Guild Wars 2

We pretty much all agree that the shouts cool down reduction trait, in it’s current iteration, is undesirable. Not only because vs1-2 foes the effect is underwhelming, even in a perfect scenario when you hit 5 enemies it’s absolutely not worth the risk.

The most common proposal is to make it 15% CDR +3% for every enemy hit. While it would be somewhat okay in vs1-2 battles (still meh IMO), this proposal makes the trade off even worse for large scale team fights.

How would you change Augury of Death to make it worth running in middle of a vs3-5 fight?

My first idea was to add a scaling heal so the trait looks like:

• Augury of Death
  Your shouts now heal you and recharge faster for each foe they hit.
  Recharge Reduction per foe: 7%
  Heal per foe: 400

But if we start thinking outside the box there are many fun possible additions for this trait, like: AoE confusion with applied stacks increasing for each foe hit, 1 random 10s boon for each enemy, per foe length stacking protection or retaliation, a plague like percentage scaling of our life and toughness for X seconds or temporary percentage scaling of our offensive stats, etc.

Again, instead of trying to make this trait less bad in vs1-2 fights, how would you make it really good at what shouts were intended to do?

Actually I fully disagree. The thing about the trait is you only need to hit 3 people for it to be better in slot than other CD traits, and here is the thing: many professions bring extra stuff for you to hit. Elementalists can have elementals, Necromancers have minions, Rangers always bring their pet, Engineers have turrets, Mesmers and clones, basically in any given Xv2 you are almost guaranteed to be able to hit three targets. However, that isn’t the point of this trait, this trait is meant to be used for teamfights where hitting 5 people is common, and there it shines.

Giving it a second effect is too much imo.

I actually like Augury of Death as it is now. However, I feel we could really use some group support so that they aren’t shunned in dungeons.

15 Power and 15 Ferocity increase per hit to allies within a 600 AoE with a stack cap of 5 for 7 seconds.

I totally want to be greedy by saying shouts should corrupt a single boon with this trait

Without that, you’ll be way better off just using signets.

Design idea from choxie, but i fully support it:

- instead of full linear scaling, aka 1x , 2x – 5x
-some decent high base with lower scaling, aka 3x, 3.5x , 4x , 4.5x , 5×.

Lower min/max range to balance
Consistently always worth using

So for the trait, instead of 1-5x 7% recharge , give

15% base , then +5% for each extra enemy hit….. so 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 exact same max even.

THat is for base trait.
Given how trash and inferior shouts are – a added effect per enemy hit also sounds nice. Would need to be a corrupt or even better if transfer per hit to actually see those things and necro itself used in big fights.

Having a higher base wouldn’t be bad, I like that idea. I don’t think it needs anything more though, it is only an adept trait, all of the other specialization’s comparable traits only have one effect.

I’d like to get something more out of Shouts for sure. At current, the trait is boring, even if it’s balanced, which I’m not so sure about. I’d take a reduction in cooldown reduction to 5% from the current 7% if I could also get like 4% life force per target hit or fury per target or something.

@Bhawb: You should know better than anyone that playing a necro in a team fight means the focus fire is always on you. Currently using the shouts leaves you exposed to several seconds of focus fire without any defense. 600 range still means you have to run up to, and stay, exactly in the middle of everything if you want to guarantee five hits (no ambient or teammate los to defend ourselves). And I’m accounting for summons and other stuff, someone will always range or move in and out of the fight. You are pretty much setting up yourself for an enemy team burst or at least a guaranteed interrupt.

In a vacuum I would completely agree with you, but since we are exposing ourselves to our greatest weakness, I don’t. Shaving off 2-18s more than other CD traits isn’t wort it if we die before we can use them again.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually I fully disagree. The thing about the trait is you only need to hit 3 people for it to be better in slot than other CD traits […]

A whopping 1% more than other CD traits, hurrah! Nope, we need 3 hits to have a reduction on par with other traits. And we would still be worse since all the other CD reduction traits that I can remember have a second effect.

Bhawb.7408:

and here is the thing: many professions bring extra stuff for you to hit. Elementalists can have elementals, Necromancers have minions, Rangers always bring their pet, Engineers have turrets, Mesmers and clones, basically in any given Xv2 you are almost guaranteed to be able to hit three targets. However, that isn’t the point of this trait, this trait is meant to be used for teamfights where hitting 5 people is common, and there it shines.

Ele elementals and Engi turrets everywhere! Pfft, don’t make me laugh. Rangers will try to range (and kite) a necro or a team fight so it pretty much counts as 1. Mesmers have an insane kite and disengage and are a bad match-up for necros. MM are uncommon and if they have half a brain they won’t bring their minion in a team fight to have them die of cleave and AoE. It’s because of the extra stuff that we have a fair chance to hit 4-5 foes. Without the Ranger pet and Mes clones running in our face 3 hits would be the max we could hope for.

Bhawb.7408:

Giving it a second effect is too much imo.

No it’s not. I can’t remember a CDR trait without a second effect. You can argue that the bonus CDR is our “second effect”, but it isn’t always available and we have to put ourselves in danger to take advantage of it.

Charblaze.6958:

@Bhawb: You should know better than anyone that playing a necro in a team fight means the focus fire is always on you. Currently using the shouts leaves you exposed to several seconds of focus fire without any defense. 600 range still means you have to run up to, and stay, exactly in the middle of everything if you want to guarantee five hits (no ambient or teammate los to defend ourselves). And I’m accounting for summons and other stuff, someone will always range or move in and out of the fight. You are pretty much setting up yourself for an enemy team burst or at least a guaranteed interrupt.

You can deal with focus fire reasonably well with Reaper, and that is less Reaper’s issue and base Necromancer. I was getting very large CD reductions when I was using the shout trait. CttB→NCSY→reaper shroud gives you 2s where the enemy team can’t focus you, and once they try to turn you’ve got 8s of immunity to CC. Also, the reduced CDs allow you to deal with focus fire better, since all the effects scale up. Ignore issues that aren’t related to this trait, you can’t balance every single trait to fix every issue, on its own this trait is fine.

You don’t actually get focused that often in general play. Sure this trait might not work in WTS, we also aren’t all playing WTS, nor is PvP the only game mode. In WvW this trait is basically guranteed full effectiveness every single use, same with many PvE fights.

Charblaze.6958:

And we would still be worse since all the other CD reduction traits that I can remember have a second effect.

Yes, the master tier CD traits have second effects, generally adept ones only get extra effects if they are for OH weapons.

Charblaze.6958:

Engi turrets everywhere!

1 Supply crate = full target limit

Again, I’ve used this trait on stream, people were remarking on how much I could reduce the CDs by. The problem with shout builds were other issues (mainly that Soldier runes don’t work so my condition removal was garbage), but this trait alone performs pretty well. I’m not stuck on the idea that it can’t do anything else, I think it might be fair for it to have a relatively small secondary defensive effect, but I wouldn’t give it anything big at least. I wouldn’t treat the potential extra 15% CDR as an extra effect though, and if that’s the reason why ANet didn’t give it something then absolutely we need more, the high CDR is mitigated by potentially low CDR.

People have been asking for years improving necro for team fights by making scalable defense (among others). Reaper is exactly that: GS has low LF generation against 1 enemy, but amazing vs a group, the shouts are better the more enemy you fight.

I had my best experience with the reaper using tanky gear and jumping in the middle of a large fight. The LF is very easily full, the damage remains strong despite the gear and you just don’t die.

Augury is the best trait you could ask for this play style. Your heal can be on a ridiculously low CD.

Crosspost from Bhawb’s feedback thread.

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree with more shout target scaling. I actually found it to be downright frustrating that these utilities were ONLY useful in situations with large numbers of foes.

My thoughts were buff them baseline to still be acceptable, but add in minor effects that ultimately add up with more foes. As it stands, the shouts feal downright weak if not utilizing them against at least three targets. I’d push them more towards the 2/3 target area base, and just add smaller increments per target to still fully reward going up against 5 targets, but not punish the reaper for not doing so.

Only if reaper’s shouts get the same cast times and base cool downs of tempest shouts. As they are now they leave you too exposed to focus fire from multiple opponents when you try to take full advantage of their scaling. Higher base effects and smaller increments would make the risk/reward trade off even worse than it already is.

Shouts are not meant for 1 vs 1. Trying to make them kinda ok in 1 vs 1 it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, a pretty dumb idea. You would end up with a mediocre 1 vs 1 utilities that don’t encourage you to use them for their true purpose.

Instead, can we have really really good team fight utilities for once?

It’s not 1 vs 1 were necro has troubles. Actually we are in a really good place if you start with enough life force. Hard 1 vs 1 are the ones involving professions summoning tons of junk like mesmers. Nor shouts should be used in a vacuum, a balanced build requires shouts + other skills mixed in.

Any 1 vs 1 issues should be addressed in the core profession by fixing and improving our current weapons, utilities and life force management/generation.

Posted this in another thread but here is what i think the necro shouts need. A niche like other classes. Ranger trated shouts give swifteness and regen guard trated shouts convert a condi to boon war traited shous aoe heal. Necro needs this to something like convert a boon to a condi on surrounding enemies.

Or I am down for them making the cooldowns all like 20 seconds like your soul is mine that way when traited if your in the mix hitting max targets. Your soul is mine was 13 sec cd if i hit all targets. Shouts might be nice if they had this possible low cd time.

How about, you take greatly reduced damage during the cast times of shouts.

Have it heal a fraction of the damage of the shout could make it worthy on top of the current trait.

Knighthonor.4061:

Have it heal a fraction of the damage of the shout could make it worthy on top of the current trait.

That fits the necro well to have it leech some health from the dmg u did with the shout. Of course I can always prey for like 3 secs of stab on shout use but again me preying.

Augury of Death: A simple trait that does what it says. However, with the current state of shouts and the cast times. This trait doesn’t revival other picks in its tier much. I think making AoD have an additional effect when using shouts would help. Like if each shout gives a set boon to allies and removed or converted a boon on foes for every shout if traited. This would give the shouts more group support and still have the necromancer aspect of stripping/convert boons. That or cause shouts to restore some form of Life Force if AoD is traited.