Guild Wars 2

Reaper feels way better than it did during BWE1. Just a few more tweaks and this could be the melee monster we all wanted.

Skills
GS2: Gravedigger Something feels weird about how this skill gets queued. I’ve had instances where I activated Gravedigger and had a significant delay in having it actually trigger. In some instances, I would activate Gravedigger, have it not trigger, mash the button for it, attempt to use another attack only to have Gravedigger trigger twice, the first time hitting the enemy (very low health, thus killing it) and the second time completely wiffing the attack and wasting a cooldown because I was not expecting it.

GS5: Grasping Darkness does not feel solid. I am not confident in the power’s ability to actually perform as advertised and drag the enemies to me when triggered. Much like Spectral Grasp, enemies get caught on terrain and fall down but are not pulled to me or end up being missed entirely when the attack occurs nowhere near them. I would very much like it if Grasping Darkness was made a GTAOE like the Warrior’s whirlwind attack.

GS4: Nightfall I like not being rooted by Nightfall, but I don’t agree with making it drop at your feet like a mine. Dropping at your feet seems to imply that it’s an anti pursuit tool, but this clearly goes against the Reaper’s theme as being the one pursuing and punishing. Shouldn’t Nightfall’s dark field continue to follow the Reaper like a Berserker’s Flames of War fire field? Or if it’s intended to be a pre-emptive strike tool to blind and cripple a target as you close in on it, shouldn’t it be GTAOE instead of a static PBAOE?

RS2: Death’s Charge As others have noted, targeting with RS2 is buggy and inconsistent. A spinning scythe does not a helicopter make. That was not how I wanted to end my time in Verdant Brink. I think that Death’s Charge is also a good candidate for conversion to a GTAOE like Whirlwind and Deflecting Shot. That way it could be used as both a closer/pursuit ability as well as a means to rapidly reposition (ie: flanking or retreating). Ground targeting would make the ability more consistent as well as giving the player more overall control of how their abilities are executed and how they are used.

Heal: Your Soul is Mine! The heal coefficient is still too low. It is moderately useful to supplement life force generation, but unless the healing is improved or the cooldown is reduced to ridiculously spammable levels, this shout is utterly useless at providing any form of healing whatsoever. My suggestion: increase healing coefficient with a bonus healing given when life force is low. This makes it extremely dangerous to corner a Reaper, as at any moment they could turn on you and go back to slaying.

Elite: Chilled to the Bone! The ability is cool as hell (huehuehue) and synergizes with trigger on elite traits such as Krait Runes. As it is, the cooldown is too kitten long for what it does. 120s is far too long for mediocre elite damage, a 2 second stun, and 12s of stability. Either reduce the cooldown to ~90s with the ability to trait down its cooldown to ~72s like other 90s skills or give it more special properties such as leaving an ice field or giving the reaper and allies within the shout radius frost armor, etc.

Other Notes
Greatsword Hits like a freight train and handles a hell of a lot better than it did during BWE1. Not being rooted for any of the abilities makes the Reaper control a lot better and feel more responsive overall. GS3 feels a lot more consistent now that its hitbox is synced up with the actual animation.

Synergy From both a flavor standpoint and a gameplay standpoint, Reaper is looking better than ever. Pairing up with a Herald running naturalistic resonance, a might-stacking shroud knight with fury and swiftness can be absolutely devastating against groups. I spent hours this afternoon gleefully slaughtering mordrem in both Verdant Brink and SW with my guildmates. Fighting hordes felt fantastic. I never felt hopelessly overmatched no matter the number of enemies arrayed against me because it always felt like with proper play and good reflexes I could carve up every modrem in front of me and still have might stacks left over to punch Mordremoth in the mouth. I love this class and I look forward to seeing it tweaked to perfection so I can slay like a boss in the live build of GW2.

GTAOE Abilities? GS3,4,5 and RS2 all could potentially be converted to using GTAOE targeting in the same manner as the Warrior’s greatsword whirlwind attack. While this may be more difficult to code, it will make the abilities more consistent and allow for creative tactics to be used such as skillshotting invisible enemies using the drill, launching an opening strike against a distant target with Nightfall, grappling that sneaky thief or mesmer with grasping darkness, or using Death’s Charge to close gaps and rapidly reposition.

Sholef.6580:

Reaper feels way better than it did during BWE1. Just a few more tweaks and this could be the melee monster we all wanted.

Skills
GS2: Gravedigger Something feels weird about how this skill gets queued. I’ve had instances where I activated Gravedigger and had a significant delay in having it actually trigger. In some instances, I would activate Gravedigger, have it not trigger, mash the button for it, attempt to use another attack only to have Gravedigger trigger twice, the first time hitting the enemy (very low health, thus killing it) and the second time completely wiffing the attack and wasting a cooldown because I was not expecting it.

GS5: Grasping Darkness does not feel solid. I am not confident in the power’s ability to actually perform as advertised and drag the enemies to me when triggered. Much like Spectral Grasp, enemies get caught on terrain and fall down but are not pulled to me or end up being missed entirely when the attack occurs nowhere near them. I would very much like it if Grasping Darkness was made a GTAOE like the Warrior’s whirlwind attack.

GS4: Nightfall I like not being rooted by Nightfall, but I don’t agree with making it drop at your feet like a mine. Dropping at your feet seems to imply that it’s an anti pursuit tool, but this clearly goes against the Reaper’s theme as being the one pursuing and punishing. Shouldn’t Nightfall’s dark field continue to follow the Reaper like a Berserker’s Flames of War fire field? Or if it’s intended to be a pre-emptive strike tool to blind and cripple a target as you close in on it, shouldn’t it be GTAOE instead of a static PBAOE?

RS2: Death’s Charge As others have noted, targeting with RS2 is buggy and inconsistent. A spinning scythe does not a helicopter make. That was not how I wanted to end my time in Verdant Brink. I think that Death’s Charge is also a good candidate for conversion to a GTAOE like Whirlwind and Deflecting Shot. That way it could be used as both a closer/pursuit ability as well as a means to rapidly reposition (ie: flanking or retreating). Ground targeting would make the ability more consistent as well as giving the player more overall control of how their abilities are executed and how they are used.

Heal: Your Soul is Mine! The heal coefficient is still too low. It is moderately useful to supplement life force generation, but unless the healing is improved or the cooldown is reduced to ridiculously spammable levels, this shout is utterly useless at providing any form of healing whatsoever. My suggestion: increase healing coefficient with a bonus healing given when life force is low. This makes it extremely dangerous to corner a Reaper, as at any moment they could turn on you and go back to slaying.

Elite: Chilled to the Bone! The ability is cool as hell (huehuehue) and synergizes with trigger on elite traits such as Krait Runes. As it is, the cooldown is too kitten long for what it does. 120s is far too long for mediocre elite damage, a 2 second stun, and 12s of stability. Either reduce the cooldown to ~90s with the ability to trait down its cooldown to ~72s like other 90s skills or give it more special properties such as leaving an ice field or giving the reaper and allies within the shout radius frost armor, etc.

Other Notes
Greatsword Hits like a freight train and handles a hell of a lot better than it did during BWE1. Not being rooted for any of the abilities makes the Reaper control a lot better and feel more responsive overall. GS3 feels a lot more consistent now that its hitbox is synced up with the actual animation.

Synergy From both a flavor standpoint and a gameplay standpoint, Reaper is looking better than ever. Pairing up with a Herald running naturalistic resonance, a might-stacking shroud knight with fury and swiftness can be absolutely devastating against groups. I spent hours this afternoon gleefully slaughtering mordrem in both Verdant Brink and SW with my guildmates. Fighting hordes felt fantastic. I never felt hopelessly overmatched no matter the number of enemies arrayed against me because it always felt like with proper play and good reflexes I could carve up every modrem in front of me and still have might stacks left over to punch Mordremoth in the mouth. I love this class and I look forward to seeing it tweaked to perfection so I can slay like a boss in the live build of GW2.

GTAOE Abilities? GS3,4,5 and RS2 all could potentially be converted to using GTAOE targeting in the same manner as the Warrior’s greatsword whirlwind attack. While this may be more difficult to code, it will make the abilities more consistent and allow for creative tactics to be used such as skillshotting invisible enemies using the drill, launching an opening strike against a distant target with Nightfall, grappling that sneaky thief or mesmer with grasping darkness, or using Death’s Charge to close gaps and rapidly reposition.

Agreeing with everything you’ve said, especially changing things like Deaths Charge to GTAOE.

What I’D add : GS 3 just doesn’t feel impactfull atm. It is good LF generation against 3 targets, but against 2 or less, it is worse than GS auto, and the damage isn’t even medicore, it is plain bad. Making it dash a very short distance, increasing the LF generation against less targets or increasing the damage would be great.

I’d also love RS #5 to get more damage , as currently it underperforms Gravedigger even if the target has below 25% HP. Also it should finish downed players instantly in PvP (like thief elite), but increase the cooldown of it to 60 or more seconds IF you use it to finish. It is called “Executioners Scythe” after all.

As for Nightfall… following the Reaper around would be really awesome.

I still think the CDR traits should reduce the CD by a base and then a little more when meeting the cuirrent conditions.

Deathly chill changing chill into “frost” which works like chill (maybe minus the attackslow) and is treated as chill for all purpose, but stacking in intensity would be cream on a cupcake, but that is most likely not doable without major coding so… (I can still dream, right? )

All of the above is just my personal opinion , so do not hate on me please ^^

I don’t agree with changing RS2, it needs the clunk fixed, but I enjoy it otherwise, very much so.

If GS4 worked like Warriors T5…. I’d be in love. Very much so. Gah, that just sounds great….

They should increase the damage for reaper shroud one because it has to take into account the fact it is melee. While it does great damage, it doesn’t do great Shroud damage.

RS degenerates far too quickly. Also Reaper shroud relies on vital persistence far too much, Vital persistance must be baseline or we are forever stuck with SReaping. Limiting build diversity.

RS2 and GS 5 are extremely buggy. RS2 usually moves in the wrong direction without a target. GS 5 most of the time doesn’t pull in. IF I had my way, I would make it an Teleport to target and AoE chill or cripple. But that is just me.

Reaper shroud doesn’t do great damage. Given the fact that it requires the player to be in range.

Shouts are too dependant on Augury trait, in addition the augury trait is too wildly useless 1v1/great against 5. Balancing around a flat reduction would be way better.

I want to use the shouts, but they aren’t there yet.

Can we make this the official thread? In some of the other forums a red has already merged the feedbackthreads into one, but seems RG is otherwise occupied.

I tested reaper a lot and came to the following conclusions:

Reapershroud

DPS on Skill 1 and 4 is too low. These skills should be quite a bit stronger then its DS counterparts as they are meele.

Skill 2 could use a range increase to 900 because of the casttime and aftercast.

The fear on Skill 3 should be instant cast, most skills in this shroud lock you into an lengthy animation or casttime, making the flow of the shroud really bad as you could use this fear to ensure skill 5 connects, sometimes you want to interrupt a key skill but are locked into skill 2 or 4.

Skill 4 should generate lifeforce, as currently lifeforce is depleted way too fast due to the risk of meele and aoe cleave that naturally comes within meele range.

Greatsword

The flow of the skillset does not feel right, i can use skill 5 to pull my target, even after the pull is successfull i cant combo this into skill 3 or skill 2 because of the long casttimes. In any competetive scenario this weapon is countered way too easy. Switching around the chill application from the AA to another skill would open the doors to making the AA stronger and faster, at the current state the chill doenst matter as you cant apply it at all (from a PVP POV)

AA still feels very bad to use, especially in pvp.

Skill 3 needs to be a more damaging skill in a 360 range cone, as Skill 2 is a onetrick pony thats too easy countered. Reduce the cooldown, the lifeforce gain and the duration of the vuln, trading the utility for damage and pressure. Switch places with skill 2 on the bar.

I suggest making skill 4 a groundtarget AOE, pulses damage every second to help with blinds and blocks, keep the condition application as it is. The base AOE should be 240, increasing to 360 on the last pulse.

Skill 5 could apply a 1 sec imob after pulling.

Shouts

You are all weaklings is good in design, the might should last a bit longer considering the low number of skills we possible could activate within these 5 seconds.

Suffer is still very very weak against 1-3 targets, mediocre at best against 5 targets. The skill lacks flavour, 3 sec chill just isnt worth it. Increase the base transfer to 3 conditions, per 2 targets hit +1 condition, capping the skill at 5 condis, against 5 enemys. This skill should also apply a few stacks of torment to help condition builds.

Nothing can save you Remove the cast time and let this skill apply 2 seconds of quickness. This gives the skill a lot of tactical options as it helps to ensure a quicker unblockable hit with a key skill.

Rise is flawed by design. Its only remotely usefull against 5 targets, if there are 5 targets the minions die passive and almost instant trough cleave and AOE. If you keep this skill in this literation at the very least give us some benefit when the minions die, like the usual lifeforce when minions die (currently these minions do not give lifeforce), or let them apply aoe healing on death to give this skill any sort of use.

Chilled to the bone is not potent enough for an elite skill. Lower the CD to 90, increase the Stun duration to 2,5 and make this stun unbreakable, else this skill is too weak compared to other aoe CC Elite skills, the amount of low CD Stunbreaks, Group Stunbreaks and Counterplay trough block / blind.

Traits

Shivers of Dread Please add something to the skill, fear application is to low as reaper. Let this skill cause fear under certain circumstances.

Augury Stands and falls with the shouts.

Nova Increase Range to 240, increase damage a bit. Its gated by the ICD already.

Soul Eater The lifesteal numbers are way too low considering the hit frequency and reliability of the skills. The CD reduction tied to a single, unreliable skill does not feel good.

Deathly Chill: Its still very weak, even on condi builds. Chill is one of the few condis that people tend to cleanse first whenever possible, a sustained non stacking condition with intended short duration application like chill should do more damage.

I want them to merge Chilling Darkness into Shivers of dread. Fear application is too low for this trait to be very good. With the new Death’s Charge, chilling Darkness has exactly what is needed for Reaper, in this spot. And it acts as a means of anti-kiting while in shroud.

Something like: Chilling Darkness – Applying Blind or Fear causes 2 seconds of chill. 4 second ICD per target.

Then make Death’s charge 3/4 cast and have a more smooth animation and less aftercast.

Gravedigger could use less aftercast, or a 1 second cast and leave the AC.

I’d LOVE if night fall followed the Reaper like Torch 5 warrior.

Vital Persistance needs to be baseline. Spectral mastery needs toned down to compensate that more people will use it (and it’d be stronger with VP baseline)

Spite needs some of its damage boosters and might moved to reaper so that reaper can do something other than SRS reaper.

Curses needs buffed for damage. Some of the Life Force from soul reaping needs to be added to Death Magic. There needs to be better reason to use other trait lines with Reaper AND it needs to be less punishing to not take certain ones. Currently everything is in Spite/SR while the rest are mostly forgotten about.

Most of my changes have already been implemented, and it feels great. There’s still a few things I’d like to see.

#1: Mild Soul Eater Buff.
#2: Make Augury of Death a 20% + 3% recharge per foe hit, or an additional effect so it is more reliable.
#3: Mild Damage buffs on shouts.
#4: Reduce Soul Spiral’s animation time, which also happens to increase its DPS.
#5: Make Infusing Terror Persist outside of Shroud.

Anet was hesitant to put in these changes, fearing everything would be “too much”. But, those above issues don’t go away just because other things are buffed. A useless trait/skill doesn’t stop being useless just because something else was buffed.

I wish Augery had a meaningful addition to shots like Signets have. And that makes them useful against any amount of enemies. Like… Shouts consume 2 conditions and heal 200 per condition removed, or idk… Something personally beneficial that doesn’t revolve around hitting an enemy. I wouldn’t mind more condo removal on Reaper that isn’t transfer of hit related.

I love the spec but it has some core issues for PvP.

1- The skills 1 and 2 take too long to land (especially skill 1 since it’s the AA, Skill 2 I could understand at the limit). As someone said, I can pull someone successfully with Skill 5 (already not always that easy to do) and still be unable to land skill 2.

2- Stability or block is a huge issue. The greatsword and elite spec rely mostly on pulling the enemy (Greatsword skill 5 or the other utility pull I forget the name, I think Grasping Death) to you since you have almost no mobility nor gap closer. You have number 2 in Reaper Shroud but it’s just a mini dash, it doesn’t cut it against a ranged class. If they have anything that blocks or gives them stability, you have no way to close the gap and just get killed from range. Necro doesn’t really have hard hitting abilities from long range to compensate. You can use a staff but it doesn’t deal a lot of damage while the other weapons are short or melee range.

I like it a lot, I’ll play it for sure but I fear that after a few weeks, I’ll have to go back to the current builds if I want to PvP because they are just way more effective than this. Signet and Power necro builds are reliable. This one doesn’t seem very solid if you’re against good players.

The other melee specs have stuff like Teleport (Thief, Guardian and Revenant) that are efficient at closing a gap for example. Warrior runs fast and has charges, whirlwind and so on. Even dagger ele can move around very fast with lightning and fire. Greatsword Necro just has nothing at all. You’re basically forced to sacrifice a utility skill for a mandatory long range pull and it’s not even reliable. Number 5 is short range and not always that easy to throw. The other classes don’t get screwed over on their mobility and gap closer if the enemy has a certain buff on them. Necro loses his entire gap closer with stability (and it’s already not that great and not always reliable even without stability because of terrain compared to the other gap closer options from other classes).

Grasping Darkness at a GTAoE would be awesome and quite fun to use.

Reaper in this new soon to be new bar breaking meta need a very good way of breaking bars. I do say that the reaper’s place should be to break bars. Also their sub 50% traits should be shared to groups. obviously adjusted to compensate for that.

So making chill would be extremely helpful and an easy way to make them part of the meta.

To add to the point I made concerning PvP and gap closer options earlier, I’m now checking the warrior (I tested Necro, Guardian and Thief) and I see that Warrior in Berserker mode can have stability nonstop… (and Riffle seems to be a thing) which is exactly the type of thing that makes the entire Necro spec not work if our gap closers are negated by this. Spectral Grasp and Greatsword 5 NEED to be reliable, it’s our only way to get close to our enemies in PvP. If I teleport onto my target with my Guardian or my Thief, even if they block or whatever, worst case scenario, my attack could miss but I’ve closed the gap and I’m now close to them. With the Necro, if they dodge or block or have stability, you’re still far away and have no way to catch up to them to put up a fight. It’s terrible design for a game that has PvP tournaments and is an Esport. I got the expansion for the PvP, I couldn’t care less about the PvE repetitive scripted mobs (I’ll do it once just to see the landscapes and dungeons but that’s about it). If the expansions don’t bring anything new that is truly viable for PvP, I don’t see much point and most likely will not be buying any further GW2 expansions (I had all of the GW1 campaigns and played it for years and the new stuff that was added each time had some new interesting and useful PvP abilities back then).

ronpierce.2760:

I want them to merge Chilling Darkness into Shivers of dread. Fear application is too low for this trait to be very good. With the new Death’s Charge, chilling Darkness has exactly what is needed for Reaper, in this spot. And it acts as a means of anti-kiting while in shroud.

Something like: Chilling Darkness – Applying Blind or Fear causes 2 seconds of chill. 4 second ICD per target.

Then make Death’s charge 3/4 cast and have a more smooth animation and less aftercast.

Gravedigger could use less aftercast, or a 1 second cast and leave the AC.

I’d LOVE if night fall followed the Reaper like Torch 5 warrior.

Vital Persistance needs to be baseline. Spectral mastery needs toned down to compensate that more people will use it (and it’d be stronger with VP baseline)

Spite needs some of its damage boosters and might moved to reaper so that reaper can do something other than SRS reaper.

Curses needs buffed for damage. Some of the Life Force from soul reaping needs to be added to Death Magic. There needs to be better reason to use other trait lines with Reaper AND it needs to be less punishing to not take certain ones. Currently everything is in Spite/SR while the rest are mostly forgotten about.

^ Exactly this. If the only trait lines that count as a reaper are consolidated within 3 trait lines it makes for extremely boring game play. Having gs 4 follow the reaper has my vote too; it never worked as a root, but as an aoe placed upon the caster makes using it more fluid with the grasp (when it works).

I agree with [“Your Soul is Mine!”] needing a bit more heal. At the moment, it’s a tad low. Reducing [Gravedigger] to a 1s cast time while retaining the after-cast seems reasonable. Not sure how I feel about [Nightfall] following the player though.

I’m probably in the minority, but I liked the ground-stab animation it had before in the 1st BWE. I just wish we could ground target it like Mesmer GS3 rather than it casting right underneath us.

Also, [Augury of Death] & [Soul Eater] should have a base cooldown for these traits. Getting a reduced cooldown for hitting more foes seems rather clunky in practice and the reward benefits the shouts/greatsword skills with already low cooldowns.

Perhaps a flat 20% for Soul Eater and 15% base for Augury of Death with 4% per foe so hitting 1 foe nets it at 19% recharge, close to the usual 20% standard.

Shiki.7148

Agreeing with everything you’ve said, especially changing things like Deaths Charge to GTAOE.

What I’D add : GS 3 just doesn’t feel impactfull atm. It is good LF generation against 3 targets, but against 2 or less, it is worse than GS auto, and the damage isn’t even medicore, it is plain bad. Making it dash a very short distance, increasing the LF generation against less targets or increasing the damage would be great.

I’d also love RS #5 to get more damage , as currently it underperforms Gravedigger even if the target has below 25% HP. Also it should finish downed players instantly in PvP (like thief elite), but increase the cooldown of it to 60 or more seconds IF you use it to finish. It is called “Executioners Scythe” after all.

As for Nightfall… following the Reaper around would be really awesome.

I still think the CDR traits should reduce the CD by a base and then a little more when meeting the cuirrent conditions.

Deathly chill changing chill into “frost” which works like chill (maybe minus the attackslow) and is treated as chill for all purpose, but stacking in intensity would be cream on a cupcake, but that is most likely not doable without major coding so… (I can still dream, right? )

All of the above is just my personal opinion , so do not hate on me please ^^

GS3 doesn’t feel impactful? How can that be? It provides 12 stacks of Vuln, which counts as 24% extra crit with Decimate Defenses. It is the single most important ability for many GS builds, I would think.

I like the idea of GS4 (Nightfall) following the Reaper.

And yeah at the moment Reaper Shroud doesn’t last long enough without Vital Persistence.

Question: Does anyone know the health of Shambling Horror?

I ask this because, as a defensive skill, it might actually be pretty good. This all depends on how much health they have, though.

Lemondish.3268:

Shiki.7148

Agreeing with everything you’ve said, especially changing things like Deaths Charge to GTAOE.

What I’D add : GS 3 just doesn’t feel impactfull atm. It is good LF generation against 3 targets, but against 2 or less, it is worse than GS auto, and the damage isn’t even medicore, it is plain bad. Making it dash a very short distance, increasing the LF generation against less targets or increasing the damage would be great.

I’d also love RS #5 to get more damage , as currently it underperforms Gravedigger even if the target has below 25% HP. Also it should finish downed players instantly in PvP (like thief elite), but increase the cooldown of it to 60 or more seconds IF you use it to finish. It is called “Executioners Scythe” after all.

As for Nightfall… following the Reaper around would be really awesome.

I still think the CDR traits should reduce the CD by a base and then a little more when meeting the cuirrent conditions.

Deathly chill changing chill into “frost” which works like chill (maybe minus the attackslow) and is treated as chill for all purpose, but stacking in intensity would be cream on a cupcake, but that is most likely not doable without major coding so… (I can still dream, right? )

All of the above is just my personal opinion , so do not hate on me please ^^

GS3 doesn’t feel impactful? How can that be? It provides 12 stacks of Vuln, which counts as 24% extra crit with Decimate Defenses. It is the single most important ability for many GS builds, I would think.

Well here is the thing: They gave massive vuln spam to so many elite specs and base professions that this vuln literally doesn’t matter. Also, get this: you can keep up 25 selfmight and 25 vuln on 3 targets with RS auto alone . While dealing pretty good damage, meaning the 1s casttime usually is a waste if you have a single other class in the group having access to a good amount of vuln. This is all for PvE mind you.

One more thing for PvE : Make “Chilled to the Bone!” usable underwater please. Like, why are the other shouts usable but not CttB?! I really want a second elite thats usable under water, and this time nobody can make any excuses about “there is no animation for it” (Flesh Golem) or “it would look ridiculous and immersion breaking” (Lich).

sign for “Chilled to the Bone!” usable under water

and the golem could just transform into a bone fish for under water combat

Quickening Thirst : Increases movement speed for while wielding a dagger. Dagger skills recharge faster if activated while above the health threshold. —-—> Increases movement speed for while wielding a dagger or greatsword. Dagger and greatsword skills recharge faster if activated while above the health threshold. Or something like that…
+ stability sharing from shout.

Tommyknocker.6089:

ronpierce.2760:

I want them to merge Chilling Darkness into Shivers of dread. Fear application is too low for this trait to be very good. With the new Death’s Charge, chilling Darkness has exactly what is needed for Reaper, in this spot. And it acts as a means of anti-kiting while in shroud.

Something like: Chilling Darkness – Applying Blind or Fear causes 2 seconds of chill. 4 second ICD per target.

Then make Death’s charge 3/4 cast and have a more smooth animation and less aftercast.

Gravedigger could use less aftercast, or a 1 second cast and leave the AC.

I’d LOVE if night fall followed the Reaper like Torch 5 warrior.

Vital Persistance needs to be baseline. Spectral mastery needs toned down to compensate that more people will use it (and it’d be stronger with VP baseline)

Spite needs some of its damage boosters and might moved to reaper so that reaper can do something other than SRS reaper.

Curses needs buffed for damage. Some of the Life Force from soul reaping needs to be added to Death Magic. There needs to be better reason to use other trait lines with Reaper AND it needs to be less punishing to not take certain ones. Currently everything is in Spite/SR while the rest are mostly forgotten about.

^ Exactly this. If the only trait lines that count as a reaper are consolidated within 3 trait lines it makes for extremely boring game play. Having gs 4 follow the reaper has my vote too; it never worked as a root, but as an aoe placed upon the caster makes using it more fluid with the grasp (when it works).

I wanted to agree and reiterate the Vital Persistence baseline with a nerf to Spectral Mastery. I feel pigeon-holed into 3 trait lines and losing out on the support options/sustain with Death Magic and Blood Magic lines. I think that’s the most major issue I have with the mastery so far.

Otherwise, I think Reaper is shaping up to be the best, and most needed mastery.

I believe that this is the BWE feedback thread with the most posts in it, so I will leave my thoughts here.

Reaper Shroud
Except for the random behaviour of RS2, this felt excellent. While I was still getting burst down in PvP, I felt like I had a real chance to survive and recover in a teamfight and then punch back. It was a feeling I was severely missing as base necro. It was quite competent in 1 v 1 scenarios, too, but was extremely weak against good kiters, which I believe is a fair balance. Even after the bugfix Infusing Terror is quite potent and allows the Reaper to avoid some ragdolling, at least for a little while.

Greatsword
In PvE it felt excellent, perhaps giving us a chance to -not- be a completely unwanted class for dungeons. It felt extremely satisfying to smack a boss good with some nice gravediggers.

In PvP it felt way more useful than last time around, and while I can see it decrease in usefulness once people learn to watch out for its animations, I believe that it has some fun tools to use both defensively and offensively.

• The LF gain on auto made it much easier to sustain shroud while trying to keep up the pressure output with the weapon, not having to rely on GS3 to hit for us to gain some shroud improved the experience dramatically.
• The 50% boost to gravedigger made this ability the staple skill it deserved to be – it is the Necromancer’s 100 blades. Excellent change.
• Death Spiral – the increased cone made the experience with this skill much less frustrating.
• Nightfall – A range indicator would be more than welcome, but other than that, this skill is incredibly good utility.
• Grasping Darkness – The animation and hitbox feel a little clunky. Sometimes I hit targets I should have, sometimes I miss targets I should not. Most of the times it does its job, however, and is quite good for what it is. I would say keep it at its current range – the reaper should be fairly limited in this capacity.

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

Adept

• AUGURY OF DEATH – I am just not the biggest fan of shouts, and believe that Relentless Pursuit is a mandatory trait for PvP, thus I never really played with this trait. Perhaps people might be interested in taking it for PvE if a shout or two become strong for that game mode.

• CHILLING NOVA – I do not see this trait as becoming really popular. Perhaps it will be useful for some all-in chill builds, but since Chill Reaper is not a viable option right now, I doubt that this will see much use.

• RELENTLESS PURSUIT – Absolutely mandatory in PvP. If you do not take that trait, you are likely not going to have a fun time.

Master

• CHILLING FORCE – Excellent for PvP due to its synergy with other tools of the reaper, and an excellent reward for managing to maintain chill on foes.

• DECIMATE DEFENSES – Excellent for PvE, allows you to make sure that the main source of your DPS, Gravedigger, will crit.

• SOUL EATER – For PvE – once you get to the point where you can spam Gravedigger, you do not really care about the quicker recharge of other abilities. For PvP – you rarely manage to land enough attacks to make it worthwhile, and will probably get better sustain for yourself through the chilling force combo with Blighter’s boon.

Grandmaster

• DEATHLY CHILL – not the biggest fan, this is definitely by far the worst grandmaster trait we possess. Unless the damage is really quite something, the other two options just outclass it.

• REAPER’S ONSLAUGHT – excellent in PvE for obvious reasons. Quite reasonable in PvP, especially when combined with Dhuumfire. If Blighter’s Boon gets nuked, I will run to this trait instead and hope for the best.

In Conclusion
Aside from some minor issues and some number tweaking work with the traits – I believe that Reaper is good for shipping. I have not had so much fun with an MMO character for a long, long time, and I believe that Robert and Co have done a fantastic job with it.

I sincerely hope that they do not turn any of the current Reaper stuff into a GTAOE or skillshot. The game is already over-cluttered with that mechanic on too many other weapons and skills, and I actually appreciate that I can play Reaper without ever having to fish around for my mouse cursor and a range indicator in a PVE dogpile.

I guess this is as good a place as any to put my personal feedback about Reaper, since it doesn’t seem like there’s a central thread for it like there is with other professions.

Reaper is still my favorite elite spec so far (though Herald is close). The improvements made from BWE1 were really nice overall and hit a lot of the problem spots. Don’t really have a whole lot of comments for improvement now, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few here and there.

Nightfall – Going to echo others and suggest it become a Reaper-centered AoE that moves with you. Fits the theme of the Reaper chasing you down all the while surrounded by crippling darkness.

Reaper Shroud AA – Could use a touch more life force generation. Nothing too drastic, but maybe an extra 1% spread over the first two hits for example. A bit more damage overall would also come in handy.

Death’s Charge – New functionality where you can drill down a single enemy is nice, however it seems to me that the range or the smoothness of the skill has taken a hit because of it. Seems to occasionally bug out and slow down prematurely, or just not go as far as it should. Like, I’ll be in range of an enemy (according to the range indicators) and yet I’ll just barely make it to them by the time the charge ends, or fall just short. Hoping such issues can be resolved.

Placement of Shout stunbreak – Having our designated shout stunbreak on “You are all weaklings” feels off to me. That feels like a shout I’d like to start combat with, given the weakness (to cut down on opponents’ initial burst) and the might (to improve your own initial burst). But if I use it like that, I leave myself without a stun break until it comes off cooldown. I feel like it would be much better suited for “Suffer”, since that one is already a bit more defensive / reactive in nature, rather than something you want to blow early. Or I suppose they could just add a stunbreak to “Suffer” and keep “You are all weaklings” as a stun break as well. 2 stunbreaks would hardly be super OP or anything. But if it has to be one or the other, then I’d much rather have it on “Suffer”.

Your soul is mine – Still feels like it could use a bit more healing, whether it be from scaling or base heal amount. Its a pretty nice heal against multiple targets, but if you’re already facing multiple targets you probably need more than “pretty nice” and against less than 5 it’s pretty meh.

Suffer – If it doesn’t become a stunbreak as per the above suggestion, I think it needs a little something extra. A single condition transfer and a small amount of chill doesn’t really scream “suffer” to me. Perhaps a few stacks of Torment or something. But if it becomes a stunbreak then its probably fine as-is.

Chilled to the Bone – Cooldown reduction, please. Gods, its way too high for just a stun, as many have already said. Alternatively, give it a secondary effect outside of the stun (perhaps a flat, unremovable damage nerf for 5 seconds) to make it more worth the cooldown.

Augury of Death – Plain cooldown reduction traits are pretty boring and out of place in the new specialization system. I’d like to see a secondary effect added to shouts through this trait. In keeping with the “unstoppable monster” theme, perhaps it could give 1s of Stability to all shouts, ensuring that our shouts are also unstoppable.

Chilling Nova – Its already a chance to occur based on crit AND dependent on the enemy being chilled in the first place. I’d cut the ICD down by half for that reason.

Soul Eater – Does the recharge reduction actually work? Because in my testing it doesn’t, but it seems no one else mentions it, so maybe I just wasn’t seeing it. It seems like it’d be nice if it worked, but I’m just not sure it does. On the other side of the trait, the life drain is pretty low considering how slowly GS actually attacks most of the time. If the spike heal from Nightfall / Death Spiral is too problematic, I’d rather see the trait get an ICD to prevent those spikes while giving a greater heal amount for the slow hits of the rest of the GS attacks.

Shivers of Dread – As many have mentioned, we don’t have enough Fear sources to actually make this count. I don’t think I’d ditch it entirely as some have suggested because I do like the concept, but it needs a secondary effect to make it more worthwhile.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

Like I said a 3 times/ second icd is suicide to the trait. Also the trait is related to AoE boon spam so maybe that is the problem?

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

The thing is though our sustain is only really high in situations where we are getting boon spammed, plus the bug in PvP with objects giving us LF. If we are by ourselves the only reliable boon generation we have is in the spite line.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

The thing is though our sustain is only really high in situations where we are getting boon spammed, plus the bug in PvP with objects giving us LF. If we are by ourselves the only reliable boon generation we have is in the spite line.

Yes, I agree. But apparently getting spammed with boons in the middle of teamfights makes the reaper way too tanky. Hence the ICD implementation. If we see a nerf, I expect it to hit blighter’s boon and perhaps a scaling the LF gain from RS1 back to its BWE1 values. I obviously wish that does not happen but – what can you do?

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

You mean the same helseth who made a video at how mesmer scepter auto attack inflicting torment would ruin the game? Also what makes helseth more experienced with dealing with reapers?

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

The thing is though our sustain is only really high in situations where we are getting boon spammed, plus the bug in PvP with objects giving us LF. If we are by ourselves the only reliable boon generation we have is in the spite line.

Yes, I agree. But apparently getting spammed with boons in the middle of teamfights makes the reaper way too tanky. Hence the ICD implementation. If we see a nerf, I expect it to hit blighter’s boon and perhaps a scaling the LF gain from RS1 back to its BWE1 values. I obviously wish that does not happen but – what can you do?

So maybe the problem is boon spam and blighter’s boon is just a sympton from it?

Tim.6450:

You mean the same helseth who made a video at how mesmer scepter auto attack inflicting torment would ruin the game? Also what makes helseth more experienced with dealing with reapers?

He is a pro player who knows a lot about the game and high-tier PvP and is a really experienced necromancer? I agree he overreacts often, but his word means more than the one of random people on the PvP forums.

Tim.6450:

So maybe the problem is boon spam and blighter’s boon is just a sympton from it?

Maybe, but just nerfing one trait that goes out of whack becauseo f the boonspam is an easier and less time-consuming solution to the problem in comparison to addressing all the boonspam.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

You mean the same helseth who made a video at how mesmer scepter auto attack inflicting torment would ruin the game? Also what makes helseth more experienced with dealing with reapers?

He is a pro player who knows a lot about the game and high-tier PvP and is a really experienced necromancer? I agree he overreacts often, but his word means more than the one of random people on the PvP forums.

Tim.6450:

So maybe the problem is boon spam and blighter’s boon is just a sympton from it?

Maybe, but just nerfing one trait that goes out of whack becauseo f the boonspam is an easier and less time-consuming solution to the problem in comparison to addressing all the boonspam.

I knew he played mesmer a lot but necromancer? Oh well, you learn something new every day. Well anet had the time to adress all conditions so why not boons? Also removing the symptons instead of the problem will not make the problem go away.

Reposted from the other thread, since our feedback threads aren’t merged.

(1) Reaper Greatsword is still a total glass cannon. GS4 & 5 offer almost nothing for defense.

(2) I think the damage on Greatsword is too low. Right now it is doing PS warrior level damage, (and far below icebow which outclasses everything by miles) but the class offers nothing for the team.

(3) I played a lot with shouts. My survivability went way down when I took shouts instead of spectrals, my damage went way down when I took shouts instead of wells. Surprisingly, my survivability also went down when I took shouts instead of wells due to Dark field plus RS 4 combo. Shouts offer very little.

(3a). The elite shout doesn’t feel elite.

(3b). I’d like to see an additional condition removed on Suffer.

(4) The heal shout still has too long cast time.

(5) The reaper seems a lot more vulnerable to conditions than base necromancer.

(6) Reaper shroud autoattack doesn’t do enough damage. I tried it with 2 grandmaster traits boost it and it’s not enough.

(7) The class needs needs needs improvements to axe and focus and scepter. Staff at range is awful. Axe/focus/scepter need to be good enough to be alternate choices to staff.

(8) I had trouble tagging mobs with reaper. Some tags require a crit or 2 normal hits and the mobs don’t live that long. (GS is slow, RS 1 does bad damage by itself)

(9) Fire Field plus RS 4 is perhaps the first OP thing the necromancer has ever gotten. (please nerf burning damage).

(10) Elementalists needs a nerf, and the best way to do this is by buffing necromancer/reaper to the point where elementalist actually has a counter.

(11). The chills don’t stick. They are all too little duration/pointless (except maybe for whirl finisher chills). What’s the point of having 20 different ways to chill if you cant chill your enemy long enough to close the gap and get one attack in?

(12). Did RS 2 have it’s range decreased? It hardly seemed to move you.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

WE all know Helseth is generally accurate and not full of hyperbole. We also know that he generally doesn’t have an agenda. Helseth says a lot of things, it doesn’t mean anything. When you are in experience fighting a class, it seems strong. It is the same kitten problem Elementalist at during bwe1. People whine and they completely cripple every weapon except d/d.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Traits
Elephant in the room

• BLIGHTER’S BOON – People say that this trait can scale out of whack when a lot of boons are spammed onto the necromancer, however I believe that giving it a 1s ICD would pretty much destroy the trait. I believe that it was ronpierce who originally suggested that the trait is given a “this effect can not occur more than three times over the span of one second” mechanic, which I believe would be a reasonable solution.

This will ruin the skill in a matter of seconds a blood is power -> 3 life force. Also reaper can cap this on its own for a while: chilling victory+sigil of strength+RS 3 for 8 seconds you are capped. No at best it needs number shavings (And I’m doubting about that one to) not a change in functionality, the guardin one works fine and guardian is a boon bot.

Also maybe there is too much AoE boon spam in PvP?

Edit: Added an afterthought.

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

The thing is though our sustain is only really high in situations where we are getting boon spammed, plus the bug in PvP with objects giving us LF. If we are by ourselves the only reliable boon generation we have is in the spite line.

Yes, I agree. But apparently getting spammed with boons in the middle of teamfights makes the reaper way too tanky. Hence the ICD implementation. If we see a nerf, I expect it to hit blighter’s boon and perhaps a scaling the LF gain from RS1 back to its BWE1 values. I obviously wish that does not happen but – what can you do?

The only sensible nerf I can see though is to reduce the healing values to half, or even life siphon levels, based on Anet’s nerf and buff patterns. An ICD of any kind in really afraid would possibly ruin this trait, as it’s the first form of scaling defense we’ve had that’s worth a kitten . >_<. Sorry just REALLY hesitant but I do agree it is a bit….awesome when I can get 20%!LF from hitting 5 enemies with “yaaw” and get 20% LF. And then watching as my health refills while in shroud. I finally makes Shroud our other health bar rather than the second health bar. ;-;

TheLastNobody.8319:

The only sensible nerf I can see though is to reduce the healing values to half, or even life siphon levels, based on Anet’s nerf and buff patterns. An ICD of any kind in really afraid would possibly ruin this trait, as it’s the first form of scaling defense we’ve had that’s worth a kitten . >_<. Sorry just REALLY hesitant but I do agree it is a bit….awesome when I can get 20%!LF from hitting 5 enemies with “yaaw” and get 20% LF. And then watching as my health refills while in shroud. I finally makes Shroud our other health bar rather than the second health bar. ;-;

If you just cut the healing value of the trait by half, you will make it much worse in 1 v 1 scenarios, while keeping it quite awesome in team scenarios. It would heal for 70-ish HP per boon, which turns into 40-50 HP whenever poisoned, which you can not really cleanse when in shroud. If we just slash the healing value by half we will hurt the reaper in 1 on 1 engagements, where it is not as scary since it is easily kiteable.

This is why I support the “activates three times every second” solution, since it encourages your teammates to use their boons more intelligently if they want to support you, while not hurting the reaper too much in 1 on 1 fights. Sure, you can hit the cap by yourself with a specific combination of traits, but I am fine with that.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

Um with all the reaper talk, have we forgotten the true FOTM d/d eles? Talk about sustain and dps without the need to receive boons from other classes, because they generate their own massive amounts of boons.

I think people crying foul about reapers need to step back and stop using getting killed as an excuse to cry nerf over a beta weekend. It’s amazing how long dd eles have been the most overpowered class and somehow they’re sliding under the radar now that people are focusing on reapers for some strange reasons. I should mention that Reapers die just as easy when focused, the Nos-state will live on. Being “tanky” is only a term used when Reaper isn’t being focused during team brawls. Have we forgotten Reapers still don’t have invulns, blocks, evades, stealth, and escapes?

Until tournaments stop being won by stacking enough eles, I think people should chill a bit with calling for reaper nerfs.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

You mean https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3k2ltw/cant_focus_fireburst_reaper_for_free_kill/cuuhhsu?

I may read it wrong but he didnt say it is op perse. He said that the passive sustain/tankiness is bad for the game and should be more active (Essentially the same stance he has on PU mesmer).

Honestly i would be fine with having more active defenses on the reaper at the cost of the passive ones. But as it stands without mobility, blocks, invulnerabilites, evades etc. reaper kinda needs such “absurd” sustain/tankiness.

Muchacho.2390:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

You mean https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3k2ltw/cant_focus_fireburst_reaper_for_free_kill/cuuhhsu?

I may read it wrong but he didnt say it is op perse. He said that the passive sustain/tankiness is bad for the game and should be more active (Essentially the same stance he has on PU mesmer).

Honestly i would be fine with having more active defenses on the reaper at the cost of the passive ones. But as it stands without mobility, blocks, invulnerabilites, evades etc. reaper kinda needs such “absurd” sustain/tankiness.

His post certainly seems to be greatly fluctuating in tone. But I am sure he wouldn’t want the reaper to be unviable. He just seems to dislike the type of survivability Reaper was given.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Muchacho.2390:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Tim.6450:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Well, people report that our sustain is a bit too high, so we need a solution to this that doesn’t make the trait completely useless such as a flat 1s ICD.

You don’t mean that pvp forum thread where the main poster is a condi mesmer right?

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

You mean https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3k2ltw/cant_focus_fireburst_reaper_for_free_kill/cuuhhsu?

I may read it wrong but he didnt say it is op perse. He said that the passive sustain/tankiness is bad for the game and should be more active (Essentially the same stance he has on PU mesmer).

Honestly i would be fine with having more active defenses on the reaper at the cost of the passive ones. But as it stands without mobility, blocks, invulnerabilites, evades etc. reaper kinda needs such “absurd” sustain/tankiness.

His post certainly seems to be greatly fluctuating in tone. But I am sure he wouldn’t want the reaper to be unviable. He just seems to dislike the type of survivability Reaper was given.

Yeah but it is clear what he wanted to say. That would be in 4 words: passive bad, active good.

Silmariena.6205:

Quickening Thirst : Increases movement speed for while wielding a dagger. Dagger skills recharge faster if activated while above the health threshold. —-—> Increases movement speed for while wielding a dagger or greatsword. Dagger and greatsword skills recharge faster if activated while above the health threshold. Or something like that…
+ stability sharing from shout.

I like you.

datawais.7209:

I wanted to agree and reiterate the Vital Persistence baseline with a nerf to Spectral Mastery. I feel pigeon-holed into 3 trait lines and losing out on the support options/sustain with Death Magic and Blood Magic lines. I think that’s the most major issue I have with the mastery so far.

Otherwise, I think Reaper is shaping up to be the best, and most needed mastery.

While I would love for Persistence to be baseline, I felt just fine using Blood Magic over Soul Reaping all weekend as MM or even normal Reaper.

Dead.5829:

datawais.7209:

I wanted to agree and reiterate the Vital Persistence baseline with a nerf to Spectral Mastery. I feel pigeon-holed into 3 trait lines and losing out on the support options/sustain with Death Magic and Blood Magic lines. I think that’s the most major issue I have with the mastery so far.

Otherwise, I think Reaper is shaping up to be the best, and most needed mastery.

While I would love for Persistence to be baseline, I felt just fine using Blood Magic over Soul Reaping all weekend as MM or even normal Reaper.

MM is one exception because with the amount of pets (protectors) you have you will want blood, death (pet line) and reaper; soul means less when you are your own petting zoo. The other exception is if you go condi, then you will replace spite with curses. You could run spite, curses and reaper, but your LF gen for RS would be terrible.

Other than those two different play style exceptions though if you are going to run power you will want spite, soul and reaper. I am not referring to a regular necro here, just reaper.

Edit: you could run a different combination, but your damage output would suffer immensely for the sake of a small increase in survivability.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

• AUGURY OF DEATH – I am just not the biggest fan of shouts, and believe that Relentless Pursuit is a mandatory trait for PvP, thus I never really played with this trait. Perhaps people might be interested in taking it for PvE if a shout or two become strong for that game mode.

I quite like the shouts now. My only gripe is the CD on Chilled to the Bone, and the lackluster transfer floor of Suffer (only sending off 1 condition if around 1 enemy). If Suffer transferred, say, 3 conditions minimum, with up to 2 more OR 3-5 conditions, split among enemies, I would feel much better about not bringing Plague Signet. As it stands, 1v1 against an enemy that can stack burns + one other condition when Suffer is your main transfer is less than decent.

CttB feels like a fantastic opener to a fight, especially with the reduced cast time, I just wish it could be used in more fights. Reducing the power through lowering the duration of the stab, the length of chill, etc might be a way to balance for a lower cd. Playing a Shiro Revenant for any length of time showed how CttB is somewhat lacking for what it’s supposed to be doing.

Augury itself could also use the same heightened floor rebalance that the shouts got. Maybe 15% normal + up to 4% per target hit.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

• RELENTLESS PURSUIT – Absolutely mandatory in PvP. If you do not take that trait, you are likely not going to have a fun time.

I feel like this would be fixed by making ranged necro weapons actually good. When running Augury , I was only really sad about long durations that didn’t get sent off by Suffer.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

• SOUL EATER – For PvE – once you get to the point where you can spam Gravedigger, you do not really care about the quicker recharge of other abilities. For PvP – you rarely manage to land enough attacks to make it worthwhile, and will probably get better sustain for yourself through the chilling force combo with Blighter’s boon.

I’m of two minds about this one. Decimate Defenses is just… always good. Chilling Force is great with Blighter’s, but unimpressive in its might duration. Soul Eater vamp is FANTASTIC when GS3 can actually land on multiple targets, proccing 18 times. The vamp is not good with everything else, though. I feel like it should probably be changed to be a much bigger vamp amount, but have an ICD.

The CD of it really needs to be changed to something else. As you said, under 50%, you’re not really using another ability. Everything is probably dying after a couple of casts. I could see it being strong when you actually do want to stop to use Death Spiral or Nightfall more to mitigate damage or maintain vuln on things that won’t be dying immediately. If not becoming just a stock 20% reduction in CD, I could see it instead being that each GS skill reduces the CD of other GS skills by X% (maybe too good on Death Spiral).

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

• DEATHLY CHILL – not the biggest fan, this is definitely by far the worst grandmaster trait we possess. Unless the damage is really quite something, the other two options just outclass it.

Agreed. If this was some sort of separate condition that stacked based on chill application, it might be pretty good. As for now, it’s basically 500-700 dps added to your chills, which, while not bad, is nothing compared to other condis. Aaaaand if you’re condi, you probably want Blighter’s Boon to help with your LF generation or Onslaught to give you more Dhuumfire procs in Shroud :/

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

• REAPER’S ONSLAUGHT – excellent in PvE for obvious reasons. Quite reasonable in PvP, especially when combined with Dhuumfire. If Blighter’s Boon gets nuked, I will run to this trait instead and hope for the best.

I absolutely loved this trait, especially with Transfusion and how strong Soul Spiral is. My only complaint was that with the power disparity between gravedigger and… everything in RS, I wasn’t finishing people very often while in Shroud. I’d liked to see the recharge reduction work outside of Shroud OR Shroud to do enough damage I don’t want to drop it and finish someone with my GS.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

In Conclusion
Aside from some minor issues and some number tweaking work with the traits – I believe that Reaper is good for shipping. I have not had so much fun with an MMO character for a long, long time, and I believe that Robert and Co have done a fantastic job with it.

Agreed! I really loved playing it this weekend. To the point that I didn’t even get around to… anything but Reaper and Herald. I think Reaper is almost good to go, with some minor changes to itself and some major changes to baseline necro weapons.

I didnt see many problems with reaper it was solid when i played it. On that note though
gs3 needs a larger cone and 450 range to make it worth using in the rotation as of now you can just slap on blighters boon and not have too worry much about life force generation. Shroud 2 I think can be increased too 900 range without being op as a gap closer its not all that great atm I just use it for the projectile destruction. I just wana say shroud 4 hits like a truck even though its 3 sec I was getting 16-20k aoes in a pug group. I really enjoyed my reaper over the weekend especially the part where I soloed two champs and mobs with a full zerk reaper on arah path 4.