Guild Wars 2

Spectral skills draw on energy/power from the Underworld, but are very much physical. Shadow Fiend for example is essentially the “spectral” minion, and while kind of airy/floaty he is still very solid.

apoidea.7095:

But aren’t spectral skills about ghostliness in which case shouldn’t you lack the solid body to reflect/block projectiles anyway…(Sorry just commenting on the assertion that reflect/block fits into spectrals but I still do agree that we need some way to handle projectiles).

Guess we’ll just have to deal with infusing terror (stability) + Spectral Armor to absorb the damage as gaining life force until then orz…

Interesting idea for Spectral Walk. What if instead of receiving the low 2% life force per hit it simply allowed projectiles to go straight through you. Kind of op but if balanced it would have a lot of flavor and actually help us escape.

hailsatan.2865:

apoidea.7095:

But aren’t spectral skills about ghostliness in which case shouldn’t you lack the solid body to reflect/block projectiles anyway…(Sorry just commenting on the assertion that reflect/block fits into spectrals but I still do agree that we need some way to handle projectiles).

Guess we’ll just have to deal with infusing terror (stability) + Spectral Armor to absorb the damage as gaining life force until then orz…

Interesting idea for Spectral Walk. What if instead of receiving the low 2% life force per hit it simply allowed projectiles to go straight through you. Kind of op but if balanced it would have a lot of flavor and actually help us escape.

At least while the spectral aspect of the skill was up (max 8 seconds). So, like warriors who become immune to conditions for 8 seconds, we become immune to missles until the skill is up, which is also cancelled if we hit it again to tele back to where we initiated the skill. The arrows/missles would pass through you.

Cool idea.

Gryph.8237:

At least while the spectral aspect of the skill was up (max 8 seconds). So, like warriors who become immune to conditions for 8 seconds, we become immune to missles until the skill is up, which is also cancelled if we hit it again to tele back to where we initiated the skill. The arrows/missles would pass through you.

Cool idea.

So instead of being destoryed they just pierce through you but you dont take the damage? Seems like if they could find a way to implement it, it would be cool. Also seems kind of trolly if you have ppl standing behind you.

Re: projectiles passing on through-

It’d be somewhat unique to the Necromancer. Since it doesn’t destroy or reflect the projectiles for others, it’s selfish. Mechanically it’s still largely inferior to the destruction / reflection of other professions. It’s perfect, and I desperately hope it isn’t implented.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

spoj.9672:

My point was that those coefficients on the reaper skills are not strong enough compared to what other classes have. Which means the idea that reaper hits slower but harder isnt exactly true.

Are you accounting for attack speed from the trait and the ability to recharge gravedigger on low targets? Repeated 2’s are pretty strong! Also necro will have a trait called Rending Shroud that will be putting up monstrous amounts of vuln. Not to mention the traits that make your auto attack in Reaper Shroud cause vuln and might!

At least as far as PvE goes, it seems not to be mentioned that necromancers are not the only ones that will be stacking vulnerability. There seems to be a bit of overkill on the emphasis/importance of the necromancer applying all of the vulnerability and its associated value. There is also the fact that this vulnerability stacking also benefits anyone else attacking the target…including those others with higher weapon coefficients and more % damage modifiers. Don’t get me wrong, I love the vulnerability stacking I’m seeing for necromancers, but it feels like we are letting too much of the necromancer’s potential contribution ride on something that we aren’t even overly needed for.

I think we need something else as a group contribution. It seems ANET is dead set against necromancers providing boons of any sort to the group, so I’m not sure where to go with this. Our active defense contribution seems nearly non existent too. We could at least provide some reflects on something like spectral wall, but I’m assuming that our utilities will still be locked out while in any shroud?

The Gates Assassin.9827:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

1. No power GM traits in Curses. I’d still like to see terror moved and another GM take its place.
2. Still no projectile reflect
3. Still no blast finishers
4. Still low mobility
5. No way for Reapers to defeat thieves. One thief could literally kill 5 reapers without getting hit. No stab + no effect of chill on thieves + slow attacks = thief wet dream.
6. Loss of access to torment if we take reaper… torment… the condition invented JUST for necros in the first place…

1. Low Mobility – By design.

By design the necro contradicts anets class description as an “attrition” based class.

In other words, “design” hasn’t applied for 2 years with the necromancer.

I thought this forum specialist report thing was supposed to be about fixing the base necro class?

Yes, reaper is looking really nice, but anyone who doesn’t buy the expansion is still going to be stuck in the land of necros sucking complete kitten.

Tobias.8632:

I thought this forum specialist report thing was supposed to be about fixing the base necro class?

Yes, reaper is looking really nice, but anyone who doesn’t buy the expansion is still going to be stuck in the land of necros sucking complete kitten.

I totally agree. What good is a decent “elite” trait line, when the base class is garbage ? I know some of you might argue the “garbage” part, but compare it to how other classes function in pve, spvp, wvw, etc.

War Mourner.5168:

Anchoku.8142:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I could also see Spectral Armor absorbing projectiles shot at you, while Spectral Walk could cause the trail left by your movement with the skill active to reflect projectiles. Spectral skills in general outside of Spectral Grasp feel as though they could have a reflect/block component.

TRON Deathcycle – I like it. Make it block movement, too.

That would be a genuinely hilarious way to stop people from escaping, although would be pretty abusing in WvW zergs.

Yeah, it would be terrible if an ultra cheese skill like that existed in this game!

12s spec walk compared to 3s slick shoes is a tad different.

Just a few suggestions, I think nightfall, gs4, should inflict weakness on pulse (1-2 seconds). Also, Death’s charge looks super cool, but unless the cast time gets reduced or it goes an extra 300 range it will barely be faster than walking. I’d suggest making the cast time a little shorter because it fits the them they are going for. They could also make the burst at the end inflict blind instead of poison because it would give you some defense running into the fight.

Nightfall inflicting blind is way more useful than weakness.

And the poison is nice. It means reaper gets poison access without building for it. Also has synergy with putrid defence.

spoj.9672:

Nightfall inflicting blind is way more useful than weakness.

And the poison is nice. It means reaper gets poison access without building for it. Also has synergy with putrid defence.

I meant pulsing weakness for 1-2 seconds. I think in the video they said they were messing around with it. Definitely keep the blind at the end. I do understand that the poison has synergy, but if I’m coptering into battle, I’d rather have defense against my foes next hit then decreased healing.

They said its changing to pulsing blind and cripple. Which is way more useful than weakness. Especially in PvE.

I wouldnt be against adding a blind in addition to the poison. But i think it should remain as an aoe poison.

I like the pulsing blind, which means we have a better option than well of darkness for trash now.

Hmm, wonder if they will change well of darkness then. I’m not opposed to a lot of blind, but this would just blow welling darkness out of the water.

As for death’s charge, I think a blind and poison might be too strong, but I think it needs a minor buff to the distance or cast time to be effective as a gap closer.

WoD is blown out of the water by its own CD.

Bhawb.7408:

WoD is blown out of the water by its own CD.

LOL true. I think 35 seconds would be reasonable when considering all the chill and vuln you could now get. Maybe even 25 or 30 seconds would be reasonable.

War Mourner.5168:

12s spec walk compared to 3s slick shoes is a tad different.

To be fair, it’s 3 sec skill duration and 3 sec oil slick duration, so if an engi dumps his entire load on you it’s actually 6 seconds of being perma-knockdowned.

zapv.8051:

As for death’s charge, I think a blind and poison might be too strong, but I think it needs a minor buff to the distance or cast time to be effective as a gap closer.

Yeah I’m surprised nobody else is worried about that. Reapers will have trouble catching up to ranged classes with their only gap closer being gated behind life force (which you can’t build at range).

Thats the entire point though. The counter to reaper is staying away from them. They cant really fix that without imbalancing the spec. Its already going to be really strong up close. Which will make it a really good on point bruiser. Perfect for forcibly taking objectives. But not great for defending if it can be poked at from long range.

Yeah sure it’ll hurt being on a point with a reaper, but what about Stronghold where your opponent doesn’t have to stand in a narrow circle? If the target stays at over 600 you can’t pull them, you can’t teleport to them, you can’t snare them, you can’t even build life force to use Death’s Charge to catch them! What are you supposed to do vs a staff ele, AA with staff?

Reaper will be good for clearing mobs and raiding the base. And you could see thieves stealthing the reaper and eles giving them fgs to get them up close and surprise the enemies. :P

Team play. Necro is selfish. Reaper is dangerous and selfish. Team play is whats going to make the class good.

In Stronghold, you can also take advantage of ground targetted wells being default now or run Scepter/Staff as your other weapon set (forget axe unless it gets a huge buff). Just because Reaper’s Shroud lacks range doesn’t mean you can’t get it from other places.

Does anyone else have a vague feeling that Reaper may be a nerf to anything but trash mob farming?

The problems with many of the current traits and skills have not been addressed and Reaper seems designed to abandon everything but a short-range power/AoE build.

Considering what seems to be an increased focus on fast-paced, ranged combat, Necromancer / Reaper may become even more disadvantaged. We will have to wait and see, of course, but Reaper is definitely a slow, short-range tank profession. Slow things are easy targets in modern combat and need constant protection.

Hey, why don’t you point out to anet that there were NO necros in the tournament, and perhaps then point out that their beloved top 5 classes are frequently played for the same reasons over and over and over again. The top five classes have multiple condi clears, multiple invulns/blocks, huge heals, and great mobility. In addition to their defenses outlined above, they can build for FULL GLASS and it does not change their defensiveness. They still have the same blocks/evades, clears, heals, and mobility WITH THE added fact that they can dish out the highest damage levels. IT is a joke that this has been the case since about day 1. yeah, a casual can go in and play necro for awhile and do ok, but then vs a team, he learns it is junk. Bet we wont see this in the report.

To top it off we have some of the slowest attacks/cast times in the freakin game, can’t keep anyone near us, can’t do anything vs focus fire, cant even generate life force, have no attrition, have to sacrifice all attack to get any defense, and have 0 mobility other than 2 freakin dodges.

same crap, different day. reaper will be the same. slow casts, huge cooldowns, slow attacks, defense tied to DS (+1 stability), slow lf gen.

Anchoku.8142:

Does anyone else have a vague feeling that Reaper may be a nerf to anything but trash mob farming?

The problems with many of the current traits and skills have not been addressed and Reaper seems designed to abandon everything but a short-range power/AoE build.

Considering what seems to be an increased focus on fast-paced, ranged combat, Necromancer / Reaper may become even more disadvantaged. We will have to wait and see, of course, but Reaper is definitely a slow, short-range tank profession. Slow things are easy targets in modern combat and need constant protection.

Its certainly a buff to single target melee boss fights. And there are still quite a few of those. For example, in the vine wrath you can usually melee any of the bosses except the terragriff. And for that, for ranged damage, you are correct, you shouldnt take the reaper. And that is what we’ve all pointed out, and told the devs, and that the devs are (hopefully) looking into.

Given how they said they’re settinig up traits, it shouldnt be difficult to swap off reaper for curses/deathmagic/blood magic. So if you need range / are doing more ranged open world content you swap one trait line, and boom you have range. If you’re doing dungeons / melee bosses, you swap to reaper. As long as they make the other trait lines good, this should work out. Right now our ranged options are lich, scepter condi, and standard DS. Axe and Staff are pretty lackluster ranged options, so hopefully they get looked at. And hopefully the other trait lines get looked at too so we’re not stuck sub par builds half the time.

Gryph.8237:

Hey, why don’t you point out to anet that there were NO necros in the tournament, and perhaps then point out that their beloved top 5 classes are frequently played for the same reasons over and over and over again.

Afaik,

-no necro in final teams (leeto didnt play for bigD)
-highest place necro was forsaker with Rotate to procreate , 8-16th spot.

It is pretty much 0x necro and 2x warri/engie , maybe 1x ele and zerker thief/guard/mes mixed in for flavor.
Also ZERO rangers too.

Would be nice to see total stats from 100+ teams or 500 poeple as that would be a really nice bigger picture of the community.

Flumek.9043:

Gryph.8237:

Hey, why don’t you point out to anet that there were NO necros in the tournament, and perhaps then point out that their beloved top 5 classes are frequently played for the same reasons over and over and over again.

Afaik,

-no necro in final teams (leeto didnt play for bigD)
-highest place necro was forsaker with Rotate to procreate , 8-16th spot.

It is pretty much 0x necro and 2x warri/engie , maybe 1x ele and zerker thief/guard/mes mixed in for flavor.
Also ZERO rangers too.

Would be nice to see total stats from 100+ teams or 500 poeple as that would be a really nice bigger picture of the community.

Yes solid Logic will get overlooked because Necros want to get hit, have two health bars, and are in a good spot.

Can we get some news on core specializations especially the curses master and GM issue and Reaper’s Precision escape of death.

Hey anet, did you know that in all of our builds, that adding a third trait line to condi or power, really does not do crap at the grandmaster level? I play several other classes and im practically drooling at the idea of adding a 3rd grandmaster, and heck master level trait, while for the necro, it simply doesn’t freaking matter because no grandmaster brings jackhammered kitten to the class.

Power, i guess you can add blood magic for some real awesome syphon skills, and get a lackluster GM, same with DM, get nothign really for that line. Cureses GM sucks for power, so yeah, poop on that.

Condi? what? add power? whoopie dee dooo, blood? nope, dm? guess im stuck with DM, but that will be underwhelming as most are minion focused. yay. so awesome. same old necro, just more lines to blink at.

Gryph.8237:

Hey anet, did you know that in all of our builds, that adding a third trait line to condi or power, really does not do crap at the grandmaster level? I play several other classes and im practically drooling at the idea of adding a 3rd grandmaster, and heck master level trait, while for the necro, it simply doesn’t freaking matter because no grandmaster brings jackhammered kitten to the class.

Power, i guess you can add blood magic for some real awesome syphon skills, and get a lackluster GM, same with DM, get nothign really for that line. Cureses GM sucks for power, so yeah, poop on that.

Condi? what? add power? whoopie dee dooo, blood? nope, dm? guess im stuck with DM, but that will be underwhelming as most are minion focused. yay. so awesome. same old necro, just more lines to blink at.

Thats true for base necro, but for reaper you can go Spite/Soulraeping/Reaper (power) and Curses/Soulreaping /reaper(condi). Until we see the changes to BM I’ll consider BM and DM leveling/minionmaster lines.

Sorry for necroing what is considered to be an old topic, but…

I am very interested in the topic of the Blood Magic rework. It was by far my favorite of the Necromancer’s attributes in GW1 and I feel it hasn’t translated well into GW2, so far. I posted about this earlier in another thread, but as I’ve read this is the thread it should have been in. Here are some ideas I have on the topic to improve upon the unique quality of the Blood Magic line and strengthen it as a serious choice for Necromancers.

Bloodthirst (20% siphoning effectiveness) should become baseline. As the Blood Magic line is currently, and proposed to continue to be, a trait line largely themed on the mechanic of siphoning; this line benefits a great deal through this trait. So much so, that placing this trait in the adept line, I feel, creates an illusion of choice, as the other two choices: Ritual of Life (creates a Well of Blood when reviving an ally and reduce revive time by 10%) and Mark of Evasion (create a Mark of Blood on dodge), are less useful in comparison, in my opinion. Ritual of Life only becomes useful if you have a downed ally, so the opportunity of use is finite; while Mark of Evasion is only useful if within melee range and is under-powered. On the flip side, not choosing Bloodthirst is a decision to make a line that seems more and more focused on siphoning to be 20% less effective. A better opportunity of choice needs to be made in the adept traits to strengthen the line as a whole. Furthermore, I believe it is a known bug currently that this trait alongside Vampiric Rituals actual decreases the siphoning strength of wells.

This is why I propose doing away with Bloodthirst as a trait, and either giving all siphons a 20% increase or otherwise a healthy rebalancing. This would create an opportunity to rebalance the adept traits and create an opportunity of choice, it strengthens the overall viability of siphoning as a unique mechanic for Necromancers to consider taking, and it may just simplify the game’s code (however, that’s just wild speculation on my part).

I like the direction Vampiric Aura is going in with regards to the preview we got, but I’m curious if giving a more passive buffs to the party is the best means of connecting the Necromancer to party-wide support. What I think would be a neat manner of supporting the party through life siphoning would be not to just copy the life siphoning mechanic over to other characters with a passive buff where, as I imagine, their attacks cause life siphon. Rather, I think what would create a unique support structure is for the Necromancers to tag party members with a buff that is connected to the necromancer and transfers a percentage of the necromancer’s life siphoning strikes to party members. Thereby making the Necromancer’s actions more closely tied to the support given to its party members. I’d like to call this idea “Doctor Death”, as although it is similar to GW1s Order of the Vampire, it is different in that instead of making the party all vampires the Necromancer is in theory “killing one to save many” and making the necromancer a party medic in a different way than through Signet of the Vampire, for instance, which doesn’t see too much use currently.

My last idea, given that the Blood Mage’s wheelhouse is in health pool manipulation more or less, is the idea of temporary linking health pools. The idea is that with the necromancer enjoying a pretty healthy health pool it could act as a temporary damage soak or buffer for squishier characters via an augmented set of skills that link two or more players together. Thus, providing support from the necromancer through damage mitigation within the theme of Blood Magic in a way that is unique to the class. However, as this mechanic isn’t something I recall ever coming across in GW2, it is certainly not a short term fix to a long term problem, and would take time to implement and iterate upon. But nonetheless, the Blood Magic line needs inspiration and a lot of work to make it a serious contender.