Guild Wars 2

Salamander.2504:

Dead.5829:

Bhawb.7408:

YSIM out heals CC, as long as you have condi removal, traited YSIM is literally the strongest heal we have before you count the LF.

I don’t think I can echo this enough. This heal is insanely good, especially with Augury. It also opens up a lot of runes to be much more usable. Rune of the Trooper with just traited YSIM and Suffer is disgusting.

I really don’t get why it has such a bad rap.

Do soldier runes clear condis for allies with YSIM and Suffer? I’m guessing not since YSIM and Suffer don’t actually target allies?

Any and all allies within range of your shouts will be affected by soldier runes.

Yep, Soldier/Trooper runes (change names because consistency) clear condis at a ludicrous rate with shout builds. Also YSIM is a great heal, it is extremely fast, heals for a lot, procs a bunch of on-hit stuff, and can also life steal and give LF. It isn’t for 1v1 builds, but builds expecting to teamfight get a ton out of it.

I don’t have any problem with this change. It’s sad , i agree , but i still do pretty well in spvp . Haven’t tried wvw yet . Ppl are overeacting as usual . It’s true it makes spite mandatory to have some usage , but tbh i wouldnt take out spite for any reason . since, to me , it’s our best specialization

So what about making it so BB procs on allies defensive boons like regen/prot/vigor/resistance/aegis on top of any boons the Reaper aplies to himself(as we pretty much only stack might) ? It would stop the excessive boon spam as it mostly comes from outside might and swiftness. From this point foward it could use some testing to see if it stills needs a ICD.
The way it was nerfed, just completely removing the factor that made Reapers good at team fights was just too harsh…

Silverkey.2078:

I insist but nobody seems to notice it (or everyone think it’s stupid):
Blighter’s boon:
“You gain 100 HP or 0.5% LF every seconds for each unique boons currently on you. Maximum number of boons: 5”.

This way, there is a cap to how much we can get (500 HP or 2.5% every seconds in this example, but the values or the intervals can be adjusted). This also allows to not favor more “fast stacking of short duration boons” compared to “long duration boons”. Since we have few boons ourselves, we cannot easily cap this without allies help.

For what it’s worth, I like it.

Carlos.7915:

So what about making it so BB procs on allies defensive boons like regen/prot/vigor/resistance/aegis on top of any boons the Reaper aplies to himself(as we pretty much only stack might) ? It would stop the excessive boon spam as it mostly comes from outside might and swiftness. From this point foward it could use some testing to see if it stills needs a ICD.
The way it was nerfed, just completely removing the factor that made Reapers good at team fights was just too harsh…

Its exactly what i was thinking about.

The fact they completly remove incoming support from ally is a really bad move for us.

I like the allied defensive boon suggestion with self boons from the Reaper also proccing the effect.

Reaper still has control over their own boons, but they benefit from group defensive boons while in shroud.

Apparently they considered this though.

Maybe keep it like that and add an effect for allies regeneration.
The main complaint is that regeneration/direct heal do not work while in shroud.
With Reaper meant to go melee, it could ease both aspect.

Kulvar.1239:

Maybe keep it like that and add an effect for allies regeneration.
The main complaint is that regeneration/direct heal do not work while in shroud.
With Reaper meant to go melee, it could ease both aspect.

This. The best thing about Blighter’s boon was the fact allies could heal us in shroud.

I think someone suggested that for each unique boon on you, you gained 1% LF while outside shroud, and in shroud you regenerated like 100 health. I think if they did this, but capped it at like 3-5 unique boons, that would do the trick.

Really though if they would allow us to be actually healed while in shroud, it would solve this whole problem. I mean we give up our utilities, heal, and elite, plus we have no extra blocks, dodges or evades. So I don’t see why we should not be allowed to be healed in shroud, which is far less common than boon spam.

What if Blighters Boon just becomes MIGHT ONLY ?

“When you gain might, gain 1% lifeforce(or XXX if OP). When you gain might in shroud, you are healed for XXX ammount.”

Theme:
“Necro always had offensive defense – like weakness instead of prot. So youre supporting your necro by building offense.”

Reality:
Might is stacking so its not worthless AND it erradicates all other easy short pulsing stuff that flies around. Might is also the only one a necro can make, I mean retal from axe is second spot with 5% MAX case.
“You want to burst heal your necro cz hes a pingpong ball and cant heal him in shroud? Do some might.”
“You want to perma passive sustain with everything? Sry, necs cant have nice things”

I always supported idea of blighters boon, not only because its fair linear scaling defense , but if the healing in shroud is a too high value – it was double that of AH healing guard- you can just balance shave the heal from 120 – 80 – 40 – boom 60 perfect spot.

@Flumek Might stacking was likely the reason for the nerf in the first place.

Gnat.9405:

@Flumek Might stacking was likely the reason for the nerf in the first place.

I know its the main one.

And exactly because its the primary one and the only one we can also benefit from at all ourselves, it would be a nice nerf to just focus around it.

I think it with all the other common pulses like swift/regen/fury/stab stacks, it would reduce the original BB to around 70%.

A solid nerf,
the trait stays functionaly the same,
Further addjustments can be made on the numbers part.

Although I have to agree that in certain situations this trait could be very over powered, the fix that they chose for this is too restricting on all other aspects of gameplay other than WvW and arguably sPvP; though I don’t think it was an issue. If they move this out of Grandmaster and re-jigged another trait to take it’s place I can see this change justified. Currently, this change is harsh, other suggestions made here would make more sense but we are not developers so we’ll never know the FULL reasoning behind it, no doubt there is additional information left out of the explanation which has left many necro’s un-happy, but not in the ‘’OMG A NERF!?! WHY A NET I WAS WRECKING!?!?111’’ but in the ‘’Why didn’t you make a smarter choice for us gamers’’ Sadly this may be the best choice for the game but not for the Necro players. My suggestion?

Leave the BB trait in it’s current state, drop it to Master trait level. Provide us with a new Grandmaster trait and compliment the new GrandMaster trait with a secondary aspect to compliment Spite/blood magic trait line.
EXAMPLE:
Siphoning Health builds a stack of ‘’Thirsty for blood!’‘. Once 25 stacks of Thirst is reached generate 5% Life Force after 2 secs.
While in Reapers Shroud: Consume 5 stacks of ’’Thirsty for blood!’’ every 5 secs, quenching your thirst and healing you for 100hp (or gives you regen for 3 secs)

What do you guys think?

Could we perhaps get a real block/invuln option to compensate perhaps? This BB nerf have all but killed any viability (if there was any to begin with) for Reapers to fight as frontline melee in WvW.

Without being able to get healed while in shroud via allies boons, Reaper sustain goes way down. Along with the fact that you’re missing all the water blasts because they also don’t affect you while in shroud. The situation is dire.

We really got screwed. We have a terrible new weapon (AA sucks a lot) a major trait nerf to the ground. I have pretty much shelved the reaper and just sticking with the good old necro. I might not be perfect, but there is not point investing in a trait line that doesn’t offer much.

I dunno if this has been suggested before, but what about “Outgoing boons to allies give you lifeforce / health”?
That would make Mark of Blood a lot stronger (5% lifeforce, and would be nice with Mark of Evasion from Blood Magic as well), and would work with Well of Power really well, for example. Each pulse of the well would be a potential 5% lifeforce (granted no 5 man team would cluster on top of a well but still).
It would have interesting interactions with certain runes as well (Runes of the Pack give 3 boons AoE, for a potential of 15% lifeforce) or other runes which give off AoE boons. It still wouldn’t be as strong as pre-nerf though. I can’t see it being OP tho, just more useful.

Outgoing boons are almost completely nonexistent on normal builds. It’d make BB such a niche trait that it’d only be proc’d well on builds that don’t need or want it.

Hmm based on my testing and general heresay, it seems that condi-chill reaper will be the most run build in high level pvp, but even then it will be more of a 1v1 hero anti-meta build than an actual meta build itself.

So I ran a Soldier build last night with Blighter’s Boon and though I had some initial LF generation problems I was able to tank mid while downing all sorts of people. I think I was with a group of particularly low level people because I was at 215 points and the next closest person was 160 but it was pretty fun. Take a look at the build. Did I just get lucky?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRozGsyGwbTgeTsgLYxZxvYYkqL0GeWQXtAwCA-TJhHwACeCAMLDA4UAMa/BA

Dristig.9678:

So I ran a Soldier build last night with Blighter’s Boon and though I had some initial LF generation problems I was able to tank mid while downing all sorts of people. I think I was with a group of particularly low level people because I was at 215 points and the next closest person was 160 but it was pretty fun. Take a look at the build. Did I just get lucky?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRozGsyGwbTgeTsgLYxZxvYYkqL0GeWQXtAwCA-TJhHwACeCAMLDA4UAMa/BA

Looks interesting. Possibly luck, how many crits were you rolling out? What was your playstyle?

Arkrath.1407:

snip

Looks interesting. Possibly luck, how many crits were you rolling out? What was your playstyle?

More crits than I expected. Decimate defenses seemed to be pulling it’s weight for sure.

I was far point assaulting and teamfighting at mid. I was able to pull off some Gravediggers in teamfights and Chilled to the Bone -> Gravedigger was pretty strong. I had no ranged at all but as I was staying on points and comfortable LoSing people it wasn’t as bad as it sounds. The 86% reduction on movement impairing effects was pretty amazing. I barely had to use stun breaks because of it. I stayed in shroud a LOT. I was 2v1 then 3v1 then 4 v1 on their home point before they downed me on one of my far point assaults. At least one of those was a completely useless ranger. It was very interesting. I think it is one of those unranked hero builds though because I could see a coordinated team really ruining my day. I had a Guardian running around with me and putting Aegis on a Reaper is disgusting.

This nerf made me sadder than the reaper hood not showing asura ears/charr horns. I really thought reaper could shine in PvP as long as they left BB alone, it actually let us interact with our team and be supported very well.

I will never get why sustain is so bad for a necro to have when they won’t give it active defense. And yet some classes get both with better mobility. Being a slow, selfish, HP sponge is annoyingly bad design for pvp.

Silverkey.2078:

I insist but nobody seems to notice it (or everyone think it’s stupid):
Blighter’s boon:
“You gain 100 HP or 0.5% LF every seconds for each unique boons currently on you. Maximum number of boons: 5”.

This way, there is a cap to how much we can get (500 HP or 2.5% every seconds in this example, but the values or the intervals can be adjusted). This also allows to not favor more “fast stacking of short duration boons” compared to “long duration boons”. Since we have few boons ourselves, we cannot easily cap this without allies help.

That’s an interesting idea and certainly one worth testing out I think.

Dristig.9678:

So I ran a Soldier build last night with Blighter’s Boon and though I had some initial LF generation problems I was able to tank mid while downing all sorts of people. I think I was with a group of particularly low level people because I was at 215 points and the next closest person was 160 but it was pretty fun. Take a look at the build. Did I just get lucky?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRozGsyGwbTgeTsgLYxZxvYYkqL0GeWQXtAwCA-TJhHwACeCAMLDA4UAMa/BA

Your build is basically a big damage sponge, it’s not exactly threatening and very vulnerable to condi builds since you really only have the signet to protect yourself. Given the score chances are you were playing people well below what you should be.

nearlight.3064:

Hmm based on my testing and general heresay, it seems that condi-chill reaper will be the most run build in high level pvp, but even then it will be more of a 1v1 hero anti-meta build than an actual meta build itself.

There’s more and more diamond skin tempest. The kittener who designed that trait is a kittening kitten.

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Hmm based on my testing and general heresay, it seems that condi-chill reaper will be the most run build in high level pvp, but even then it will be more of a 1v1 hero anti-meta build than an actual meta build itself.

There’s more and more diamond skin tempest. The kittener who designed that trait is a kittening kitten.

Perfectly balanced with the eles low health pool and relative squish ones right?

Mentioned this idea before, but it seemed a bit greedy with unnerfed BB.

The secondary effect for traited GS and shouts – is a neglictible lifesteal.
Beside being low and heavily unreliable (nr of enemys and lol gravedigger lol), lifestealing is already a blood magic mechanic.

What if the secondary effect was “steal 1 boon on hit”.?

Its not another corrupt,
lifesteal can be balanced and remain blood magic thing,
it is something for melee teamfight survival,
nothing new is generated, just stolen from one side to another.

Steel one boon is fine, but honestly I think the lifesteal is fine. It is definitely not a negligible amount, at 150 each you’re looking at 750+ per shout use, which means in ideal conditions you are looking at roughly 90 siphoned per second. Its a really big effect to add considering its tied to also up to 35% CDR.

Robert Gee.9246:

Carlos.7915:

I guess necromancers need to live in their own instances apart from the rest of the game, not being able to support or receive support

I’m fairly confident that boons will still apply their effects to necromancers even if this trait is not equipped.

Thank you for the communication Robert.

I’ve had a lot of fun on my necro over the years and have no problem admitting they can be situational powerhouses. That said, necro has had serious design flaws since launch. Necro anti-synergy with itself (much less a team) is very frustrating.

The core balance issue seems to be lifeforce gain. It varies wildly with situation, making effective balance impossible and leading to kludge fixes like ‘no healing in Shroud’.

I suggest:

• re-conceptualize lifeforce as something a necro only gets from hitting a target
• normalize lifeforce gain/time for all weapons making it predictable enough to balance
• remove lifeforce gain on nearby death (sad to suggest this but it is too unpredictable to balance effectively)
• allow healing in Shroud to remove the worst anti-synergy necro suffers

continue to balance from there.

You’ve probably considered something like this already. If so, I’d be interested in understanding why it didn’t work out.

Silverkey.2078:

I insist but nobody seems to notice it (or everyone think it’s stupid):
Blighter’s boon:
“You gain 100 HP or 0.5% LF every seconds for each unique boons currently on you. Maximum number of boons: 5”.

This way, there is a cap to how much we can get (500 HP or 2.5% every seconds in this example, but the values or the intervals can be adjusted). This also allows to not favor more “fast stacking of short duration boons” compared to “long duration boons”. Since we have few boons ourselves, we cannot easily cap this without allies help.

I’m going to add my support to this idea as well. It seems like it could be a lot easier to balance so that it’s good by yourself but not insanely overpowered with your entire team behind you, while still allowing allies to assist you with activating your trait.

Ara.4569:

nearlight.3064:

Hmm based on my testing and general heresay, it seems that condi-chill reaper will be the most run build in high level pvp, but even then it will be more of a 1v1 hero anti-meta build than an actual meta build itself.

There’s more and more diamond skin tempest. The kittener who designed that trait is a kittening kitten.

Yeah, but they’re easy pickings with chill when diamond skin gets broken in a teamfight, so it’s fair.

Rune of the Lich just got removed from PvP, probably to nerf MM reapers. Something literally nobody complained about and it got removed.

GG Anet you really know how to show that you understand what you’re kittening doing. Removing content from PvP without any rhyme or reason and without taking communty feedback on it.

How about you let the kittening game settle and see if Minion masters actually are even USED AT LEAST ONCE in competitive play before nerfing them HUH!? If you’re gonna let elementalists run rampant for literally years then you can let me have fun for once.

striker.3704:

Rune of the Lich just got removed from PvP, probably to nerf MM reapers. Something literally nobody complained about and it got removed.

GG Anet you really know how to show that you understand what you’re kittening doing. Removing content from PvP without any rhyme or reason and without taking communty feedback on it.

How about you let the kittening game settle and see if Minion masters actually are even USED AT LEAST ONCE in competitive play before nerfing them HUH!? If you’re gonna let elementalists run rampant for literally years then you can let me have fun for once.

China ran an MM necro build at WTS. But they also got obliterated.

I think that decision was to be consistent with removing pirate runes that minstrels druids and staff eles were often using to raise their 1v1 damage while being unkillable on a point.

Bhawb.7408:

Yep, Soldier/Trooper runes (change names because consistency) clear condis at a ludicrous rate with shout builds. Also YSIM is a great heal, it is extremely fast, heals for a lot, procs a bunch of on-hit stuff, and can also life steal and give LF. It isn’t for 1v1 builds, but builds expecting to teamfight get a ton out of it.

Good to see you’re still here after 3 years Bhawb! The reaper line has really pushed it more to play like a shout cleanse warrior of olden days. You highlight a lot of the good parts that come with YSIM.

Right now, Reaper imo is a so-so trait line to be using for anything. In terms of DPS, if you land 100% of your hits with GS its pushing maybe 10-12% more DPS than the dagger in Zerk gear. The problem with Reaper/GS is its lack of synergy with vampiric/blood traits and its huge damper on mobility. It doesn’t heal yourself very well to -replace- dagger.

My problem I’m facing right now is its inability to land any hits because of how sorely telegraphed its attacks are, and if you’re not hitting with necro… you’re not gaining LF. no LF = no survivability.

In the HoT content, specifically facing insect swarms from mord husks, we don’t have any active mitigation tools like blocks/aegis or chainable evades like with ranger/rev/guardian/mesmer/ele so if you’re caught outside of DS you’re guaranteed death. Blighter’s Boon was a staple for people to regenerate health while turtling in DS, so I understand how people are mad over it not being useful anymore.

The good parts of Reaper aren’t the traits. IMO the traits need a lot of help. Right now you can pump out a lot more effective DPS running Rampager’s gear and do a D/D power/cond abomination with spite/blood/(SR or Curses) build without subjecting yourself to instant death in new content once your LF pool is wasted. The Reaper skills though, some of them are really good for PvE content, like YSIM. Being able to quickly fill both your HP pool and LF pool is what’s needed to survive in the new expansion content for this class, but it detracts from your ability to push out hard damage.

as a solo player this has actually been a nice buff for me :P

striker.3704:

Rune of the Lich just got removed from PvP, probably to nerf MM reapers. Something literally nobody complained about and it got removed.

Lich was really bad runes for MM. These runes were removed to reduce some of the completely passive AI play, but these didn’t affect MM’s power at all. MM should be running more like Vampirism/Pack/Scrapper/any general offense or defense runes really, Lich however gave a really terrible 6th bonus, and vitality is the least useful defensive stat.

Rune of the Lich was maybe the worse runeset in the game.

The minion, even Traited, was awful compared to the Ogre or Parrot. And the other runes had good bonuses, such as Ogre’s 4% bonus to damage that Lich didn’t have.

Maybe they can fix Lich Runes now. My fix: have them pop a lich #4.

The thing about Reaper is that greatsword really needs traited shouts for LF. Greatsword has no sustain skills and makes little LF by itself. However, if I use utilities and traits to increase LF and other defense measures like condition management, greatsword becomes less hazardous to use and competitive enough against multiple trash mobs.

I still view greatsword as a more PvE-centric weapon but Reaper Shroud has more utility in WvW and PvP because of its mobility and chill. Greatsword relies heavily on close range, target rich environments but is weak to ranged, scattered, Single-boss, or other target poor environments.

Ironically, staying in shroud as much as possible is my goal with greatsword. I use it almost like staff – pop the skills and utilities off and AA or Digger when safe, then go straight to shroud or swap to ranged. Staying with greatsword is fine until there is too much heat. Then I abandon it for Shroud or a ranged weapon.

Dagger is different in that the weapon has sustain; lots of LF, siphon heal, immobilize, and your choice of off hand. Dagger can be camped, except for range. Greatsword needs help from utilities and more active shroud play.

So disappointed about this change, really killed my enthusiasm. In matches against competent players you just melt in team fights, its ’focus the necromancer* all over again and becoming a feature of the game.

to be honest I haven’t used this trait since I realized a nerf was coming, I found better ways to sustain so this doesn’t affect me. It’s not the “reaper killer” like some people are whining about. it does suck though, because it was a good trait. Ah well