five-meter whirlpool is created underneath the target for six seconds, dealing a ton of AOE damage. Because of that AOE damage, (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths is a great option for both single-target and AOE encounters. The entire effect can occur once every 18 seconds, leaving a pretty short window of downtime between procs. As a Light Armor set, you only ever want to run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, keep (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca on the body and run (Perfected) Whorl of the Depths on the weapons and jewelry.

Advancing Yokeda

Berserking Warrior is a Heavy Armor set from the trial Hel Ra Citadel, and it gives us a ton of one of the most important stats in the game: Critical Chance. With five pieces active, Berserking Warrior gives us 986 Critical Chance at base⁠. Whenever you deal Martial melee damage, your Critical Chance increases by another 298 for five seconds, stacking up to five times. To keep those stacks from dropping, make sure that you Light Attack on your front bar at least once every five seconds. Advancing is historically considered an exclusively single-target set, but if you can maintain all five stacks in an AOE situation, that Critical Chance will also increase the Cro’s already remarkably strong AOE damage. So while it’s primarily considered a single-target option, Berserking Warrior can work very well for AOE on the Cro too. Because it’s a Heavy Armor set, we only ever run Berserking Warrior on the weapons and jewelry. If you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca, move Corpseburster to the body. If you’re using it to replace Corpseburster, Berserking Warrior fills those weapons and jewelry slots while (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca stays on the body.

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment⁠ is a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge. At base, it increases your damage done to monsters by 7%. Whenever you interrupt a target while in combat, that bonus increases to 21% for 30 seconds. Because that proc condition is rarely something that we’re going to be able to activate in an organized raid, we primarily consider (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment for its reliable 7% damage-done increase. That baseline is still very strong and makes (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment one of the best options for overall raw AOE damage on the Cro by simply increasing the damage of the class’s already remarkably strong AOE toolkit. (Perfected) Ansuul's Torment should be run exclusively on the body.

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria

(Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set from the trial Cloudrest, and this is another classic. With five pieces active, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria gives us 200 Weapon and Spell Damage passively. Whenever you deal damage with a Light or Heavy Attack, you create a ring of fire beneath you for eight seconds. Standing in that ring increases your Weapon and Spell Damage by another 44 for five seconds, stacking up to ten times. That gives us 440 Weapon and Spell Damage at max stacks, or 640 total when we include the passive portion of the five-piece bonus. Because this is a stat increase that buffs our entire toolkit, (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is very strong for both single-target and AOE damage. This set can be a little tricky to maintain though. You need to recreate the ring as often as possible and make sure that you stand inside it at least once every five seconds to refresh your stacks. Because (Perfected) Mantle of Siroria is a Light Armor set, we only want to run it on the weapons and jewelry, regardless of whether we’re replacing (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster. We can get away with front-barring a set that gives a stat increase here because that buff is provided off of a Proc, which means the buff will last regardless of what bar we're on as long as we're tracking and maintaining our stacks.

Tide-born Windstalker

Tide-Born Wildstalker⁠ is a craftable set found at the Tide-Born Foundry in Solstice. It increases your direct damage done to monsters by 15%⁠, which is a huge buff and makes Tide-Born Wildstalker one of the strongest craftable sets in the entire game. If you don’t have any of the previously mentioned options, you can run Tide-Born Wildstalker with very similar success to our meta options. Tide-Born Wildstalker should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Highland Sentinel

Highland Sentinel⁠ is the next-strongest craftable set, and its crafting station can be found in West Weald. This set gives us a ton of Critical Chance, which is one of the most valuable stats in the game, but its proc condition is very odd. With five pieces active, the set gives us 986 Critical Chance passively. Then, every second that you stand still in combat gives you a stack of Sentinel’s Eye, adding another 443 Critical Chance per stack, up to three stacks. Every second that you move removes one stack. This condition can be very tricky to maintain, especially for newer players, so I don’t necessarily recommend Highland Sentinel as a go-to replacement. But if you’re okay trying to min-max with the tools that you have, you can pair Tide-Born Wildstalker with Highland Sentinel and have very good success. Generally, I would use Tide-Born Wildstalker first. If you choose to use Highland Sentinel, though, it should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Order's Wrath

A slightly weaker but much easier option to maintain is Order's Wrath⁠. This set gives us a little bit less Critical Chance than Highland Sentinel, but it also gives us Critical Damage, making the set very strong and versatile for newer players, unoptimized groups, or even solo and four-man situations. This set can be crafted at Steadfast Hammer and Saw in the High Isle and Amenos region. Order's Wrath should always be run on the body, regardless of whether you’re using it to replace (Perfected) Slivers of Null Arca or Corpseburster.

Endless Hail

When running a bow, we have to replace Stampede and Carve from our traditional setups with two different abilities. We still want a weapon ability that can reliably proc our back-bar weapon enchant, and the primary option that we’ll use is Endless Hail. This is simply a strong AOE that we gain access to when running a bow, while also serving as the skill that keeps our back-bar weapon enchant proccing after we return to our front bar.

Poison Injection

Poison Injection is only worth running when we’re using the Master’s Bow, (Perfected) Caustic Arrow, because we need Poison Injection to proc the weapon’s effect. On its own, Poison Injection is a relatively weak DOT, so if we aren’t running that arena weapon, we can replace it with a flex skill of our choice.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected) Sul-Xan's Torment

(Perfected) Sul-Xan's Torment is an absolute staple in trash builds. Whenever an enemy you've recently damaged dies, it will leave behind a vengeful soul, which, once collected gives 2160 Critical Chance and 12% Critical Damage for 30 seconds. This soul only lasts for 6 seconds, so you'll want to collect it quickly. Crit is king in trash pulls. Because an optimal trash rotation involves getting to and casting your spammable as quickly as possible, the amount of abilities you actually end up casting in a good pull are very few. For this reason, damage done is largely determined by how often you crit, so running a set that provides a buff that increases our Crit Chance is valuable on it's own, but the Crit Damage Sul-Xan offers also helps bring us to the Crit Damage cap in trash where debuffs like Major Brittle might be less reliable. Finally, its 30 second duration means that it's very easy to maintain pull to pull AND we can even get some of the DOT to bleed over into boss pulls if we play our cards right. It's an absolute must have!

The Velothi UR-Mage's Amulet

The Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is our strongest Mythic for this AOE setup. It gives us Offensive Penetration, which helps when single target debuffs like Crusher aren't covering everything we're hitting, and Minor Force, which adds value when we're not already receiving that buff from the group.

The biggest reason we run it is the 15% damage-done bonus against monsters. We lose 99% of our Light and Heavy Attack damage, but this is an easy trade in AOE encounters. The raw damage done of an ability numerically doubles when you're attacking two targets, triples when you're attacking 3, and so on: if Unnerving Boneyard ticks for 20K against 1 target, 20K times 2 targets is now worth 40K total damage done. Light Attacks can only hit one target at a time, so the more targets there are, the less raw DPS value the Light Attack is worth.

As an IMPORTANT NOTE just because you have Velothi equipped DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP LIGHT ATTACKING. Light Attack Weaving still procs enchants, which do decent damage on their own, help proc status effects which do very good damage, and help maintain ult gen. They're still incredibly important.

(Perfected) Crushing Wall

The (Perfected) Crushing Wall is the strongest arena weapon in the game for AOE damage. It increases the damage dealt by Wall of Elements, which is already one of the strongest AOE abilities in the game. That increase in damage results in wall often doing more DPS than full 5 piece proc sets. It becomes an absolute must have in essentially any AOE encounter that you’ll come across.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain for gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.

Corpseburster

Corpseburster is an absolute non-negotiable for our main Stam Cro setup. Consuming a corpse triggers an explosion that can hit for up to 95K in a five-meter AOE. Enemies hit also receive Diseased, dealing additional instant damage, and Minor Breach, making it very useful in hitting the pen cap in AOE situations for the group. Corpseburster's damage increases by 10% for every Grave Lord ability slotted, which influences the way we set up our bar pretty significantly, attempting to stack Gravelord abilities on the front bar when possible.

(Perfected Ansuul's Torment)

(Perfected) Ansuul's Torment is a Medium Armor set from the trial Sanity’s Edge that adds a ton of Critical Chance through its two piece bonus and the additional Perfected five piece stat line, while also increasing our damage done to monsters by 7%. Whenever we interrupt an enemy while in combat, the set gives us an additional 14% damage done to monsters for 30 seconds.

This is a particularly strong set for AOE damage because it increases the damage of our already naturally strong AOE toolkit: skills like Detonating Siphon, Corpseburster, Blighted Blastbones, and Unnerving Boneyard. In trash, we want to run Ansuul in pulls where we have our (Perfected) Sul-Xan's Torment Buff already active, opting to swap Ansuul on for pulls with the buff, and back off for Sul-Xan whenever we are about to lose the buff. A small optimization, but an optimization nonetheless.

The Velothi UR-Mage's Amulet

The Velothi Ur-Mage's Amulet is our strongest Mythic for this AOE setup. It gives us Offensive Penetration, which helps when single target debuffs like Crusher aren't covering everything we're hitting, and Minor Force, which adds value when we're not already receiving that buff from the group.

The biggest reason we run it is the 15% damage-done bonus against monsters. We lose 99% of our Light and Heavy Attack damage, but this is an easy trade in AOE encounters. The raw damage done of an ability numerically doubles when you're attacking two targets, triples when you're attacking 3, and so on: if Unnerving Boneyard ticks for 20K against 1 target, 20K times 2 targets is now worth 40K total damage done. Light Attacks can only hit one target at a time, so the more targets there are, the less raw DPS value the Light Attack is worth.

As an IMPORTANT NOTE just because you have Velothi equipped DOESN'T MEAN YOU CAN STOP LIGHT ATTACKING. Light Attack Weaving still procs enchants, which do decent damage on their own, help proc status effects which do very good damage, and help maintain ult gen. They're still incredibly important.

(Perfected) Crushing Wall

The (Perfected) Crushing Wall is the strongest arena weapon in the game for AOE damage. It increases the damage dealt by Wall of Elements, which is already one of the strongest AOE abilities in the game. That increase in damage results in wall often doing more DPS than full 5 piece proc sets. It becomes an absolute must have in essentially any AOE encounter that you’ll come across.

Slimecraw

When running a Mythic and Arena Weapon, we will have room for a 1 piece monster bonus. Crit Chance is the strongest one piece stat that we can obtain for gear, so we will want to run any monster set whose one piece is a line of Crit Chance. My preference is Slimecraw, just because it tends to be the most common shoulder people have due to its historical relevance.