Guild Wars 2

tuman.6593:

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

What about the warrior elite on 20 sec CD?! Its single target, but 20sec!!!

Augury change actually feels great. If you run a tanky build and throw yourself into big fights, you’re super difficult to bring down.

CttB feels good, but not quite there. Even running into a big teamfight with Augury and firing it off, the cd feels a bit too long. I think maybe 60 could be a sweet spot. This isn’t Plague or even Lich (and definitely not Rampage), the cd doesn’t need to be restrictive to every other fight or two.

YaaW and NCSY feel fantastic. Even YSIM feels great when running Augury. Suffer is okayish, but I feel like the transfer numbers in 1v1 could be higher (I’ve been running offhand dagger with my axe, instead of Warhorn because of this). Maybe it’s trying to do too much between damage, transfer, and chill. Rise feels amazing. Possibly even too good with the Death Magic traits. But since we have to give up one of the MM lines to get it, that’s probably ok.

Soul Eater feels… okay, but I think it contributes too much to the overloading of Gravedigger on the GS.

Greatsword… It’s the weapon we wanted, but I feel like it’s a Gravedigger and Nightfall stick. Grasp is fantastic when it works, but too short-range to really prevent people from leaving the fight with you. Death Spiral gives decent LF and Vuln, but with Soul Eater no longer giving it lifesteal, it feels lackluster. I feel like the 20% cdr + the old (but buffed) lifesteal on Soul Eater would make the weapon feel better on builds where I’m trying to maximize time using it. Keep in mind that this weapon basically just gives damage, chill, and vuln. It doesn’t give mobility or support, so I see no reason that any ability on it should do as pitiful of damage as Death Spiral and Grasp currently do.

Axe could still use some help. :’ (

tuman.6593:

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

Our stun also can’t be broken and we also get Stability for each foe hit.

14,8k gravedigger in a spvp match against chronomancer. I don’t think it’s nerfed.

Highscore!
15c

Targuil.3741:

14,8k gravedigger in a spvp match against chronomancer. I don’t think it’s nerfed.

Those reports were coming 24 hours ago, not today.

Enjoying the Reaper for sure, but just wanted to say that I got a progress blip for “Hammer Kills” in RS due to the scythe modeling and animations probably coming from the hammer models you use. If this isn’t on purpose, so that the kills count for the weapon I’m holding, then just wanted to mention it!

Hmmm So I decided to try Try Silver-wastes today and Also V/Brink as well today

Firstly Odd thing is I am doing more dps to the new adds than I am to SW and there is a huge differece on G/D

1: Best grave digger I can do vrs Normal/Elites in SW is 5k ???/
2: Best Grave digger I had in V/Brink is 9/10k (Same gear)

3: Overall dps seems lower than last BWE for reaper

I played some matches as reaper and I didn’t hit anyone with Gravedigger even a single time. It’s so slow that ppl asking for nerf are ridiculous

All right, a few concerns to note from my limited testing. I only PvE cuz that is all I play.

First thing, as everyone else has noted and they said was fixed, was just how easily I melted through the story mobs (and HoT mobs in general)… though reaper killed all the dino’s the fastest of all the classes I tested when coming up the ramp at end of story. I dunno if that is a problem with other classes not having comparable AoE or necro being a bit on the upside for power (well, condi’s, I am using all condi builds).

Second… the minions from Rise:

• Given ample healing (we have druids now) in a zerg or WvW kind of setting, they seem to last beyond cooldown time and thus, you could, theoretically, spawn an infinite quantity of them? Is there a hard cap to their numbers? I had at least ten when fighting Taidha. (I forgot about chronomancer contributing to this!)
• What if we have a party with lots of necro’s, will there be a graphics cap? What about, in PvP, when we have multiple necro’s on both sides using this; can we distinguish the vast quantities of these minions?
• Are these minions influenced by the “hiding miniatures” or “low” setting to models such that they are going to be invisible?
• What happens if we have a, theoretically, infinite hoard of them? Do we even take damage?

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Then there is chill and its condi-based damage. I am worried that, because it is non-stacking, all my condi chill damage vanishes the moment anyone else puts chill on the foe. This brings us right back to the same problems we had with bleeds/burns/etc. not being able to go over a stack of 25. I do not know what you can do to remedy this but maybe keep an internal, hidden, stack counter for each reaper… or make the chill damage duration on the necro… so long as they are maintaining their stacks, enemies that have chill around them will take damage.
Then, for QoL, I would really like to see the damage on it as it continues to bug me. ie: When I am playing with gear and trying to figure out the best combination of types so I can get reasonable healing and damage, I have to go into the build window just to see how much damage chill will do. I want to see this damage modifier on chill descriptions on the skills as well just like what happens for every single other condi damage ability in the game. This also applies to when we have might as we run around… it’s just nice to see the damage on our skills as well.

Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something

guess you didnt play the first beta where it had a 1s cooldown when used below 50% and it was too clunky so they changed it back to how it was when they originally showed it in the “meet the reaper”..aka 100% cooldown

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

tested all day gravedigger

on golems and players

the outcome is the same
with 54% crit chance (maraduer) it feels like hitting with 4%. i had 5 attacks with no crit at all with 4k each.
my AA crit more often.
also the dmg when crit was around 6-9k dmg depend on the armor and might stacks 8-15 stacks

bug or nerf?!

Scrappers are quite tough for reapers, doable, but they put up good fights. Anybody else have comments regarding how Reapers do against other elite specs in your experiences so far?

These shouts aren’t hammy. Who in your voice acting or art department thought these lines should be read seriously? I’m not sure I have any desire to play a Reaper now.

This is not sarcasm. I am disappointed at all of the new shouts as things you hear in battle, but only with Reaper am I disappointed in their voice direction.

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

I don’t get the logic behind both of guy’s comments and maybe it is best that way.

I would like to adress 2 issues about reaper usage in PvE:
1. Dps
2. Chill

Since there is so much hype about the “high numbers” on greatsword, reaper’s demage is still very low in comparison to some classes, which bring a lot more utility and usage for party overall. Many Veteran Necromancer players are hoping to get into the End-Game Content with our beloved class, but with these low numbers i fear it won’t be possible. The numbers of the skills might be high, but if compared to dps overall, it is truely weak and classes like Revenant or Engineer highly outnumber these + granting permanent party buffs, reflects and stealth… So here is one of the solutions for reaper:
Numbers need to be higher! I don’t know how to solve the gap between PvP and PvE, but i fear with that low demage and long casting times it will be unused. Also i don’t see any difference in using GS over the Reaper’s Shroud since they do farely the same dps, also the utilities are similar. The only difference is that in RS im am mobile and can dodge the heavily hitting mobs in high end instances. So there needs to be bigger differentiation between those 2 Reaper mechanics. At least in numbers: i need to be rewarded for the lack of mobility.
So there is this question: why wouldd you take a Necromancer (Reaper) in party?
2. Chill?
Well in PvE this mechanic is pretty useless. I don’t know what kind of impact it will have on high lvl fractals or raids, but the slowing down bosses or veterans is highly uneffective because:
1. They get usually crippled.
2. They don’t move because attacked by meelee groups.
As i said it might be useful in content where you can’t meelee bosses though so far there is rarely a spot where it is impossible.
So by selling this feature as Necro’s “speciality” in my oppinion there should be something added that is rewarding enough to use this feature, because so far it is very weak.
For example the chill traits should do higher demage or it should have an impact on the party too by using chill. Similar to alacrity but maybe letting party members strip boons at a certain interval. Another suggestion is to implement a trait or effect that lets you attack faster after a successful apply of chill: it would make GS usage a lot more significant.

Been playing a bit, like I said before things are much better, at this point I think most of the improvements that need to happen are PvE focused, because “slow but scary” in PvE doesn’t work nearly as well as it does in PvP. The other changes are mostly QoL changes and numbers. Also, as a side note a lot of issues I’m having aren’t with Reaper itself, but the core profession still needing work (though we’ve been moving in the right direction, we need patches to happen every few weeks).

Shroud
Shroud is looking good. I’m feeling tanky, it doesn’t degen too quickly due to the sustain from the 1 skill. I’d still note that we really need less passive defense and more active, because especially with shroud it is often one of two things happening:

1. There isn’t too much burst damage, I can sit in shroud for a while and I feel powerful without being overbearing
2. I get bursted to absolute hell, especially because of things like unblockable AoE pulls/barriers that have been added to a lot of professions, on top of things like Air overload that hits harder than Gravedigger over its time
   However, that’s a large issue more with the base profession and Death Magic than I’d blame on reaper itself, though it is related because I hear a lot of people mention Reaper is too tanky, which I myself wonder about, and then an ele kills me in 2 seconds and I remember why we have such a strange binary defense.

Overall for shroud’s skills, I think Executioner’s Scythe needs a damage boost in PvE, at the very least below 50% and 25%. In PvP I don’t think it would make any difference, since in PvP there is a strong tradeoff between using it just as a high-health stun+field to try to crush someone down quickly, or wait a bit longer and try to really drive home the kill. But in PvE it isn’t really worth casting over Gravedigger, which is strange for such a long CD skill.

Shouts
Shouts are doing really well now I think. Most of them are useful, though I think a few small improvements could be made.

“Suffer!” – as I’ve said the last BWE’s, this has no niche right now. It is a bad Plague Signet in almost every situation, since in the best situation it transfers the same number of conditions plus chill, but in most situations it is less condition transfer, with no stun break. I’d really like to see this also be able to transfer CCs, so it could transfer up to 5 conditions and CC effects, prioritizing CC effects, which also makes it a stun break. This gives it a niche nothing else can fill, but without a change it will forever be a bad Plague Signet.

“Rise!” – Should be a stun break IMO, it is a defensive skill anyway. However if Suffer! is changed this could be left alone, as 3 stun breaks could be too much.

The only other thing I’d look at is that since the minions are melee, they are too easy to kite as they have to stop to attack. Summon it in the Mists against that golem that runs, and you’ll notice even a random AI can avoid minions for a huge amount of the time. They either need to have a range increase, or their animation needs to be faster so they aren’t kited so easily, it should be a conscious effort to kite them, not a passive side effect of normal fighting.

“Chilled to the Bone!” I think it would be reasonable for this to have a lower CD, otherwise it’s looking great, just really unreliable for you to be able to both land it and follow up meaningfully.

Greatsword
Only issue I currently have with GS is a few QoL things.

Auto Attack I feel the auto attack just isn’t going to work. People have mentioned its issues in PvE, and it has the same issues in PvP. You just don’t have time to complete an auto attack chain, let alone put in all the setup work just to allow it to land even if you had the time. And lets say you land it, you get a measly chill and average attack damage (for the time). I think this just needs to be sped up, you already have a lot of the “slow” feeling from the 2 skill, the AA doesn’t need to be a lethargic smash.

Death Spiral – I think this could be sped up a bit, as it deals relatively low damage. It is more a setup/combo, not a standalone nuke.

Grasping Darkness – Should have an increased range, its just a bit too low right now IMO.

Traits
Chilling Nova – I just don’t find myself wanting to use this really. It requires too much to work (highish chill uptime without it but a desire for even more chill, decent crit chance), and basically just propagates chill. A better trigger would be really nice.

Soul Eater – Another trait I don’t see myself wanting to use. It reduces the CDs of GS which is nice, but effectively it is a small defense/damage buff in a tier with a huge and strong damage buff, and a strong damage/sustain trait. It doesn’t really compete with them, and it ends up clogging the line with a trait that does something really similar to Chilling Victory, but in a less desirable way.

I’d say give this trait some kind of defensive/utility secondary attachment instead of life steal, since if you want damage you’ll run the other two traits anyway. Maybe toughness while wielding Greatsword, or add some type of active defense, like evade on GS3 use, add extra utility to Nightfall, just something that makes me stronger with the greatsword but in a distinctly defensive way that I couldn’t just replace with Decimate or Chilling Victory.

That’s about it. Overall I think Reaper is more than playable as is, but I’d really like to see a few extra changes to bring it from really good to amazing in every way. I’d also bring up a final time that something that will improve us even more than these changes would be to have our base profession worked on at least once a month, even with small focused changes.

And finally, I’d like to once again thank Robert Gee and any other devs who’ve helped with Reaper for their work.

I’ve been trying to test condi-reaper, and I’m just not sure if reaper is worth it if you want to use conditions. Running Spite/Curses/Reaper with rabid armor and sinister trinkets, my chills only do 500/800ish damage depending on which side of the 50% mark you’re at (with no might/vuln/corruption stacks). Doesn’t necessarily seem worth the loss in survivability/utility from blood magic or soul reaping. I think the chill damage or condi-damage scaling needs to be ramped up for this one.

Aside from the damage, the five stack limit on chill resulting in the DPS being overwritten by others is especially frustrating. Each of our chills last such a short time we have to put out a fair amount of chills out in order to keep the dps going and if these are being overwritten then condi-reaper really won’t be worth it. If you’re not willing to remove the 5 stack limit on chill due to pvp concerns, then the only way forward really is to modify deathly chill in such a way that the damage is separated from the chill stack, like having it put a traditional damaging condition on chill instead. Alternatively, you can have a different number of maximum chill stacks on players versus npcs which would potentially solve the problem too.

Chilling victory is also disappointing, as the 5seconds of a single stack of might seems way too short to make it a worthwhile competitor to Decimate Defenses. Decimate Defenses synergies with all of those bleed-on-crit bullkitten that condimancers put up with. However, chilling victory is the only reasonable way of generating life-force while running scepter but that’s more because scepter’s lifeforce generation is known to be terrible. Compared with might from siphoned power (2stacks for 10s) the might from chilling victory is basically a non-factor. Would be nice to see either more stacks or a longer might from chilling victory. Even then, in group play where there is lots of boon sharing and you may be able to assume high stacks of might coming from teammates, Decimate Defenses definitely wins out due to the higher bleed stacks you’ll get based on a higher crit chance.

Finally, a really frustrating thing is how once again our class mechanics get in our own way, when we use nightfall and then RS4, the resulting leeching bolts don’t heal us through shroud. Comeon Geesus, let us heal through shroud already

The shout Chilled to the Bone does not work with Soldier Runes

Jelzouki.4128:

The shout Chilled to the Bone does not work with Soldier Runes

Ok, thought it was just me. Switched to Valkyrie seems ok with that trying again to confirm.

I agree wholeheartedly that deathly chill should just apply a different damaging condition rather than trying to turn chill into one. It’s neat conceptually but if three BWEs have taught us anything it seems a nightmare to actually make work. Applying torment (Or burn? I mean really, why not?) or even bleed (though obviously it’d need to be more than just the one stack) would be great.

I’m loving reaper by the way. Lots of fun, lots of build options, it feels like it’ll have a fun and useful place in every game mode so long as you’re creative and can get a feel for it. And that’s AWESOME.

That GS5 though, yeesh. Still seems buggy in reference to terrain. In fact, a bug I notice in particular is that if the mob I’m targeting is between me and a wall, and that wall is within the 600 range of the skill, when the claw hits the wall it just disappears and my target is never yanked. Which of course really sucks, because that’s definitely a situation that does and will happen often enough to make this skill really bad (and easily counterable by other classes). I honestly just wish the skill would be changed if this is going to always be an issue. Something less fun and creative would still be better than something that doesn’t seem to work right half the time.

Gerrark.9870:

That GS5 though, yeesh. Still seems buggy in reference to terrain. In fact, a bug I notice in particular is that if the mob I’m targeting is between me and a wall, and that wall is within the 600 range of the skill, when the claw hits the wall it just disappears and my target is never yanked. Which of course really sucks, because that’s definitely a situation that does and will happen often enough to make this skill really bad (and easily counterable by other classes). I honestly just wish the skill would be changed if this is going to always be an issue. Something less fun and creative would still be better than something that doesn’t seem to work right half the time.

See, I have the opposite happen. The animation disappears into the wall, but the pull still happens right on cue. I haven’t had it fail yet in Verdant Brink.

A lot of what this class does currently feels “right,” especially in that most of the traits do not tie you to the greatsword, but the necromancer’s lack of reliable stunbreaks or even stability (outside of foot in the grave) really sticks out in a lot of the CC-heavy fights. The Legendary Fire Wyvern sticks out in this category of “things you can’t really get yourself out of as a reaper.” What could really round this out as a melee class is some kind of trait that would apply a conditional stability, or maybe tack a microstability (like well of power) to shouts when traited or something. Necro has never really been a mobile or dodging class, and reaper definitely isn’t, so it just seems natural they’d have a few more tricks for standing their ground up their sleeve.

imidacloprid.2948:

A lot of what this class does currently feels “right,” especially in that most of the traits do not tie you to the greatsword, but the necromancer’s lack of reliable stunbreaks or even stability (outside of foot in the grave) really sticks out in a lot of the CC-heavy fights. The Legendary Fire Wyvern sticks out in this category of “things you can’t really get yourself out of as a reaper.” What could really round this out as a melee class is some kind of trait that would apply a conditional stability, or maybe tack a microstability (like well of power) to shouts when traited or something. Necro has never really been a mobile or dodging class, and reaper definitely isn’t, so it just seems natural they’d have a few more tricks for standing their ground up their sleeve.

This is not a reaper only thing. My chronomancer was also getting screwed in melee.

Essentially, you want to hump his back at all times, and when he starts turning around just dodge the fire to stay on his back.

When he flies back down to land, wait till he does his tail swipe before getting to his back.

Turns out all the whining about berzerker melee has made them design a lot of bosses that just encourage boring ranged weapon autoattack spam.

Coming from someone who only played the Reaper all three beta weekends, I will say what I said on the reddit thread pertaining to feedback.
Its come a long way from first beta weekend. I like it but i still feel like gravedigger could use a 1 sec cast instead of 1 and a quarter. It would then feel a little more fluid with a combo from grasping darkness. I also feel grasping darkness flows better with a ground target able function (such as warrior gs3 for example).
As for the reaper traitline, people are finally realizing how good blighters boon is as opposed to the first weekend. This trait is good and because of this, it seriously outshines the other two GM traits. Now I know one is focused towards condi and its decent but BB is overall still much better on a condi build for sustain as were already doing good condi pressure without this traitline at all. As for reapers onslaught, this, this, idk exactly what to say. It needs some additions or something because as the RS currently stands, its attacks are already pretty quick and recharges are fairly low to begin with (this trait only lowers cds through “on kill” which is unreliable to begin with and it should just straight lower the recharge without a secondary function). This seriously needs something to make it worthwhile. I do notice we have no trait that allows us to do more damage to chilled foes. That maybe something you can tack onto a trait such as Reapers Onslaught to give it a little more leeway.

Overall, I love the mobility more than anything. Death’s Charge is great, this has really been polished into a well working skill ty Rob. Mobility is a key factor in bursty / power classes and I can finally play a massive high damage brawler spec on my favorite class.

To add to this, many feel this class is strong and it is. But that doesn’t make it unbalanced or overpowered. The other professions have very strong capabilities as well except many haven’t been interested in them or played them enough to notice. I don’t feel godly in anyway. I have to constantly be kiting in and out of fights to burst and stay alive. Overall I really wish the base necro gets some more love after HoT is released so that build diversity expands. This goes for all classes as well.

silvermember.8941:

I don’t get the logic behind both of guy’s comments and maybe it is best that way.

As it says, monsters with high healthpools make gravedigger feel very boring. You can basically end up using only gravedigger only for 2+min. As you can move while while activating and have decent stab uptime you can easily kite or ignore most things bosses do. This makes those fights dull.

From a pve point of view.
Really nice work since the last BWE. Reaper feels a lot smoother compared to the first BWE.

DS 1 feels good, but i think the dps is still abit too low
DS 2 feels perfect now
DS 3 good
DS 4 good
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.

GS 1 feels good
GS 2 feels good, but 2 things.

1. it feels horribel boring vs foes with high hp pool under 50%. The cd reduction should trigger only one time in a row! Or should we rly spam gravedigger for 2 minutes until a boss is dead?
2. pls rework the animation for charr, it looks rly strange.

GS 3 feels lacking. Would need more DPS, has gotten much worse since the change of souleater. I will never use this skill in any dungeon/fractal or raidgroup. Do u really want this?
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.

Fix GS 2 and 3 and the weapon is close to perfect. But from a pve point of view, classes with two weaponsets are more interessting. I´d like to see a dagger/GS rotation, similar to guardians GS/S oder GS/M.

GS23411123>switch to dagger, just for example!

Shouts It feels awkward that some shouts have casttimes.

“Suffer” is ok but the cd looks abit too long for its use. I will use it sometimes.

“Nothing can save u” feels like a pure pvp skill, vulnerability is not rly needed in pve (groups). I´d like to see a simple aoe boon convert. The casttime is too long for its use.

“U are all weaklings and rise” I could not find a use for this skills in pve, sry

Elite: The cd feels way too long for pve, or the stun duration is too short. Even for trashmobgroups it feels abit lackluster. Can u just reduce it´s cd (and casttime) for pve?

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.

Wells Wells are the best choice for utilities in pve in most situations. 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.

Due to our support, necro/reapers should be one of the highes dps classes ingame (pve). It would be extremly nice if u could change some numbers to change this.

Norjena.5172:

From a pve point of view.
Really nice work since the last BWE. Reaper feels a lot smoother compared to the first BWE.

DS 1 feels good, but i think the dps is still abit too low
DS 2 feels perfect now
DS 3 good
DS 4 good
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.

GS 1 feels good
GS 2 feels good, but 2 things.

1. it feels horribel boring vs foes with high hp pool under 50%. The cd reduction should trigger only one time in a row!
2. pls rework the animation for charr, it looks rly strange.

GS 3 feels lacking. Would need more DPS, has gotten much worse since the change of souleater. I will never use this skill in any dungeon/fractal or raidgroup. Do u really want this?
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.

Fix GS 2 and 3 and the weapon is close to perfect. But from a pve point of view, classes with two weaponsets are more interessting. I´d like to see a dagger/GS rotation, similar to guardians GS/S oder GS/M.

GS23411123>switch to dagger, just for example!

Shouts It feels awkward that some shouts have casttimes.

“Suffer” is ok but the cd looks abit too long for its use. I will use it sometimes.

“Nothing can save u” feels like a pure pvp skill, vulnerability is not rly needed in pve (groups). I´d like to see a simple aoe boon convert. The casttime is too long for its use.

“U are all weaklings and rise” I could not find a use for this skills in pve, sry

Elite: The cd feels way too long for pve, or the stun duration is too short. Even for trashmobgroups it feels abit lackluster. Can u just reduce it´s cd (and casttime) for pve?

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.

Wells Wells are the best choice for utilities in pve in most situations. 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.

You honestly find spamming dagger auto attack to be more interesting that greatsword?

After using GS skills u are spamming GS aa for ~8seconds, so its better to switch and use warhorn 5 + dagger for example, or some RS skills (but they are abit too weak imo).

We will use GS enough vs targets below 50% health. I think gravedigger spam will get fixed. Cause it´s rly boring.

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

Grave Digger generates no LF. I found that if I spam it too much, I have no LF for DS. I think it is fine as it is. The lack of LF punishes players for not managing the pool well enough. It is like using up all your initiative.

Nightfall, when traited with Chilling Darkness, doesn’t show the “chill” effect on its toolbar.

Also, let me say that a Chill Reaper is the best thing I’ve ever played. EVER.

Anchoku.8142:

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

Grave Digger generates no LF. I found that if I spam it too much, I have no LF for DS. I think it is fine as it is. The lack of LF punishes players for not managing the pool well enough. It is like using up all your initiative.

U don´t need RS in pve. It does less dps then GS and especially GD spam.

I haven’t seen this brought up yet, but even if it has, I’m bringing it up again.

[Decimate Defenses] needs more info. How long does the buff last? Is there a cap? What is the duration of each stack?

Currently there is no indicator whatsoever that this trait works, other than noticing more critical hits in combat, which is anecdotal at best.

Norjena.5172:

Anchoku.8142:

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

Grave Digger generates no LF. I found that if I spam it too much, I have no LF for DS. I think it is fine as it is. The lack of LF punishes players for not managing the pool well enough. It is like using up all your initiative.

U don´t need RS in pve. It does less dps then GS and especially GD spam.

You don’t need RS if your group is good at stacking might and vulnerability. Otherwise, it’s most certainly necessary. Besides, with Dhuumfire and reaper’s onslaught, RS DPS isn’t that far behind gravedigger spam.

Though, I find myself using blighter’s boon because the reaper lacks sustain without blood magic.

Also: what are people’s opinions on shivers of dread? From the PvE context it basically adds a 3 second chill to a single skill (RS3) unless you’re running staff. I personally hate running staff b/c I find it boring, but it seems like as far as minors go… it could be more interesting?

I haven’t played around much with reaper in pvp though, how is this trait performing when it comes to corrupting stab into fear? Is this just a trait that’s great in pvp and less so in pve?

Quarktastic.1027:

[Decimate Defenses] needs more info. How long does the buff last? Is there a cap? What is the duration of each stack?

Currently there is no indicator whatsoever that this trait works, other than noticing more critical hits in combat, which is anecdotal at best.

This isn’t how that trait works. Whenever you hit an enemy with Vulnerability on them, your crit chance against that target is increased by 2% per stack. You do not get any buff on yourself for it, there are no stacks involved, it just checks for vuln and applies the crit.

Quarktastic.1027:

I haven’t seen this brought up yet, but even if it has, I’m bringing it up again.

[Decimate Defenses] needs more info. How long does the buff last? Is there a cap? What is the duration of each stack?

Currently there is no indicator whatsoever that this trait works, other than noticing more critical hits in combat, which is anecdotal at best.

The “buff”, if you would call it that, lasts as long as a target has vulnerability on it. No vulnerability on the target you are hitting? You won’t get the extra crit chance. Seems pretty simple the way it’s written now. You have extra crit chance (2%) per stack of vulnerability on a target.

I feel like if Augury of Death would make it so that Shouts become Blast Finishers, they would become a lot more useful over wells in PvE and in PvP, you would be able to easily grant your allies Frost Aura via Chill field + Blast. Or survive even longer solo by Dark + Blast for that blind. Or use a Poison field for Area Weakness. Which would make Reaper combo more with itself which will make it more fun to jump in and out of Reaper Shroud and would also increase Reaper/Necromancer’s potentional for PvE. Problem might be balance, of course. But I don’t see how a ton of blast finishers would affect PvP that much. Easiest to balance is to give it a 1/4 sec cast time (if traited for blasts.) on the instant casters, so you can interupt it if you play with a lot of allies.

My feedback will be mostly on a PVE point of view:

Greatsword:
So to start of, i dont think the DPS GS brings will be enough to bring us into a wanted spot for challenging content, most of the time you have to cancel your auto chain/graveddiger to avoid an attack as we have no blocks/invun to secure landing a hit without dying

GS1: could still use a little damage buff
GS2: need a cast time reduction to 1 second to be more reliable
GS3: has a pretty long cast time for what it does, could use a cast time reduction too
GS4: is a pretty good skill in my opnion
GS5: its a unreliable skill , a lot of times the target just stops half way through

Shroud:
So i must say that Vital Persistence is way too importante to be able to stay in shroud for a decent period, otherwise it just melts. Its a issue with death shroud too but its more glaring with reaper shroud as you`ll be at meele range. Vital persistance needs to be baseline or it`ll hit reaper build diversity way too hard

RS1: its in a good spot in my opnion
RS2: feels really satisfying using it as a gap closer now
RS3: feels kind weird with terrifying not being instant cast
RS4: feels really good
RS5: could use a damage buff, i know its a stun and a ice field, but still falls way behind graveddiger

Shouts:
I really wanted to use then, but the way they are now i find myself wanting to use most of them instead of other skills

YSIM: not that bad, but i dont find myself wanting it over other heals
Rise: i dont plan on running minions, so i dont have much to say about it
NCSY: would be really good if the unblockable was shared to allies too, as it is now its just one more selfish skill that give us unblockable when we already have a lot of skills that are unblockable
Suffer: worst shout in my opnion, i really cant see a use for it as we have way better condi transfers, maybe making so it create a small ice field on the foot of targets hit by the skill? Would give us more ways to combo with the finishers that we are finally getting as well as keeping the theme of beeing the shout that chills
YAAW: again another selfish skills doing things that we already have a good access to, my suggestion would be to change the might to fury/retaliation and make it applies to allies too (the duration depending on the number of targets hit of couse)
CTTB: still feels as the cast time is too big, should decrease it to 60s

Traits:
Most traits feels really good but Augury of Death and Soul Eater are still lackluster

Augury of Death: i think the life siphon on shouts fits really bad on them, my suggestion would be to remove the siphon and make so shouts share up to 2 boons on us to nearby allies, it would be a way to improve necros support options by a little bit

Soul Eater: again the life siphon fits really bad, but i dont really have a suggestion on this one, maybe making so gravedigger corrupt a boon on use?

With that being said, i want to thanks you guys at the balance team for all the hard work, hopefully the feedback given on this thead can help to make reaper even better

Since I will not be able to play tomorrow, here is my Beta feedback. Its strictly PvP.

Greatsword

-As many people already said, biggest flaw of GS is its Auto attack. I don’t use it! Its way to slow. My suggestion is to reduce it to 2 hit attack and move the chill application to the second one.
-Gravedigger is fine as damage, but its slow animation again make it very hard to land. Most player already learned to dodge it. The only time I can land is if people don’t have endurance or I’m in the middle of a multi target brawl and all the visual effects hide the animation. I don’t know how to fix this, really the only way is to make it hit faster…
-Skill 3, Death Spiral I wont complain about this one. It fail to hit sometimes, but not as often as Gravedigger and the only real miss is the lost Life force.
-Nightfall is a good skill. Great even.
-Grasping Darkness, still not very reliable. I also think it need longer range. 900? Maybe 750!

Reaper Shroud

-Auto attack. Its good, but I have one suggestion. Why don’t you split the LF between attack 2 and 3. Giving better LF generation even if one of the attacks being dodged.
-Death’s Charge is buggy and messy. The speed and distance is good, but it fails to hit, sometimes fails to move or combination of both. Sometimes only hit once or twice.
And sometimes fail entirely and only turn my character to face the target at the end of the animation.
-Infusing Terror, we need to keep the stability outside of Shroud, please!
-Soul Spiral its a fine skill.
-Executioner’s Scythe, very good skills, but again as Gravedigger people already learned to dodge it and I fail to land much more often with each day playing. Please reduce cast time to 1s. Probably need a little damage buff as well. Or change the threshold to 66% and 33% HP.

Shouts

-YSIM: Need scaling with healing power, apart from that its fine.
-NCSY: Good one, can’t complain here.
-Rise: Love it
-Suffer: Haven’t used it. It’s just not on par with the rest. I will take Plague signet any day or something else.
-YAAW: Mixed feelings. The weakness is very good and long, but the might is just meh.
I would prefer to get something else, what about few sec of resistance+vigor?!
-CTTB: Make it 60sec cd!!!

Also need another stun breaker on one of the shouts. Either Suffer or maybe Rise.

Reaper traits

-Augury of Death: How much better it would be if it gives LF instead of HP. Or even better give us both hp steal and LF.
-Chilling Nova: Why should I pick this one? I don’t like it much. :/ Reduce the DC to 5sec. It rely on Crits and it has 10sec Cd right now…
-Relentless Pursuit: Fine trait.
-Shivers of Dread: I think its insignificant. I think it need additional option on this one.
-Chilling Force: Like it, useful
-Decimate Defenses: Like it, useful. On par with the one above.
-Soul Eater: Now this one I will never take. First of, stealing hp on this super slow weapon, who cares! And the bigger problem again is the slow attack which miss a lot. This feels strictly PvE trait.
-Cold Shoulder: Its good one.
-Blighter’s Boon: Nice one, especially with team mates that apply a lot of boons, like guardians.
-Deathly Chill: I didn’t like it very much. The damage still feels to low and the whole condition Reaper felt weaker then the Power Reaper.
-Reaper’s Onslaught: I used this the most. Something else that came to my mind. Is it possible this trait to be the reason why Death’s Charge is so buggy?!? Faster attacks break the skill/animation and it fail occasionally?!

PS: !!! Vital Persistence need to become baseline!!! Reaper is so restricted right now, we want more diversity in builds. THANKS in advance!!!

Well that’s it from me, hope its of some help.
Take care

Carlos.7915:

My feedback will be mostly on a PVE point of view:

Traits:
Most traits feels really good but Augury of Death and Soul Eater are still lackluster

Augury of Death: i think the life siphon on shouts fits really bad on them, my suggestion would be to remove the siphon and make so shouts share up to 2 boons on us to nearby allies, it would be a way to improve necros support options by a little bit

Soul Eater: again the life siphon fits really bad, but i dont really have a suggestion on this one, maybe making so gravedigger corrupt a boon on use?

With that being said, i want to thanks you guys at the balance team for all the hard work, hopefully the feedback given on this thead can help to make reaper even better

I think that instead of doing Life Siphon on Soul Eater, It instead adds a Lesser Signet of Vampirism on the target(With a 5iCD per target), it would act the same as the previous one but would be a lot more for party support.. And the Boon sharing on Necro would be lovely. I so badly hope that happens. Would make me only want to play necro and no other class ever again.

Of all of the specializations the Reaper is still the one I enjoy playing the most.

All in all it is well done. The theme is there, the skills are there. The play style works, and contrary to other people I can’t report any decline of my damage output. Full zerker still does around 11k with ca. 10 might stacks and around 17k with 25 might stacks on the ususal mobs in pve (15k on most mobs in HoT maps).

The thing that should really be improved is the auto attack on the greatsword. Even for the slow-hitting Reaper it’s too slow. Maybe scrap the second attack in the auto attack chain, maybe make the chill more noticeable or last longer … just something for it to feel more smooth. At the moment it isn’t worth using, sadly.

Personally I don’t mind the shouts.The only one I’m actively using is “You are all weaklings!”. The others are ok, I guess. One of the shouts gave stability in the first beta weekend (don’t remember which), and that was really nice to have on a Necromancer, as the class is still badly lacking stability. Why not make one normal shout give stability again? Especially “Suffer” isn’t that appealing to me at the moment.

Ashamir.9574:

Of all of the specializations the Reaper is still the one I enjoy playing the most.

All in all it is well done. The theme is there, the skills are there. The play style works, and contrary to other people I can’t report any decline of my damage output. Full zerker still does around 11k with ca. 10 might stacks and around 17k with 25 might stacks on the ususal mobs in pve (15k on most mobs in HoT maps).

The thing that should really be improved is the auto attack on the greatsword. Even for the slow-hitting Reaper it’s too slow. Maybe scrap the second attack in the auto attack chain, maybe make the chill more noticeable or last longer … just something for it to feel more smooth. At the moment it isn’t worth using, sadly.

Personally I don’t mind the shouts.The only one I’m actively using is “You are all weaklings!”. The others are ok, I guess. One of the shouts gave stability in the first beta weekend (don’t remember which), and that was really nice to have on a Necromancer, as the class is still badly lacking stability. Why not make one normal shout give stability again? Especially “Suffer” isn’t that appealing to me at the moment.

YaaW used to give one stack of stability for one second, because it had a one second cast time. Making it instant is strictly better.

silvermember.8941:

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

I don’t get the logic behind both of guy’s comments and maybe it is best that way.

Maybe they didn’t play BWE1. Anyone who played BWE1 should remember how clunky and awful that was when reduction wasn’t 100%.

Optimus Prime.8015:

Hmmm So I decided to try Try Silver-wastes today and Also V/Brink as well today

Firstly Odd thing is I am doing more dps to the new adds than I am to SW and there is a huge differece on G/D

1: Best grave digger I can do vrs Normal/Elites in SW is 5k ??
2: Best Grave digger I had in V/Brink is 9/10k (Same gear)

3: Overall dps seems lower than last BWE for reaper

Were you in the beginner celestial gear or something? I’ve been running full berserker, and the highest gravedigger I got was just over 21k on a regular veteran mob.

Before anything, i want to say. thanks Robert Gee!
Reaper needs DPS improvement, talking about PvE in this part, we need damage because we dont bring too much utility for our group, this is changing, its true, we have AoE blind on GS, projectile block with base necro(CPC), nice boon corruption, but we could get a more damage to worth be picked up in groups.
So, lets begin, long wall of text incoming, and sorry about any mistake, english is not my native language!

Reaper Shroud
1#Life Rend/Slash/Reap: removing after cast of first and second attack of AA chain would be great, atm our AA chain is about 2.25sec; without aftercast we should get every AA chain in 1.75sec
2#Death’s Charge: feels awesome, i just think we should get 100% projectile destruction while casting it, i dont know if its intended, but i was doing FOTM and got hit by “Pistol teleport” from Mai Trin several times even while using Death’s Charge
3#Infusing Terror/Terrify: its good, its strong, its the answer, for PvP, that necro needed
4#Soul Spiral: nothing to add
5#Executioner’s Scythe: should get some buff to feel more executioner… something like:
when above 50% HP~>1 X dmg; when below 50% HP~> 1.5 X dmg; when below 25% HP~> 2.25 X dmg ~ps: X=base damage

Greatsword
1#AA chain: same as Reaper Shroud’s AA chain, needs buff, in this case, keep this AA speed, but buff damage and buff the chill of Chilling Scythe from 2.5sec to 3.5sec~4sec.
2#Gravedigger: spam when enemy below 50% HP? no, please… put the reset’s threshold on 25%~33% and buff damage, yes… high number right? but our actual “wasted” time is 2 seconds, 1.25 castime+0.75aftercast, so 15k on this skill means 7.5k DPS – less spam and more damage!
3#Death Spiral: “okay” skill, good amout of life force when fighting trash mob and free stacks of vulnerability.
4#Nightfall: perfect, not only because of blind/growing AoE, but the animation is incredible!
5#Grasping Darkness: hmm, this skills its not working fine when you want to pull, sometimes if theres any object or a slight incline this skill will not work as intended, needs some polishment.

Skills
Every shout seems pretty lackluster, but “Rise!”
Heal
#“Your soul is mine!”: what about 10% life force instead of 5% on use? keeping the plus of 3% life force for each enemy.
Utilities
#“You are all weaklings!”: i dont know, theres something wrong about this skill, i know, cool idea, like a monster “breaking stun” then smash the poor enemy, but… this skill dont worth one utility slot; what about keeping 8sec weakness and break stun, but instead of 5 might+3 might per enemy, put on it a buff that improves our damage for X seconds and add at least 1 stack of stability for 10sec.
#“Suffer!”: 1 condition per enemy? no, thanks… i have plague signet! make it transfer 2 condition per enemy and we’re talking.
#“Nothing can save you!”: instead of removing 2 boons and put 5 vulnerability for each boon removed; make it corrupt 2 boons and put 5 vulnerability for each boon corrupted, reduce cooldown from 25sec to 20sec, but reduce the duration of unblockable attack from 4sec to 3sec
#“Rise!”: hey! this skill is good, but this should not be possible to dodge this skill… okay, its already unblockable, make it “undodgeable”!
Elite
#“Chilled to the bone!”: 90 seconds? even if your enemy cant breakstun out of it, dont worth take it as elite – just remember, enemies can still blink, same case as ice bow 5#
put it on 60 seconds cooldown and this will be a option
hey! this skill is bugged, when you interrupt it this skill go on full cooldown like Lich Form back in 2013~2014.
[EDIT]
Traits
#Augury of Death: buff the damage/heal
#Chilling Nova: slight buff to damage
#Soul Eater: make it passive life steal for each hit of GS
#Deathly Chill: make it scale better

So, Soul Reaping is pretty mandatory for Reaper because of Vital Persistance, but keep it this way, if your build is focused in Death/Reaper Shroud theres nothing wrong in Soul Reaping being a must have.

Bhawb.7408:

Quarktastic.1027:

[Decimate Defenses] needs more info. How long does the buff last? Is there a cap? What is the duration of each stack?

Currently there is no indicator whatsoever that this trait works, other than noticing more critical hits in combat, which is anecdotal at best.

This isn’t how that trait works. Whenever you hit an enemy with Vulnerability on them, your crit chance against that target is increased by 2% per stack. You do not get any buff on yourself for it, there are no stacks involved, it just checks for vuln and applies the crit.

I still feel like a bit of clarification is in order. If the trait read something like: “Striking a foe suffering from vulnerability increases your critical hit rate against that foe by 2% per stack of vulnerability” I wouldn’t have been confused. It’s a bit more wordy, but I feel like it conveys a clearer sense of what the trait actually does.

At this point, I really only have three things to complain about on Reaper itself. Two are traits, one is a skill.

1. Chilling Nova. I…just can’t justify taking this trait. Either I’m running Reaper’s Onaslaught or I’m running Augury of Death. The only time this is worth considering is against a lone boss who doesn’t use any soft CC’s. And due to how Defiance is changing, it loses a lot of its luster even then. I’m not sure what can be done with its current functionality, though. It may require a total rework to be an attractive choice. Perhaps apply a couple seconds of Slow when we chill, same cooldown?

2. Soul Eater. The Life Siphon on Gravedigger only isn’t making me want to use the trait. The siphon is way too weak to even consider this over Chilling Victory or Decimate Defenses. Plus, what is it trying to do for us? If I want sustain, I go with Chilling Victory. Damage? Decimate Defenses. Perhaps this trait could do something else, other than siphon health? What if it made Gravedigger grant you Protection or Retaliation per target hit? Or perhaps apply Weakness? What if it gave Gravedigger a benefit when hitting foes above 50% health (which could be any of the suggestions I already made)?

3. “Suffer!” This shout will always be compared to Plague Signet. There is just no way around it, since they are both instant-cast condition transfers with the same maximum. The question is, is the damage and Chill worth the stun break and always maximum power (plus Might and boon corruption when traited)? Not normally, no. Something needs to be done with this shout to make it not the “bad Plague Signet.” And just making it a stunbreak is not it. It needs to do something different from Plague Signet.

The greatsword is far too low to be of much use in PvP.
Skill 5 rarely is reliable. For me it rarely works on a consistent basis.
Skill 4 is so boring and I doubt people will stand in it, honestly it is so uneventful I don’t remember what it does, other than to use it and then us RS4.
Skill 3 too slow.
Skill 2 useful only at 50% which is great but getting to 50% might be a problem.
Skill 1 too slow, it should be faster.

Reaper Shroud is great, it just needs VP to be baseline to allow more options as a player.

Overall, Reaper is a great elite specialization but the GS and the lack of an alternate range power weapon will cause it to have issues in the long run.