-9 degen spreader

This an idea I like to try for my ranger, this will work best on PvE:

Expertise: 11+2
Wilderniss survival 11+1+2
Curses: whatever you have left

1. Poison Arrow (E)
2. Barbed Arrows
3. Suffering
4. Whirling Defense
5. Throw Dirt
6. (optional)
7. Troll unguent
8. Sunspear Rebirth Signet

Use:

-Apply Suffering on a group of enemies for a start degen of -2
-Use poison arrow together with barbed arrows on each enemy to spread another -7 degen fast under multiple targets

Sounds easy enough, but will it work?

What do you guys think?

Suffering hardly seems necessary, expecially at 15 unexpertised energy. Try out something else, dont know what though. Maybe some fun ranger WS spirit to help the team against the enemy, for example if your using heroes set up a non-enchantment based build and add Natures Renewal to really annoy some enemies.
Pestilence would be useful to spread the degen from dead enemies to the nearby creatures.

Use Toxicity. Much simpler, expertised, and allows for a different secondary. Suffering really isn't that good except for triggering Feast of Corruption.

Toxicity is BeastMastery, which means investing points into that, but with an unconditional -2 it would work very well. Nice idea

The downside of Toxicity is that poison applied on you and your allies also causes -2 extra degen.

Also if your foes use toxicity, youll spread -11 instead of -9

Did A-net nerf the game so that necro spells no longer benefit from expertise?

Suffering was never effected by expertise because it is a spell. Only (touch)skills benefit form expertise such as vampiric touch or blackout.

Oh ok I thought expertise affected all skills.

Skills being the keyword. If it's labeled as a Spell in the skill description, Expertise does nothing. Only skills that are literally labeled Skills in the tool-tips are affected by Expertise.

It's kinda confusing at first. Anything you can put in your skill bar is technically a skill. However there are different types of skills that often have subcategories. For example there are spells, but there are types of spells like enchantment spells, hex spells, weapon spells, etc. There are also "skill" type skills. This includes attack skills, stances, and shouts (...I think...). Anyways, everything that is a primary ranger skill is considered a skill type skill, but there are a few skills from other professions that are technically skill type skills such as Vampiric Touch, Plague Touch, Ritual Lord, etc. I hope that clarifies.

^ Since that big update before Nightfall... Expertise doesn't work on Shouts or Stances outside the Ranger line. Makes using frenzy a bit more of an investment....