Guild Wars 2

Put your Reaper feedback in here so we can keep it organised for Robert Gee.

I’m not going to make any outlandish statements until I have a in depth play.

Some of the reaper shroud abilities seem really good in particular loving the death serial.

Reaper has potential. The chill affect for it seems really underwhelming and I rarely notice chill being helpful.

The reaper shroud skills are good and should stay as they are. The cleave on points is good for that.

I see it being good for celestial builds. It too weak for zerker stuff at the moment since most of the skills don’t kill enemies quickly

Sustaining burns at 2-2.5k in shroud and putting up 12 (tooltip says 11, but is wrong?) stacks of poison (for 4s each) from Reaper’s Swirl is pretty nice.

Greatsword and its traits (and shouts to a slightly lesser extent) seem fantastic against lots of enemies: tons of lifeforce, gravedigger rotation, Soul Eater actually being a noticeable reducer of the other cooldowns (and you want to be using nightfall as muc has possible). But it’s lacking versus one enemy, and the auto attacks are almost an afterthought. Nightfall is the coolest ability on the GS. Gravedigger feels lacking, especially with the aftercast; I feel like the very long aftercast isn’t taken into account for the skill being an (almost) chainable burst. However, I don’t feel like it’s that far off from a good feel. Maybe a 1s cast and 10% more damage?

Shouts, when running Augury of Death, actually don’t feel so bad when you get into a pack of things. The cooldowns become pretty short when you’re nailing a lot of targets. Suffer feels like too long of a cast for condi transfer and/or applying chill to a running enemy. NCSY actually feels pretty good on the whole. YAAW feels pretty good too, but not as.

From a pve perspective
-greatsword is bad and confusing.
-reaper shroud is amazing
- RS#1 damage is too low I expected at least dagger #1 at base.
-RS #2 might function better if it were like leap but it is not that important.
-Reaper master minor trait is weak (especially since using terrify recharges cooldown).
-chilling nova is too weak, icd at least to 10
-shouts don’t have a reason to get on my utility bar
-chilling force is a bit on the weaker side , reduce interval time
-deathly chill is weak needs more damage.
-great vulnerability stacking
-life reap life force regen is too low.

Gravedigger is such a disappointment. This needed to be the Necromancers version of hundred blades.

Greatsword 2 and Greatsword 3 seem to have the same function, boring damage skills that you hit because autoattack is weak.

Reaper Shroud 2 will never hit anything with its main attack ever. It runs past enemies that you’ve got targeted, and the damage that it does while you are running is tiny.

The new Mesmers are bursting everybody down very quickly. The new shouts don’t help against Mesmers. I did run into a MM, the new shouts were golly against MM

Using blighters boon to gain life force before combat starts works, but not very well.

First impressions:
- Reaper Shroud is amazing.

- Greatsword feels like an inferior D/P from Thief, except slower, and lower DPS.

From a PvE perspective its all bad. The numbers are still pathetic. Especially with the atrocious cast times. Im glad aftercasts arent a major problem as well though (1 redeeming gold star for that). I honestly cant see myself dropping a trait line for this right now. We are better off staying with dagger and lich form and keeping blood magic.

But i just didnt enjoy GS at all. Its so slow and slugglish it feels as if im lagging 100% of the time (im not). The damage numbers are still very very weak. Whats the point in playing something so slow that its unfun but it doesnt even pack a real punch?

RS is nice and fluid and fast. But RS 2 is kind okittenward with its functionality. Id really like to be able to actually control where i end up. So making it lock to a target if you have one would be the best solution. It should still work as it does currently when used without a target though (think of warrior sword 2). RS auto-attack is maybe on the weak side damage wise. And lifeforce feels like its draining too fast even when auto-attacking only and using vital persistence (is this a bug?).

Heres the coefficients of all skills. As you can see they havent actually been changed since initial speculative calculations from the stream. Which means our early feedback that damage would be too low was ignored. And it turned out to be true.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aI9lEpPZLiNVf7ibEeVzV1h_-aWWt-JEGW0suFgaewM/edit?usp=sharing

Also. Chilling force. I remember there was a few people saying this would be broken because of blighters boon. I said if blighters becomes overpowered because of this then blighters boon should be rebalanced. Not the trait which is average on its own. It seems that was ignored as well. Blighters Boon was left untouched and Chilling force got butchered for 1v1s and boss fights. It was also doubly nerfed by all the chill reduction in the game. Its much harder to get permanent chill now. So why should we have chilling force still suffering for it?

Guess I"ll put this here: I’ve been working on the damage numbers, stripping myself down and getting the base damage of each attack (along with other miscellaneous notes). To do this, I went to southsun cove (level 80), unequiped everything except for dire exotic weapons so there was no contributions to power. I left a picture of my stats and setup below. Now, I can’t get the damage values listed on the wiki, so I took the regular weapons as a baseline. With these stats, this is what I have currently:

Dagger AA: 330, 257, 440. 2 Targets.
Life Siphon: 990, 358 Heal
Dark Pact: 275
Reaper’s Touch: 248, 4 bounces
Spinal Shivers: 165, 248, 330, 413
Locust Swarm: 66
Well of Suffering: 1596
Well of Corruption: 798

Now, we get into the stats on the reaper’s skills.

GREATSWORD

Greatsword AA: 343, 383, 444 + 1.75 seconds of chill. 3 targets.

Gravedigger: 807, 5 second recharge, 80% recharge reduction with effect. 5 targets. SPECIAL NOTE: This skill is a whirl finisher, and sends out 3 bolts each use.

Death Spiral: 366, 12 second recharge. 12 × 10 stacks of vulnerability per hit. 2% life force per hit. 3 targets. NOTE: This skill scales up life force gain per enemy hit, getting a total of up to 36% per skill use.

Nightfall: 282 per pulse. 25 second recharge. Causes blind and cripple per pulse. Dark Field. 5 targets.

Grasping Dead 403, 3 × 4 poison, 4% life force per hit. 5 targets. 30 second cooldown.

SHROUD KNIGHT

Shroud Knight AA: 246, 246, 492. 1% life force on final hit. 3 targets. BUG: final attack has no target listing.

Death’s Charge: 410, 5 targets, 6 second cooldown. 1 × 3 blind on land.

Infusing Terror: 1 second of fear. 20 second cooldown. NOTE: The skill does not persist when leaving Reaper Shroud.

Soul Spiral: 1133 damage, 11 × 4 poison if all hits connect. 40 second recharge. 2 second duration. Whirl finisher that sends out countless bolts on use.

Executioner’s Strike: 615 damage above 50%, 821 between 50% and 25%, 1026 below 25%. Chills for 1 second, ice field lasts for 5 seconds. Stuns for 1.5 seconds. 30 second recharge.

SHOUTS

“Your Soul is mine!”: 133 damage, 3,940 healing, 4% life force per target hit, 20 second cooldown.

“You Are All Weaklings!”: 133 damage, 6 seconds weakness, 4 × 5 might, 1 × 1 stability, stun break. 30 second recharge.

“Suffer!”: 266 damage, 2.25 seconds of chill, 1 condition transferred. 30 second recharge.

“Nothing can save you!”: 133 damage, 5 × 10 vulnerability per boon, up to 2 boons removed, 35 second recharge, 1 × 4 unblockable.

“Rise!”: 133 damage, 40 second recharge.

“Chilled to the Bone!”: 532 damage, 8.75 seconds of chill, 2 × 10 stability, 2 second stun. 120 second cooldown.

END OF DAMAGE NUMBERS.

Now, this is only half of the equation. The animation times listed for each attack are trimmed down guesses. The hard part is, I don’t have a recording utility that I can put a stop watch to, so everything after this point becomes napkin math.

Reaper shroud is awesome. Really like it. Not sure yet how the balance is, but the cleave damage on the #1 is just sweet.

GS feels lacking.
IMO #4 and #5 look and feel quite good.

1. feels a bit mediocre either the attacks are too slow or the damage is too low.
   Gotta be careful to keep it balanced since it cleaves 3 people, but this feels “decent” in the cleave and “meh” vs 1 target.
   Also the big glow on the Chilling Scythe makes it really easy to avoid tbh.

1. is just poor. The damage is lacking. It has a huge cast time and aftercast. This ability needs to do MORE damage and a reduction to the cast/aftercast, because it feels extremely clunky atm. You’re very immobile when using it, especially below 50%. Also the 80% cooldown reduction feels a bit…. odd… as well, the GS is too slow to get an extra auto attack in in between gravediggers, and the cooldown of 1 sec is too long to make it flow well. Please look into this.

1. isn’t too bad. But I find the cone to be a bit small. Making it easy to sidestep.
   The damage on this is ok, given that it also gives LF and vuln.

spoj.9672:

From a PvE perspective its all bad. The numbers are still pathetic. Especially with the atrocious cast times. Im glad aftercasts arent a major problem as well though (1 redeeming gold star for that). I honestly cant see myself dropping a trait line for this right now. We are better off staying with dagger and lich form and keeping blood magic.

But i just didnt enjoy GS at all. Its so slow and slugglish it feels as if im lagging 100% of the time (im not). The damage numbers are still very very weak. Whats the point in playing something so slow that its unfun but it doesnt even pack a real punch?

RS is nice and fluid and fast. But RS 2 is kind okittenward with its functionality. Id really like to be able to actually control where i end up. So making it lock to a target if you have one would be the best solution. It should still work as it does currently when used without a target though (think of warrior sword 2). RS auto-attack is maybe on the weak side damage wise. And lifeforce feels like its draining too fast even when auto-attacking only and using vital persistence (is this a bug?).

Heres the coefficients of all skills. As you can see they havent actually been changed since initial speculative calculations from the stream. Which means our early feedback that damage would be too low was ignored. And it turned out to be true.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aI9lEpPZLiNVf7ibEeVzV1h_-aWWt-JEGW0suFgaewM/edit?usp=sharing

Life reap is only 1% which is too low. Could you also know the exect time of the full #1 chain?

GS chain was about 3.1-3.2 seconds. Ill test RS chain in a min.

basically…….i want reaper shroud….but nothing else related to Reaper. oh the builds one can make by dropping reaper trait line….

spoj.9672:

And lifeforce feels like its draining too fast even when auto-attacking only and using vital persistence (is this a bug?)

I’m getting knocked out of reaper shroud after only a few seconds. I agree with this quote.

Maybe it’s just all the damage that we’re having to face tank.

I was talking about against a test dummy in HotM lol.

And RS auto attack is about 2.3-2.4 seconds repeatable. total coefficient per second is just over 1.1. Which is really really weak. Its only very slightly stronger than GS auto attack. These numbers are far far below what dagger has. And RS barely does more than regular DS (surely the gap should be a bit bigger considering melee and risk)

spoj.9672:

I was talking about against a test dummy in HotM lol.

And RS auto attack is about 2.3-2.4 seconds repeatable. total coefficient per second is just over 1.1. Which is really really weak. Its only very slightly stronger than GS auto attack. These numbers are far far below what classic DS and dagger has.

A shame I expected dagger #1 dps or higher but thank you for the info.

I edited btw. Its better than classic DS by a small margin. Rushed math!

Hopefully I can try it out in PvP soon. Thoughts from running around in PvE for an hour -

Greatsword: Seems too slow and too low on damage. I’m okay with moving slower, but there needs to be a lot more damage happening to make it feel effective, especially when moves are repeatedly interrupted or miss. Aside from that, I like the GS skills overall, and I think they work well together once you get some sort of rotation going. Grasping Darkness sometimes pulled the enemies all the way to me, and sometimes only part way, but I’m not sure if that’s a problem with the move or if it was interrupted or something.

Shouts: I like them so far, but I haven’t looked at them in too much detail.

Reaper Shroud: I love it. I would play the whole game in it if I could. It’s the faster, melee version of Death Shroud I didn’t realize I needed.

Definitely feels like the lifeforce is draining too fast in reaper.

Grasping Darkness just don’t work well on moving targets. I was well within range to grasp someone but nothing happened after using it. The ability to pull may be the only reason why I would even consider using GS.

I agree with someone said above that GS 2 and 3 are being spammed because GS 1 is way too slow and too lackluster. This does make GS 2 & 3 a boring skill being used on cooldown because GS 1 is so bad. I know necros have asked for better skills to use than autoattack. I have no idea how to balance this to be honest.

Shout feedback. They are still bad. Biggest thing to point out. Executioner’s Scythe in RS is far superior to Cttb. There is literally no reason to run that shout with its cast time. Especially when we have a stun on a 30 second cooldown with a shorter cast time and more damage. The stability on Cttb doesnt help. Because 10 seconds of stab after a 2 second cast does not make any sense what so ever.

Also something i noticed. IF we dont hit any targets we dont even get a single effect from shouts. Surely we should get the base amount?

I never played necro before, so i’m obviously bad at it, but i really like Reaper so far and had lots of fun with it. Didn’t use GS and Shouts because they just looks bad, but had lots of fun with Staff + Dagger/X and Signets/Spectrals, both Cele and Zerker.

(Condi) Chrono is absurdly op right now, so i might consider switching to Necro/Reaper once the expansion hits. Still deciding on a build, though, since all traitlines look kinda nice to me.

Alright, I did some napkin math. The time it took to complete 20 full auto attack chains with the greatsword was 1.00.56, or one minute and half a second. This comes to 3.025 seconds for the auto attack. I’ll trim this down to 3.

Comparing this to dagger again. With my base numbers, dagger does 489 DPS. The greatsword, however, does 390 DPS. The dagger auto does 25% more DPS.

Even with bitter chill, the greatsword auto is wholly useless at the moment. Now, a few other napkin math timing:

Grasping Darkness: 1.4 seconds.
Gravedigger: 2.2 seconds,
Death Spiral: 1.7 seconds
Nightfall: 1.8 seconds.

Wow… maybe I’m doing this wrong, but these numbers are horrendous. For anyone wondering, what I’m doing is using this website to time the attacks. I start the watch, wait until 10 seconds (so I can synchronize the event), and then press stop as soon as a second animation begins. I do this a couple of times, and take the lowest number I receive.

So, Gravedigger spam. Adding on the recharge, this is basically 3.2 seconds to use gravedigger and the first auto attack. This is a DPS of 359, making gravedigger spam do less damage than the auto attack in the first place. There is one corollary to this, however, in that gravedigger is a whirl finisher. While standing inside of an enemy, gravedigger will hit them with 3 whirl finisher bolts. As far as now much damage those bolts do… I don’t know. They don’t appear in my combat log. In the PVP lobby a full zerker setup has dark bolts doing 241 damage, so I assume in the overworld this will be added to whatever the target is being hit for. Against the golems in the PVP lobby, this amounts to about a 10% increase. So, in a dark field, Gravedigger spam hits for394 DPS, making it roughly the same as just auto attacking.

The DPS of other skills is as follows:
Gravedigger (skill alone): 366
Death Spiral: 215
Nightfall: 627
Grasping Darkness: 287, not including poison

Overall, wow did Anet mess up the greatsword. The only skill that has higher damage than the dagger’s auto attack is nightfall. Soul Spiral, Gravedigger, Grasping Darkness, all of them worse. There’s no point to anything. You just use the greatsword as a weapon-slot well, and stick with the dagger.

spoj.9672:

I was talking about against a test dummy in HotM lol.

And RS auto attack is about 2.3-2.4 seconds repeatable. total coefficient per second is just over 1.1. Which is really really weak. Its only very slightly stronger than GS auto attack. These numbers are far far below what dagger has. And RS barely does more than regular DS (surely the gap should be a bit bigger considering melee and risk)

that’s really unfortunate. outside of RS 2, i really like the way RS plays….hope the numbers improve

spoj.9672:

I was talking about against a test dummy in HotM lol.

And RS auto attack is about 2.3-2.4 seconds repeatable. total coefficient per second is just over 1.1. Which is really really weak. Its only very slightly stronger than GS auto attack. These numbers are far far below what dagger has. And RS barely does more than regular DS (surely the gap should be a bit bigger considering melee and risk)

Mhh ok , i didnt do the math so i wont doubt you but RS really felt great in pvp apart from RS 2, which in my opinion should work like the warrior sword 2 leap.

Also how are the numbers with the attackspeed increase trait?

Maybe I am doing this wrong. I just timed reaper’s shroud to find out how long it takes to preform 20 auto attacks, and came up with 1.01.5, coming to a total animation time of 3.075 seconds. I think the issue is pacing: The last hit of Shroud Knight actually takes forever, it is just all in the aftercast. This is wtih reaper’s onslaught, btw.

Reaper’s AA: 320 DPS.

Death’s Charge: 1.5 seconds
Infusing Terror: Instant
Soul Spiral: 4 seconds
Executioner’s Scythe: 2 seconds.

Death’s charge’s DPS is way too complicated to calculate.. Its a utility skill anyway.
Soul Spiral: 283 DPS. Not including poison.
Executioner’s Scythe: 513 DPS at maximum, 308 DPS at minimum.

here is a caveat, though: While shroud has only 320 DPS, this comes with substantially more buffs. A 50% increase to crit chance, namely. While in the PVP lobby I have 47% crit chance and 216.6% crit damage, so this is a modifier of 1.55. Shroud Knight would get a 97% crit chance, coming to a modifier of 2.13. If we factor in these modifiers, this will give dagger a scaled damage of 758, and Shroud a scaled damage of 682. This means that the Dagger AA is only 11% stronger than Shroud Knight, and that additional barrier can be overcome with various other traits (vulnerability, might stacking, etc).

Overall, shroud knight is pretty bad, unless you specifically trait for it (reaper’s onslaught, mainly). The big mistakes, it seems, are in how Soul Spiral and Death’s Charge are executed.. Death’s Charge is unreliable, and Soul Spiral takes twice as long as it should. Were Death’s charge targetable, and Soul Spiral accurate to its description, then Shroud Knight would actually be good.

This is moot, however, as Shroud Knight does not directly compete with dagger.

So far, it looks like the top DPS rotation will be something like this:

#1: Drop Nightfall
#2: Swap to dagger and carry on as normal.
#3: When the enemy is low enough, use Executioner’s Scythe and quickly leave shroud.

With basically all other reaper skills being ignorable. On a pug build, a reaper’s shroud build would actually be good to use, but in a premade the group precision and might stacking make those bonuses useless.

RS2 needs to either stop advancing when a target is hit or drag the target with it like the revenant staff skill does. how it is right now makes it horribly unreliable and incredibly clunky for skirmishes

Overall greatsword feels far too slow for it’s damage, it’s too easy to evade the attacks in pvp (as predicted) and the damage is very underwhelming for the attack speed, either up the damage or (ideally) increase the attack speed to be on par with other greatsword attacks.

RS in general feels weaker than it should be, even when using the attack speed booster mastery, the damage just seems underwhelming.

The elite shout just isn’t very good at all for the cooldown it has.

I feel that there should be some sort of passive damage mitigation within reaper’s shroud, as HoT mobs pack a serious punch, and being a light armour class all we really have to mitigate damage as a melee front liner is our HP pool, we don’t have the regen of the warrior, evades of a thief or mitigation of a guardian, we need some sort of passive defense mechanism

I’m going to put all my feedback for the reaper in the post in my signature, but I’ll mention this here first:

Reaper shroud sustain got nerfed. It was 2% lifeforce on every third auto, which is pretty bad. And in this beta it got changed to 1% every cycle.

RS1 should generate lifeforce as follows:
Life rend 1% per hit (max 3) > life slash 1 % per hit (max 3) > life reap 2% per hit (max 5). This would allow RS to scale better with more enemies.

1 enemy is 4% lf every 2.4 seconds which is 1/3rd as much as Staff auto generates in the same time.
2 enemies is 8% lf every 2.4 seconds which is 2/3rd as much as Staff auto generates in the same time.
3 enemies is 12% lf every 2.4 seconds which is as much as Staff auto generates in the same time.

4 enemies is 14% lf every 2.4 seconds

5 enemies is 16% lf every 2.4 seconds

I really like the access to frost aura from using RS5+RS2. The short CD on RS2 could give some auras frequently from all the fields others can drop. But I do feel like that RS2 would be so much better if it worked like warrior sword leap. It’s kind of wonky atm. Falling of cliffs to often. Necrocopter sure sends you flying. . .

Oh that 2.3 seconds for RS auto was with the trait. So yeah. Its even worse without.

hey can Charr-Male Greatsword animation for auto attack get a buff. very poorly done. hard to tell if I am swinging or not.

BUG ALERT!: Reaper’s onslaught is currently bugged. I just ran another series of tests to conclude if I got the DPS timing for shroud knight wrong (spoiler, I did), and I did one with Reaper’s Onslaught and without. Started mid combat, the time for 20 attack chains was as follows:

Without: 49.565 seconds
With: 49.555 seconds.

Unless 1% of a second is a 15% increase in attack speed, Reaper’s Onslaught does absolutely nothing!

So, new AA DPS for Shroud Knight is 397. Reaper’s Onslaught or not, doesn’t matter. This means that the shroud also does more auto attack damage than the greatsword. Wow, the Greatsword is really horrendous, isn’kitten Anyway, this would go up by 15% with a properly working reaper’s onslaught, making it actually quite competitive with the dagger. With adjusted crit rates we get a scaled DPS of 846 with Reaper’s Shroud vs. 758 dagger, meaning that Reaper’s Shroud is actually good.

So, out of curiosity I decided to check the sword again. One minute. 0.7 seconds for 20 attacks. So still 3 seconds per auto attack chain.

EDIT: Onslaught tested again for good measure. Got times of 49.46 and 49.51. Reaper’s Onslaught is bugged.

So because of the massive cast times in RS ive been interrupting my own skills so much. Especially if i get hit and knocked out of RS. It cancels the cast. Can we just allow channels to continue properly?

My list of suggestions so far:

BUGFIX: The tooltips of greatsword melee attacks have 170 range listed while the dagger has a range of 130 listed. They both hit at the same range. Please increase attack range of the greatsword by 30%
BUGFIX: Life Reap currently has a blank number under its number of affected targets. Please insert the correct amount (3).
BUGFIX: Reaper’s Onslaught currently does nothing. Fix when appropriate.

Greatsword Changes:
#1: The auto attack should have their damage increased by 10%, and increase the chill duration on AA to 2 seconds base instead of 1.5 seconds.
#2: Gravedigger should receive a 35% increase in damage, and should recharge 100% of its cooldown instead of 80%
#3: Death Spiral should also receive a 35% increase in damage.
#4: Nightfall should have a consistent size of 300 radii throughout.

Reaper’s Shroud Changes
#1: Death Spiral should have its full animation time reduced from 4 seconds to 2 seconds like ti says on the tooltip.

Trait Changes
#1: Augury of Death: Change this so its base recharge is 15%, and then gives an additional 3% recharge for each enemy hit (credits to Malchior).
#2: Reduce the ICD of Chilling Nova to 10 seconds. Increase the damage it does by 50%

I haven’t tested out the shouts that much. The thing with the shouts is that right now, the base reaper is broken, and the shouts aren’t that good. If the base reaper was good, then maybe they’d be worth the time.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

My list of suggestions so far:

Greatsword Changes:
#1: The auto attack should have their damage increased by 10%, and increase the chill duration on AA to 2 seconds base instead of 1.5 seconds.
#2: Gravedigger should receive a 35% increase in damage, and should recharge 100% of its cooldown instead of 80%
#3: Death Spiral should also receive a 35% increase in damage.
*#4: Nightfall should have a consistent size of 300 radii throughout. *
.

Also, Nightfall should be instant cast. We aren’t mesmers, we can’t blink, we can’t distort, we don’t have aegis; we need to be able to cast this skill while moving because we can’t afford to stay in one place.

so far it’s been alright.. the damage is a little bit low though.
i would like to see the range on Gs5 increased to 900 range atleast

the shouts should probably be looked over though. they aren’t very appealing.

i will post more tomorrow

I like the work done here with Reaper Shroud and Greatsword concept-wise. Where the improvements are definitely needed are in the execution of that concept.

GS: A weapon that is supposed to deal good multiple-target damage. However, the long casting times and slow life force gain hurt it so much. A good fix would be high burst damage that recompenses our patience for casting such long skills. As is, it is not achieved. The current damage output and life force gain does not make up for its drawbacks. I even used the Soul Reaping trait to mitigate the drawbacks of low force gain, and still, while using GS that life force gain was too slow.

Gravedigger: The animation looks amazing, but what it delivers is less so. It suffers from extremely poor execution of concept. It was made with pvp in mind, and yet it inherently hinders it’s own efficacy in pvp. The long casting along with an obvious and easily recognizeable animation makes it one of the easiest to avoid attacks in the game. A downed state person’s defenses can activate faster than Gravedigger. And if by some sheer luck Gravedigger manages to hit something, the damage isn’t that punishing at all. It needs either a shorter casting time, a larger field of effect, or more damage. But something has to give. As it is, it is a very pretty cool looking attack with increadibly underwhelming effects.

The auto attack of GS could be faster. If not, then as with everything else, an increase in damage output would make it worthwhile.

Increasing the range of all GS attacks is needed. With the current design concept, that shouldn’t be surprising. With low mobility and a very poor leap, our attacks with GS simply need far more range.

I attacked a group of 5 normal difficulty monsters in the Silverwastes, armed with GS and all shouts, and even then, I did not gain Life Force gain as quick as I normally do under those circumstances with my dagger/warhorn or even my staff, and a group of minions. Those 5 mobs even worried me at a point. They took me longer to dispatch. This is a melee necromancer that is slow casting, has a kitten leap, and has little to no way of escaping CC. The pay-off should be high damage and innate damage mitigation. I did not get that. (UPDATE: Tried PvP, this rings very true there as well)

To drive my point really accross about how much improvement Reaper GS needs, guardian hammer has similar slow auto attacks (just a tad bit faster), but it casts protect, chills, heals, golf swings, and leaps, and all while generating a good consistent damage output. And no one bats an eye at that. We are all pretty comfortable that guardian hammer can do so much. I really am stunted that this same sense of freedom to make a weapon awesome wasn’t taken for Reaper’s Greatsword. I’m not asking for those same exact benefits that guardian hammer has. But I do want a Reaper GS that can amaze me just as well as guardian hammer can. Because I know it can be done.

Now about the Reaper line itself, I can’t help but notice how terribly underwhelming any trait that purports to increase life force gain is, especially when using greatsword. Blighter’s Boon and Chilling Victory feel nerfed. 1% Life force gain from very specific targets is not enough. I feel that Chilling Victory would do well with at least 2% Life force gain and 2 stacks of Might. Soul Eater’s Life siphon per second is too low for a class that has little in the way of avoiding damage and is slow. 57 HP per second. It’s really not worth it. And then there’s the casting time recharge reduction for Greatsword. Only 3%. Only 3% for the slowest weapon of ALL.

Overall, the irony is that I feel some weapons do better with the Reaper line than Greatsword.

I had hoped the shouts would bring more team-support to the table. Since they are not, then at least drastically reduce the casting time and make them a bit more heavy hitting?

RS is mostly good, but that RS2 feels wonky. I keep surprising myself with it. ZOOM! No control. I also keep interrupting myself during RS.

When I look at Reaper I feel as if someone tied the designer’s hands after he wrote down the concepts. " Okay, you got the cool factor down, but you have to make sure the numbers are lame." It’s fun, Reaper is fun, but it suffers from extremely poor execution of numbers. Looks great, does bad. It’s like looking at a huge scary shadow and then realizing it was just a mouse. Not much like the relentless bringer of death they were going for.

Agree with all of what you said but in addition, GS needs a consistent gap closer on a 10 seconds CD. Every other Melee weapon has one but the GS and we get punished for that.

Ours has 3 times the CD of your average gap closer and unlike every other gap closer it can be dodged and negated.

I tried Reaper GS in sPvP. That weapon needs some serious work. The long casting times, the clunky inefficient leap, and the slow life force gain pretty much make this weapon nearly unviable in a PvP environment. It is too slow for a fast paced playing mode as sPvP is. GS desperately needs to have the numbers improved and it’s leap fixed.

WARNING, OPINIONS AHEAD, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

I feel Reaper, overall, is meh.

Tried the shouts. They’re… Well they’re just bad. “Chilled To The Bone!” is okkkaayyyy in certain situations but it doesn’t make me want to take it over Plague.

Greatsword is awful. It has some nice utility but just like the shouts (and our Corruptions), it’s too situational for me to want to take it over something like Staff. The damage is just too low for it’s attack speed.

Reaper Shroud is nice. It feels very intuitive the way the skills are designed which I like. Smooth skill casting that can easily be combo’d in to something else is my favorite style of play and a major part of why I love conditionmancer so much. Unfortunately, Reaper Shroud is also quite weak with a condition build. You can stack burns a lot more quickly but they still only ever reach around 5 stacks. Soul Spiral is amazing for Poison stacking though I’ll say that much. It’s just unfortunate the cooldown is so long. Death’s Charge is also amazing for the mobility. It’s still not an incredibly lengthy ways to travel but the short cooldown does wonders for solo roaming in WvW. A leap every 5 seconds means I can actually escape people sometimes.

Deathly Chill sucks. With 2.4k condition damage I was getting 314 per tick on Chills. That’s waaayyyy too low to justify being a grandmaster trait.

Tried full Berserker and full Rabid Reaper. Was all I cared to try to be honest. If something doesn’t suck me in within the first while of gameplay I can comfortably say that it never will. It’s fun but I still enjoy base Necromancer more than Reaper.

Also, Death’s Charge needs to run in to targets something like Warrior’s underwater spear #5 attack does. If not targeting anyone, it goes straight ahead. If targeting someone, it just spins on top of them. That’s how Death’s Charge should be working because at the moment it just goes straight by people which makes it incredibly difficult to land the Blind.

~ I’m aware that this is beta and things are subject to change. Maybe greatsword damage will get buffed which would be nice. As it stands however, I’m not interested in Reaper really at all. It looks pretty… That’s about all I care to say at this point. Maybe I’ll give it another go in the future when some things have been smoothed out.

just a quick note when i was using the reaper
gs5 the pull doesn’t travel all the way back to you
it is possible for gs5 to miss a target right in front of you
i think it only travels 600 range back to you
rs2 should function like warrior leap or guard leap
rs2 really hard to use in combat
rs5 seems to miss and not do damage when it should

I’ll add to some of the feedback in a similar manner. I played with Reaper for a few hours and then went back to my typical dagger/warhorn build (all in pve).

Before I begin, I’ll start by saying that the animations are frickin’ awesome. Loved it!

I had my first go as zerker with strength runes and force/night sigils with GS/Staff. Pretty similar to my main build but with a GS instead of dagger. I went with Soul Reaping, Spite, and Reaper…pretty much full dps with the “monster theme” line in reaper.

From an overall feel standpoint, I felt weak with the GS. It got a little better but struggled with survivability as I was interrupting my big attacks with dodges/movement and couldn’t put out enough dps. The GS attacks did seem weak, especially with how slow they were. I struggled with LF generation a lot!

Reaper was very cool – the abilities seem strong but RS1 seemed much weaker than a comparable DS1 even with the increased attack speed. Speaking of which, I stopped using the +15% attack speed trait in Reaper and didn’t really notice a difference either visually or with TTK.

I switched to using the top traits (shout cooldown, GS trait, gain LF/Health on boon) after that. I immediately noticed my LF problems drastically diminish and my survivability went up. Perhaps I was missing my blood magic siphons…but this seemed so much more fun. GS was still weak for how slow it was, but I didn’t feel like a wet paper bag anymore and my sustain was less problematic.

Overall, it seems like a lot of fun but needs some tweaks. GS needs to be stronger IMO to make connecting with a hit worth it. It also needs a little more LF gain than just #3/5. Perhaps add it to the 1st/3rd hits of #1. #4 has a weird feel to it and it’s too easy to interrupt yourself. I’d also expect #2 to be as strong as warrior HB with adjustments for the time to execute the ability.

Having play a couple hours in PvE i can agree with most of the posts: greatsword aa and gravedigger are rather disappointing.

aa is rather slow and the damage doesn’t make up for it. The chill at the end is also too low to be useful. I some what understand not wanting perma-chill to really be a thing (hence the worthless chill increase trait being only 10%, which only effectively adds any duration to the ult chill and staff 3 chill) but come on. Chill is suppose to be the reaper’s thing but they can’t reach any decent up time with the low durations on most of their chills and the chill stacking cap being reduced to 5.

Gravedigger is rather disappointing… basically ditto to what everyone else has said: too slow/low damage to be worth using and it has terrible flow.

death spiral is nice, some people might not have notice but it is 2% per hit, per target so if you hit 3 targets with it you get 36% RS, which can be rather nice.

nightfall is cool, overall I am fine with its as is.

grasping darkness can be nice when it doesn’t kitten out, which seems to do so on any ground that isn’t perfectly flat =/.

I like reaper shroud but the damage on 1 seems to be slightly low and 2 is slightly annoying to use. the other RS skills seem good to me. I would like to see 3 to be a stun-break but that might be asking for a bit much.

For the shouts I have only used “you are all weaklings”, “suffer”, healing one and the ult, so I can’t say much about the other 2. They are definitely best for groups of targets and not really worth their cast times single target. I found that using blighters boon (oh no, you would lose some dps on RS if reaper’s onslaught actually worked) YaaW can generate 20% RS against a full group of targets. Combining that with chilling force and suffer (suffer cast 1st then YaaW immediately after it) it bumps up to 30% RS. The ult shout takes way to long to cast for its effects. I feel like it could use either a moderately lower cast time (1 second isn’t terrible) or a decent chunk taken off of its cd (90-100 seconds, with trait and max targets that would be 58.5-65 sec cd).

Over all the entire kit seems to be aimed completely at always hitting 5 targets to be truly worth it. On a slightly good note if you are hitting a lot of targets with your stuff you can achieve a rather good up time of RS but with the kind of meh damage on the aa it isn’t as good as it could be. I also love the animations of everything but give the slowness of the greatsword skills the animations make it really easy to tell whats coming and therefore easily dodged/walked out of.

The shroud is fun, but the shouts and greatsword are terrible. Everything is far too weak for too long of cast-time.

Alright, I played a bit of Reaper.
Great sword: Sucks. See everything above for more info
Reaper Shroud: Dhuumfire works great with RS. However, the chill nerfs greatly hinder what RS could’ve been. I get that the blind on RS 2 is supposed to sync with chilling darkness, but chilling darkness is so awful that there is no point in taking it. Also, RS 2 iS clinky like burning speed, but without a good way to land it. The lf gain on the auto attack in RS is abysmal. 1% is so tiny that it doesn’t even make a difference with vital persistence while taking no damage, which is an unrealistic scenario.
Traits: Chilling Nova went from something incredibly awesome to a worse version of sigil of ice. 2 seconds of chill every 15 seconds sucks. Augury of death is bad because shouts aren’t worth running and necromancer has no business trying to do anything against 5 people but hide. In the master tier, soul eater is bad because it has pitiful siphon, restrictive cd reduction, and gs sucks. Decimate defenses doesn’t even belong in Reaper (feels more like a spite minor). Chilling force is the only realistic choice, but chill uptime is too low to abuse it with. The master tier honestly felt devoid of good traits from a condi perspective. Blighter’s boon does not appreciate the chill nerfs because it dramatically reduces the potency of it while running without support. Since the only thing on necromancer it synergizes especially well with is Reaper’s might, I’m really only making the best use of this skill while spamming 1 in RS. Deathly Chill is too weak. As a condi spec, the only reason I’d ever want to spec into Reaper is for RS + Dhuumfire because it doesn’t really offer anything else to make me want it over spite or death magic. Reaper’s onslaught is too small of a boost to notice, and an on death recharge of a skill with a short recharge is a total joke. It is only cool to imagine charging from foe to foe in a killing frenzy if you don’t realize that you can’t kill foes fast enough, and that you’ll probably go right past your next target.
Utilities: why would I ever use any of the utilities? The scaling effects should be baseline, but even then they are terrible. The elite is the only reasonably long chill to stack might off of with chilling force, but even that is way too weak.
Chill: Gee, I’m going to be honest, balancing chill uptime to the effects of chill duration runes was a terrible idea. While theoretically possible, 100% chill uptime is not actually possible. The chill will be cleansed, and most will not run chill duration runes because that means no traveler’s, perplexity, or strength runes, which are ultimately more useful and fun than a long chill. The nerfs to chill make every skill that could apply chill unreasonably bad. For example, the icd on chilling darkness ruins its usefulness with aoe blinds such as well of darkness, plague 2, and in a way, deathly swarm. It cripples these skills to yield to a weak damage trait. On top of that, many of the chills Reaper has, such as chilling nova, have such a short duration that the trait ultimately has very little synergy with chilling force since the slow necromancer will only be getting at most three hits in (3% lf and 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 15 seconds). Reaper have to sacrifice so much to get a decent amount of chill that it is practically not worth it to invest into any chill at all, and ultimately, that means to stay away from Reaper.
Tl;dr: The best part about Reaper is spamming 1 in RS to “reap” benefits from traits that are bad with DS.
Final verdict: Warm Ice Cream

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Alright, I did some napkin math. The time it took to complete 20 full auto attack chains with the greatsword was 1.00.56, or one minute and half a second. This comes to 3.025 seconds for the auto attack. I’ll trim this down to 3.

Comparing this to dagger again. With my base numbers, dagger does 489 DPS. The greatsword, however, does 390 DPS. The dagger auto does 25% more DPS.

Even with bitter chill, the greatsword auto is wholly useless at the moment. Now, a few other napkin math timing:

Grasping Darkness: 1.4 seconds.
Gravedigger: 2.2 seconds,
Death Spiral: 1.7 seconds
Nightfall: 1.8 seconds.

Wow… maybe I’m doing this wrong, but these numbers are horrendous. For anyone wondering, what I’m doing is using this website to time the attacks. I start the watch, wait until 10 seconds (so I can synchronize the event), and then press stop as soon as a second animation begins. I do this a couple of times, and take the lowest number I receive.

So, Gravedigger spam. Adding on the recharge, this is basically 3.2 seconds to use gravedigger and the first auto attack. This is a DPS of 359, making gravedigger spam do less damage than the auto attack in the first place. There is one corollary to this, however, in that gravedigger is a whirl finisher. While standing inside of an enemy, gravedigger will hit them with 3 whirl finisher bolts. As far as now much damage those bolts do… I don’t know. They don’t appear in my combat log. In the PVP lobby a full zerker setup has dark bolts doing 241 damage, so I assume in the overworld this will be added to whatever the target is being hit for. Against the golems in the PVP lobby, this amounts to about a 10% increase. So, in a dark field, Gravedigger spam hits for394 DPS, making it roughly the same as just auto attacking.

The DPS of other skills is as follows:
Gravedigger (skill alone): 366
Death Spiral: 215
Nightfall: 627
Grasping Darkness: 287, not including poison

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Overall, wow did Anet mess up the greatsword. The only skill that has higher damage than the dagger’s auto attack is nightfall. Soul Spiral, Gravedigger, Grasping Darkness, all of them worse. There’s no point to anything. You just use the greatsword as a weapon-slot well, and stick with the dagger.

Totally agree on all counts. DPS still sucks and RS bleeds off so kitten ed fast that you barely have a chance to pull off RS 4&5. I don’t know what to say except I’ll finish off the beta but kitten I’m disappointed again, kitten ! I can’t say this often enough, two health bars are jack kitten if you can’t move, break off or deal enough damage to counter. By the way the whole…can keep someone chilled 100% of the time, hell I couldn’t manage that with an NPC no hope doing 50% against a player.
Slow no matter how much potential damage is still fraking slow….everyone say it with me GS is too slow!

So tested out Reaper during reset night in WvW on a T1 NA server. I built the reaper to be a power reaper, enough power to drop well bombs, but a bit added toughness & protection from Death Magic line for going in deep.

The good:

-Blighter’s Boon, I went from 0 lifeforce to full just running with the zerg from one tower to another. Remember we asked for passive LF regen for death shroud? I’m happy to see this available for reapers, but a bit sad that we don’t have a similar version for death shroud. During combat when boons started flying all over the place, my lifeforce regen was just crazy, allowing me to keep popping into reaper shroud or stay in shroud and keep whacking away. If you’re rolling reaper, please try Blighter’s Boon. It is awesome, and I feel it’s a must have for all reapers.

-Death’s Charge, I use this to get in, also use this to get out of heat. Love it, and thanks for the short cooldown.

-Soul Spiral is pretty much the highlight of reaper shroud’s dps abilities. This is good and bad because when it’s on cooldown, I feel vulnerable. I was hoping reaper 1 was going to be good damage but I just didn’t feel the pop.

-Infusing Terror is nice, love the stab and optional aoe fear.

The bad:

-Executioner’s Scythe is a great ability, but it reminds me of Focus 5, the cast time is just too long and easily avoided. This will become an ability that won’t see a lot of use because of how long the cast time is, much like Focus 5.

-Reaper 1, not feeling it. Good for cleaving downies, but that’s about it.

-GS all around just too clunky in a game that shines on active action combat. Too slow, not enough oomph when it does it. GS 5 doesn’t pull properly on moving targets otherwise I would use GS just for it (suggest to change this to aoe rather than frontal cone). GS 4 has that awkward pause at the end that’s just not needed.

The problem with GS is that Reaper Shroud outshines it, making GS unneeded. When you’re out of Reaper Shroud, you just need to build up lifeforce, which GS is very poor at. GS can use a range boost, and/or shorten cast time. You factor in lag in WvW, I couldn’t use GS even if I wanted to, because I couldn’t connect any hits for the life of me.

I feel terrify on reaper shroud needs to have a range increase. like at least 600 like “fear me” not the current measly 360.. I have to practically be in their pocket to fear them

For role playing the Reaper is perfect.

But for actual gameplay its poor.

RS5 doesnt always hit. This need to be made more consistent or else this is pretty much useless.

RS skill 3 could use some damage reduction effect along with current use. And maybe a better fear element to it. Maybe steal health or something along with the fear, or a AoE fear would be nice.

Reaper Shroud need better self defense damage reduction.
Or simply a passive reduction on incoming crits.

A lot of good points and ideas in this thread.

Personally, as a PvPer, I am more in favor of speed and range being added to the greatsword skills, as I feel this is what they lack most. It’s hard to say if the damage is even viable, as hitting targets is so difficult. (tbh vs decent players it’s not “difficult”, it simply won’t happen)

RS5 doesn’t reach the target unless it’s stationary or you’re looking right at it rendering the whole GS4/5 a really bad hit or miss, but hey we look awesome swinging at the air.

Good:

Movement – better mainly due to Stability, Relentless Pursuit and the Leap
Damage – Its good dmg, sometimes Great( not Warrior dmg) but actually good for us
Cleave -There is alot of Cleave, Finally !!
Reaper Shroud – Seems like all 5 skills are well balanced

And I have more fun on Reaper then I had in over a year on my Necro

Bad:

Gravedigger – the cast time is wayyy to high
GS #3 needs imho abit range
LF Generation is very low on GS, specially when u only hit 1 target
also u seem to be pushed out of Reaper Shroud faster then DS, mayb due to u being hit more as Melee based Shroud but its very noticable and several Guildies say the same
Shouts – All are underwhelming when you only hit 1 target but they are still kinda weak even when u hit more targets, exception is the Elite that actually works either way.