Guild Wars 2

Zombie Fury.5804:

25 stacks of vuln and 20 stacks of might my grave digger is only hitting 8k crit WITH zerker so yeah idc what people on this forum say they did nerf it pretty hard

What are you hitting with it?

Try relogging, quitting the game completely, switching gear and specs, deleting that character, etc.

Warscythes.9307:

1. 6-8 sec chill on auto is absolute insanity, I am honestly not sure how you think that is fine when reaper offers plenty of chill as it is.

2. Nightfall is a pulsing aoe blind, that alone makes it a great skill. Yes you can try to make it better but it doesn’t really need that much because of the fact it is a blind field. You can’t just throw around things like I want something to be better without giving reason.

3. kitten is the filter here mate, if you curse then it gets filtered to kitten.

The guy wasn’t even that insulting in the first place, you need to learn how disagreeing with something does not mean he is being meanie poopy pants. Respond to him with logic and reasoning instead.

I gave my own personal feedback after playing for 4 hours with various specs/builds etc if you dont agree thats fine however His or Her comments were more of a condescending tone rather than " hmm seems a little to strong in my opinon etc"

Regarding your second point I didnt Say I wanted I again gave suggestions and feedback where did I say I WANT ? I said here are some examples and I know its the filter however the comment I made stands… no reason to curse Period.

The issue is more of the suggestion you made was incredibly overpowered which honestly lends issues to your credibility. That was really the main reason for the reaction. But arguing this kind of thing is fairly silly at this point so let’s both move on.

As for the people not hitting the damage they should be hitting. You guys are running S/SR/Reaper right? Even without close to death I was hitting 11k crits. I honestly have no idea how you are maxing 8k gravedigger unless there is some really weird bug going on.

Robert:

The visual on “You are all Weaklings” is absolutely awesome!

I am loving this round of tweaks, thanks!

Cheers!

HardRider.2980:

Odd people saying there’s been a nerf yet I’ve hit Gravedigger for 14k and isn’t zerker nor full 25 might stacked.. i think i was around 15 at the time.

I didnt say I thought they nerfed it, I said I think something buggy is up because people are experiencing different numbers with the same gear. Its beta thats to be expected.

reaper has way too much stab. incredible sustain and damage, hard to punish mistakes.

mistsim.2748:

reaper has way too much stab. incredible sustain and damage, hard to punish mistakes.

You mean except for where they only have stab on two sources? I won’t deny Reaper’s have solid sustain and damage, but what we’re seeing is Necromancer performing like they always should have, thriving in the heat of combat so long as they aren’t hard focused by the team to shut down the sustain.

mistsim.2748:

reaper has way too much stab. incredible sustain and damage, hard to punish mistakes.

Looks like you’ve just been having high success with your druid, judging by your recent posts, and ran into a reaper than chopped you up and sprinkled you over his dinner. Don’t be salty about that and come here saying reaper is too powerful. it is balanced…FINALLY balanced. Druid has several interrupts (not counting any pets with interrupts or knockdown/back) and reaper has lots of slow skills and cannot upkeep stab indefinitely (only 2 reliable sources of stab, 1 on a 90 second cd and is situational at best). Ample time to interrupt it if you play skillfully and not just smashing buttons in panic mode. Take some time to learn the tells. Necro is overflowing with long tells and slow skills.

Warscythes.9307:

As for the people not hitting the damage they should be hitting. You guys are running S/SR/Reaper right? Even without close to death I was hitting 11k crits. I honestly have no idea how you are maxing 8k gravedigger unless there is some really weird bug going on.

I’ve only been averaging 8k crits, but I’m primarily in Zealot’s gear that I banked. Soooo, yeah, that average makes perfect sense for me.

The class feels great. Locust Swarm, Well of Corruption+Suffering, and Necrocopter inside of the fields for leeching bolts inside of an enemy is crazy for AoE burst. I’m extremely happy I transferred all of my ascended berserker gear for this beta weekend.

Trait description bug with Chilling Victory: it still only lists 5s Might duration. It does actually gives the full 8s we were promised in the change notes from after last BWE.

Right now, you can get a maximum of 5 stacks of might per target with the greatsword autoattack, due to the 1s cooldown resulting in Chilling Victory only triggering on the last two strikes of the chain – and that’s if you put enough resources into Chill duration that the autoattack produces permanent Chill. With the minimum 20% boost from Cold Shoulder, Chilling Victory only triggers once per 3s autoattack chain, on the initial hit after Chilling Scythe hits (for the second hit the trait is still on cooldown, and by the third hit the Chill has fallen off again, so it gets reapplied but doesn’t trigger the trait). This results in a maximum of 3 stacks of might per target. At that point not only is it bad Might stacking, it’s not even good life force gain (a third of a percent per second). Compare it to Siphoned Power, which effortlessly maintains 12-14 might stacks so long as you’re attacking a target under 50% health (and only requires one target). Reaper’s Might adds another ~15 stacks if you’re autoattacking in Reaper’s Shroud (10 in the slower-to-attack Death Shroud), again not requiring more than one target.

I feel that Chilling Victory should be increased to at least a full 10s of Might. Reaper’s Might and Siphoned Power just severely outclass it in the might-stacking department, and they’re both minor traits, not major traits – they even stack with each other! On top of that, Chilling Victory is competing with Decimate Defenses, which is a very strong trait.

Vital Persistence needs to be made baseline.
The shout that is a condi transfer should also be a stun breaker.
I think the greatsword feels a lot smoother and can actually work into a build now.
I think the life steal on the greatsword trait is pretty useless considering how situational grave digger is.
I think after vital Persistence is made baseline decimate defenses should take its place, because chilling victory seems like a way better trait than decimate defenses because of the synergy with blighters boon, or merge decimate defenses with the greatsword trait to synergize with the trait that applies vuln on chill.
That would actually be a lot better and I would then consider it over chilling victory.

I personally dont like that, when you get something under 50%, your entire rotation basically becomes GD spam. I’d like a little less power there and have it spread out a bit. I also think regular auto attack speed could go up a bit, considering how slow it is.

the lf drain reduction from vital persistance needs to be baseline.. only then can we have some real fun

if this cant be done for some strange reason (just test it out for a week if its not good then change it back i do not see the problem!! ), then put a trait that does the same thing in reaper shroud so we are forced to take it there and have at least some build diversity that doesn’t come down to 1 trait line 2 are mandatory….

Really nice work since the last BWE. Reaper feels a lot smoother compared to the first BWE. I keep my feedback short and simple:

DS 1 feels perfect now
DS 2 feels perfect now
DS 3 the fear casttime still feels out of place. Instantcast please?
DS 4 perfect by itself
DS 5 feels a bit weak compared to Gravedigger. Even at under 25% health gravedigger deals more damage. Please adjust the health tresholds and the damage it does. Could maybe execute foes under 25% health instantly like the Daredevil elite does.

GS 1 feels okay
GS 2 is perfect
GS 3 feels lacking. Would need more DPS, has gotten much worse since the change of souleater.
GS 4 is perfect, i love this skill now.
GS 5, its not reliable at all. Seems buggy at times, doenst pull the full distance sometimes.

YSIM Perfect
YAAW The might application is bad in duration. Please make the duration of the might much longer, but decrease the stacks. Currently it will overwrite the longer duration might stacks from Spite / allies / firefields with the sheer amount of low duration might, makes this skill more of a burden.
Suffer Its still mostly useless or too weak. Could we add something like reveal to it, or give some boons per foe hit? It feels like a weaker version of plague signet.
NCSY Feels good, could we please make this instant cast?
Rise seems fine as well. Love the model.
CTTB Is getting there. I think the CD should be 60 seconds base, if you can make this without reducing its effects even further.

Shivers of Dread: We still lack synergy with this trait
Augury: Tooltip is buggy, still states 7% reduction per foe. The lifesteal values are a too low, especially the healing value. Would like this to give me at least 900 health if i hit 5 targets. Would also be pretty cool to get 1 s of retaliation per foe hit for the synergy with bligthers boon, but that would be too strong as an adept.
Chilling Nova: The damage and chill feel fine, the CD does kill it a bit.
Soul Eater: Recharge reduction is much better. The lifesteal attached to gravedigger is awkward, gravedigger is our strongest GS skill already. Would prefer the old version of lifesteal, for all skills while wielding a GS, + in reapershroud. Reduce values of lifesteal a bit ofc.
Chilling Victory: The ICD is okay, the Lifeforce generation with Blighter’s Boon was a bit too strong in best case scenarios. Please make this might much longer in duration though – same issue as YAAW.

General issues and concerns:

Reapershroud and combo fields - please make leeching bolts work. The majority of our fields are darkfields, it feels so bad when you pop a GS4 for defense, then go RS and DPS just to see my blind leap does blind and my Death Spiral is wasting its whirl finisher.

Vital persistance - Please make this – or part of this – baseline. With Reaper i feel like i need my Shroud much more then as baseline necro – even to a point where i could say Soul reaping is mandatory just because of this trait.

Shouts - please normalise some values: It feels awkward that some shouts have casttimes, some are unblockable, others are not, also the damage values are all different. Could we at the very least get them all (except for the ulti)normalised to the damage of Rise?

Wells - Due to the way the reaper skillset works i feel like wells are one of the best choices for utilities apart from shouts and some spectral skills. However, seeing the new mesmer wells makes me rather sad. Could we please rework / buff our wells a bit? Even fully traited they arent as damaging, or as supporting, or as fast recharging as the mesmer wells are baseline.

Fear - Please give us more access to it as reaper via traits. Our minor benefits from fear only, at this time it feels almost like a wasted slot.

Something about Grasping Darkness is off. Either it’s the cone width or the skill radius, but it just is not reliable. Terrain is like at fault here (so..much.clipping during testing) but what I would absolutely love if it Grasping Darkness was activated like DS #5 where it tethered up to 5 people and then pulled them in (keeping same chill and lifeforce values etc). At the moment it feels a bit off. This is my only current gripe with GS

I don’t notice any differences in gravedigger from last beta. I am still critting 13-18k on mobs in Verdant Brink.

Edit: And that is in full berserker gear.

Brujeria.7536:

Really nice work since the last BWE. Reaper feels a lot smoother compared to the first BWE. I keep my feedback short and simple:

DS 1 feels perfect now
DS 2 feels perfect now
DS 3 the fear casttime still feels out of place. Instantcast please?
DS 4 perfect by itself
DS 5 feels a bit weak compared to Gravedigger. Even at under 25% health gravedigger deals more damage. Please adjust the health tresholds and the damage it does. Could maybe execute foes under 25% health instantly like the Daredevil elite does.

GS 1 feels okay
GS 2 is perfect
GS 3 feels lacking. Would need more DPS, has gotten much worse since the change of souleater.
GS 4 is perfect, i love this skill now.
GS 5, its not reliable at all. Seems buggy at times, doenst pull the full distance sometimes.

YSIM Perfect
YAAW The might application is bad in duration. Please make the duration of the might much longer, but decrease the stacks. Currently it will overwrite the longer duration might stacks from Spite / allies / firefields with the sheer amount of low duration might, makes this skill more of a burden.
Suffer Its still mostly useless or too weak. Could we add something like reveal to it, or give some boons per foe hit? It feels like a weaker version of plague signet.
NCSY Feels good, could we please make this instant cast?
Rise seems fine as well. Love the model.
CTTB Is getting there. I think the CD should be 60 seconds base, if you can make this without reducing its effects even further.

Shivers of Dread: We still lack synergy with this trait
Augury: Tooltip is buggy, still states 7% reduction per foe. The lifesteal values are a too low, especially the healing value. Would like this to give me at least 900 health if i hit 5 targets. Would also be pretty cool to get 1 s of retaliation per foe hit for the synergy with bligthers boon, but that would be too strong as an adept.
Chilling Nova: The damage and chill feel fine, the CD does kill it a bit.
Soul Eater: Recharge reduction is much better. The lifesteal attached to gravedigger is awkward, gravedigger is our strongest GS skill already. Would prefer the old version of lifesteal, for all skills while wielding a GS, + in reapershroud. Reduce values of lifesteal a bit ofc.
Chilling Victory: The ICD is okay, the Lifeforce generation with Blighter’s Boon was a bit too strong in best case scenarios. Please make this might much longer in duration though – same issue as YAAW.

General issues and concerns:

Reapershroud and combo fields - please make leeching bolts work. The majority of our fields are darkfields, it feels so bad when you pop a GS4 for defense, then go RS and DPS just to see my blind leap does blind and my Death Spiral is wasting its whirl finisher.

Vital persistance - Please make this – or part of this – baseline. With Reaper i feel like i need my Shroud much more then as baseline necro – even to a point where i could say Soul reaping is mandatory just because of this trait.

Shouts - please normalise some values: It feels awkward that some shouts have casttimes, some are unblockable, others are not, also the damage values are all different. Could we at the very least get them all (except for the ulti)normalised to the damage of Rise?

Wells - Due to the way the reaper skillset works i feel like wells are one of the best choices for utilities apart from shouts and some spectral skills. However, seeing the new mesmer wells makes me rather sad. Could we please rework / buff our wells a bit? Even fully traited they arent as damaging, or as supporting, or as fast recharging as the mesmer wells are baseline.

Fear - Please give us more access to it as reaper via traits. Our minor benefits from fear only, at this time it feels almost like a wasted slot.

Thx, finally something worth to read after all the QQ about a GD nerf which doesnt exist.
I can confirm GS5 doesnt work at all and got broken since BW2.

This skill need some changes at start from a range increase 600 to 900 and make it more fluid by forcing the character to turn towards the target.

Reaper/ Beta 3 Overview

Condition:

The condition reaper is in a very powerful place at the moment.

Celestial Amulet

I had a scepter/dagger and a staff, using +Chill on Swap, +Bleed on Swap

I took Soul Reaping for additional shroud “flashing”, longer lasting death shroud, and stability. This branch gives you the health to continue flashing your death shroud for damage. With Enfeeble, you can stack 5+ bleeds, chill, and weakness simply by switching to Reaper Shroud. More flashing, as well as stability on flash, will grant you free-cast on your #4 ability.

With Curses, you gain Plague Signet passive, giving you more resistance against conditions, a choice between either Corruptions, Terror, or Boon Shred, as well as Enfeeble, which is a significant damage increase for Reaper, being in melee so often.

In Reaper, you get reduced movement impairing effects, Might on Hit/Chill, and Chill Deals Damage.

Damage:

Deals heavy, unblockable burst to MULTIPLE TARGETS. Reapers with this build are able to clear blind much easier than other Necromancer builds with their constant AoE. In addition, because the damage of this build relies heavily on weapon-swapping and “flashing” shroud near the enemy, Reaper Shroud is only used at the end of rotations when you’ve already stacked quite a few conditions on the target. The swap to shroud should apply chill, weakness, and 5+ bleed, plus then the #4 can add up to 12+ poison. Combined with the strength of the #5 stun, you can drop multiple players.

Rotation: Stack target with bleeds, poison. Build Shroud. When bursting, get within melee range of your opponent, enter Reaper Shroud, and use you Stability, #4, and then #5. Try to use #2 to escape combat or get out of range to heal before you leave it, and begin rotation again.

Your biggest burst will come every 2nd Shroud.

1st Shroud – Enfeeble, both weapon swaps.
2nd Shroud – Both Weapon Swaps
3rd Shroud – Enfeeble, Both weapon swaps

In addition, your hits have an additional chance on critical to bleed the target again. This means that the 3 hits from weapon swapping has a chance of applying 3 more bleeds. You can get 8 bleeds instantly stacked in a shroud swap if you’re lucky.

If a character gets downed, as a Reaper, it’s your job to stop them. On clumped up targets, the Reaper really shines. You can drop your scepter AoE’s, staff Aoes, and then swap into shroud on the downed target, and use your #4.

This deals enough damage with celestial to slow the rezzing to a dead halt, as well as make the enemy team run away crying from the barrage of conditions. Think 12+ bleeds, 12+ poison, weakness, chill, blind. Generally, with allies helping, you can down anyone stubborn enough to continue rezzing, and you’ll likely down at least one of the fools who runs away.

Will test more when I get home, and i’ll provide pictures. In a match (we went 500-150) I got 590k condition damage, and 200k power damage, WITH CELESTIAL ARMOR.

This build has godlike damage, good survival, and is practically immune to warriors, thieves, rangers, and is fairly successful even against classes with high amounts of condition cleansing because the bursts come in “waves” (think pre-nerf terrormancers) and the damage will come too quickly.

Valkyrie Armor, Zerk Weapons and Zerk/Knight Mix Trinkets I crit Siege Razer in WvW for 16,7k Gravedigger and on player an Ele for 14,2k so I dont get why ppl say only 8k with Zerk. Dmg hasnt bin nerfed since BWE2

Dead.5829:

Zombie Fury.5804:

25 stacks of vuln and 20 stacks of might my grave digger is only hitting 8k crit WITH zerker so yeah idc what people on this forum say they did nerf it pretty hard

What are you hitting with it?

Try relogging, quitting the game completely, switching gear and specs, deleting that character, etc.

So this was my gravedigger damage with absolute full zerker gear, sigil of force and strenght runes. I was missing 180 power from signet of spite, 210 power from sigil of bloodlust and also banner +power, frostspirit and the warrior #150 power trait. I didnt pay attention if i got the revs +150 ferocity buff, though.

The thing is most people want to test this quickly, but its hard to find a mob that will live long enough for your RS#1 to stack up all that vuln and selfmight, so they run to the nearest champions, or the common huge hylek veteran mobs, these mobs do have rather high thougness by default and thats most likely why people go crazy about a Gravedigger nerf.

dont do that much damage in pvp with grave digger.. mostly because people kite and dodge it

Reaper is the most fun I have ever had in dungeon runs in a LOOOONG time. Full celestial gear, with all shouts on heals/utilities/elite, sure it wasn’t optimal, but I couldn’t die, and those numbers were nuts. Plus reaper shroud had a very long uptime, was switching out of for other abilities to get a moment to shine! haha A+ devs, love it.

Soul eater spec option should be reverted to the last beta version, the life steal on it right now is utterly worthless

Rise! feedback:

1. I really like the new models
2. I’m satisfied with their HP and toughness
3. I like that some of them may still be alive (with like 15% hp) while I use the skill again
4. Good alternative for active defense skills, actually from my whole raid team I was the last to die because of it (we didn’t figure out how to negate the big aoe dmg and the minions soaked all the damage).

Awesome skill good job!

Things I really dislike:

- GS #5 and I’m not talking about functionality but behaviour. Every single skill you use when not facing target and releasing camera control (RMB), you turn around and use it. When I mash GS 5 without facing the mob, my character doesn’t turn and I get the error message. It’s extremely frustrating and it really did kill me sometimes.

- Energy sigil procs on shroud entry/exit. It messes up my whole energy management. I was forced to waste the energy sigil cooldown and I died many times because of it. Please either remove it or rework the sigil to grant a buff that replenishes your endurance once you are out of it.

- Elite shout needs to stun for at least 4 seconds. It’s underpowered. The gained boon should be something else, like quickness. (Would open many opportunities like Gravedigger spam with quickness while the mob/player is stunned and has to break stun or die)

- Other utility shouts – they are more pvp/wvw skills. I don’t like that, I suggest splitting their versions between pve and pvp/wvw and making them stronger in PvE (unblockable for whole party, much longer might, less cd/more boons corrupted, longer chill.

Also while I’m writing some feedback, please look at what Blood Is Power does and what Empower (guardian), then look which skill takes utility slot and which is a weapon skill. Thank you.

Im amazed with Reaper.thanks Mr Geesus

Personally, I played only on pvp, and I loved it! <3

I tested only power builds (soldier or valkiry, with strength rune, strength sigil, and force sigil). First beta WE with necro so didn’t see the previuous reaper.

(Not native speaker, sorry for the upcomming mistakes and bear it)

1) The shouts :
I think in pvp, most of the shout are useless (compared to other spells, notably the spectral ones) exept the one who spawn minions, the elite one (kinda slow to cast, was interrupted most of the time, but still good) and maybe the one who permit to be unblockable.
In pvp imo (and more with the greatsword), a shout build would be unviable as long as it doesn’t give life force(and the trait that give “heal” on shout is a joke in 1v1).
The heal shout is useless compared to consume condition.

Maybe, with soldier runes it may be of some use, but as long as it does’nt give live force, I’ll probably go with spectral spells (breakstun+life force ftw!).

2) Greatsword
I will love it in pve! But, in pvp?
-Skill 1 : Meh. Does it job. is only it would give more life force or more chill?
-Skill 2 : Loved comming out from deathshroud like, “watsup? you down lol”. My enemies a little less (made a guy rage on reaper GS for a whole game <3).
Overall, I think it’s strong against unskilled or medium player, or linked after a cc, otherwise the animation is a big flashing “DODGE OR BLOCK NOW”!
Still loved it somehow. =)
-Skill 3 : Perfect as it is, the 3 kinda counterbalance the lake of life force regen and the vulnerability help a lot.
-Skill 4 : Nothing to say. Probably forgot to use it… =/
-Skill 5 : Good to pop enemy rolls. Or to make them slightly strafe to safety. Yeah, slow and unreliable imo. But when it hit its kinda good. Would prefer a dash.

I will probably use the greatsword over dagger anyway, but only because of gravedigger to make noobs ragequit. For more serious people, the dagger would be more reliable imo.

3)Reaper shroud :
Perfect! ewerything is awsome! Well, maybe the 5 is way too long to cast, but it’s a great roll bait.

4)Traits :
Relentless poursuit (and maybe augury of death but, meh), decimate defences, and Blitgher’s boon (or reaper onslaught but, meh again). Others are useless for a power reaper imo.

I think the reaper will be great in pve. In pvp, it’s fun, but I am not sure about it’s viability over the standar power necro.

I will still play it aniway.
I love spinning way too much.

Sublimatio.6981:

Hi I really like reaper now except one thing that I expect to be changed as it’s really messing everything up – please remove swap sigil proc on Shroud entry/exit. It removes the consistency with weapon swaps (i can’t see exactly when my next proc will be ready).

Also – Rise! is great now, good job. I don’t like the other shouts as they’re weak pvp skills.

About 99.73% of player want swap added to regular shroud.

It just adds a lot of versatility , more interesting and thoughtful sigil choices.

I see the rT tag in your signature, thus i will assume you are speaking from a PVE perspective which only think about max dps rotation. Example

“Scepter/nothing + nothing/dagger , a build where you camp autoatacks in one set whole time and only use this trick to trigger swap sigils on CD”

With no offense to you or PVE, that kind of playstyle is stupid.
The current 2+1 3-way weapon choice of reaper is amazingly engaging, and its always better for players to start paying attention and making decisions.

Edit:
A visual indicator for such CDs would be nice, but like anet said, it musnt cluster the UI and i also dont know where to fit 5-10 passive CDs per player on screen.

Well, I guess we’re going live with no changes to the garbage shivers of dread, with shouts being useless still in PvE, with no viable adepts for PvE (augury of death is bad because shouts are bad and only wells will be used, chilling nova is mediocre, and relentless pursuit is mostly useless), and subpar grandmasters (reaper’s onslaught is of little use since reaper shroud is a DPS loss over greatsword usage so you’re gaining no DPS by traiting for shroud, and the other two are pathetically bad).

Oh, well, at least we’ll have Gravedigger spam to keep us relevant even if our group utility is still lackluster and many of our traitliness/utilities are a mess for PvE.

Deathspiral is useless if the target has 25stacks of vul. That makes this skill unused in pve.

Boring, would nice if u could buff it to a useful dps skill (probably with some condis).

And if u play charr, the gravedigger animation looks kinda strange. Charr should not jump in the air like ugly asura do.

Sometimes my Death’s Charge works as intended. Fast travel and no clunky at end. But then sometimes it works like on BWE2. Slow travel and clunky.

In the previous BWE you could death’s charge and infusing terror at the same time. That functionality has been removed and makes it really clunky considering infusing terror is instant cast.

Shouts are underperforming. Your soul is mine, in the previous beta it felt like it generated far more life force. It might be due to another bug, it’s a great heal to use randomly cause of the free life force though which is well received. Nothing can save you is a nice shout however this like all the other shouts should be instant cast aside from the elite. Trying to use it to strip boons was pitiful though. Again people would just kite you and the cast time meant they got away a lot.

Now if you do both, it does the charge and then queues up the infusing terror which doesnt make sense.

The terrify on DS3 preferrable is instant cast as it already requires a 600 range to use. However its’s, decent as is.

Infusing terror needs to be far more visible that its up, so that enemies can notice as well as you notice on yourself. My suggestions are to either have a symbol above you similar to base DS3, or you raise up your hand with the scythe similar to the thief steal fear when you actually activate the fear.

Reaper shroud procs weapon swaps now? I’m not sure if thats intended or not. But normal death shroud did NOT proc weapon swap. Only the actual weapon swap procced it.

Reaper makes a great condi cleaver. Ds5 on dead bodies, along with DS4 which gives the poison stacks makes it extremely potent. Even if they’re shadow refuged the fact that DS5 can land is phenomenal.

I’ve found that a condi reaper outperforms a power reaper. Condi reaper can take out the boon stacking builds with corrupt boons, along with the tons of chill and cc to control them. It also covers all the ranges. Staff and scepter/dagger for ranged kiting. DS for the melee range. Previous base necro the DS made it extremely succeptible to melee, and stealth attacks. But the shroud now protects. Additionally all of the shroud abilities are something to be scared of as reaper compared to base. Base DS1 was too slow and was no threat, additionally DS4 was no threat either as base.

Reaper shroud procs weapon swaps now? I’m not sure if thats intended or not. But normal death shroud did NOT proc weapon swap. Only the actual weapon swap procced it.

it always has..
its to do with how they are coded and what DS was before its current incarnation.

I have tested 2 reaper builds a blood/power reaper and a condition/chill reaper in the silverwastes. The builds weren’t optimised but they gave a good indicator of the reaper.

The blood reaper:
- Build : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQD7kjGolGsbTwmGgeTsgLYTFhmQVIuKuFHjQXtAQLA-TRSBABUcBAoU9GzUCe1+jyjbURAFNC4pLgMlYA8EAAA-e
- Playstyle notifications: shroud as a defensive tool/gap closer, dagger for out of combat mobility.
- remarks: It felt very good, sustain was amazing and jagged horrors did survive much better. Reaper shroud was a fantastic defensive option: executioner scythe did nice as a stun while soul spiral was just a fantastic siphon proccer. Greatsword had a variety of tools that did help me deal with the situation at hand. The only negative thing too say was that I didn’t notice the siphon from soul eater.
-suggested improvements: Replace soul eater siphon with something like greatsword do 5% extra damage and heal for (50% off) that amount.

The condition reaper:
-build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRArY7dn0ICd2gd3AW3A0biFcBL+K2FHjQDgAwCIaD0BGBA-TRyCABAcSAwR9HnVud8TAwNTCpof4Ulgzs/wRKJIEwi1A-e
-Playstyle notifications: shroudless outside soul spiral (and exexutioner scythe against stronger opponents), below 50% health easy 100% chill uptime, intended for full sinister hybrid.
-remarks: deathly chill was a bit dissapointing after doing the math for a fight against a veteran eath elemental I came to the following numbers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B46pHtMIfhsURmY2MTBER1BGNzA/view?usp=sharing (for dps a second is added due to opening with spinal shivers). My biggest problem was the bonus damage uptime of 33% which and the overal dps of 685 in the end consdering 100% chill uptime and having more condition damage due to lingering curse and target the weak. That being said reaper does make a nice suplementary role for a scepter based condition build.
-suggested improvements: Relax the bonus damage constraint on deathly chill to 66%~75% health or remove it.

One semi-negative point. I can’t make a difference between any of the 3 Reaper grand master traits. Whatever my choice is it doens’t feel any different, at all. For grand master they should be more distinctive, no?

Lynnie.7213:

Sometimes my Death’s Charge works as intended. Fast travel and no clunky at end. But then sometimes it works like on BWE2. Slow travel and clunky.

I confirm that. Sometimes half the skill spin on spot and just then charge toward the target. Or sometimes don’t move at all, rarely.
Also, sometimes don’t register hits, just spinning next to the target, but no digits pop on my screen. Honestly I didn’t checked the combat log, to confirm that.

after some testing of the traits and skills again I am very impressed with the changes the growing darkfield on GS just perfect for my life steal build when teamed with the reaper shrouds whirl.

I few have mentioned about the trait soul eater and I agree to it feeling underpowered it be nice if it was a something like heals for 5-10% of GS critical hit damage (1icd) and remove the GS cooldown reduction as it wont be needed. I like the GS skills feeling slow but powerful so CD reductions not needed that why we have weapon swap hit big moves swap to dagger or shroud.

the Rise utility great now I cant tell if the spawned minions affected by minion lifesteal traits or not I know VP trait works on them. I guess if they had to much lifesteal or ways of healing they would be perma up at least aoe keeps them in check.

I finding a lot of really good synergy with the different trait lines and reaper line what really nice and a lot of different build combos to pick from.

not got a lot of problems with the spec and well done on the animations side they a lot smoother

on the pvp side of things they hit like trucks but are easily countered by ranged attacks and kiting/dodges so cant complain really necros where in a good pvp place anyway so it just more melee focused necro now as an extra option to pick. I expect people use that new corrosion cloud ranged blocker and reaper shroud whirl to control points and get that 16 stacks or so of poison on people if traited for remove condition on shroud entry at least you get rid of the self weakness.

very happy with this spec

A BUG: sometimes the LF is filled in green despite haveing 0 LF and u have to close game to fix !!! Happened twice sofar.

Am I the only one who thinks that 1.25second casting time is simple too high for skills that hit a single time in gw2? In PvE it feels unnecessarily slow and in PvP it is simply impossible to hit anyone decent/good with it when it matters. 3/4 is perfectly dodgeable and 1.0 is already slow. Given the super obvious animations on gravedigger+ds5, they should not take forever (aka 1.25) to cast.
Although it was nothing to do with the beta: Consume conditions should also not be on a 1.25 second cast but on 0.75 or 1.0.

Another more general thing: Please fix the issue with daze, sometimes you cannot stun break it. I did some duels against friend who played druid and not being able to stun break a 6 second stun with flesh wurm, spectral walk and foot in the grave is “a bit” annoying. Especially since foot in the grave seems to stun break it with death shroud but somehow not with reaper’s shroud. Might be wrong on the last point though, perhaps someone can check.

When providing feedback, please keep in mind that all the mobs in VB have been significantly nerfed since last BWE. Everything dies in about half the time, regardless of build/class. So even if it feels you are much stronger, it is more likely you are just plowing through the stupidly easy mobs now.

I played a condition reaper this weekend in PvE and honestly it felt pretty close to perfect. Deathly chill was fixed, which was great, as was the added chill damage icon.

The only issue I still have is the chill stack limit of 5. My chills were constantly not sticking to the target because some non-condi reaper, or ele put a bunch of chill stacks on the target, meaning I was completely losing out on my GM trait a large percentage of the time.

My review on shouts.. Dang, they are actually good now. They still aren’t picked too often, but because they are low cooldown and instant now, its so much easier to use. GS feels a lot better, especially the gs 3 being easier to land, and 4. The reaper shroud 2 makes it to where you even have a semi better way to escape. And he keeps using move when hes caught up! That is a legit move now! Good job!

Is there a bug affecting the damage output for some people? I’ve been reading the comments and there seems to be something going on there.

I’ll be short as possible.

Greatsword feels lot better now got no real complains about it (regarding what type of weapon it supposed to be) but there is still something missing to me, maybe i’m just spoiled with warrior GS, but i just dislike lack of proper targeting and always depending on having a target as otherwise is way too easy to miss and there is lot of guessing.
Actually i do have one complaint regarding GS no5. it is still unreliable but somehow i doubt it will ever be better just like every other ‘pull’ skill, i’ll just call it engine limitation.

I was actually using shouts now YAAW – great now but kinda low duration on that might , NCSY / Suffer seems rather similar but still lack that something also too bad that there is no stun break on them as well XD
And Rise kinda blows. I mean they do fine as distraction but they are melee and will often get wiped to clave so you will rarely get their active effect while in pvp they suffer from clasic minion AI. Considering that you can’t directly control them they would do lot better if they had ranged attack, maybe not 1200 range but 600 or 800.

CTTB sure could use stun break in there(if you compare its effect to cd and other elite skills) or even more reduced CD.

R Shroud feels much better now especially no2 although that one still tends to act like wild horse from time to time but luckly those are rare now.
No3 is fine really but guess i’m just used to it being instant fear so cast on it feels kinda odd.
But there is still this i wont say synergy but dependency on SR trait line just for shroud degen.

Reaper traits – well changes ware nice and i see that life leech is supposed to be necro thing but its kinda pointless on Agury of death and Soul eater. Shouts hardly do that much dmg even with this extra life leech not like you will slot them for their dmg component in first place, but healing from it is hardly noticeable.
Same thing with greatsword one. Sure the global 20% prema cd reduction is good (but in reality only useful for GS no4/5) but this version of life leech is even worse from previous one.

I’ve just noticed that shambling horrors dont give life force when they die.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

When providing feedback, please keep in mind that all the mobs in VB have been significantly nerfed since last BWE. Everything dies in about half the time, regardless of build/class. So even if it feels you are much stronger, it is more likely you are just plowing through the stupidly easy mobs now.

I played a condition reaper this weekend in PvE and honestly it felt pretty close to perfect. Deathly chill was fixed, which was great, as was the added chill damage icon.

The only issue I still have is the chill stack limit of 5. My chills were constantly not sticking to the target because some non-condi reaper, or ele put a bunch of chill stacks on the target, meaning I was completely losing out on my GM trait a large percentage of the time.

To those of you who have tested condition reaper in PvE: what has been your preferred stat combination? Has full glass (Sinister) been effective or do you prefer a slightly tankier (Rabid or Carrion) setup? Thanks!

After the rose tinted last beta ive changed my opinion on gravedigger. It feels to slow and clunky again. After the novelty of good damage last beta wore off its now quite unfun having to self interrupt constantly with dodges.

Overall it still feels good damage wise. But i feel gravedigger needs to be slightly faster to cast. I dont really mind it having aftercast. But it just takes too long to hit. It feels so unsatisfying to get 90% of the cast off and then have to dodge and deal no damage. Reduce it to 1 second please.

Similar issue with Death Spiral. Its still unreliable to hit without targets. And its too sluggish for how weak it is. Make it half second cast like nightfall and wail of doom please. Its a similar cone shaped skill like wail of doom so i feel it needs to be about the same cast time to make it feel fluid.

Grasping Darkness is still really unreliable to hit. Please, please, please make it a ground target directional skill. Also 600 range isnt really good enough for this skill. I feel it needs to be about 900. But i would settle for 750 quite happily.

I was worried about deaths charge speed increase affecting the projectile block too much. I actually dont think its too bad like this. There are still some weird issues where your character will turn at the end of the charge. Not anything serious. Just ruins the aesthetic a bit.

Executioners Scythe is still too weak compared to gravedigger.

Chilled to the Bone is still bad for an elite. It needs a much longer duration on the stun and a further reduction to cast time.

Still having issues with chill up time again. This time i think its more because the main source of chill is from chilling nova and greatsword auto. But due to self interrupting and wanting to cast other greatsword skills you miss the final hit of the auto chain a lot. So chill uptime drops. My solution to this would be to make grasping darkness directional ground targeted to make it smoother and more reliable for chill and the pull. And split the chill on the greatsword auto attack to 1 second on the 2nd hit and 1.5 seconds on the 3rd hit.

In summary the main issues are its still too sluggish in a lot of places. And this certainly ruins the fun factor in more difficult situations where you end up interrupting yourself constantly to dodge. The slow sluggishness also effects your ability to maintain chill quite dramatically. So its a double negative.

Running shouts and great sword

Life force generation is adequate, now, with Augury of Death and shouts. LF generation on great sword is better now that the AA is fixed but without AoD, it still feels slow in generation.

Shambling Horrors could use an extra 10% speed to help them keep up with normal-speed targets.

Grasping darkness had something going on with terrain where, even though i could hit with the sword, a small elevation difference, even at very close range, caused the skill to fail to activate. It took me some time to figure out what was going on because I was right on the mob.

There are only two major traits in Curses that are attractive enough to run: Plague Sending and Weakening Shroud. However, the minors are quite a bit more useful than the rest of the majors.

The shouts all seem to be useful and function well.

Capping vulnerability all by myself is easy without any condition duration equipment or consumables. I really do not like that when not playing solo because it feels like a waste.

Going to try a MM using axe/focus and great sword, next.

Sulwyn.4362:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

When providing feedback, please keep in mind that all the mobs in VB have been significantly nerfed since last BWE. Everything dies in about half the time, regardless of build/class. So even if it feels you are much stronger, it is more likely you are just plowing through the stupidly easy mobs now.

I played a condition reaper this weekend in PvE and honestly it felt pretty close to perfect. Deathly chill was fixed, which was great, as was the added chill damage icon.

The only issue I still have is the chill stack limit of 5. My chills were constantly not sticking to the target because some non-condi reaper, or ele put a bunch of chill stacks on the target, meaning I was completely losing out on my GM trait a large percentage of the time.

To those of you who have tested condition reaper in PvE: what has been your preferred stat combination? Has full glass (Sinister) been effective or do you prefer a slightly tankier (Rabid or Carrion) setup? Thanks!

I run full rabid. Sinister really does nothing for Scepter/dagger or staff. I lose out on a good bit of dps in RS, but the extra toughness is worth it, especially in upcoming raids.

Further testing and i’ve decided that Deathly Chill still isn’t working correctly. Due to the 5 cap limit on Chill I only get MY chill on the target about 25% of the time, even less on boss mobs. The rest of the time my chill is overwritten by other reapers, or other classes applying chill. Additionally the 5 limit means I am constantly losing chill applications due to 5 1/2s chills taking up all the chill “slots”. Having your GM trait rendered useless 75% of the time is just a poor design. Either change the trait to apply torment on chill, or remove the 5 chill limit.

I just want to compare our elite shout with revenant elite ability Jade Winds:
“Chilled to the bone!” – 1.25 sec cast time, 2 sec stun, 90 sec CD;
“Jade Winds” – 1 sec cast time, 3 sec stun, 5 sec CD.
Our shout deals 2.5x more damage and apply chill for 8 sec , as revenant its cost 50 energy, but anyway too much difference in favor of revenant, isn’kitten

I realized only one problem and seems I am the only one. RS skill 2 ’’death’s charge’’ is buggy for me. Sometimes hitting 4k sometimes 8k. Dont know if its intentional but attacks usually miss the target. Also I realized that when you stay at higher ground than the target and charge, attacks do not miss alot and full stack might damage goes up to 10k with valkrie gear which I tested so far