Guild Wars 2

I could not for the life of me get Greatsword to work in spvp, it felt far too clunky. I ended up going back to the standard Dagger/Warhorn and Staff setup instead with good results. I think the specialization is in a good place but for me the greatsword is nearly as bad as the axe. I hope they review it going forward.

Here’s my Reaper feedback. I’ve played Reaper in PvE, mainly in Verdant Brink and I’ve also played some PvP with it. First just some general impressions:

In PvP I found that I was very vulnerable to being kited, and while out of shroud getting CC’d was still a big problem. I don’t think we should be invincible or anything, but those are some big weaknesses I currently see.

I still think we need a stability somewhere in our utilities that’s not attached to some elite skill. This could be put on a shout, or on one of the base Necro skills. Even making the Infusing Terror we have in Reaper Shroud continue pulsing when we leave would be a great help.

Other than this, I found that I was pretty reliant on Shroud to sustain myself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but going into Soul Reaping so I could take Vital Persistence pretty much felt like a must unless I was running a minion build where I could juggle conditions around with Unholy Martyr instead. I think this reliance hurts build diversity, and I’d like to suggest lowering the baseline lifeforce degeneration a bit to alleviate this (i.e. partially baselining Vital Persistence).

Another thing that became very apparent when playing Reaper is just how combo starved base Necro is, and this goes for both PvP and PvE. Greatsword and Reaper Shroud have good access to combos which are very fun to play with and adds a new layer of play to the combat. None of our other weapons (except staff) have this, and basic Death Shroud has nothing of the sort either. I think this is a good time to implement some of the combo finisher ideas the necro community have been wanting for a long time.

And now to comment more specifically on the weapon, shroud and skills. Let’s start with our weapon, the greatsword. I feel the greatsword is starting to get in a good spot and it has a good feel to it, but I still think there are tweaks to be made, mainly with the auto attack and the pull.

• The Auto Attack: The problem I see with this skill is mainly a PvP problem. Nobody’s gonna stand still long enough for you to hit them with the last attack in the chain. It takes too long to get there and then just apply a short amount of chill. This auto attack chain needs to be sped up, and adding a short chill to the 2nd part of the chain would not hurt either. Another option I see would be to make the last attack apply an ice field on the ground, similar to how the guardian hammer chain works.

• Gravedigger: This attack feels rewarding now. It’s slow, but it hits kitten hard. I am quite satisfied with how this attack works now. It could possibly be a little bit faster like other people have commented, but it still needs to have a decent tell so people don’t just get instagibbed out of nowhere in PvP.

• Death Spiral: It has a good effect, and is overall a solid skill. I still think the range of this skill needs to be increased though for better reliability.

• Nightfall: This field is huge and I love it. I don’t think this skill needs to be changed.

• Grasping Darkness: The life force is good, the chill is good, the damage is fine. My problems with this skill is that 600 range really doesn’t seem to cut it as a gap closer, and as a mass pull for gathering mobs the arc is too small in many situations. I don’t think it needs both of these things, but what I think it needs is a range increase and a ground target indicator so we can more accurately get an impression of what’s in range before we use it.

Now for Reaper Shroud. I feel it’s kinda in the same alley as greatsword. The Shroud has some good functionality, but needs some tweaking.

• The Auto Attack: Overall fairly satisfied with it. I still think a small damage increase wouldn’t hurt, but it’s not strictly necessary. Life force generation is a little on the low side. It’s good if you hit several enemies, but if you’re fighting several enemies chances are your life force is going down quite fast. You could increase the life force gain a little bit more I think.

• Death’s Charge: I like how this works, but it bugs out some times. If those are ironed out I think this skill will be fine.

• Infusing Terror: This is a really nice skill, but there is one thing that I’d really want to see changed. It needs to keep pulsing if we leave Shroud.

• Death Spiral: The burst poison application is nice. Not sure if it would be too much, but I’d love to see some life force generation on it. Overall it’s a pretty solid skill. The big problem I see with it is not really about the skill itself, but more about how Shroud works. It produces a whirl finisher, and most of our combo fields are dark fields which produce leeching bolts. Sadly we don’t benefit from this combo because they don’t heal through Shroud. I’d love to see this changed so we can get the full benefits of this skill.

• Executioner’s Scythe: I love the stun and ice field, it’s good utility, but the damage is too low. It needs a pretty significant buff to damage if it’s going to be used as high damaging execute attack, which I believe was the original intentions behind it.

Now for the shouts. I really like that many of them are instant cast now, that’s a great improvement.

• Your Soul Is Mine!: The healing part still feels a bit weak. I’d like to see it heal a little more or added healing per target hit. Other than that I think it’s good as a life force generating heal.

• You’re All Weaklings!: At first I wasn’t really a big fan of this one, but I’ve come to like it more. The weakness duration is pretty good, and the burst might is nice. My main complaint here is that the might duration is a bit short. I’d like to see it increased to the same duration as the weakness.

• Rise!: This one is great now, and if you hit lots of enemies and have it traited you can run around with lots of small damage absorbing minions. I love it.

• Nothing Can Save You!: This one is potentially quite powerful, but you only have so many slots on your utility bar. I want to suggest a change to this skill. I’ve been of the impression for a long time that Reaper needs to have a source of stability that doesn’t rely on being in Shroud or casting an elite skill with a long cooldown. I know it already does a lot of things, but this is the shout that I think is the most fitting for a stability per target hit effect. May I suggest the following: Standardise the unblockable to 5 seconds, and then add stability for each target hit instead of increasing the unblockable duration (or you could add stability to the current version and just increase the cooldown). I think it would make its way onto a lot more utility bars this way, and give reaper something it really needs.

• Suffer!: I feel like Plague Signet would just be more beneficial in most cases. What this skill should have is a stun break, and then some additional effect to help you in sticky situations. I’d suggest either a very short daze to interrupt skills, or a short immobilise or both. This would give you the option to use it offensively, or to try to get out of a bad situation. The immobilise would also make this skill helpful when trying to chase someone.

• Chilled To The Bone!: It’s great that it can’t be stunbroken, and it can be really really good when timed right. That being said, it’s really easy to dodge it and the cooldown is quite long for a skill that gets negated that easily. The stability seems to be kinda slapped on there for good measure. My suggestion here is to move the stability to a different shout (NCSY or Suffer seem like the best candidates for this) and then cut the cooldown to 60 seconds.

Trait feedback coming in a separate post.

For the short time that I’ve tried Reaper, I’m enjoying it! I enjoy “Rise!” alot. I do feel like my greatsword attacks seem a little slow. I felt most of my damage came from my shouts.

If Vital Persistence were baseline, I would absolutely run Spite/Reaper/Death Magic instead of Soul Reaping. Extra crit in shroud be kitten ed, I want more power and toughness in shroud but I don’t really want to give up Spite (It fuels Blighter’s Boon magnificently, plus has our only real damage modifier) but currently the only way to get Death Magic really in the build is to replace spite and we lose a lot of power that way with losing might stacking.

So, yeah. Please, please make VP baseline. Just about every Necro out there would love for that to happen. We’d actually see more varied builds, I think, if that were to happen. We’d still have spectral bunkers, of course, but other builds could be more interesting (also, side note….. Can someone please take a look at the useless Death Magic minors?)

Greatsword
• Skill combo 1 need a little more lf last hit is too slow for what it does
• Grave digger could be just 1 sec rest of the skill is ok
• Death spiral is ok
• Nightfall is ok
• Grasping darkness is ok ( cool down reduction to 25 would be also good)
Shouts
• You are all weaklings: is ok
• Suffer: need to transfer at least two conditions per foe
• Nothing can save you: unlockable should last longer or make it party wide or add quickness for 4 sec
• Rise : is ok
• Chilled to the bone: reduced cast to 1 sec rest is ok
Reaper shroud skills
• Skill 1 is ok
• Death charge: is ok
• Infusing terror : should pulse out of shroud
• Soul spiral: is ok
• Executioners scythe: need a little more damage and cast reduced to 1 sec
Traits
• Augury of death: Life siphon could be a little higher rest is ok
• Chilling nova: is ok
• Relentless pursuit : add regeneration like warrior one

• Soul eater: Siphon is way too low make it apply to all great swords skills
• Chilling victory: could use 1% more lf but is good
• Decimate defenses: is ok

• Blighter’s boon: need more healing and 1% more life force
• Deathly chill: is ok
• Reapers onslaught: attack faster is nice but the rest of the skill feels lacking

Note: reaper shroud drains too fast, it depends too much of vital persistence this should be base, If this is made baseline we should get a trait that gives life force while in combat 1% every 2 sec something like signet of undead.

Here’s my feedback on the Reaper traits.

Generally I think we have some really good traits in this traitline, but there are some that are underperforming. And the grandmaster slot has very little to offer for any power build that doesn’t capitalise on Shroud, so I will try to address that.

First a look at the adept traits.

• Augury of Death: I actually like this trait now. The shouts are a bit better than in the last betas, and the small heal for each target you hit is nice.

• Chilling Nova: This trait needs to change in order for it to be worthwhile. If we’re gonna have this long ICD it needs to proc on critical hits with no added requirements. Even then I think we’d we well off with an additional effect, such kitten extra damage against chilled foes.

• Relentless Pursuit: It’s fine in its current state, see no need for change here.

In the master tier I think we have a really good trait, a decent trait with good potential and one trait that really underperforms.

• Soul Eater: This trait just can’t compete with the other two, and I really don’t have any specific ideas on how to fix it, but I’ll just trow out some ideas: Gravedigger corrupts boons, 10% increased damage with greatsword, chill and deal damage to foes around you when you swap to greatsword in combat. These are just some ideas, hope it helps.

• Chilling Victory: It’s pretty good. The ICD is a necessary evil but not too harsh, the might duration is a bit low though. I think an 8 second base duration would be more appropriate.

• Decimate Defenses: This is awesome. Needs to stay as it is.

In the grandmaster tier we have two traits that benefit Shroud a lot, and one that’s supposed to benefit condi. None of these traits really bring much benefit to a power build that doesn’t want to sit in Shroud.

• Blighter’s Boon: This is a powerhouse of a trait. When paired up with the Spite traitline it really brings some sustain. If you manage to hit a lot of enemies with your YAAW shout, this will also build you quite a lot of life force. It gets even better if you have allied players with you pumping out boons. It’s very strong and definitely deserves the grandmaster spot. I think it’s in a really good spot right now, and I don’t currently think it needs any changes.

• Deathly Chill: This is supposed to be the condi trait, but I find it underwhelming. It makes your chill deal damage similar to Terror, which is nice, but chill is such a common debuff that you can easily end up overwritten by other chills. The damage from it is decent, but nothing spectacular. What I would like to see on this trait is some additional effect, and I have a couple of different ideas for this. The one I thought of that I liked the most is that you apply a group buff to yourself and allies around you in combat that increases all outgoing damage (power and condi) by 5% against chilled foes. This way necros that don’t want to trait heavily into shroud gets a great beneficial trait to choose that also buffs nearby allies, and this trait will not get nullified by other players applying chill to the same target.
  Some other ideas would be that applying chill also corrupts a boon (would open for some really cool builds in PvP), or that applying chill also applies an additional condition like torment (more condi pressure).

• Reaper’s Onslaught: In any situation where you need sustain I think Blighter’s Boon will be the go-to trait. If you don’t need sustain and you’re just looking for dps, is auto attacking from Shroud what you want to be doing? Maybe? I don’t know how the numbers add up. It’s not a bad trait, but it doesn’t do much unless your build will be auto attacking a lot from Shroud. If this trait granted you a short burst of Quickness on Shroud entry I think this could be an important trait for glassy necro burst builds, or any Shroud flashing build.

I hope my thoughts and suggestions are considered and will be of help to the team that’s working on this specialisation. Thanks for all the good work you do, and I’ve had a blast playing the Reaper and look forward to playing more at launch!

I actually love the fact that gravedigger recharges 100% when a mob is below 50%. It feels so satisfying to me in pve and is one of the main reasons I enjoy Reaper. It feels like a minigame where I try to hit every single gravedigger I can while still avoiding attacks, and when I was testing it out soloing dungeons it was a great way to kite certain bosses when they hit the 50% threshold. Chill + Gravedigger weaving was awesome, I really hope that it doesn’t change.

The biggest issue I had with reaper had to do with greatsword auto attacks not feeling worth it at all. Maybe make it faster since the damage output didn’t feel worth the amount of time it took to swing.

Just need PvP changes for the greatsword. It doesn’t need more damage, just something to help actually land those attacks on players /slightly/ more often.

Gravedigger does about comparable damage to hundred blades or coalescence of ruin, but I find it far harder to land in PvP than both of those skills.

I’ve really enjoyed seeing how Reaper has changed over the course of the three weekends. I’m coming from the perspective of a primarily PvE player, so keep that in mind..

I’m excited to have a durable melee, as that’s one of the things that I enjoy on Necro vs. other professions, and Reaper is a huge boost to that. Also, getting several field/finisher combos within the class really improved the experience. Shamelessly stealing the nice formatting above:

Greatsword
• Autoattack is very slow, I often end up swapped through skills for combos and didn’t let it finish. This may simply be due to how long anything less than champions or some elites live, though.
• Gravedigger feels like it needs slightly bigger range. It’s awkward to have enemies who are visually being hit by the tip of my sword not taking damage. The Love the damage, though. Cast time feels fine to me.
• Death Spiral feels good.
• Nightfall isn’t as useful defensively as a one-second blind field like our well, but the ability to always have a field to combo off of is worth it.
• Grasping Darkness still fialed to hit a few times, though I think that may have been myself or the target moving out of range. The range does feel fairly short.

Shouts
• Your Soul is Mine: The LF is nice, but I usually ended up running a longer CD hel with utility like Consume Conditions or Well of Blood for Cleansing Bolts.
• You Are All Weaklings: Very nice might boost and weakness. The might is pretty short, but the cooldown is, too. I suspect this will be used more solo than in a group setting, though maybe have more frequent access to vuln will give it the nod over other choices.
• Suffer: I always like to have a condi cleans handy. I’m used to using the well, so it took some getting used to relying on a single button press instead of the pulsing cleanse, but this felt like it worked well.
• Nothing Can Save You: This feels more niche, especially if I’m running Axe/Focus as the second weapon set instead of staff. I didn’t use it much, but the numbers seem fine for when it is needed.
• Rise : I was surprised how strong this ended up being. The minions had the usual AoE problem but lasted long enough that it felt worth pressing every time. I actually messed around a bit soloing in Arah and they made a big difference.
• Chilled to the Bone: I think this may be my go-to when not running Spectral Mastery for Lich. Part of Reaper’s weakness is the amount of time you need to expose yourself to get off a Gravedigger in a crowd, and this helped with that nicely.

Reaper Shroud
• The Autoattack is fine and plays nice with several of our traits. I’d like to see a bit more life force on it, as a lot of the time even running VP it was hard to stay in shroud for long given incoming damage in melee. Some that is certainly me needing to dodge better, but on longer fights I can see myself getting forced out quickly, and in short fights you’re only in there long enough to combo off and get something into Gravedigger reset range anyway.
• Death’s Charge: Mobility, a different finisher, and a low CD.. not much to say here. Love the frost armor.
• Infusing Terror: I actually thought the stability kept going out of shroud already. Would be nice.
• Soul Spiral: My favorite button in Shroud. Good combo potential. Always happy to press this.
• Executioners Scythe: A field we don’t get anywhere else, and probably our best one to combo off of. I often used this more as an opener as an execute, the throw out some chilling bolts, but in a longer fight it’ll be back up when the boss is low and you can then start to whirl off it with Gravedigger, too. Also, like Chilled to the Bone, it’s great to have a stun to let you get off your harder hitters safely on non-bosses.

Traits
• Augury of Death: Not sure I even noticed the siphon, but if you’re using several shouts it’s a standard cooldown reduction option.
• Chilling Nova: I didn’t really notice this go off.. does it even have a visual? In any case, it’s some extra damage and chill.
• Relentless Pursuit: Seems fine when it’s needed. I suspect I’d like it more in PvP.

• Soul Eater: I didn’t play around with this too much. If the reduction is per target hit, seems fine. If it’s 3% per swing, that feels low. Agree that the siphon here feels out of place. Maybe if it was 5-10% of damage dealt by Gravedigger?
• Chilling Victory: This would be a great option for a more Shroud-focused build. Also didn’t try it very much.
• Decimate Defenses: One of my favorite talents. The option to swap in some alternate gearsets and still be able to reach high levels of crit has opened up all kinds of possible builds, and I love it. Necro had this to an extent with the 50% crit in Shroud, but this applying outside of Shroud makes all the difference. It does mean that if you run low precision gear you’re not always going to have the high crit rate on enemies that don’t live long (and there’s that heartbreak when you see a 4k Gravedigger instead of 10k+), but being able to not run super glass cannon all the time and still be able to hold your own when it matters is welcome. I’m curious to see how much uptime this will actually get, as I found that most of my pugs the last few days had some difficuly keeping vuln up, and while we’re very good at it, you can’t keep it on everything all the time.

• Blighter’s Boon: Good sustain option, should be great for groups, and somewhat addresses the lack of healing in Shroud as a potential raid concern, especially with Herald on your side. I wonder if it will be enough, and what non-Reaper Necros will do, though.
• Deathly Chill: I haven’t tried a Reaper condi build yet.
• Reapers Onslaught: Feels good. It’s great to be able to combo off several times in an encounter if you can stay in Shroud long enough to pick off some weaker guys.

Like several people above, I do feel that Shroud ended pretty quickly at times, but as noted above I didn’t stack as many supporting traits as I could, so if you take all the LF gen you can it may be fine.

Gear
I tried several variations on gear.. full zerk, valk armor and zerk trinkets, cavalier armor and zerk trinkets, and cavalier armor with a mishmash to get crit as close to 30% as possible (group with fury, but not necessarily spotter/a banner). For running around solo, cavalier with zerk trinkets seemed to work best (I’m a little slow on the dodges at times, especially if it’s hard to see enemy animations under legendary effects/other players’ spells flying around). I’m planning on sacrifcing the power to start with that, and will just swap trinkets out depending on if I’m solo or grouped.

Traitlines
I almost always paired Reaper with Spite. Given that Spite gives you vuln on chill and pulsing vuln in Shroud, as well as the 20% damage below 50% health which meshes well with Gravedigger, I never wanted to take it off my bar for a DPS focused build. I tried each of the other choices for the last slot.

Soul Reaping is a good default choice. I generally took Unyielding Blast as I was using Traveller Runes for movespeed already. I took Spectral Mastery if running Lich, or VP if not. Generally, I found less of a need for Lich as a damage cooldown – I may be more inclined to take it over CttB in high level fractals or the like where it’s not always a good idea to melee the boss. Losing the range on Shroud may make this more attractive. Finally, as I was already getting crit from Decimate Defenses, either of the other GMs were good options, but I mainly used Dhuumfire since I was using shroud to combo RS5 + RS4 more often than not, so the stun break may not be up when needed. It added a surprisingly good amount of damage with no Condi Damage on gear, and I can see it being a lynchpin for Condi Reaper.

Curses was underwhelming as a power build. It has some nice utility in Plague Sending and RS2 corrupting boons, and Weakening Shroud is good, but it seems more suited to a hybrid or condi build.

Blood Magic was great for sustain as always and is likely to be run in groups. The first row doesn’t have much choice unless you’re running dagger or bleeding sigils on your weapon sets. All of themasters and GMs are good options depending on what you’re running in the rest of your build.

Death Magic was actually my favorite pairing by the end of the weekend. It’s a bit more selfish than Blood Magic, but keeping in mind that we’re a bruiser that had slower skills, the extra defense was welcome. I mainly ran Shrouded Removal, Deadly Strength (helps with the power loss from running cavalier over valk or zerk armor), and Corrupter’s Fervor. Every chill adding 3 vuln from Spite kept that up easily. Unholy Sanctuary is also an option, and should be good with new content while you’re figuring out what to dodge, or if you’re going for more sustain.

I think that’s about all I have.. very excited for release!

For those who ran Reaper on both PvP and PvE, how do the two experiences compare?

I am curious to hear your feedback because greatsword, Shroud, and shouts favor 1vMany encounters whereas a lot of the typical Necro PvP weapons and utilities are more single target use; E.G., Signets, corrupt boon, most Spectral, and most weapons. Staff, wells, marks, CPC and Epi, and DS AoE.

My impression is that 1v1 or 1v2 should still favor Current Necromancer builds due to the type of encounters and I do not remember Arenanet touting Reaper as a PvP solution. From memory, the new specializations are meant to support the new content.

Anchoku.8142:

For those who ran Reaper on both PvP and PvE, how do the two experiences compare?

I am curious to hear your feedback because greatsword, Shroud, and shouts favor 1vMany encounters whereas a lot of the typical Necro PvP weapons and utilities are more single target use; E.G., Signets, corrupt boon, most Spectral, and most weapons. Staff, wells, marks, CPC and Epi, and DS AoE.

My impression is that 1v1 or 1v2 should still favor Current Necromancer builds due to the type of encounters and I do not remember Arenanet touting Reaper as a PvP solution. From memory, the new specializations are meant to support the new content.

Reaper actually does pretty well in PvP, believe it or not. I would recommend taking a tanky amulet (Soldier for me) because of this: Reaper shines in team fights. You can hold a good portion of the enemy team at bay while your team tends to mist essence in stronghold, or captures points in conquest, or goes after lord in stronghold/foefire. As for PvE… Well. Reaper crashes through old content mobs (myself and a friend running tempest ran through CM story real quick to compare to previous runs and it went. just. beeeeautifully) and it does a hell of a number on new mobs as well (that same friend and a random ranger, I think, were tackling a champion Coztic and then I showed up as a reaper and the frog, well… .croaked)

10/10, would recommend playing as a PvE Boss

I’m very pleased with reaper, by far my favorite elite. I’m swapping to main my necro in HoT. But I do have two change I’d like to suggest. The first is a graphical one. In my opinion one of the biggest issues Necro suffers, is despite having a pretty good amount of team support now, only none of them are easy to see. Reaper is already getting labeled as the most selfish class in the expansion. Even the new projectile destruction is very easy to miss. So please Add some kind of clear visual to necro support. Every one can see when a guardian puts up a reflect wall, party/raid members need to see what their Necro has done for them.

Finally combo finishers and fields. Necro’s are still lacking in the comboing area, a blast finisher on a shout would be very helpful to solving this problem. I’d suggest “suffer” as a good candidate. But anything that would let necros contribute more in the comboing system would be very useful.

I actually like the idea of reducing Gravedigger’s cast time but making it reset its cooldown say only 2 times in a row or so to balance the PvE DPS boost.

Just so the skill could occasionally land in SPvP. It should be hard to land, but right now it’s basically impossible and doesn’t do damage as reliably as even comparable skills like hundred blades.

Edit:

Gave it some thought. Here’s how I’d change the GS specifically:

Auto attack:
Applies 1s Chill on 1st and 2nd swing, 3rd swing happens in a larger AoE than the previous swing (~220 radius), perhaps with a frost nova graphic added to the impact.

Gravedigger:
Cast time reduced to 0.75 or 1s, radius increased to 220, only resets twice from striking a low health target.

Maybe it sounds like a lot, but GS necros are mostly getting walked on in SPvP atm. Using a dagger is just night and day more effective. I suspect it will remain that way, but would like to see the gap narrow.

This would also address the boring GS gameplay when grinding down large boss health pools after 50%

Quarktastic.1027:

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.

Who cares about solo pve? U will not fight raidbosses solo, so u will never spam gravedigger if u play solo cause mobs die fast enough.

Right?

Abit more feedback about traits:

Spite minors.
Death´s embrance and siphoned power, both of these traits are pure solo traits.

Reapers and necromancers need more dps in partys. It would be nice if u could change at least one of those traits to make them an dps increase in partys.

Reaper: Deathly chill, seems a little bit too weak imo.
Shivers of Dead, looks abit out of position, a small dmg increase dealed to chilled enemys could be added or? 5% for example.

Some few, small dmg multipliers could be added to blood/death magic and curses.

As a reaper its so easy to get 100% critchance, we don´t rly need minors like the new “target the weak”. Change it back to it´s old version?

This could also add more trait variety (and increase reapers support). If we don´t have to use Sould Reaping.

U could split reaper builds into more RS based (hybrid/sinister) and more GS/weapon based (direct dmg/berserker) builds for example.

The leap on RS2 seems to be spotty to land, but it may just be getting lost in Necro actually having some flashy graphics that I’m not used to.

The whirls on GS2 and RS4 make life very nice, and it feels great to finally be able to meaningfully contribute to the combo system.

Reaper GS feels much more at home on 2-3+ than on single mobs/bosses, and that is, from the content you’ve provided, precisely what was intended.

RS definitely feels more ambivalent about attacking a group, and doesn’t feel like a kitten against a big boss like the GS can.

That said:
Reaper GS just doesn’t work in single-mob raid units like we’ve seen so far. RS can survive nicely as it has slightly better range than GS, and traited to Death Magic gets that little bit more toughness. GS itself though is suicide, because of the shorter melee range, lack of mobility and mitigation. I wonder if changing the Beyond the Veil to be a 2-second Aegis would be a better solution(down from a 3 sec Protection).

GS5 still doesn’t work on slopes, and actually seems to be less reliable than the last weekend, it would:
- Not do anything at all because the mob was on a hill(I.E. the switchback paths). On hills, at least this 90% of the time, otherwise 50% of the time. It seems to have a max angle it works at, and that angle is less than the slopes on the hill.

When it did hit:
- Knock them over where they stood, 20% of the time
- Pull them halfway and knock them over, 50% of the time
- Pull them all the way and knock them over, but then offset them 300-500 either side of my stationary char. 15% of the time when it did work – This only happened on flat ground.
- Work as intended 20% of the time.

Well now,

The good:
- overall the Reaper feels and looks great
- RS is awesome
- GS 3-5 are great
- Chilled to the bone is my new fav elite

The bad:
- GS 1 (auto attack) is too sluggish and the final swing is even worse
- GS 2 while having great potential has a huge tell and is way too easily avoided
- outside of Elite shout use Chill is unreliable
- The stun on RS 5 might be bugged as in not working, im not 100% on that
- GS 5 is pretty unreliable ( but great when wai)

Suggestions:
- add a bit of Chill on all GS 1 hits
- share Shout buffs with teammates, as it stands the Reaper remains the class who only buffs himself
– Rise can give Protection to allies
– YAAW shares the Might with allies
– YSIM can share healing with allies

The death spiral animation clips through the ground pretty badly. Not only that, but the dark energy as a whole is very hard to see. I think the dark energy should be tighter on the sword during the beginning of the animation, and then shoot forward for the lunge.

Other than that, reaper feels very good to me. Soul eater still feels very clunky to me with the life steal on grave digger. I think it should also give life force on hit.

Greatsword : Skills 2-5 are incredibly fun (albeit #5 is still a little bugged); The AA needs some loving though. Make it as fast/slow as Warrior Hammer, and you can keep the “slow but deadly” theme (slower than all other GS) but have it at a usable speed.

Shouts : Shaping up nicely. Basically no complaints there anymore.

RS is amazing; However, AA could need a minor dmg buff, and Executioners Scythe is worse than Gravedigger damagewise, even below 25% HP, so buffing the damage (or add an instant finisher on it like Daredevils elite + a cooldown increase IF it is used to finish X) ) would be nice.

Deaths Charge is still slightly bugged, having a completely wonky amounts of hits on it; sometimes it hits like it should, sometimes just 2-3 times.

And I still think there should be a skill that teleports you to an enemy if they are chilled or crippled to show the movie-monster theme of being slow and never catching up… until the poor victim stumbles, then it is suddenly right next to it.

The problem with increasing GS autoattack speed is that it’ll end up doing significantly higher DPS than RS auto. With the RS auto now being melee instead if ranged, I don’t see that as being a good idea from a PvE standpoint.

So I think the attack speed on the GS auto should be increased whilst the damage coefficients are decreased so you end up with the same DPS, like what they did to the ele’s lightning whip.

Just a few things off the top of my head. PvE PoV.

Greatsword

• GS1: Feels too slow. Can use a cast time reduction on the 3rd chain.
• GS2: Remove useless second cleave animation. Absolutely no reason to keep it.
• GS3: Can use a damage buff / cast time reduction.
• GS4: Make it pulse every second. 2s is just too long imo.
• GS5: Fails half the time. Maybe it’s time to turn it into an actual gap closer? Lupi’s “shadow walk” comes to mind.

Reaper’s Shroud

• RS1: Increase damage coefficients to 0.7/0.7/1.4 to bring it in line with GS auto.
• RS2: Turn this into an evade. Probably should’ve been an evade in the first place.
• RS3: Make it continue pulsing outside of shroud.
• RS4: Projectile destruction anyone?
• RS5: Increase damage coefficients to 2.0/3.0/4.0? to bring it in line with Gravedigger sub 50%.

Traits

• Chilling Nova: Reduce ICD to… 5s? Tone down the chill/damage if necessary.
• Shivers of Dread: Waste of a slot in PvE (only affects a grand total of 3 skills). Add a 7-10% damage modifier against chilled foes.
• Soul Eater: Needs an additional effect to bring it in line with other classes’ GS traits. Notice that this is the only GS trait with 2 effects instead of 3. Revert lifestealing change.

Shouts
…

OlliX.1705:

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

I did play BWE1 and yes it was awkward that it wasn’t 100%. My point is that agains foes with high health gravedigger gravedigger becomes a second auto. and in those cases only pressing 2 ain’t more fun then only pressing one. Those fights happen quite often. In most other cases I like gravedigger.

I have enjoy testing the Reaper this weekend and I like where the shouts are going i would of just like to seen some of them cause fear. Or as a suggestion Augury of Death makes all shouts inflict 1 sec of fear to all foes hit. That way AoD would work well with Shivers of Dread as i would of thought with Shivers of Dread being a base minor trait i would of gotten access to more fear but as i said that what i would of liked

After playing the reaper this time my feelings about it have remained the same since the last beta weekend. It is almost perfect. Massive fun to play with a lot of options available to us to toy around with. In terms of damage the reaper is highly versatile very capable of going full condi, glasscannon power, tanky, minion master, minor support, and hybrid.

With that said I do still have some issues. Even with soul eater being changed the way it was I don’t see any real reason to take it over the other two traits. Even when going full tanky and using a greatsword I’d rather use Decimate Defenses or Chilling Force. I don’t know, I’m just not so keen on that trait. If others are really enjoying that trait please let me know. I almost feel like it might be more valuable giving 1% life force on foe struck with gravedigger. Or on a more control side, strip a boon on gravedigger. Perhaps that’s too much? Maybe? I’ll let you guys think it through.

The other problem I had with reaper is the heavy reliance on Vital Persistence. Although it wasn’t 100% needed on all builds, it was really hard justify not taking it on any of my builds. Even the ones more focused on the greatsword over reaper’s shroud. Although the 15% skill recharge wasn’t necessary the 50% Degeneration Decrease was! Perhaps rolling 25% of that into the base shroud could remedy this or perhaps the full 50% should just become baseline. More testing is required.

There is always the last issue I run into while playing the reaper. And that’s the necromancer itself. Although the necromancer has gotten far better over the years and has seriously been ramped up in these past few months it still struggles with several issues that seriously hinder the reaper. I don’t know if the necromancer’s weaknesses are enough to destroy the reaper’s desirability or usage, but my bet would be no.

Over all, I absolutely love the elite specialization. Completely did a 180 on it from when you first showed it. My top 4 professions from GW1 where Necromancer at #1, Mesmer at #2, Dervish #3 and Ritualist #4. I’ve already got epidemic from the mesmer which was the primary type of build I loved on them and now I have my necro dervish. All I need now is my ritualist elite specialization for the necromancer and I’ll never have to play any other profession ever again. O_O

Minions burn too fast in the new content. I finally had to switch things and shelve the MM because they just die way too fast in HoT content.

Chiming in because I see so many people asking for changes to a couple of the traits that include an increase in damage against chilled foes -

Currently all of the traits that apply a flat damage increase only effect direct damage and not condition damage (e.g. Close to Death). This distinction between direct and condition damage effectively makes traits that give a flat damage increase useless for condimancers. While it’s unfair that condition damage isn’t considered “true” damage or some kitten by the devs, that seems to be the way they roll on this issue. If a trait increases damage, it should increase ALL damage, power or condition based.

Jackalrat.5493:

Just need PvP changes for the greatsword. It doesn’t need more damage, just something to help actually land those attacks on players /slightly/ more often.

Gravedigger does about comparable damage to hundred blades or coalescence of ruin, but I find it far harder to land in PvP than both of those skills.

It needs chill durations to be longer.

I really enjoyed Reaper this time around. The changes made significantly improved the playability of the class. I will say that I felt a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to use one of the core aspects of the new elite, shouts, while in reaper shroud. Especially considering there are descriptions that suggest alternate functionality while in shroud for some of the shouts.

It’s odd to me to have to leave shroud to use my utility skills, but I suppose it’s always been that way with necro. I was just hoping this would not be the case with reaper.

I’m a little worried that dagger + warhorn/focus/dagger will end up being better than the Greatsword just for consistency’s sake in PVP if there aren’t more % damage modifiers added, Gravedigger doesn’t hit twice (for half damage each) or have a reduced aftercast, or Death Spiral doesn’t do more damage. I’d really like to see an evade frame on Death Spiral, or see it get some Lifesteal back from Soul Eater.

This is probably too late in the game, but axe animations can be changed quickly eh? :

I’d really love for the animation of Gravedigger to have an upswing, then a downswing, with the up hitting the target .5s or so after the start of the animation, the the downswing being the 1.25s after start. The upswing doing 1/4 or 1/5 of the damage, then the downswing doing the rest would make the swing feel better weighted and balanced between feast and famine based on dodging a lengthy and well telegraphed skill. The opponent could still dodge the majority of damage, but the Reaper still gets something in, rather than spending 1.25 (probably 1.5 or so with aftercast) for nothing.

- An animation that looks like the character is dragging the flat of the greatsword up towards the target with the upswing, then slamming it down on the… downswing would look great for this. Digging the grave, then putting the target into it. (Also, what a fantastic place for a blast finisher, that second swing where the sword is slammed down onto the ground?)

The current double swing whirl animation looks amazing… but awkward for what the skill does. There’s only one hit, rather than two, and the name of the skill is Grave digger not Grave trimmer.

Is it actually intended that vulnarability is not increasing chill damage?

PvP only.

Greatsword:

- The trait not only has strong competition but the lifesteal amount is laughable. Give it a quickness proc maybe ?

- 1c: I landed it once, it was a team effort though. I can’t land that alone, unless my opponent chose to, which is usually bad news. The frost aura around a big two handers wasn’t enough of a tell so it has to take 0.75s ?

- 3: That thrust could land faster and/or farther.

- 5: between having to properly face our target(s), the 0.75s cast time and the travel time, the range feels more like 450 than 600 to me. And that’s when the grass doesn’t get in the way… Just pull no matter what, I’m so tired of all the terrain bugs that I try to play without any kind of projectile.

Overall, it is getting better. But it’s still too slow. Last time I couldn’t stand it after an hour. This time, I used it for 2 days until I switch back to dagger/warhorn. After that, I must say I missed GS in a few occasion, but nowhere near enough to take it.

Shouts:

- Augury trait: we are not that good in team-fights to deserve harsh punishment in 1v1. If the additional effect can’t be boon stripping, I would at least prefer life force over health: being a team-fighter means my team will most likely cover the healing part.

- Rise: finally we have our first active defense skill, if I may say so. I love it, dearly.

- Nothing can save you: The cast time works against its utility: when I see my opponent block, I want to instantly activate it so my attack in motion hit. Is it the puny shout damage that warrant a cast time ? Then, for the love of Grenth, get rid of it.

- Suffer: I suffer more than my enemies for having this on my bar. Make it matter!

- Chilled to the bone: 10 sec of stability is nice, but 2 stacks only ? Make the amount of stack scale per foe struck. Also, about the cast time: 0.75 is telegraphed, so what would you call 1.25 ?

Base necro:

- 2-3% life force degen baseline.
- Focus 5 on 0.75 cast time.
- Axe 1 and 2: increase damage by 10% every single patch until other professions start complaining, then remove 10%. Or rework its benefits.
- Dagger 4 and 5 don’t give any life force. Dagger 5 is hard to land.
- Death Shroud 1 should either hit twice or get its cast time and after cast halved to not lag too far behind Reaper Shroud in term of traits.

And finally: dark combo fields are really lack luster. We have tons of it, and Shroud can’t benefit from lifesteal. I think this area needs some improvements.

I haven’t tested reaper yet until last 3 hours. Someone else bragged really hard about it, And I thought why skip it! I must say i’m amazed. Animations are great, it brings new tools to the necro, and more importantly good continous dps is within reach now for necro (dagger/X + greatsword). What I love the most is reaper nr 2. That leap + damage is amazing. Necro finally has a usefull leap. Omg that has been one of my biggest gripes with the profession. Now I can leap all around, even out of combat (ty critters). Nr 4 is also amazing, especially bringing a whirl finisher to necro.

Perhaps the thing i miss the most (when playing reaper) is the 600 range aoe’s, especially life transfer. Reaper aoe’s are also big (imroved already i read somewhere), but not as crazy. But it’s no big deal tbh.

Reaper nr 3 is brillant way to add both fear and stability in one skill. And timing is more important then ever with that skill, promoting skillfull play.

So yeah, just mostly a short but positive post about reaper (I haven’t played necro in over 2 years, and I now definitely will. I think that says enough)

This is from a purely PVE stand point and focuses on that content. This is just a suggestion based on my time playing reaper. These aren’t to do with core aspects just the reaper, there are plenty of posts regarding that throughout the forum.
DS 1 This is good and does an ok amount of damage in AOE (It seems that with single target especially in the new areas and Living world areas it doesn’t hit that high at all.) Maybe a 2-5% Damage base increase.

*DS 2 * This skill works well apart from that fact that it charges me off to any way it wants to. It sometimes goes forward or to either side. Maybe have it always go forward or stay still if we are holding kitten? Not too sure where to go with this.

DS 3 The first part works well, but the second part of the skills that gives us chill and fear doesn’t seem to work that well from a pve standpoint maybe if we can get a damage output on CHILL that is something like torment where if they move while chilled it does damage.

DS 4 Works Extremely well apart from the poison doesn’t last all the long. Would love to see a small increase to the poison and an increase of damage so it’s would do around 1.1k to 1.4k a tick rather than 228-448 from which I’ve seen with no condi damage.

DS 5 feels a bit weak compared other skills that we have such as gravedigger. There is also a massive skew from 800 to 3.4k but it needs a base buff or more damage or the CD needs to be moved down to 15 seconds.

GS 1 This seems ok but would love to see the LF generation double.
Part 1 from 1% to 2% *
*Part 2 from 1% to 3%
Part 3 from 3% to 6% , Numbers might be high but it should help with life force.
This would make Death shroud last long so we would not have to be forced to use vital persistence as we get more life force.

GS 2 This skill works, there have been people that have been complaing about it not doing damage or the damage is somewhat lower than BWE2. I haven’t had this problem apart from enemies in the new area and living World areas. Would love if the 1.25 sec swing time was halved when an enemy was below the 50% mark and then halved again when below 25%.

GS 3 Feels bad and should be changed, maybe change to 8 stacks of vulnerability and 4 stacks of poison/chill. But right now it a skill that should never be used unless you need vulnerability which in RS we are adding every time we hit near.

GS 4 DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING
GS 5 it’s not reliable at all. Seems buggy at times, doesn’t pull the full distance sometimes. Make it 900 Range. Or even keep it 600 range but make it 360 degrees pull.

Shouts REMOVE CAST TIMES SIMPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And fix augury of death it does not work at all.
“Suffer” the 30 seconds cool down seems kind of high as Augury of Death currently is not working. If it’s going to stay at the 30 seconds range maybe change it up. Ive put some suggestions below.
Suggestion 1
• It should send all conditions in an AOE range for that amount of time.
Suggestion 2
• For each condition sent we should receive 3% LF Generation if LF is full then gives us Health straight to our POOL.
“Nothing can save u” feels like a pvp skill, vulnerability should not be a problem in any PVE group with RS or GS. Maybe change to Chill and Vuln as that’s what the reapers meant to do.

• “Chill To The Bone”*, just give us a carbon copy of ICE BOW 5.

The augury change has made shouts feel a lot better across the board. I just feel as though Suffer could use some minor tweaks to make it more reliable at removing conditions against one target.

The GS is a really fun and interesting weapon but I fear it won’t be used outside of PvE, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that we’ll be using dagger/warhorn in PvP for the rest of this game’s life time. Its just too clunky and slow, even if it does hit like a truck, Reaper’s Shroud abilities are all the cleave we really need.

Tho I hope the Reaper stays as is I predict 1 Nerf and hope for more qol chnages.

Predicted nerfs: Less Poison on RS#4

QoL: Better AA on GS and even on RS and an Overhaul on Shouts in general: dmg, effect,CD’s etc… they arent just there yet and very few of them will replace Core Necro skills.

I have more to say but this is it in base. Also I had tons of fun on Reaper again.. havent had fun on Necro for a year.

Some Additional Feedback

Two small things I would like to add,

Cosmetic side of things

1: In reaper form I LOVE how it keeps your existing Skin/Outfit and then changes the colour to match can we please PLEASE get this to include the Back piece !!!!!

2: Post Processing – High this allows a nice hue change when in Reaper/Death Form
Can we get this changed or increased it looks awesome but i was hoping we could change the Hue a little to make it Black/White greyish i think this would look awesome!

All shouts are usable under water except for “Chilled to the bone!”
Please give us an other under water elite besides Plague

nearlight.3064:

The GS is a really fun and interesting weapon but I fear it won’t be used outside of PvE, but I think I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that we’ll be using dagger/warhorn in PvP for the rest of this game’s life time. Its just too clunky and slow, even if it does hit like a truck, Reaper’s Shroud abilities are all the cleave we really need.

Unfortunately, I agree. : ( As soon as I got over wanting to hit high damage gravediggers, and went back to dagger MH, I found I was doing just as well by spamming auto, had better sustain with D2 than Soul Eater GS, and had the utility
of the offhands (even dagger offhand on a power build, to get the additional condi transfer). It may not have been ‘better’ in every encounter, but it did feel more consistent. I missed those massive Gravedigger whomps, and camping a downed player, though.

Hello. I’ve been playing necro since a little after launch, so I love the class and I spend by far the majority of my time on it pvp/wvwing in havoc squads.

I barely pve at all so none of my comments here take into consideration pve fights. That may or may not be why I have some issues, but I don’t know.

I played Condi Reaper in WvW/PvP all weekend. I barely touched power/greatsword as the speed hasn’t been changed from the last weekend (or if it was I didn’t notice any difference) and frankly the slowness of the attacks makes it pretty unusable. I don’t zerg in WvW, I only havoc/solo, so maybe it’s just not intentionally balanced for that type of game play… I’m just saying that I find it pretty unusable for those types of fights. Maybe a balance between small/large group fights just isn’t possible to achieve, with the amount of damage its attacks do, I don’t know.

Same comment with the shouts: it’s purely meant for zerging (obviously as you know), large group stuff, and that just isn’t usable in a smaller setting. Not a complaint per say, just not worth putting any shout on my bar. It’s a shame in my opinion that they are only usable in a large group. The larger the group, the smaller the skill cap, and it saps a lot of my enjoyment to have to play these new abilities in that playstyle. Again, just my thoughts as a havoc roamer.

Soul Eater: This gs ability is one of the slower ones in the game and this trait gives a piddly life steal. This really really needs to be buffed if it’s supposed to offer some sort of sustain. Or just take it out and give the gs cd reduction another cool ability to be paired with.

Chilling Nova: The ICD on this is too long. Considering the amount of condi cleanse in the game, this really isn’t a sustainable way to apply chill for me, and not worth taking in smaller group fights or solo. With stability the target isn’t going to be feared/chilled, greatsword is almost unusable in a smaller fight (the gs5 applies a decent length of chill but on a long cd and again, easily wiped), the shroud 5 skill only applies several seconds of chill on a long cd….. the only way to get more chill applied is to shroud4 on the field if you can. Short of using focus or staff, it’s hard to get it applied consistently. Again, since I’m not using the shouts, I can’t apply it with those.

Chill is the reapers niche. No one else is geared to thrive with that condi like we do. That said, we need a more sustainable application imho and reducing the cd on this trait would really help for the smaller scale fight, especially with all the condition cleanse available now.

Condi reaper is a huge improvement overall over the older death shroud builds. I’m really enjoying the playstyle and can’t thank you guys enough!

Darth.

After this weekend event my only big complaint about the necromancer is the Soul Reaping trait line, also Soul Eater might still need a small change but other than that I think necro is looking pretty good.

Soul Eater could possibly give a pulsing aoe lifesteal that either scales with the number of enemies, or deals/heals for X, divided by the number of enemies in the area, up to Y. (This is while wielding a GS, and in addition to the recharge reduction for GS skills.)

I played Reaper for about 20 hours this beta, and I must say that it felt quite satisfying. I do not really have much to say in comparison to the first two BWEs, so I will keep it really brief.

Reaper Shroud Felt awesome as always. Entering it feels really impactful and really lets you catch your breath, which is something the necromancer sorely needed before. DS2 felt much better than before and actually let me catch up to some people. I would say that RS is good for release.

Greatsword Seems to be in an awesome spot for PvE. It has some issues in PvP related to players knowing all its animations by that point and avoiding whatever you throw at them. Its skills feel great when they connect, however, and it really brings necro up to other classes when it comes to competing for spots in PvE groups.

Shouts The elite finally feels like it has a reasonable CD and is usable in PvP. The utility traits all seem to have situations where they would be useful. I think that they are pretty much ready for shipping.

Traits After the last BWE’s tweaks the traits feel much better. Although I did not deviate from my usual reaper build much, I certainly see possible playstyles where different trait combos can be viable.

The main issue Reaper has in PvP right now is how easy it is to kite. Against experienced players you will find yourself unable to catch on whenever you enter Reaper Shroud since, they would just walk away, and unless you have swiftness on, you have to chase them down at normal combat speed. I am not really sure if I want to see that issue addressed since it is what makes the reaper balanced, powerful in teamfight situations, but easily kiteable and avoidable in 1 v 1 fights, but I figured I would point that out.

The more people learn our animations, the weaker Greatsword and Reaper Shroud will look. I believe that this is an important thing to consider when thinking about buffing/nerfing this elite spec.

In regards to classes which counter us, my hardest fights were against Heralds since even in marauder they would outsustain me, and Chronomancers, since they could kite me exceptionally well while still CCing me quite hard despite DS3. I also found myself quickly adopting the new axe in place of dagger, since the 900 range pressure helped against thieves and daredevils tremendously, and axe 3 is actually not a bad source of LF because of the retaliation procs.

All in all – I would say that Reaper is in a really good place – a bit on the strong side, but not crossing the line, a class I would pick in a group for all game modes, but would not be a mandatory element of it.

YSIM should generate significantly more life force, and while traited with Augury of Death when YSIM is activates it will finish the cd on reapers shroud. (increase lf gain on YSIM).

Great work guys!

Was I the only one happy with YSIM when running Augury?

Dead.5829:

Was I the only one happy with YSIM when running Augury?

I loved it. You can literally hit 100% LF with YSIM/YAAW/GS3/GS5, just 4 abilities that take around 3s to cast. YSIM is, once you count in LF, a 9k+ heal while using Soldier (PvP) on a 13s CD in teamfights with Augury. Even without Augury it is a decent heal, though situational.

Greatsword is useless in sPvP because it’s far too clunky. In Reaper’s shroud, I get kited a lot without viable opportunities to close the gap to opponents since I’m locked out of everything else. I would suggest increasing the range of death’s charge to 900. Remove blind to balance the skill again if necessary.

Overall, Reaper is a lot of fun and is a huge improvement to the necromancer class. I’d also be ok with greatsword being a PvE weapon if the damage is worth the clunkyness (played PvP only so far).

I’need gonna add some more feedback from a minion master perspective.
Great sword:
-the auto is too slow to really glue to the enemy. I think all three hits should apply chill. However the first hit’s duration should be very short, the second hit 1 second of chill, and leave the third hit as is.
-grave digger seems cool and works great.
-soul spiral’s animation needs to be tightened up. It clips through the ground and is too light and transparent to be a clear tell. Make the energy darker and start closer to the sword and extend outward during the thrust. Otherwise it’seems spot on mechanically and functionally.
-nightfall is awesome.
-grasping darkness (whatever GS5 is called) is perfect.

Traits
-all of them seem pretty spot on. However soul Eater still feels off and weak. I’d say give it siphoning on every attack, and more on grave digger. Possibly even give grave digger back it’s cooldown reduction when you hit with it on top of the 20% base reduction. Right now soul Eater loses out on sustainability to chilling victory (which will always be paired with blighter’s boon) and needs a bit more identity. I think changing it in one of these ways would help. Keep the main focal point of the trait grave digger. Grave digger is a flavorful skill and it is cool seeing the trait utilize it.

Shroud
-feels really good functionally and performance wise. I’d like to see the range on reaper shroud 4 Transfusion match the necromancer shroud 4 transfusion.

Dead.5829:

Was I the only one happy with YSIM when running Augury?

I was happy too. I advocated for some form of healing on augury, or scaling healing on YSIM, since BW1.

I’m still not happy with Soul Eater and Chilling Nova.

Life leach on GS still doesn’t convince me. At least before you could use death spiral to pile a lot of heal, restricting it to gravedigger made it worse. In my opinion Soul eater is a PvE trait, because the other 2 options are too good in PvP and WvW. As a PvE trait I’d like to see some form of party support from this trait. Same thing for Chilling Nova, it should be a damage boost against chilled foes plus AoE chill on crit.

Maybe make Soul Eater increase attack speed and have gravedigger reduce cooldowns like before???

This was my first BWE trying Reaper and I did exclusively PvP. I play necro as an alt in PvP normally. Having played against reapers the previous two BWEs, seeing the other side gave a good overall perspective of where it sits.

Greatsword
This just felt lacking. It seems like it should have somewhat high sustain damage to make up for the highly telegraphed big hits, but it didn’t really do anything in practice. It didn’t have enough utility to make up for the lack of damage either.

• Auto-Attack Needs more damage.
• Gravedigger Continually cleaving downed players with this was amusing at first, but the skill didn’t feel practical. Using it on a target above 50% felt like you were being punished, since they would likely drop under 50% from the hit.
• Death Spiral This skill needs to do more. If it had more range, it would make a nice opener.
• Nightfall The 2s pulse interval made the blind feel unreliable.
• Grasping Darkness I use greatsword on guardian a lot, so I’m used to an attack like this being avoided in PvP. But because the Reaper greatsword setup has such a dependency on getting targets into melee and because of all the life force potential lost, missing this attack felt very bad.

Reaper’s Shroud
The damage was very strong overall, completely overshadowing greatsword. It felt far more mobile and reliable than greatsword.

• RS#2 was a great for mobility.
• Stacking stability on RS#3 seemed a bit much. It lasted practically the entire time you would sit in a single cast of RS. For how much damage RS can deal (with Deathly Perception and a damage amulet, it crits all the time) and the gap closer, not being able to stop the necro was a problem for melee.

Shouts
I played around with most of the shouts, with varying degrees of success. I used Augury of Death most of the time.

• YSIM Not bad, but seemed to give an over abundance of life force and not enough HP. Could have just been my poor management of life force, since I’m more used to DS playstyle.
• NCSY Tried it a few times and it wasn’t worth it. If I want boon convert, I’m better off with Corrupt Boon (more boons, longer range), or even Well of Corruption. The unblockable period wasn’t worth it.
• Suffer I liked this a lot for keeping targets near me, and the condi clear was great in a large fight.
• YAAW Didn’t get a good enough feel for it, but I was using it mostly for Weakness. The might doesn’t last long enough to be worthwhile in PvP.
• CTTB Good elite, especially against multiple players with Augury. Could probably cut the cast time a little bit.

Traits
Out of the ones I used

• Augury of Death The cooldown reduction per player needs to be a little higher. [BUG] Objects, like buildings on Champion’s Dusk and Battle of Khylo, count as players.

General
Some thoughts on how Reaper fits with the overall profession.

• Using Spite and Soul Reaping feels too mandatory.
• Greatsword doesn’t have a good complementary weapon. Warhorn for swiftness helps a lot, but then I’m taking axe or dagger, both of which outshine GS. Staff has good utility, but then you have pitiful damage outside of RS and your mobility is awful.
• Alternatively, you can use Signet of the Locust for mobility, but then you’re drawn toward a signet build with Signets of Suffering.
• Felt obligated to take Consume Conditions or Plague Signet in order to deal with condi loads. Neither fit that well with a melee-oriented spec.
• Needs some degree of toughness to survive better in melee, but don’t want to give up crit. This is a PvP amulet problem which hampers Reaper.

If chill on auto is scary for a developer, they can just slap a 1-2 second cripple on the 1st and 2nd swings of the auto.

To be honest my main gripes with the reaper are the mediocre traits for PvE, the useless shouts, and a reaper shroud that is essentially a DPS loss so you don’t even want to use it in PvE unless you’re in danger of dying. Our heals are still sorta terrible, but that goes for most of our utilities that aren’t wells anyways.

Right now PvE reaper lives and dies by Gravedigger spam. The moment they touch Gravedigger for PvP whine, is the moment you’ll see the PvE reapers raising their voices again.