Guild Wars 2

i will list the concerns i have with the shouts from a pvp perspective:

your soul is mine
250 damage
4k heal
4% life force
20s cd 0,75s casting time

the problem with this heal skill is, it’s not powerful enough if it’s not against 5 targets. you will get a 4k heal which is very low, not removing any conditions compared to consume conditions, low damage and some life force. even against 5 targets i would never take this over consume conditions because it is one of the best condi cleanses in the game and very useful with all the conditions that are currently flying around in pvp.

you are all weaklings
250 damage
6s weakness
4 might (4s)
stunbreak
25s cd 0,75s casting time

this shout is by far the best shout in the game solely because it breaks stun on such a low cooldown. the additional 4 might combined with the grandmaster trait give a nice small amount of healing on top of it. the weakness is also very nice.

rise
250 damage
1 jagged horror per enemy hit
40s cd 1.5s casting time

sorry rober but this shout is the worst shout. jagged horrors are bad, very bad, to use this shout you would have to trait for death nova and even then it’s not that great. i can understand that 5 dying horrors can give you a bit of life force but even then it doesn’t justify the long cooldown and the long casting time. 20s cd with 0,75s casting time at the very least and even then this shout will most likely not see a lot of use.

suffer
250 damage
condi transfer per enemy hit
3s chill
40s cd 1.25s casting time

this shout is very problematic, what if you don’t hit a single enemy? you won’t get anything from it. reaper shouts going in a different direction than warrior and guard shouts is “okayish” but the difference between all the shouts is, on warrior or guard you don’t care of there’s nobody around, if you use them you will benefit from it. as a reaper the shouts are completely useless.

make this skill remove 2 conditions regardless if you hit an enemy or not and +1 for each enemy hit up to a total of 5 (2 base + 3 from enemies).

lower the cooldown to 25s and the casting time to 0.75s

nothing can save you
250 damage
convert 2 boons to vul (5 per boon)
unblockable attacks
35s cooldown 1s casting time

the problem with this skill is the following: with unblockable attacks you want to interrupt/kill an enemy that is currently blocking (obviously) to do so you would have to 1. use this skill (1s cooldown) and then fear them or pull them. your pull on the gs has a 0,75s casting time and your staff fear has also a 0,75s casting time. if we add this together it’s a 2s+ (reaction + use shout + use interrupt + human delay) action.

let’s take a look at frequently used block skills: shelter (1.25s, 2s total of block) and gear shield (instacast and 3s block duration).

this shout has to be instacast to make it work ortherwise just remove the unblockable on it because it’s useless. IF it will be instacast the cooldown would be okay.

chilled to the bone (elite)
1k damage
12s chill
2s resistance per target hit
2s stun
120s cd 2s casting time

this skill is in what it does very strong but also really weak in its execution. what i personally would do with this skill is reduce the chill to 6s, give 2s of resistance regardless if you hit an enemy with it and most important: reduce the casting time to 1s and the cooldown to 100s.
it’s an elite skill, make it strong enough. we saw the revenant’s jade winds elite datamined and (idk if you changed it) but this one here is a joke compared to the datamined jade winds.

augury of death (trait)
i respect you for trying a different approach here but please just make this trait a normal 20% reduction. you could even do a 15% reduction + further -3% for every enemy hit to get a 30% but if you want to see this trait and the shouts being used in pvp the base reduction has to be higher. remember: pvp is 5v5 and no good players will ever fight a 5v5 on a point. (foefire lord and stronghold not counting because it would be 5+ anyway with the npcs)

best would be, but i don’t think you’re gonna do that, is to just drop the casting times on shouts except for the heal and the elite (heal 0.75s elite 1s).

alright, so that’s it for my feedback

this shout is very problematic, what if you don’t hit a single enemy? you won’t get anything from it. reaper shouts going in a different direction than warrior and guard shouts is “okayish” but the difference between all the shouts is, on warrior or guard you don’t care of there’s nobody around, if you use them you will benefit from it. as a reaper the shouts are completely useless.

This I don’t see as a problem. There are a ton of abilities in the game that do nothing if you don’t hit enemies with them, that’s working as intended. It’s unusual for a shout, but these are meant to be unusual shouts, offensive, not directly buffs. I’m no expert, but Suffer actually seems pretty useful to me for a masochist condi necro build. Blood is Power and stuff, and then pass those condis, plus Chill, to the various enemies.

I do agree that in general though the shouts are very underwhelming. Also, Shouts should be instacast, the entire point of them is that you can launch them no matter what else is happening, in the middle of other moves if necessary. If you have to stop what you’re doing to cast a Shout, then it’s not a Shout.

Ohoni.6057:

I do agree that in general though the shouts are very underwhelming. Also, Shouts should be instacast, the entire point of them is that you can launch them no matter what else is happening, in the middle of other moves if necessary. If you have to stop what you’re doing to cast a Shout, then it’s not a Shout.

+1

i think the reason why they’re not instant is kinda their offensive purpose and the (low) damage…

imo there’s actually no reason not to have them instacast. would be best to happen to have the utility shouts instant.

heal and elite with casting time.

i really hate having cast times on these shouts…..most effects aren’t really much better than mantras, which have multiple casts and no cast time once charged………and the only stunbreak is pointless with that cast time. i don’t see how these were “so overpowered we needed to add cast times”. if they had one ounce of direct ally support along with these offensive affects, then i might agree………but they don’t.

only shout i really like is the aoe weakness/might shout.

It seems I’m not the only one who struggles to see why one would use any of these over what we have. I still prefer plague signet over Suffer, Corrupt Boon over Nothing Can Save You, Consume conditions over your Soul is Mine, and any minion skill over Rise. That doesn’t even touch the skills that aren’t single target versions of the shouts, of which I frequently use Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk.

i think the reason why they’re not instant is kinda their offensive purpose and the (low) damage…

Maybe, but then don’t call them Shouts. Ideally, and I’m not sure they have the tech to do this, a better alternative to giving them small casting times, would be to give them a shared micro-cooldown, in that if you cast any shout, all shouts go on cooldown for at least a few seconds. That way you couldn’t just glissando the utilities and dump a ton of damage at once, but you could still pull out any single Shout you wanted at a moment’s notice.

what you mean is a shared global cooldown on shouts. i think that would be quite a bit of coding. tbh even if you just instacasted all 3 of them it wouldn’t be that fatal. i would be more scared of a medi guard using his meditations.

The damage on shouts is peanuts.
The cast time on shouts is not.

I don’t see why they have cast time at all, let along long ones.
The elite especially stands out.

You’ve got a 2s cast time where you shout at all your enemies, letting them know to CC you as soon as possible.

The only real benefit of having damage on the shouts at all, is to proc those on hit traits more, but if it comes at the cost of cast times? Nah.

yeah i think it would really help if the utility shouts were instant and the heal 3/4 and the elite 1s. would be fair if you ask me.

They should all just be instant cast… they are mediocre at best and Necro already suffers from ridiculous cast times on everything except Doom, so just make these instant already.

As mentioned above, why would i take any of these over existing utilities – they just don’t measure up.

The grand master doesnt heal you if you use shouts, it only gives you LF. The heals only ocurr while in RS so that leaves the master trait of hitting chilled targets, might on lifeblast, regen when hit under 90%, fury on death shroud etc. no utility.

I’m not sure what you all are smoking, the utilities are absolutely worth taking. The only changes needed would be making Suffer! a stun break again, making Rise! have some decent minions like Bone Fiends, and Your Soul is Mine! having a scaling heal/ratio with people hit (not a ton).

But these shouts are very strong. Don’t think of them like other shouts, these are very offensive utilities, and they scale into teamfights crazy well.

as i said, i stated my views related to PvP effectiveness and the only good ones for PvP are you are all weaklings because of the stunbreak and nothing can save you because it’s a meh-ish boon rip with flawed unblockable attacks.

the elite cast time is too long
the heal is meh compared to consume conditions with all the random condis atm
rise is useless because AI
and suffer is a worse version of putrid mark on a longer cooldown.

and no they’re not “very offensive” they are “offensive” at best.

as it is now i would take any other guard/war shout over reaper shouts, even if they were affecting only yourself.

necro orders from gw1 would be way better even if you just converted them to the current combat system.

Bhawb you are blinded with excitement. Suffer is a weak plague signet until you are surrounded by 3+targets and then its a non functioning plague signet because it has 1.25 second cast time. You are all weaklings is an inferior Blood is power until 4+ targets (for a single cast or 2) and even then you might want to think twice about using it in case you get stunned, not to mention it too can be interrupted.
And no Im not saying reaper’s are bad so far they are my favorite elite spec from the 3 revealed. Judging class mechanic, weapon skills, utilities and traits I would rate the reaper a 3/4 slightly ahead of the Chronomancer with a 2.75/4 and DH with a whopping 2.5/4.

Where rise is concerned.

I actually like Jagged horrors in that they do physical damage & bleed on their attacks.

Their problem comes in that their health is constantly draining. If they got rid of that then they would be decent so far as minions are concerned.

Short of that I would like to see a new minion that does ranged attacks that bleed.

For suffer & nothing can save you. They really should lower the base CD to 30 seconds with cast times of 1/2 second.

For chilled to the bone, ya they should make it 1 second cast time & reduce the CD to 80-90 seconds.

Lastly for Augury of Death. I think they should give it a flat 20% CD reduction and have it cause your shouts to grant retaliation to allies (4-5 seconds) on use..

This would give the necro a little bit of support & help punish foes who just kite you in circles.

Vizardlorde.8243:

The grand master doesnt heal you if you use shouts, it only gives you LF. The heals only ocurr while in RS so that leaves the master trait of hitting chilled targets, might on lifeblast, regen when hit under 90%, fury on death shroud etc. no utility.

So a shout that gives you life force and scales up the more enemies it hits isn’t utility? You’re all weaklings will be a stun break that also give’s 4-20% life force refill with blighter’s boon. The heal will do the same. Being able to quickly have 40% life force in group fights seems pretty strong to me.

If it was insta cast and you had something like unholy sanctuary to bypass the CD on DS then it would start to hit broken levels of OP:
Hit 5 targets for a 15-20 second CD on the heal and “YaaW” which gives 40% life force. Since they can also do damage and crit while being instant, you can do other stuff while shouting to easily hit 50% life force or more in 2 seconds. A group trains you but whatever, 5.5k heal on a 15 second CD and US forces you into DS regardless of CD. 50% life force to last about 15 seconds in a bunkerish/bruiser build. Scythe DS auto has life force generation built into it. If you don’t have US and go blood instead, you’re life steals now heal in DS AND from what I can tell, blighter boon doesn’t require the boon to come from you. Shout warrior, ele, guard etc can now easily heal you while you are in DS on top of the might etc from your own auto attacks etc in DS. This can quickly become invincible with no counterplay because the insta heal/LF on shouts and auto proc on DS via US. Add spectral armor and last grasp in there and yeah…. too OP. This is why I think the cast time has to be there to add some counterplay. Otherwise, the % gain needs to be nerfed/# of boons decreased.

So those two shouts seem strong to me. I don’t play MM necro but “Rise” was initially interesting in a similar level when thinking from an engi perspective of detonate all minions for better pay off. My reasoning was that 12% life force per minion that dies means you spam 5 minions in larger fights = 60% life force from 1 skill as enemies try to cleave you down. This is another great way to scale defenses in team fights. However, after testing in game, that doesn’t work. Since Anet is asking for feedback on this, maybe ask for a minion that gives life force when it dies? And for people that do play minion builds/having more corpse explosions of stacking poison fields seems pretty strong; also this skill won’t go on CD once the minions die. It starts the CD immediatly because there is no secondary active. So it has that bonus compared to normal minion skills.

Having unblockable attacks is just nice although niche. Converting boons is great as well.

I have to say I find it a bit ironic that people were complaining about the data mined Jade wind elite that is a 2 second AOE stun being op but add great damage, chill, resistance or stability and necro to the mix, and suddenly it’s weak because necro >.<

Suffer would do well to transfer all conditions to all enemies instead of sharing 1 of each. I also wonder how this will work with runes of trooper. Does that first clear condi then transfer extra or the other way around?

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

Vizardlorde.8243:

The grand master doesnt heal you if you use shouts, it only gives you LF. The heals only ocurr while in RS so that leaves the master trait of hitting chilled targets, might on lifeblast, regen when hit under 90%, fury on death shroud etc. no utility.

So a shout that gives you life force and scales up the more enemies it hits isn’t utility? You’re all weaklings will be a stun break that also give’s 4-20% life force refill with blighter’s boon. The heal will do the same. Being able to quickly have 40% life force in group fights seems pretty strong to me.

If it was insta cast and you had something like unholy sanctuary to bypass the CD on DS then it would start to hit broken levels of OP:
Hit 5 targets for a 15-20 second CD on the heal and “YaaW” which gives 40% life force. Since they can also do damage and crit while being instant, you can do other stuff while shouting to easily hit 50% life force or more in 2 seconds. A group trains you but whatever, 5.5k heal on a 15 second CD and US forces you into DS regardless of CD. 50% life force to last about 15 seconds in a bunkerish/bruiser build. Scythe DS auto has life force generation built into it. If you don’t have US and go blood instead, you’re life steals now heal in DS AND from what I can tell, blighter boon doesn’t require the boon to come from you. Shout warrior, ele, guard etc can now easily heal you while you are in DS on top of the might etc from your own auto attacks etc in DS. This can quickly become invincible with no counterplay because the insta heal/LF on shouts and auto proc on DS via US. Add spectral armor and last grasp in there and yeah…. too OP. This is why I think the cast time has to be there to add some counterplay. Otherwise, the % gain needs to be nerfed/# of boons decreased.

So those two shouts seem strong to me. I don’t play MM necro but “Rise” was initially interesting in a similar level when thinking from an engi perspective of detonate all minions for better pay off. My reasoning was that 12% life force per minion that dies means you spam 5 minions in larger fights = 60% life force from 1 skill as enemies try to cleave you down. This is another great way to scale defenses in team fights. However, after testing in game, that doesn’t work. Since Anet is asking for feedback on this, maybe ask for a minion that gives life force when it dies? And for people that do play minion builds/having more corpse explosions of stacking poison fields seems pretty strong; also this skill won’t go on CD once the minions die. It starts the CD immediatly because there is no secondary active. So it has that bonus compared to normal minion skills.

Having unblockable attacks is just nice although niche. Converting boons is great as well.

I have to say I find it a bit ironic that people were complaining about the data mined Jade wind elite that is a 2 second AOE stun being op but add great damage, chill, resistance or stability and necro to the mix, and suddenly it’s weak because necro >.<

Suffer would do well to transfer all conditions to all enemies instead of sharing 1 of each. I also wonder how this will work with runes of trooper. Does that first clear condi then transfer extra or the other way around?

I’m not questioning the strength of the traits im questioning the shouts. only 1 shout benefits from reaper’s boon, and 20% life force from 5 targets is garbage compared to a spectral. In pvp you will almost never encounter a 1v 5 (5v5 are even more rare) suituation that you’ll survive especially not with a necromancer.

Vizardlorde.8243:

DuckDuckBOOM.4097:

…

I’m not questioning the strength of the traits im questioning the shouts. only 1 shout benefits from reaper’s boon, and 20% life force from 5 targets is garbage compared to a spectral. In pvp you will almost never encounter a 1v 5 (5v5 are even more rare) suituation that you’ll survive especially not with a necromancer.

I’m saying a few things though: insta shouts would get out of hand with the mechanics currently given to the shouts and how the life force generation works.

I also don’t think shouts are as weak as most ppl say there are. I won’t use 5 shouts in all reaper builds but I will add a few here and there as flavor/tools. If the elite becomes stability instead of resistance, a few stacks of stability per enemy hit will also benefit from the trait. If “Rise” gives minions that give LF when they die, this is another shout that will scale well with group fights and life force generation. You can’t really dissociate reaper traits from reaper utilities, they are a connected package that needs to be balanced as such.

Unlike spectrals armor that requires you to get hit, or spectral graps that can easily miss and is single target, it’s much more likely that an AOE shout will hit a few enemies. There is also no reason I can’t use YAAW and spectral armor.

You don’t need 5 players, just 5 enemies. A mesmer would be prime target for counting as 4 enemies. Rangers as 2 or other MM necros kitten . Turrets etc if anyone runs those.

Let’s compare the shout heal to CC.
5.3k heal every 25 seconds vs 4k heal every 20-13 seconds. Base is 212 per second for CC or 200-307 per second for “YSIM.” 700 health per extra condition or 250 health and 4% life force per enemy hit. Cast time CC: 1.25 second, YSIM .75 seconds. And people are complaining about how shouts can be interrupted?

Overall, I think shouts can be really strong life force generation tools that scale up well as fights get larger. This is something that necros are considered poor at dealing with. The only changes I would recommend is add resistance to Suffer for each enemy hit and give Chilled to the bone 3 stacks of stability per enemy hit. Rise gives minions that give LF when they die. I would sometimes run a full shout build if this happened.