Guild Wars 2

I hope I’m wrong but I understood the new skills to be a huge nerf to power/death shroud necros.

I use dagger/focus & axe/warhorn and both sets have power & torment sigils. My set up gives me 50% crit chance and 100% while in ds which makes torment activate a lot.

Imagine this scenario: you are in a protracted battle, your heal is on cooldown and suddenly your hp plummets. You ‘oh kitten’ into death shroud without swapping weapons or activating your warhorn skill. You therefore only want to stay long enough for your heal to be off cooldown. All goes well and it’s time to come out of ds but when you do you will have low hp so what now? Hit your ds fear skill which causes the melee foe to run out of range giving you time to heal and even disengage if you wish. Also torment kicks in for double damage which is a nice addition.

Not once HoT is released. Torment sigils will not double damage on fear as the foe won’t run. Also the melee foe will still be in melee range when you exit ds.

Chill, you say? Most other classes shake off conditions for fun.

New skills, you say? Slow acting highly telegraphed skills just give a foe time for free hits before interrupting so equal suicide for the user.

I really hope I’m wrong and have misunderstood. I will buy HoT and try out Reaper but for now and with previous nerfs in mind, my expectations are understandably low.

Maybe i missed something here. But, where did you get the idea fear won’t make targets run?

Not a nerf, since you don’t have to be specced into Reaper… And yeah. Fear still makes them run. They just run SLOWLY if you are specced into reaper, thanks to chill. Since, you know, reaper is melee and wants them to do the dumb teenager thing and run slowly away, tripping and falling while they go all slasher on them with massive windup skills.

Not a nerf.. It’s actually a big boost for necros.. whats the worse thing for a melee? mobs running away.. this way the enemy slowly runs away AND has longer cooldowns on their powers.. while still being in melee range to do damage.
Plus.. who said you HAD to go into the reaper spec? No one… you can still be your old self and fight as you do now inc having fear without chill..

Tormenr will hit double if they move, they dont need to be running.
What Im worried about is not being able to fear people off cliffs and oit of shadow refuge.

akaCryptic.2389:

Tormenr will hit double if they move, they dont need to be running.
What Im worried about is not being able to fear people off cliffs and oit of shadow refuge.

With Reaper you will not able to do that because the enemy is chilled. In some situations it can be a problem. But a chilled enemy can’t run and that’s the point for the reaper.

The other benefit is, in pvp and wvw if the enemy uses one of their cc break skills to break the fear (not unreasonable) they are now suffering 66% longer cd for almost the full duration chill.

I’d call the quite strong. Still, have to wait and check out the livestream.

its amazing that the individuals who have, for a long time, mained necros are silent (wonder why that is), while all the new necros are what are behind the hype train screaming how awesome it is. Yeah, it looks cool, but the necro has never not looked cool.

need to see mechanics, and numbers, because at present, im concerned that we are just the same old necro with some more chill, and forced now more into melee

Would be nice if the chill chained after the fear activated. IE they run and then get chilled.

I haven’t invested very much into trying to figure this stuff out as yet. I basically want to wait until we get updated and try it out myself with an open mind and an explorers attitude.

That said, with the information I already know, the Reaper sounds great in some areas but some challenges are on the horizon. I am used to using a dagger as my melee weapon of choice along with dagger/focus/horn. A slow GS sounds alarming when I imagine it.

Why are you using torment on a power build?

Well reaper sure have place in EotM karma train meta. Seems like good profession against upscaled players who doesn’t use any kind of cc and who doesn’t have dodge binded.

Gryph.8237:

its amazing that the individuals who have, for a long time, mained necros are silent (wonder why that is), while all the new necros are what are behind the hype train screaming how awesome it is. Yeah, it looks cool, but the necro has never not looked cool.

need to see mechanics, and numbers, because at present, im concerned that we are just the same old necro with some more chill, and forced now more into melee

+1

Right now I am not seeing anything that a hammer/DH guard can’t do.

Guards also got massive buffs to their condition builds… necros got nothing.

And what really worries me. Guards and Mesmers that spec into their elite line get huge buffs for all of their current builds.

My guard will be a hammer guard, that also has a bow. My mesmer will still use his staff/focus or torch… and my necro… well let’s just say the reaper offers condition builds nothing, the redone traits are a huge nerf to condition builds…

I’m holding my breath. It’s looks fun, but it doesn’t look effective at all.

It’s looks like a ridiculously easy free-kill for every longbow ranger.