Guild Wars 2

I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.

Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested.
http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r

Xaylin.1860:

“Shivers of Dread”

• Indeed not enough sources of Fear to make it worthwhile.
• Add: 2s of chill in 180-240 radius when entering Reapers Shroud.

Great idea. Every single traitline except reaper currently has at least one benefit on entering/exiting shroud:

-Spite has Rending Shroud (Yes you can flash this) and Spiteful spirit (though the ICD should be removed)
-Curses has Furious Demise and Weakening Shroud
-Death Magic has Shrouded Removal and Beyond the Veil
-Blood magic has Life from Death
-Soul Reaping has Foot in the Grave

-Reaper shroud has nothing. Fix this by giving it the sigil of Hydromancy effect on entering shroud. And don’t make shroud count as a weapon swap.

Pulsicle.3192:

How does Unyielding Blast work in Reaper Shroud. What pierces?

Nothing, the piercing simply doesn’t apply.

Pulsicle.3192:

Reaper’s Onslaught – Does attack speed only apply to RS skill 1?
I tested it with other skills and didn’t notice an increase on them. Does it only speed up the animation and not the induction? Bhawb in the OP mentioned it is bugged.

It just flat out didn’t affect attack speed, I tested RS1 chain with and without it, and it was identical (or nearly identical, within experimental error) attack speed.

Pulsicle.3192:

Cold Shoulder – With chill usually having such short durations, does 10% on all applied chills seem unnoticeable? Would longer duration on some chills be better? say, x% chance that applied chills are y% longer. where y could be a much more satisfying number?

Not particularly. Its actually the small chills you wanted boosted the most, since they are the ones that are going to end up “sticking” better. Lots of small to medium chills are much better than a few really long ones.

mazut.4296:

I would love so see “Your soul is mine” to give more life force.

I honestly don’t think it can. As an example, with soldier gear you are looking at an up to 8k “heal” (4k HP, 4k LF) on a 20s CD, which can go as low as 13s with the trait. Even at 20s that is a really strong heal to use.

Comus.7365:

having to deselect a target everytime i need an escape is just annoying.. in pvp i allways have someone targeted. and if it stop on someone targeted while he’s in a group of others all he has to do to negate the effect on his team mates is to step one step closer to me.

That is how every single leap meant as a gap closer works in the game, which is exactly what Necromancers have been asking for. It isn’t difficult to drop target, if Warrior players can do it we can figure it out.

Heneil Stormcaller.2935:

Another idea would be to add a pull to Gravedigger. It would make sense: have you noticed how in the animation the Reaper spins 2 times? If done fast enough it could create some kind of vacuum that would pull enemies in.
So the skill would pull 5 enemies in let’s say 200 units and then hit for a huge amount of damage (as it should be). This would also help solving the issue of Gravedigger being too hard to land.

Gravedigger should be hard to land, the problem with it right now isn’t that it is hard to land (though it could use a small range increase maybe), it is that even if you go through the effort to land it, it doesn’t mean much.

Charblaze.6958:

Overall I agree with your feedback, but why you pretty much trashed my attempt to discuss an alternate change proposal for augury to then say the same things here?

I never trashed it, I said

Bhawb.7408:

Giving it a second effect is too much imo.

And then later in that thread

Bhawb.7408:

I’m not stuck on the idea that it can’t do anything else, I think it might be fair for it to have a relatively small secondary defensive effect, but I wouldn’t give it anything big at least.

Never trashed the idea, just stated that I’m not sure it was important, and now am listing it as a potential option.

spoj.9672:

I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.

Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested.
http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r

I wish I had someone to pass my calculations to so that the devs could see them XD instead of hoping that they just randomly read them.
Anyway, I think I can agree to just about all of the points you make.

spoj.9672:

I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.

Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested.
http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r

What about the minors?

I don’t agree that there was a lack of chill uptime. For GS, sure but if you’re Condi you have Chilling Darkness, Staff 3 and 5, then you have shouts and wall, RS 4 and 5 combo. There’s runes and sigils if you want more. What bugged me the most is that Lingering Curse is a badly designed trait (even more noticable when Dhuumfire is actually a bit useful in RS).

Tim.6450:

spoj.9672:

I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.

Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested.
http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r

What about the minors?

I dont really think theres anything wrong with the minors other than maybe adding a bonus 10-20% damage to chilled foes somewhere. But that doesnt have to be on a minor. And that just comes under the category of necro/reaper lacks damage modifiers and damage. So they either need to buff base damage or give us more/better damage mod traits somewhere.

Knaifhogg.5964:

I don’t agree that there was a lack of chill uptime. For GS, sure but if you’re Condi you have Chilling Darkness, Staff 3 and 5, then you have shouts and wall, RS 4 and 5 combo. There’s runes and sigils if you want more. What bugged me the most is that Lingering Curse is a badly designed trait (even more noticable when Dhuumfire is actually a bit useful in RS).

this makes no sense. if you have to seek out other sources for chill in an elite spec that is supposed to be the master of it.. then i’d say it is lacking.

spoj.9672:

Tim.6450:

spoj.9672:

I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.

Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested.
http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r

What about the minors?

I dont really think theres anything wrong with the minors other than maybe adding a bonus 10-20% damage to chilled foes somewhere. But that doesnt have to be on a minor. And that just comes under the category of necro/reaper lack damage modifiers and damage. So they either need to buff base damage or give us more/better damage mod traits somewhere.

What if there was a trait that made Chill we apply double the effectiveness of Vulnerability on the affected foe?

Comus.7365:

Knaifhogg.5964:

I don’t agree that there was a lack of chill uptime. For GS, sure but if you’re Condi you have Chilling Darkness, Staff 3 and 5, then you have shouts and wall, RS 4 and 5 combo. There’s runes and sigils if you want more. What bugged me the most is that Lingering Curse is a badly designed trait (even more noticable when Dhuumfire is actually a bit useful in RS).

this makes no sense. if you have to seek out other sources for chill in an elite spec that is supposed to be the master of it.. then i’d say it is lacking.

Well that’s just the GS being bad. Having more of a condition ties into sigils and runes, that’s how it is for all conditions. Many weapons are also either condi or power, so GS is in an unusual spot. The shouts do bring chill even if they were lackluster otherwise.

I feel that the great sword AA would work better if it had some sort of back up plan like the guardian hammer AA does. Despite having the same weakness, guardian AA has symbol of protection to back up its easy to miss strike.

Perhaps instead of the burst of chill, the 3rd skill in the great sword’s AA chain could leave behind a small field (no bigger than symbol of protection) that does short but constant chill applications (think about how burning is applied when you step into lava).

This means that if your opponent insists on going toe to toe, they will be perma chilled no matter how many condi removals they have. As soon as they step out of that field, the chill will not last much longer.

This further reinforces the idea that the reaper with a great sword is meant to be kited while still strengthening the great sword’s utility.

Coffietire.2783:

I feel that the great sword AA would work better if it had some sort of back up plan like the guardian hammer AA does. Despite having the same weakness, guardian AA has symbol of protection to back up its easy to miss strike.

Perhaps instead of the burst of chill, the 3rd skill in the great sword’s AA chain could leave behind a small field (no bigger than symbol of protection) that does short but constant chill applications (think about how burning is applied when you step into lava).

This means that if your opponent insists on going toe to toe, they will be perma chilled no matter how many condi removals they have. As soon as they step out of that field, the chill will not last much longer.

This further reinforces the idea that the reaper with a great sword is meant to be kited while still strengthening the great sword’s utility.

That is exactly what my suggestion was an ice field left behind with some kind of chill and damage on pulse.

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

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

DeceiverX.8361:

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

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

That’s exactly what I put, raise the baseline on all the shouts so they are useful 1v1, but scale to similar power values as now if you hit 5 enemies.

I just wanted to state that a minor thing that should be changed is that Terrify on RS 3 interrupts casts and because of this it also breaks resurrections on downed allies. This gets a bit dicey when you pop it for stab to res someone in pvp and then happen to break the res to get in that crucial fear to interrupt a stomp. Doom on its DS counterpart is instant and does not break cast times and therefore resurrections as well.

Bhawb.7408:

1.25s cast time is absolutely fine, see RS 5

no it’s not fine. if it was a channeled skill or multi hit then i wouldn’t mind. but as it is now it’s not fine at all and for a 1-hit skill the cast time shouldn’t be more than be 0.5s. Warrior GS does 8-hits in 3.5s, axe spin2win does 15-hits in 3.5s, Mesmer GS does 4-hits in 1sec, Guardian GS does 7-hits in 0.75s and list goes on. why Reaper does 1-hit in 1.25s? unacceptable. the skill has too much unnecessary animation: “hey man, don’t move for a bit. let me make a practice swing first and then i’ll hit you”

Bhawb.7408:

DeceiverX.8361:

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

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

That’s exactly what I put, raise the baseline on all the shouts so they are useful 1v1, but scale to similar power values as now if you hit 5 enemies.

I must have completely mis-read that, then. I thought you said you wanted increased base cooldowns and potency with increased reductions per target hit.

Basically all of these suggestions seem quite good. A few specific comments:

For Soul Spiral, although I did not manage to test it myself, I’ve heard claims that it actually takes longer to complete than the listed 2s. Ideally this should be fixed, or at least the skill description adjusted.

I agree that Greatsword AA should have some LF generation, although exactly how much can be argued, and I’m not sure what ideal values would be. Adding it to the first two hits of the chain would give them something slightly more interesting than “cleave foes”. I rather like your suggestion of the third hit leaving a pulsing ice field. It could also stand to have its damage boosted if it is to remain at the same speed (if the field does damage, that might work).

For Gravedigger, I agree that it should be instant-recharge when hitting a low-HP foe. Even with that, I’ve heard it has a substantial aftercast that seriously damages its possible DPS (really a lot of necro skills seem to have this problem … Life Blast anyone?). Either that should be fixed, or the damage should be pushed upwards.

I really like the idea of “Rise!” summoning minions with a Dark Bond – style effect. Perhaps make them Bone Horrors, looking something like the ones from GW1?

Deathly Chill could be changed from a pathetic amount of condition damage to a damage modifier (someone else suggested doubling the effect of vulnerability on chilled targets, which sounds fun – especially nice as then the trait can be useful in both power and condition builds)

@OP

Only going to comment on things I disagree with.

- I like Death’s Charge as is. It’s a small dashing skill and I don’t think it needs to be encumbered with targeting mechanics. Especially if a player doesn’t have range limited in the options menu, this skill is going to be godly annoying to use for max distance.

- Greatsword AA, I agree it should be changed but I would like if it was different from the guardian hammer. Maybe the last attack in the chain can hit 2 or 3 separate times in its swing animation, applying chill with each one.

- No reason the damage on "Nothing can save you" couldn’t be higher, along with all shouts for that matter.

Just going to throw in that I feel resistance should be somewhere on a shout for the Reaper. It’s so crucial to be able to fight through soft cc and we only have one trait that can help with it.

Cold Shoulder – I think this is underperforming a little, I thought the old version of it was fine, especially considering we effectively only get two minors.

I mentioned this in another thread, and I think it’s been touched on in this one as well, but I think the damage reduction of Cold Shoulder needs divorced from the Chill requirement. It seems fairly widely agreed upon that:

• Chill is pretty difficult to maintain on a target, even if you are trying to build toward as much chill as possible (at the cost of a lot of superior damage options)
• Wearing cloth in melee with no access to passive resistance or avoidance is extremely painful, and Reaper Shroud gets ripped down too quickly

Reaper needs a little bit of extra survival in CQC and it needs to not be contingent on the application of a difficult-to-maintain condition.

What I would propose is something like “Take 10% less damage from enemies within range 300, damage reduction and range double (20%, range 600) when in Reaper Shroud.”

A “regular” necromancer, even a dagger one, can duck back, pop Shroud defensively, and sit at a semi-comfortable distance and spam 1. A Reaper feels like it wants to use its shroud more proactively, to get into the thick of things and start slicing, but the bar just gets burned down too quickly.

DeceiverX.8361:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I crossposted this post with the augury thread if you want to discuss the issue further without derailing this one.

Son of Urza.1692:

For Soul Spiral, although I did not manage to test it myself, I’ve heard claims that it actually takes longer to complete than the listed 2s. Ideally this should be fixed, or at least the skill description adjusted.

If for some reason it is longer than 2s then yeah it should be dropped.

Son of Urza.1692:

I rather like your suggestion of the third hit leaving a pulsing ice field. It could also stand to have its damage boosted if it is to remain at the same speed (if the field does damage, that might work).

My idea was to give the field damage because it reinforces the idea that you need to run the heck away from the Reaper, while in PvE it is more reliable and so higher DPS.

Son of Urza.1692:

For Gravedigger, I agree that it should be instant-recharge when hitting a low-HP foe. Even with that, I’ve heard it has a substantial aftercast that seriously damages its possible DPS (really a lot of necro skills seem to have this problem … Life Blast anyone?). Either that should be fixed, or the damage should be pushed upwards.

Agreed. Its DPS should be higher than dagger AA while under 50%, anything less makes no sense, though that might make for a boring “rotation”.

Son of Urza.1692:

Deathly Chill could be changed from a pathetic amount of condition damage to a damage modifier (someone else suggested doubling the effect of vulnerability on chilled targets, which sounds fun – especially nice as then the trait can be useful in both power and condition builds)

Not sure honestly. Deathly Chill would actually work as a great setup for condition builds as is, because chill is relatively easy to find in Terror builds. This essentially allows Terror builds to double up on their burst, since every application of fear also gives chill, while also allowing them a nice strong consistent damage source that would give them 3-4 sources of common damage.

That said, it isn’t like you couldn’t change it to a different setup, though I personally wouldn’t change it to be vuln reliant, as condi builds don’t really have good vuln unless they went spite. I think there are ideas to be had here to change it up.

Hammerguard.9834:

- I like Death’s Charge as is. It’s a small dashing skill and I don’t think it needs to be encumbered with targeting mechanics. Especially if a player doesn’t have range limited in the options menu, this skill is going to be godly annoying to use for max distance.

Encumbered? You mean made useful? Right now this skill is not just worthless as a combat skill for anything except running away, it can actively make your situation worse. This makes it work like every single other leap gap closer in the game, the exact thing we’ve been asking for for ages.

Hammerguard.9834:

- No reason the damage on “Nothing can save you” couldn’t be higher, along with all shouts for that matter.

Maybe, but the damage is basically negligible except to proc things that proc on damage for every shout except CttB.

Endlos.4852:

I mentioned this in another thread, and I think it’s been touched on in this one as well, but I think the damage reduction of Cold Shoulder needs divorced from the Chill requirement. It seems fairly widely agreed upon that:

• Chill is pretty difficult to maintain on a target, even if you are trying to build toward as much chill as possible (at the cost of a lot of superior damage options)
• Wearing cloth in melee with no access to passive resistance or avoidance is extremely painful, and Reaper Shroud gets ripped down too quickly

People overvalue light vs heavy armor. Elementalist has been one of the strongest bunkers in the game for ages while having the worst base stats of anyone.

Also the chill is fine, with properly balanced changes you shouldn’t have trouble keeping it up, in fact if Chilling Nova was 10s ICD you could keep up a lot of chill with just that + hydromancy sigils. Its fine for it to be tied to chill, but we need appropriate chill and appropriate reward for having it on.

Just a bump and a request from Bhawb.

Seeing as the Devs followed your post on this issue, would you please make a comprehensive post in regard to other weapon sets if you have time?

I know there are many, many good suggestions on these forums already, but they are quite spread out over many posts (and years) distilling them down for easy dev perusal might be just the thing to get them noticed.

Thanks.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Just a bump and a request from Bhawb.

Seeing as the Devs followed your post on this issue, would you please make a comprehensive post in regard to other weapon sets if you have time?

I know there are many, many good suggestions on these forums already, but they are quite spread out over many posts (and years) distilling them down for easy dev perusal might be just the thing to get them noticed.

Thanks.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and spitballing ideas with other Necromancers while I get ready to write it out. It’ll probably take a few days to fully flesh out, but I’d be happy to do it.

Bhawb.7408:

Tommyknocker.6089:

Just a bump and a request from Bhawb.

Seeing as the Devs followed your post on this issue, would you please make a comprehensive post in regard to other weapon sets if you have time?

I know there are many, many good suggestions on these forums already, but they are quite spread out over many posts (and years) distilling them down for easy dev perusal might be just the thing to get them noticed.

Thanks.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and spitballing ideas with other Necromancers while I get ready to write it out. It’ll probably take a few days to fully flesh out, but I’d be happy to do it.

That would be great, the one thing I’d want to get through is that we need our DPS specs increasing to similar levels of other classes. Reaper if it’s meant to be DPS balancing around where our DPS should be, not where it currently is. while dagger is our highest DOS weapon and the AA is the highest in the game I don’t think it’s really our DPS weapon… it just happens to have the highest DPS out of currently severely under tuned weapons.

I just really don’t want our DPS for Reaper and Greatsword being based around the weapons we currently complain are too low as they stand