Guild Wars 2

The improvement to life stealing is promising. I’d have to see vampiric aura in action first, to judge it. But there is the potential here to finally give us some use in groups. Lets hope they don’t nerf the numbers at the last minute (like they’ve done before with SoV) and ruin it.

As for the reaper, it looks fun to play, but it is going to be really difficult to close the gap with how mobile most other classes are. Plus, the class seems the most effective when fighting 5 foes at once, which is also when necromancers die the quickest. I’m not convinced yet that a necromancer is going to be able to stay alive when fighting 5 foes at once. I just don’t see it happening, but we’ll see.

The chill-spam sounds fun, although I have to wonder how this is going to work in PVE. Especially against bosses. See, a large portion of the defense of the Reaper revolves around the idea of chilling foes, so their attacks and movement are slowed. But bosses are not affected by that, so how is the reaper going to stay alive against those? That seems like a design flaw to me.

It was good to finally see some stability on the reaper, although I believe the core specialization also needs stability. Of course as soon as HoT launches, everyone will be playing Reaper. But I worry that the original necromancer might become completely useless in light of this clearly much stronger specialization. I like having options. And not the sort of options where one specialization is utter trash, and the other works.

So, it seems the devs have finally after 3 years addressed several of our problems:

-Group support
-Lifestealing being rubbish
-Lack of stability
-Lack of cleave
-Healing in DS
-Some DS synergy
-The problem of fear making foes run away, when you want to kill them

Now all that remains are:

-Minion AI being broken.
-Signet of Vampirism being the worst skill in the game
-Lack of invulnerability, or some other means of defense that scales against focused fire and large hits.

We’ll still have to see how conditions and control skills work in PVE. I’m still a bit on the fence about the break-bar mechanic. I heard a lot of feedback that our necromancer fears are not the strongest skills to hit the break-bar with. And I still dislike how this mechanic negates the actual attributes of all control skills. But at least we might see a use for control skills in PVE now.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

The improvement to life stealing is promising. I’d have to see vampiric aura in action first, to judge it. But there is the potential here to finally give us some use in groups. Lets hope they don’t nerf the numbers at the last minute (like they’ve done before with SoV) and ruin it.

As for the reaper, it looks fun to play, but it is going to be really difficult to close the gap with how mobile most other classes are. Plus, the class seems the most effective when fighting 5 foes at once, which is also when necromancers die the quickest. I’m not convinced yet that a necromancer is going to be able to stay alive when fighting 5 foes at once. I just don’t see it happening, but we’ll see.

The chill-spam sounds fun, although I have to wonder how this is going to work in PVE. Especially against bosses. See, a large portion of the defense of the Reaper revolves around the idea of chilling foes, so their attacks and movement are slowed. But bosses are not affected by that, so how is the reaper going to stay alive against those? That seems like a design flaw to me.

It was good to finally see some stability on the reaper, although I believe the core specialization also needs stability. Of course as soon as HoT launches, everyone will be playing Reaper. But I worry that the original necromancer might become completely useless in light of this clearly much stronger specialization. I like having options. And not the sort of options where one specialization is utter trash, and the other works.

So, it seems the devs have finally after 3 years addressed several of our problems:

-Group support
-Lifestealing being rubbish
-Lack of stability
-Lack of cleave
-Healing in DS
-Some DS synergy
-The problem of fear making foes run away, when you want to kill them

Now all that remains are:

-Minion AI being broken.
-Signet of Vampirism being the worst skill in the game
-Lack of invulnerability, or some other means of defense that scales against focused fire and large hits.

We’ll still have to see how conditions and control skills work in PVE. I’m still a bit on the fence about the break-bar mechanic. I heard a lot of feedback that our necromancer fears are not the strongest skills to hit the break-bar with. And I still dislike how this mechanic negates the actual attributes of all control skills. But at least we might see a use for control skills in PVE now.

Personally I wonder if the reason Necros have trouble against large groups (at least in PvE) was because they didn’t have a weapon that was reliable in attacking large groups?

One thing to remember about chill spam in PvE is that Cold Shoulder will mean anyone chilled will do 15% less damage to the Reaper by default. While I hope that Anet is going to release a blog to announce how mobs (especially bosses) will be redesigned, even if only from here on out, to be more susceptible to things like chill, Cold Shoulder might be the best that Necros can hope for.

As for lack of damage avoidance mechanics (like blocks or invul)… I wonder if the life siphon changes are the answer. The fact that Necromancers will be able to heal through DS using siphons and/or Blighter’s Boon means that life force isn’t just a “second health bar” (a term that most Necro players cringe at when they hear) it’s a shield that protects you while you regain health through other means. That said, I would be quite happy if the Blood Magic rework somehow ends with Necromancers getting a source of vigor that isn’t removing Bleeds with Well of Power.

@Foefaller Utilities and especially signets don’t work in DS if they would work then I would agree they see DS as more of a semi shield and weapon swap instead of HP to be taken down that would also free underwhelming trait slots.

Here is my feedback after a couple days of contemplation.

Make Might and Vulnerability harder to come by for all professions and Necromancer could be fine. It is too easy for a group to stack 25 vulnerability and 25 might. Either reduce the odds of getting it or change the scaling from linear to one of diminishing returns. An example of diminishing returns is having the damage bonus for each stack of might decrease slightly as the total grows; i.e., damage bonus= stack – 0.2*stack^2

I like the effort being put into Reaper and Blood Magic. It shows Arenanet is aware of the shortcomings and desires a true fix for them instead of a patch like Dhuumfire was. Allowing heals through DS is a big step toward sustainability. Without letting anything through DS, it is too easy to miss out on group support.

Chill is great. It has excellent synergy with Necromancer’s core skill set and traits but I wonder if the condition itself should be converted to one that stacks in intensity. It is an “ultimate” type condition with a huge effect – not as big as a hard CC or invulnerability mechanic but it is strong. Perhaps make it stack to a cap of 3 with 10% to 50% effectiveness.

Death Magic will not be good until minions are improved enough to be reliable in all game modes. They do not have to be the strongest option but they need to stop flipping between working great and being totally useless. Their decision making time, pathing errors, and susceptibility to AoE damage is too limiting right now.

Curses still bugs me with its high bonus to scepter. It is like scepter is being punished if people do not take lingering conditions but I understand the problems with condition damage and its uncertain future of actually proc’ing if condition cleanses and resistance buffs can crimp its effectiveness. Curses is also the only condition damage trait line we have and scepter is the only dedicated condition damage weapon.

Speaking of condition cleanses, it feels like there is too much conditions and cleansing in the game. Conditions and boons are everywhere and they seem to have lost some of their importance.

Signets are something I want looked at hard for Necromancer. They have no theme, very little synergy, and several are well below par for usefulness. Spite is probably the best because the passive is always useful and the active is strong. Locust is next best because the passive is useful and the active scales, even if it scales kind of poorly. Plague is nearly useless because neither active nor passive are worth a slot with all the cleansing going on from other professions and its cool down is unjustifiably long. Undeath is a wasted slot because cast time and cool down time are too slow. I can run over and res people faster. Take away the targeting requirement and shorten both casting and the cool down. War can drop a banner as that profession seems to be forced to carry it, anyway. Finally, Vampirism does nothing anyone wants or needs – nothing! There is no condition management, the heals are worthless, and the damage increase is unnecessary.

Runs and sigils should be re-evaluated, if Arenanet is not doing that, already.

Hi folks ,

I think these things should be looked at :

Basic DS/RS

• Self healing goes through DS/RS
• Give acces to utilities in DS/RS
• Life force regen/degen to x% out of combat

Built in

• Make Soul marks Baseline. (Scales on hit. Give it a maximum % life force gained per mark. )
• Life blast pierce.
• No ICD on entring death sroud skills.

Traits
CURSE :

• Terror and Master of terror don’t compete with Lingering curse and Vital persitence.
  (Lingering curse >>> Terror) & ( Spectral mastery/Vital persistence >>> Terror master.)
• Lingering Curse Condition duration (100%) will make necro verry challenging to balance in the future. Decreasing it to (35 – 50 % ?) and giving additional utility to scepter will be better. (Feast of corruption now corrupt (1-2) boons).
• Curse should have one Power based GM trait.

BLOOD MAGIC :

• They are changing it , should be focused on necro sustain and abbility to support a team.

DEATH MAGIC :

• Some Traits have to be reworked to give necro more active defences.

List of non effective traits with the specialisation changes.
(The ideas can be good but what the trait brings is weak compared to other alternatives.)

• Unyielding blast
• Terror master
• Deathly invigoration
• Bloodthirth
• Mark of evasion (ICD is the trouble.)
• Unholy martyr
• Deathly strengt
• Unholy sanctuary
• Having 2 minion Grand Master traits in DM
• Reaper’s préscision

• Spite full Spirit (compared to Close to death it feels weak but it’s a good trait.)

@Abimes
Unyielding blast stacks 2 stacks of vulnerability per auto attack swing. Faster than life blast anyways.
Bloodthirst with all the traits can result in 200+ HP in leaving per crit.
Unholy martyr and unholy sanctuary can be used for immortal builds.
Deathly strength is 14% toughness yo power in DS/Rs and works well with tsnky builds.

The rest I agree with and hope they are reworked.

Abimes.9726:

• Spite full Spirit (compared to Close to death it feels weak but it’s a good trait.)

If you’re running a condi build Close to Death is actually the least attractive option, depending on your build you’d choose between Signet Mastery and Spiteful Spirit.
The real problems here are:
1. the icd on Spiteful Spirit of course,
2. and the fact that you currently can’t heal in DS which will occasionally make Signet Mastery go to waste because Signet of the Locust could proc while you’re in Shroud.
But without those issues these traits are actually very solid.

Other than that I agree with your entire list.

Sigmoid.7082:

Bloodthirst with all the traits can result in 200+ HP in leaving per crit.

That’s a best case scenario and even then it’s not really much.

Blood Magic is getting reworked anyway so I’d wait until then instead of commenting on the current traits in that specialization.

Sigmoid.7082:

Unholy martyr and unholy sanctuary can be used for immortal builds.

hehe… oh you were serious? Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHA!

@ flow its not even best case. There will be 4 leaching traits. If you can take blood thirst with them as well …as long as you spec for it per crit per target its just under 200 ho which is why they keep saying its so strong even though the numbers are low. Considering the cleave snd extreme multi hit skills is quickly adds up. You can even see it in the video still numbers are subject to change.

Also I am serious. But for instances like wvw or small fights. One extends how long you can stay shrouded and the other makes you go into shroud as long as you have over 10% life force. Combine those with leaching and the ability to generate lf in shroud and stay in it for a while and yes you will have some builds while are almost untillable. Settlers or clerics for example.

Its the reason I expect it to get needed before it hits us.

@Sigmoid

Unyielding blast is still weak on the regular DS , And honestly i think with a mele setupt speed of shadow will be mandatory.

Siphon are verry weak right now 20% increase is just bad , to me that’s the kind of thing that should be built in into the vampiric precision.

Unholy martyr doesn’t help your team at all , and 10% life force to drain conditions is realy low especialy if you drain 6- 10 stacks of something (now many conditions will stack and become verry dangerous). If it came along with resistence and was doing a bit more for the team it could be nice.

Unholy sanctuary is just one of those things they’v added cause they din’t wan’t us to heal in DS. Can be good to sustain but it’s passive as hell and they changed signet of life on warri because it was so passive , i don’t see why they would give necro such a thing. So Basicaly yes , it can be good (depends on how it scales with healing) but is it realy the healthiest thing out there ? —> self healing in DS is the way to go.

14% In death shroud It’s not huge. 141 power out of death shroud and 282 in death shroud (PVP Soldier Gear.) … (more or less 50 damage increase per hit on staff 1 ( it’s the damage of 1 bleed stack with no condi damage) ) That’s realy not that much. And that aside we don’t realy lack damage , but active defences.

Sigmoid.7082:

Also I am serious. But for instances like wvw or small fights. One extends how long you can stay shrouded and the other makes you go into shroud as long as you have over 10% life force. Combine those with leaching and the ability to generate lf in shroud and stay in it for a while and yes you will have some builds while are almost untillable. Settlers or clerics for example.

One of the problems with Unholy Sanctuary and Unholy Martyr are that they are in Death and Blood Magic, and for the most part those two trait lines are only good for making you lose damage.
So you’re using cleric stats? Great, your Unholy Sanctuary now heals you for ~100 hp/s more… holy moly, I think we’ve already got ourselves an immortal necro right there.
But wait! What if we add Unholy Martyr to the mix? First of all, you score another 300 healing power with Blood Magic so that makes Unholy Sanctuary pretty much the equivalent of invulnerable. But now you also get 5% life force every 3 seconds, only if you draw a condition from an ally which could do way more damage than those 5% but whatever. 5% means you’re effectively losing just 7% through naturaly degeneration, or even 1% with Vital Persistance. Oh, speaking of which, Vital Persistance (an adept trait in a trait line that is actually useful) saves you 6% in the same time without dumping conditions on you in the process.
So yeah, totally unkillable, I guess that’s why those cleric’s Death+Blood Magic necros have been rocking the PvP meta the entire past year :P

My point is they have their place when changed. In different game modes and in different builds.

Also I just can’t view siphons as weak if they are going to heal you in your shrouded state. Especially on a reaper.

@flow um I’m on about after the trait changes when it gives 10% every 3s and you no longer get stats from traits. In the current game and in their current form they aren’t worth a mention.

Also the unkillable refers to reapers specifically.

Sigmoid.7082:

Also I just can’t view siphons as weak if they are going to heal you in your shrouded state. Especially on a reaper.

I’m sure they will be after the rework. But currently, even if healing worked through DS, the Blood Magic line is just too bad to make some small extra healing worth the point investment.

flow.6043:

Sigmoid.7082:

Also I just can’t view siphons as weak if they are going to heal you in your shrouded state. Especially on a reaper.

I’m sure they will be after the rework. But currently, even if healing worked through DS, the Blood Magic line is just too bad to make some small extra healing worth the point investment.

Thats what I am on about. After the rework lol. They suck right now on a whole other level…

Well in that case I’d really wait until we see the finished product, which honestly I hope will no longer have Unholy Martyr at all, or perhaps it will be combined with that vamp aura we’ve been hearing about.

Even with the current proposed changes Unholy Scant might add to blighters boon to make an interesting bunker build. http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAPsBqQ~

Gaining health or LF every time you hit a target, regaining HP twice as fast when you’re in DS, and just dropping into DS instead of lethal blows. It would essentially leave the enemy a 10 second window to burst you down after they run your DS out, otherwise you would have some fun times.

The problem is that such a bunker gives no support (except maybe vulnerability to surrounding enemies). More over, unholy sanctuary is just a crutch for people not watching their HP. http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBqAXoBuQ~ is likely a better build. So now with soul reaping, your Life force drains slower, you can drop into DS more frequently (7s cd instead of 10) and you deal more damage. Essentially, Death magic is only good for players who are not attentive to their surroundings (or if there are situations where there is too much going on to pay attention to all of it).

flow.6043:

I’m sure they will be after the rework. But currently, even if healing worked through DS, the Blood Magic line is just too bad to make some small extra healing worth the point investment.

Yeah this is my main concern. Numerically right now all lifesteal sucks (haaaah.) Giving necro more opportunities to do something that sucks isn’t going to fix the core mathematical problems with life siphoning or stealing or whatever we want to call it.

A big problem (and at this point I’m preaching to the choir, but this is a feedback thread, so y’know) is we (well, ‘we’ as in both naive` players and the devs, experienced players know better) sit down and we make up these theoretical EHP calculations with Death Shroud and they look great! Necro has all this EHP guys! But what falls out of this calculation is that if you truly want a ‘tanky’ class with lots of EHP you’re looking at things like Protection and Regeneration uptime mitigating damage; extra damage mitigated through extra dodges from Vigor, damage mitigated by stab uptime meaning you can actually do things and avoid attacks when 3 or 5 or 30 guys try to stun you, and so on. And these other classes – when they build supporty bunkery type builds, they’re sharing that love, and necro shares nothing,

So obviously this is where a lifesteal fix comes in, you have vamp aura to share the sustain from lifesteal, you have transfusion to share some of the death shroud ‘regen’ from life transfer, but the lifesteal itself has to be -good-. It has to justify us not having those stacks of protection and regeneration and stability and if it does that’s awesome!

That means we can have these tanky vamp aura necro bunkers running around supporting their teammates and fighting on points and spreading hopefully-improved ‘defensive’ conditions like weakness and chill and blind and fear. It means reapers can be these weird anti-guardians they’re basically begging to be running in and setting everything on ice while giving their team Edgy Grimdark flavors of sustain, in WvW and SPvP alike.

But if it doesn’t we’re back at square one except now we have a cool melee variant for Power builds in sPvP I guess and Terrormancer just got a whole lot worse.

Golby.5348:

flow.6043:

I’m sure they will be after the rework. But currently, even if healing worked through DS, the Blood Magic line is just too bad to make some small extra healing worth the point investment.

Yeah this is my main concern. Numerically right now all lifesteal sucks (haaaah.) Giving necro more opportunities to do something that sucks isn’t going to fix the core mathematical problems with life siphoning or stealing or whatever we want to call it.

A big problem (and at this point I’m preaching to the choir, but this is a feedback thread, so y’know) is we (well, ‘we’ as in both naive` players and the devs, experienced players know better) sit down and we make up these theoretical EHP calculations with Death Shroud and they look great! Necro has all this EHP guys! But what falls out of this calculation is that if you truly want a ‘tanky’ class with lots of EHP you’re looking at things like Protection and Regeneration uptime mitigating damage; extra damage mitigated through extra dodges from Vigor, damage mitigated by stab uptime meaning you can actually do things and avoid attacks when 3 or 5 or 30 guys try to stun you, and so on. And these other classes – when they build supporty bunkery type builds, they’re sharing that love, and necro shares nothing,

So obviously this is where a lifesteal fix comes in, you have vamp aura to share the sustain from lifesteal, you have transfusion to share some of the death shroud ‘regen’ from life transfer, but the lifesteal itself has to be -good-. It has to justify us not having those stacks of protection and regeneration and stability and if it does that’s awesome!

That means we can have these tanky vamp aura necro bunkers running around supporting their teammates and fighting on points and spreading hopefully-improved ‘defensive’ conditions like weakness and chill and blind and fear. It means reapers can be these weird anti-guardians they’re basically begging to be running in and setting everything on ice while giving their team Edgy Grimdark flavors of sustain, in WvW and SPvP alike.

But if it doesn’t we’re back at square one except now we have a cool melee variant for Power builds in sPvP I guess and Terrormancer just got a whole lot worse.

Did you know Necromancers are the only profession without blocks, reflects and vigor?

No, not “or Vigor,” “and Vigor” as in every other profession has at least one of each of these things and Necromancers have none of them! Which really makes the argument of “…but that second health bar!” a bit silly. I think a lot of people reading this would trade that second health bar for just one block and a half-decent vigor source in an instant.

@ Foefaller

We do have agies and vigor its just hard to get because of how well of power works. Some times you can get 1 min of vigor other times none. Sometimes you can get pulsing aiges another times none.

Quick note: I’m encouraged by the fact that lifestealing will now heal us in DS! However, I’m not happy that life steal procs are still such tiny amounts. It means that fast attack speed weapons get a much bigger benefit from it than slow weapons – and, honestly, that benefit isn’t all that much even on the fastest weapons. GS might actually be decent since you can get 3 simultaneous lifesteal traits proccing from it, and since that whirl attack hits so many times and recharges instantly if target<50%HP.

But the thing is, why balance lifestealing so it’s ok only at the best possible scenario? If they increased the amount of life you can steal from each proc, and put an ICD on each trait, then slow weapons would gain almost exactly the same benefit from it as fast weapons, and it would be balanced for ANY necro that decided to spec in lifestealing no matter how they built. Why make it a “GS or GTFO” affair?

manveruppd.7601:

Why make it a “GS or GTFO” affair?

Do you mean because of soul eater?

Well Souleater+Vampiric+Vampiric precision. Those 3 proccing together might actually be a decent amount, considering the autoattack cleaves, the 3rd attack in the chain is a 360 degree pbaoe, Gravedigger hits like 600 times within a second (proccing potentially all 3 lifesteal traits with every hit if they crit!) and the other 3 skills are also aoe in one form or another. It’s not just that you’d be getting 55 health per hit from Soulstealer, it’s that you’d also gett many more VampiricVampiric Precision procs from the aoe!

Is it really intentional that a necro in wvw with a GS should be stealing roughly 6 times more life than a necro in spvp with a dagger? Why not just make it as effective for anyone who wants to choose those traits, regardless of what weapon they’re carrying? Just slap an ICD on each trait, and make it give about 10x the health!

PS. I get why a necro in wvw in a zerg situation might NEED to steal more life to sustain their HP, given that in a big fight like that you’re also getting hit a bunch more times, but that could easily be accounted for by making the ICD per target rather than internal to the necro.

manveruppd.7601:

Well Souleater+Vampiric+Vampiric precision. Those 3 proccing together might actually be a decent amount, considering the autoattack cleaves, the 3rd attack in the chain is a 360 degree pbaoe, Gravedigger hits like 600 times within a second (proccing potentially all 3 lifesteal traits with every hit if they crit!) and the other 3 skills are also aoe in one form or another. It’s not just that you’d be getting 55 health per hit from Soulstealer, it’s that you’d also gett many more VampiricVampiric Precision procs from the aoe!

Is it really intentional that a necro in wvw with a GS should be stealing roughly 6 times more life than a necro in spvp with a dagger? Why not just make it as effective for anyone who wants to choose those traits, regardless of what weapon they’re carrying? Just slap an ICD on each trait, and make it give about 10x the health!

PS. I get why a necro in wvw in a zerg situation might NEED to steal more life to sustain their HP, given that in a big fight like that you’re also getting hit a bunch more times, but that could easily be accounted for by making the ICD per target rather than internal to the necro.

If you take the bloodmagic traits, i probably also would take the new vampiric aura trait. On the stream they said it will stack so you would have 3-4 lifesteal procs on hit only from traits and 1 for your allies.

i think anet should change their train of thought. When your defense is healing its either too much or to little. Necromancers already have life force generation which is like healing.

I posted some ideas here
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Blood-and-Death-Magic-changes/first#post5076012
There are two set of changes one is the orignal and the other one is edited to try and fit anet current train of thought. There is also a TLDR at the bottom if you dont want to read it all.
Also if you want to make sustain through healing interesting and more useful removethe fact the healing is always happen and make it happen in controllable bursts. This way it is up to skill that determine whether life stealing is super strong or not.

Foefaller.1082:

Did you know Necromancers are the only profession without blocks, reflects and vigor?

No, not “or Vigor,” “and Vigor” as in every other profession has at least one of each of these things and Necromancers have none of them! Which really makes the argument of “…but that second health bar!” a bit silly. I think a lot of people reading this would trade that second health bar for just one block and a half-decent vigor source in an instant.

Yep! Sorry, by evades I also meant blocks, but blocks are technically a little different from actual evades.

But yeah, that’s my point exactly. Necro EHP is actually really, really bad, because devs and players don’t account for the massive EHP benefits of mitigation from reliable sources of block, vigor, protection, regeneration, stability..for a lifesteal buff to make up for that, it’d have to be tremendous. Necros are probably the least survivable profession on the field right now – because glassier profs have ways to get out of trouble, and tankier profs have ways to stay in trouble without dying (stab, block, prot, etc)

I agree, they really need to boost the effectiveness of life stealing. Without us having any invulnerability, blocking, vigor or evasion, and very little access to stability, the gain from life stealing should be quite a lot to make up for it. Otherwise a necro with a life stealing build will simply not be able to stay on her feet.

Life stealing should be good with Reaper in DS. But yeah the numbers are probably too small for regular necro in DS. Not sure how they can fix that without imbalancing it on Reaper though.

Life siphon does not have to be large but they should scale with the number of attackers. I would very much like defenses like toughness also scaling with incoming dps but the Reaper traits and skills may mitigate Necromancer’s ease of being focused and burned down. It does require the Reaper line, though, so without it Necro is not fixed.

My main concerns are still (1) dungeon and mists races to a point or through a gauntlet, and (2) lack of group power-ups like fire fields or AoE stealth. Professions without these party buffs are unpopular because the game rewards them disproportionately.

Give one of the Shouts a Teleport, increase cast time and/or cooldown to balance. Would help us deal with strong kiting classes.
Give Necrocopter projectile reflect. As it goes through enemies, and doesn’t stop at them, it could make for more interesting gameplay.

Everytime I see a link to that new dulfy trait utility I have to scratch my head. The links never work… It is always a blank trait setup. So what in the hell…

@Getzzzonked
A shout that teleport ? Just ask for a wurm rework then xD … No seriously shout teleporting make no sence … “I Teleport”.

Necrocopter reflect in front of necromancer is something that have been asked a lot and it make sence. ( Unlike “I teleport”)

@ xGalaxy
it’s probably your navigator , It works fine on my macbook , my laptop and my desktop ( Safari , mozilla)

Abimes.9726:

@Getzzzonked
A shout that teleport ? Just ask for a wurm rework then xD … No seriously shout teleporting make no sence … “I Teleport”.

Necrocopter reflect in front of necromancer is something that have been asked a lot and it make sence. ( Unlike “I teleport”)

@ xGalaxy
it’s probably your navigator , It works fine on my macbook , my laptop and my desktop ( Safari , mozilla)

Technically with offensive shouts, it’s not that unrealistic. Something, though it sounds a kitteneesy, but this would be pretty useful.
“Where am I?” : Aoe blind and teleport to your target. breaks stuns. 30 second CD.

Something like that. The idea is the shout blinds them in darkness as you haunt the enemy. Kind of neat actually…

Ron I think the purpose of necromancer here is to have realy low mobility teleport on 30 sec CD against 5 —> telleport every 19 sec that’s insane “in combat” mobility .

Necromancer lacking mobility isn’t a big deal , what it needs is realy the active defences against focused fire and some form of sustain. (kitting have to be rewarded against the reaper … asking for 19 sec CD teleports is like wanting the butter , the milk and the milker.)

ronpierce.2760:

Abimes.9726:

@Getzzzonked
A shout that teleport ? Just ask for a wurm rework then xD … No seriously shout teleporting make no sence … “I Teleport”.

Necrocopter reflect in front of necromancer is something that have been asked a lot and it make sence. ( Unlike “I teleport”)

@ xGalaxy
it’s probably your navigator , It works fine on my macbook , my laptop and my desktop ( Safari , mozilla)

Technically with offensive shouts, it’s not that unrealistic. Something, though it sounds a kitteneesy, but this would be pretty useful.
“Where am I?” : Aoe blind and teleport to your target. breaks stuns. 30 second CD.

Something like that. The idea is the shout blinds them in darkness as you haunt the enemy. Kind of neat actually…

Someone with some imagination. ‘I teleport’, geez….

It’s a Reaper, a legendary executioner and bringer of doom. A shout such as, nothing can save you….
Shouting Nothing Can Save You! whilst you swoop forward in a swirl of horrific black and blue pixels, applying vulnerability and making your attacks unblockable for a short time. Now that is a good utility. Lengthen the CD, even the cast time. Make it possible to Counter.

EDIT: So yeah, maybe not a teleport. But their are ways of keeping in line with the concept and providing some meaningful movement. A sprint, instead of a teleport. Imagine how cool that would be, a necro yelling Nothing Can Save You as he sprints towards you with a greatsword.
Or hell, make that a 60 second elite if it’s too OP for all the doted on professions in the game.

“I teleport” was ironic if you didn’t get it ^^ .
I made my point i see no need to discuss it forever. (Btw reaper is inspired by slow things like pyramid head, etc…)

Abimes.9726:

“I teleport” was ironic if you didn’t get it ^^ .
I made my point i see no need to discuss it forever. (Btw reaper is inspired by slow things like pyramid head, etc…)

Oh I got the irony, but really?

RS2 is not an adequate gap closer against kiting professions. We will be kited. I don’t care how short the CD is, it will not be effective.

Abimes.9726:

“I teleport” was ironic if you didn’t get it ^^ .
I made my point i see no need to discuss it forever. (Btw reaper is inspired by slow things like pyramid head, etc…)

They are slow like monsters in movies. But have you ever noticed how when it’s dark they seem to pop out of no where? Think about it, and think about my suggestion.

spoj.9672:

Life stealing should be good with Reaper in DS. But yeah the numbers are probably too small for regular necro in DS. Not sure how they can fix that without imbalancing it on Reaper though.

And this is why I think ICD (just for Vampiric) will be necessary. There is no way you can balance Vampiric to be useful to everyone when weapon proc speeds are so vastly different. So you either have to accept it will be essentially useless on all builds except whichever ones hit fastest.

Bhawb.7408:

spoj.9672:

Life stealing should be good with Reaper in DS. But yeah the numbers are probably too small for regular necro in DS. Not sure how they can fix that without imbalancing it on Reaper though.

And this is why I think ICD (just for Vampiric) will be necessary. There is no way you can balance Vampiric to be useful to everyone when weapon proc speeds are so vastly different. So you either have to accept it will be essentially useless on all builds except whichever ones hit fastest.

The way I see it, any restrictions on vamp traits like icds will just cripple the whole concept.
Imo the RS vs DS effectivness is more a matter of build diversity than a balance issue.
Of course you could argue that vamp traits should be equally effective for both Death Shroud and Reaper’s Shroud. However, Soul Eater will be in the Reaper specialization, if you really want to max out your vamp abilities you’ll have to take Reaper’s Shroud anyway. So all things considered, you might as well assume that every siphoning build is going to take Reaper and balance for that, and just accept the fact that a core spec necro is going to be less effective with vamp traits instead of trying to find a compromise.
After that the only question is: can Blood Magic be viable without the Reaper?
This, I believe, depends on the other (non-vamp) traits in that line. Perhaps there could be some traits that have a much stronger synnergy with our regular Death Shroud. Maybe something that is tied to torment or immobilized so it would work better with Tainted Shackles? Maybe a life steal for RS/DS #2 that becomes stronger depending on how far you manage to teleport with Dark Path?
Anyway, you get the idea, I’m sure there is a way to have vamp traits balanced just for Reaper but still give Blood Magic enough versatility to not make it a pointless specialization with Death Shroud.

This is probably why they’re testing this ‘X procs over Y seconds’ mechanic. This is how other games usually handle these types of procs.

Yeah i personally would rather avoid ICD’s on things like this. Another solution is just to change base DS slightly. So reduce the lifeblast cast time and damage to allow for greater procs per second but retain the same damage per second. Because there is also the issue of reapers might and unyielding blast being better on Reaper aswell. Simply because of faster proc rate.

Another band aid solution would be to increase the number of hits on life transfer dramatically. But keep the total damage and duration the same.

“X procs over Y seconds” is just another form of ICD, it changes nothing except shifting from spread equally over time to front loading it.

There is no way base DS will ever match RS. RS has 4 abilities that hit at least 3 targets, and most of them hit those targets multiple times per second. Even if you changed LB to proc twice per second, it is still vastly inferior to RS for proccing vampiric. And this isn’t just an issue of RS vs DS (and any other form of shroud we get), it is an issue of procs in different builds. A fast hitting AoE focused offensive build is going to generate vastly more hits per second than a slow-hitting utility/support build that is going to use a lot of its time helping allies. Not an issue in and of itself, except that Vampiric is a minor trait in a specialization line that also focuses heavily on support.

And this is an issue that will continue. If you don’t gate Vampiric in SOME way, like every version of life stealing that works currently, it will never be balanced except on one build. If it wasn’t a minor trait I wouldn’t really mind, but it is a minor trait and the fact that it will be made useless on a large number of builds who go into the tree for support, not self-sustain, is crap. Now, if you don’t want an ICD that’s fine, make it a major trait, buff it, and replace it with the new Vampiric Aura.

Its not about equalising. Its more about just closing the gap slightly. Which is why id prefer they left it as it is. And increase the proc rate in base DS.

spoj.9672:

Its not about equalising. Its more about just closing the gap slightly. Which is why id prefer they left it as it is. And increase the proc rate in base DS.

There is no closing the gap slightly. There are builds that can proc it tens of times per second, and builds that won’t proc it more than once or twice. If it was an issue of say the best builds get 50% more use, then who cares. But it isn’t, some builds will get 1000% more effectiveness, and this is in a tree that directly attracts those builds that sit on the extremes, of both sides.

Well the sustain of lifeblast with lifesteal is almost non existant. A slight increase in proc rate improves potentially it quite a lot depending on the rate increase. Simply because you can get much more health back before you run out of lifeforce. Its by no means a big gap closer. Its very slight. But thats fine.

Im also fine with leaving it as it is. I still think I would prefer faster weaker Life blasts for other reasons unrelated to lifesteal though.

I find the best way to balance and limit things are CDs per target. Like Chilling Force, a 1 sec icd per target:
- Fixes its issue with Blighter’s Boon.
- Scales in power versus number of enemies, which we need.
- Reduces the variation of effect between multiple weapon types, slow or fast so that s good balancing number can be had without balancing for the fastest weapons only.

ICDs for outgoing effect are often lame for tiny perks, but ICD per target can be a fairly intuitive way to handle it. That’s just my own feels on them. (Obviously you can’t do this with ALL traits, that would get out of hand very fast).

And destroys its use in 1v1’s. Not in favour of that at all.

spoj.9672:

And destroys is use in 1v1’s. Not in favour of that at all.

No it doesn’t. Because an evade scales well against numbers is it bad 1v1? No. In fact, a 1 sec ICD per target allows them to make it more practically strong because they have less risk of over powered scenarios from multi-hit weapons. Right now, they have to balance around those possibilities of wells+WH+ fast channels, which inevitably hold it back for practical uses. (See: Siphons.)

Because thats what they did with Empowering Might right? No its been left as a trashy trait which is only good with AH. AH was the problem but Empowering Might got the restriction.

ICD’s and even ICD’s per target are a lazy way to fix the issue.

Bhawb.7408:

spoj.9672:

Its not about equalising. Its more about just closing the gap slightly. Which is why id prefer they left it as it is. And increase the proc rate in base DS.

There is no closing the gap slightly. There are builds that can proc it tens of times per second, and builds that won’t proc it more than once or twice. If it was an issue of say the best builds get 50% more use, then who cares. But it isn’t, some builds will get 1000% more effectiveness, and this is in a tree that directly attracts those builds that sit on the extremes, of both sides.

Like I said, it’s a matter of build diversity.
And yes, you could just add an icd to make it fair for builds that hit just once per minute, but seriously that would be so boring and it would limit creative gameplay that is awarded for using combos that hit many times.
Also, I don’t think the gap is that big. Due to the long cooldowns of Shroud skills 2-5 most of the life stealing will be done by the auto attack. So yeah, RS is much faster and cleaves, but what if Life Blast was baseline piercing? You’d have more hits vs more reliable hits from a safer distance.
As for the other skills, Life Transfer with up to 45 hits isn’t bad at all considering that all of them could be critical with Deathly Perception. And that leaves a 3rd core spec (Spite/Curses/DM) while Reapers get Blood Magic, Reaper and then just one additional core.

Anyway, I’d go with no restrictions and just balance for Reaper’s auto attack, then buff regular DS in different ways.

spoj.9672:

Because thats what they did with Empowering Might right? No its been left as a trashy trait which is only good with AH. AH was the problem but Empowering Might got the restriction.

Empowering might is a 1 sec ICD, not per target. Huge difference. Also, how they balance is wildly different than whether one style is better or more practical than the other. A counter, as I said, is siphons which suck because they could “theoretically” get out of hand. This is a better WAY to handle it, but would need to be properly compensated as well.