Guild Wars 2

I should preface this post by saying that I did indeed try Reaper in all modes of gameplay this weekend. I was quite comfortable using it as an alternative to Blood Magic in my PvP power necro builds, and was still generally unimpressed by it in PvE, even with the potential for 25 might permanently without having to rely on other group members. This change makes Necromancer much more viable for unorganized PvE, but in a proper group setup (read as high level fractals), the Reaper still offers little to no group ultility and the damage pales in comparison to the likes of an Elementalist or even a Warrior who is running a proper DPS rotation. The vulnerability application of the Reaper is what I would consider exceptionally good, even going as far as to say that with the right traits it can keep up with an Engineer in terms of team damage boost, though with few other offensive conditions at its disposal, there is still no reason to run it in place of an Engi.

With PvE out of the way I want to talk about my focus this weekend with the beta. I come from a small group roaming guild that runs anything between 2 and 15 people; because of this size the type of classes and builds we run are at a premium, and we constantly try to get our builds to synergize as best as possible with each other. This can mean anything from bringing condition clear, useful combo fields, or finishers, to certain group buff traits. But everyone brings something. Usually massive amounts of damage are overlooked in favor of group ultility and helping everyone, but in the case of the Reaper it accels in cleave and spike damage almost exclusively. Many of the skills and traits used with a power Reaper setup have an executioner bonus of some sort, dealing more damage as the target reaches lower health. I found that having these damage bonuses made it very easy for me to step back and pick out a target that was out of cooldowns and low on health, then quickly rush to them with Deaths Charge and finish them entirely. Securely stomping an enemy was also very consistent because of Infusing Terror. The two stacks of stability provides just enough protection from CC to get off a clean stomp and move on, whilst not being such a large cooldown that it puts you out of commission for the next fight you find yourself in.

The in-combat mobility of the Reaper is also much better than what was previously possible with the baseline Necromancer. While I was not able to keep up with the D/D Elementalist in our group, I was almost always the second or third person to engage a fight. The closing speed of a Reaper is similar to that of a Guardian or Warrior using a sword leap into combat. Deaths Charge feels like it is in a good spot as far as mobility goes, and the aoe blind at the end of the skill is just an added bonus, potentially reducing the initial damage spike of the group you’re fighting. I still found myself tethered to Spectral Walk however for out of combat movement. While Axe/Warhorn would have also been a good weapon set to use, I primarily chose to stick with GS/Staff so that I had access to a quick way of gaining Life Force. The Greatsword does lack Life Force generation and I found myself using it much more for Grasping Darkness and Death Spiral than anything else. If you run this kind of weapon setup the Soul Marks trait is absolutely required as it buffs the Life Force generation of your Staff to near unreasonable numbers. Without the ability to rely on my Staff for LF I would have found myself dead much more frequently than I did.

Speaking of survivability the Reaper is quite good at it. I ran full Valkyrie armor with a mix of Soldiers and Zerk trinkets. I only ran about 1200 toughness at most, but because of the inherent tanking ability of the Necro I felt that I could take just about as much damage as my Warrior could before having to back out. Blighters Boon is a large part of this surviability. When paired with a Guardian or Elementalist the Reaper becomes nigh-immortal in sustained combat. Between the boon output of those classes and my staff, I was able to maintain about 80% uptime of Reaper Shroud, only dropping out to clear conditions through the use of Putrid Mark and Suffer!.

Continued in next post, character cap, whoops.

Shouts and Traits are on the whole quite good and I will be disappointed with my current Necro once my beta character is unplayable. While some Shouts were completely useless such as Rise! and Nothing can save you!, the rest were very good at what they did. NCSY! is still a very good shout, but I feel that unless you know that you will be fighting Guardians or Warriors there is no point in slotting it over more might generation or a corruption well. In the end I chose to run Your soul is mine!, You are all weaklings!, and Chilled to the bone!. Along with them I ran Well of Corruption and Spectral Walk. The healing shout is a great way to open a fight for some initial LF if you’re low, and while running Augury of Death allows you to use it again when you need it later, since hitting 5 targets reduces the cooldown to 13 seconds. Chilled to the bone is in my opinion the most useful Necro elite you can run for group fighting, as it allows you to lock down targets in the same way as an Ice Bow deep freeze would, except on a shorter channel and in an area. We found this to be incredibly useful when picking at larger zergs and being able to pull then freeze people away from their group. I used You are all weaklings and Suffer almost equally depending on the type and size of group I was running into. While Suffer does only transfer one condition, it has a very short cooldown and allows you to swap in and out of shroud while it is on cooldown. The burst might generation is very useful when paired with Soul Spiral for initial aoe damage on a group if you run YAAW!. Almost all of the Reaper traits have a role to fill as I can see. I was partial to running as many damage mods as I could though, so I wound up using Augury of Death, Decimate Defenses, and Blighters Boon. Decimate Defenses and Blighters Boon are in my opinion two of the absolute strongest traits in the game. The Greatsword is a fantastic tool when paired with Decimate Defenses, because when paired with Death Perception, using Death Spiral then going into Shroud will instantly boost your crit rate by 74%. This eliminates all need for precision stats in gear and allows you to run more vitality, thus increasing your LF pool. Rending Shroud serves as a free Sigil of Accuracy immediately upon entering shroud, and subsequent pulses after that increase your crit rate even further. I found myself at no shortage of crit rate though and chose to run Chill of Death in my Spite line, instead.

With all of that being said there are a few possible changes I would like to suggest.

-I feel that the Greatsword AA chain is almost completely useless as it takes far too long to cast and provides no Life Force. Because of this I would like to see the chill duration on the third hit halved, and the other half moved to the second hit in the chain. this would give better access to chill, but at the same time maintain the currently duration of the chill on using the full attack chain.

-The cooldown of Executioners Scythe needs to be longer. Currently at a 25.5 second traited cooldown, the skill has the potential to nearly one shot kill someone every 30 seconds given the correct (and easy to achieve) situation. The skill is meant to be a finishing move to put down a wounded enemy, not a way for me to one shot kill Mesmers, which I did frequently during the weekend. I would suggest a 35 or 45 second cooldown, this would encourage players to use the skill only when they were sure that it would kill an opponent, rather than using it on everyone they saw.

-The self might generation of the Reaper is incredibly good. So good in fact that it completely overshadows that of the baseline Necro. Without running any boon duration it is possible to generate and then maintain 25 stacks of might just with your shroud auto attack. To counter this and bring the might generation closer into line with Death Shroud, I think Reaper’s Might in the Spite line should be given a one second ICD. This would allow every Life Blast to generate one might, and every other Reaper Shroud auto attack to generate one might. Because the Reaper Shroud AA attacks twice as fast as Life Blast (ignoring aftercast), this would equalize the amount of might gained through auto attacks.

-The sustainability of Reaper Shroud is probably a little bit too good at the moment. This entirely stems from Blighters Boon. The ability for any incoming boon to grant 1% Life Force while outside of shroud is incredibly powerful and is a bit too strong. Giving this trait a small ICD would help to remove the absurdity of LF generation.

My impression of Reaper this weekend was overall a very positive one. I think the specialization is fantastic and provides a style of playing that I have not really been able to achieve before with the builds and traits we currently have. It is a much more mobile Necromancer with the ability to hit like a truck and still get out alive. I’ve not had this much fun playing a Necro in a long time.

Bonus: My highest hit on Executioner’s Scythe this weekend – http://i.imgur.com/2sLmzvW.png

P.S. – Sorry for the wall of text, didn’t realize how much I had typed until I posted it.