Guild Wars 2

Although condi reaper feels much better than in the previous beta, it’s still MUCH weaker than for instance condi ele, condi chrono and condi guardian. I think the main reason for this (apart from the fact that Curses is indisputably our worst traitline and in fact you’re better off running Spite/Soul Reaping/Reaper) is Deathly Chill being too weak. At first I really liked the idea. Chill dealing damage seemed amazing to me, especially when combined with Terror. Unfortunately, it’s been rather disappointing in practice.
There are two problems with Deathly Chill:
- it doesn’t affect mobs with a breakbar (which seemed to be ubiquitous in the last beta)
- it still doesn’t deal enough damage because it doesn’t stack intensity

The latter can be easily solved – the damage from Deathly Chill could be doubled, but that still leaves us helpless against bosses or even regular trash mobs with a breakbar. Perhaps the damage from Deathly Chill could be applied even to mobs with a breakbar?

Alternatively, you could replace this trait with something like ‘Chilling a foe inflicts Torment (2 stacks, 3 seconds)’. Of course, it doesn’t seem as fun as Chill dealing damage, but the fact that Torment stacks and affects bosses is enough for me to say goodbye to Deathly Chill in its current form.

I actually played mainly condi reaper this BWE. I really loved it. It is a clear upgrade over condi necro.
I perfectly agree with your statement about curses. After a few unsatisfying attempts at running curses/SR/reaper, I ended up on spite/SR/reaper…. on a condi reaper signet build…

But I really loved it. I felt bursty (have never felt bursty on my necro, certainly not in a condi build), and decently efficient on 1v1 or even group fights. My burst looked like:

focus 4/5 for vuln + chill, staff 2,3 for damage + chill + poison field, RS 3 for stab, RS 4 for massive poison + poison bolt, continue with dhuumfire.

Using RS 5 before RS 4 works too by preventing the burst to be avoided, but replaces the poison field by chill field which reduces the burst. The chill on focus + staff normally already helps landing the RS 4.

The problem I had mostly is that while this burst is efficient, it requires life force. So I could not go into a (semi-) glass cannon amulet (carrion) because I needed to first survive an attrition fight to build LF before I could start bursting (I ended up on rabid/dire, but I would have preferred carrion to make use of decimate defenses)…

About deathly chill, I don’t think increasing its damage is the right solution. I think there should be a way to make chill stack, to allow more bursty chill use + allow more than 1 reaper (or other classes applying chill) to work on the same enemy without diluting the chill damage.

Very interested in this subject. Coming back to the game after an extended period away. Looking forward to playing reaper, but I’m more of a “watch them melt” sorta person. Would appreciate any advice on what gear to start collecting in order to make this happen. Right now I have a mix of Rabid, Carrion.. some other stuff I don’t even remember.

I would also like a point in the right direction for a spec that could work around Epidemic… if such a thing is possible. My primary interests are WvW and PvE. SPvP is not a factor.

Epidemic is not so useful in WvW:

• roaming is usual duel
• zerg usually clean condis too fast

On the other hand, if you play condi PvE, and in particular, if you play with a friend engineer or guardian, epidemic can be devastating. Currently on core necro (not reaper), we do not apply that much conditions on our own. Good news is that some changes should come soon that may improve that!