Guild Wars 2

Not sure if anybody else has suggested this, but the Reaper Shroud 3 should be a stun break. You shouldn’t have to pop it preemptively thinking you are at risk for a stun. What seems to happen is if you get stunned in shroud, there goes all your life force. This is from a PvP perspective at least.

Been playing reaper and using GS and shouts pretty extensively the past day and wanted to give my take on them. I’m not the best necro but I hope this is useful as far as what an average player feels.

Greatsword

Aesthetically I’m really enjoying the greatsword. The (human female) animations are great, I love the way they look and I do feel like my character looks like they’re this scary heavy hitter. The skills don’t really seem to back this up though.

Greatsword 1 is particularly disappointing. The numbers feel very low for how slow the weapon is. The fact that the chill is on the last autoattack in the chains mean that even in a best case scenario I am not getting an initial chill onto a target before the 3 second mark, and that best case scenario does not happen very often due to how slow and recognizable the animation is for the chill. It is very easily avoided or blocked and does not feel like it has much of an impact in a fight. I also feel like some LF generation could be added to the AA, as overall the greatsword’s LF feels rather bad.

Greatsword 2 also leaves a lot to be desired. The damage is not good at all for how recognizable and long the cast time on this skill is. The one second cooldown after hitting a foe at 50% feels clunky and I’m often unsure exactly what I should be filling that 1 second cooldown with. Letting it be spammable doesn’t seem like it would be particularly problematic, considering that it takes over 3 seconds to cast one of these.

Greatsword 3 again feels undertuned damage wise. That said, aside from the numbers I do like this skill and I am enjoying the 12 stacks of vulnerability on what feels like a reasonable cooldown. I do feel like the LF generation on this skill could be buffed as well though.

Greatsword 4 is hands down my favorite one of the weapon’s skills and actually feels pretty strong, if a little situational. I do think the radius could stand to be a little bit bigger though, and please, please add an AoE indicator to this skill so I can see exactly what it’s effecting.

Greatsword 5 is terrible. The cooldown is too long, it’s very clunky feeling and hard to land, I’m not sure why poison is on it because it doesn’t seem to fit either mechanically or thematically and having most of our weapon’s LF generation tied into this skill feels exceptionally punishing. I’d suggest giving it a ground targeting indicator, cutting the CD a bit, replacing poison with something like weakness or chill and moving the LF generation to another skill altogether (maybe the autoattack?).

Reaper Shroud

Reaper Shroud, again, looks amazing. I feel like the designers and animators really did quite well there. I’m also quite enjoying how the Reaper Shroud actually plays, although I do think there are some places where it could use some improvement.

I’m not sure if Reaper Shroud gets Death Shroud’s baseline damage reduction, but it definitely does not feel like it. Please take a look at that to make sure it’s working if we’re supposed to be getting it, and if we’re not please consider giving it to us. I feel quite squishy in RS.

Reaper Shroud 1 feels undertuned damage wise, and the LF generation on the final AA feels like an afterthought. Also, the Spite minor trait Reaper’s Might activates on every AA while the tooltip indicates it’s only supposed to activate on the final AA in the chain.

RS 2 is amazing, and the added mobility really is something I feel like my necro has needed for a long time. The blind and projectile blocking just feels like icing on the cake. However, this skill is rather cumbersome to use. I’d recommend changing it a bit so it works like warrior’s GS3 and allows us to choose what direction to go in and also allows us to stop short.

Not much to say about RS 3, it’s a good skill. Maybe consider giving it .25 CD before activating the fear for us fat-fingered folk though.

RS 4 also feels like it’s in a pretty good place right now. Maybe the CD is a little bit too long considering that the AA feels lackluster, but it may not need a reduction if that gets buffed.

RS 5 is very hard to land with the slow animation, but other than that it does feel quite impactful. I actually wouldn’t mind seeing it put on a longer CD if the casting animation was sufficiently sped up.

continued in next post

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Traits

As far as minors go, they do feel a little less impactful than most other traitlines. Nothing to say about Shroud Knight, Shivers of Dread is pretty forgettable considering that we don’t really have that much access to fears, and while Cold Shoulder is nice it is pretty hard to keep our chills up in a PvP context.

Both Chilling Nova and Relentless Pursuit seem pretty good in PvE and PvP respectively. Augury of Death feels less impactful considering how unimpressive shouts are anyways.

The second tier is actually pretty good and I don’t feel like there’s any real clear winners. I could see myself using any of those traits in certain situations, although Chilling Victory seems like it’d be relegated strictly to PvE.

The grandmaster tier is a bit disappointing though. Blighter’s Boon right now is the only choice, considering how I’m pretty sure Reaper’s Onslaught is bugged and Deathly Chill is just totally undertuned damage wise.

Shouts

Shouts are, even more than greatsword, the big letdown of the reaper spec IMO. Audio (human female) is serviceable I guess, but it doesn’t sound very scary or imposing like I feel a reaper should.

The cast times in general feel really awkward and none of the skills feel good enough to really justify them.

Your Soul is Mine feels too weak to compete with Consume Conditions, although I will say I do like the LF generation on it.

You Are All Weaklings is probably the best of the shouts, but again I feel like the cast time ruins an otherwise acceptable utility that I may have used occasionally.

Suffer doesn’t feel like a particularly useful condi transfer. I do think it could be buffed to transferring two conditions and would be a lot stronger without being OP.

Nothing Can Save You does feel good, if situational. I could see it getting some decent use in PvP, but unless HoT brings enemies with good amounts of boons it’ll be useless in PvE. Again, the cast time really hampers it.

Rise is just awful. Even a potential five jagged horrors is pretty meh, especially on such a long cooldown. I dunno if there’s technical limitations keeping it at 5 horrors total but I do feel like buffing it to two or three horrors per foe hit could maybe make it good for minion mancers. It would be flavorful and fun either way though.

Chilled to the Bone is again hampered by the terrible cast time, even more than all the other shouts.

Please do consider ditching or shortening the cast times on these skills, because they are not fun at all and really do make it a lot harder to use some already lackluster skills.

Hope this helps you guys balance stuff, I do really enjoy the way Reaper feels and plays so I want to see it in a good place.

to anet: Hey anet, thank you for making necromancer such a beautiful class as well with the reaper.. but I am confused if not, nervous why necroamancers have so many potential increased base on how many available targets skills especially with the shouts.. problem is…..85% at least of the time… there will only be up to 3, 4 if we are lucky…. opponents… to set these system.. is to force necromancers into the heat… and most of all.. what if the players just want to use/have shouts and doesn’t want to be in situations with many enemies.. take stand your ground skill for example its a skill and works fine with itself.. please try to rework this.. as many of my friends played around with reaper with none of us utilizing shouts at all..

I tried the reaper against the big vet karka and found that overall in survivability and dps it is pretty kitten good. I even had no issues against 2 big vets at a time. Note: I did trait for more stability and that helps a lot.

First, I love the vision. But I think the key for a nightmare creature is that you seem to be slow yourself, even though you’re running. How about add a chill to anything that dodges the reaper? Or give the Reaper stability or other boon if the swing is dodged? Or drain the target’s endurance by 100%. You’ve postponed the day of reckoning, but it’s not that easy to fool the Reaper.

I had fast-moving mobs run past me while I was swinging the GS and not get hit. I can’t imagine using it in PvP or other situation where players can have swiftness and can dodge.

The bottom line is: is Reaper and GS worth the cost of another trait line? I don’t feel like it. With the Chromomancer, it definitely was: heck, you get wells that rival Necro wells. With the Elementalist elite it also was: it makes a play style with less elemental swapping viable. With Necro, not really. It lets you do a bit of cleaving, but so do Marks.

I’d like to see reaper shroud skill 2, Death’s Charge, to have a second ability skill that pops up when used that will stop the charge instead of going the full distance. I feel that being able to charge thru a mob and stopping right after you get behind it can be very beneficial in game play and allow for more use in areas, especially Verdant’s Brink, where falling off the paths is a real thing.

Comments on Deathly Chill – in its current state this trait is so weak as to be almost useless. I checked the numbers, it scales based on Condition Damage with a base damage of 97 and a coefficient of 0.08, and it does 50% more damage when the target is under 50% HP (effective damage in that case is then 145+0.12xCD).

Compare this to a single stack of Burning (131.5 + 0.155xCD). Even in the best case (0 Condition Damage, target below 50% HP) Deathly Chill is only a tiny bit better than a single stack of Burning, and Burning can stack in intensity, while Deathly Chill cannot. At higher levels of condition damage it is actually WORSE than a single stack of Burning (even with the target below 50% HP) due to its lower coefficient – and if the target is above 50% HP it is even worse.

If they want anyone at all to consider taking this trait, they probably need to bump the damage up to something more like Terror. Perhaps 300+0.3xCD (450+0.45xCD when target below 50%), or around there. That would make it genuinely scary in a condition-focused build.

My thoughts on Reaper:

• For being masters of Chill, we sure suck at applying and maintaining it. Chill uptime needs to be buffed on Reaper skills/traits if the spec is going to manage anything on that front.

• Greatsword is terrible. It feels clunky and like it used to be good. On to specifics:
  1. Auto attack needs its Chill application buffed, as well as probably a shorter cast cycle time. The chill applying strike is literally the most telegraphed auto in the entire game by a wide margin, and also gives plenty of time for someone to just avoid being hit. If this happens, you don’t have Chill to work with Even if you do land it, the Chill uptime from continuous auto-attacking is laughable before even considering enemy cleanses.

2. Gravedigger really needs to return to a 100% reset on striking a foe below 50%. That 1 second period between is clunky as hell, and because the weapon is so slow, you can’t actually do anything with that time frame. The skill also needs to deal significantly more damage if it retains its cast time. Even 50% more seems fair for its telegraph.

3. Soul Spiral needs a shorter cast time and higher LF generation (whether through shorter cooldown or more/hit, doesn’t matter). As the primary LF generator of the weapon, it needs to be generating far more to help the Reaper sustain against the multiple foes Greatsword is intended to fight. Also, at least on Charr, the animation is clunky. It goes “Summon giant drill, then think about where you want to put it for a moment, decide that first location wasn’t the best spot, then thrust forward.” Just reducing the cast time to 3/4 seconds would make it feel a lot less awkward, but the generation capability needs to go up.

4. Nightfall is good as-is. No changes necessary.

5. Grasping Darkness needs help. On the rare occasions it actually functions as a pull, it’s okay, but the poison makes no sense. Better for it to be a long , single stack of poison, since condition damage and Greatsword don’t mix anyway. This is also a really clunky skill to use due to cast time, then projectile travel time, then pull. Given the short range, you really won’t be stopping anyone from escaping with this.

• Reaper’s Shroud is excellent. Only things that need changes are Death’s Charge actually stopping at your selected target and Executioner’s Scythe hitting your selected target instead of whatever is in a location in front of you. Also, just have the tooltip actually show Soul Spiral’s actual 2 second cast instead of hiding it in “duration”. You can’t cast it while stunned, casting anything else interrupts it, and you can have it interrupted. It is not an instant-cast skill!

• Shouts are all over the place.

1. “Your Soul is Mine!” needs to heal for more. A lot more.

2. “You are All Weaklings!” is pretty universal. It’s pretty good in all sorts of situations, and being a short cooldown stunbreak, it’s rather good.

3. “Suffer!” is bad. It really needs to just do something different to ever hope to compete with Plague Signet. Plague Signet always removes 5 conditions from you without caring if it’s one or 5 foes and is a stunbreak. A bit of chill and negligable damage will not save the shout.

4. "Nothing Can Save You! " looks good on paper. I haven’t taken Reaper out of PvE yet, though, and this shout is useless there (no blocks or boons). Thus, I can’t really comment on this.

5. “Arise!” sucks. It’s useless for literally everyone: Jagged Horrors are lousy with multiple foes and a 40 second cooldown to summon just one is laughably awful. Even Minion masters don’t want to run this shout. Scrap it entirely and replace with something else. My suggestion is “No escape!” knocks foes down and gives the Reaper super speed (2 seconds +1 second per foe struck). Takes inspiration from the fact that the horror movie monster catches someone because they tripped.

6. “Chilled to the Bone!” works as a general-purpose elite, but it needs a shorter cooldown and cast time.

superherofan.8042:

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

This sums up what I thought exactly. Shouts take too long for a cast, and with enough people (in WvW terms) on you, much interruption, more death. Greatsword was weak; it took me FOREVER to take down a single enemy in PvE.

Needs some loving is all I can say.

Traits are now a real sticking point on Reaper. There is really only once choice at each tier, regardless of build.

• Adept Tier:

1. Augury of Death, which is bad because shouts are underwhelming as a whole. Could probably do with giving shouts some extra effect.

2. Chilling Nova is a bad, situational Sigil of Ice. Half again the cooldown, but also requires the target to already be chilled.

3. Reaper’s Pursuit is awesome. No changes needed.

• Master Tier is closest to being good, but still only has one choice.

1. Soul Eater is terrible. Gravedigger is too slow for such a minute cooldown reduction, and the siphoning also doesn’t help this be good due to the slow attack speed.

2. Chilling Victory would be good if Reaper actually could get decent chill uptime. While this is currently a bad choice, the trait itself is fine. The environment it is in is awful for supporting it.

3. Decimate Defenses is good, especially since Reaper does stack Vulnerability really well.

• Grandmaster tier is most unforgivable for how bad it is.

1. Blighter’s Boon is fantastic. I don’t want to see this change at all.

2. Deathly Chill is laughable. A Grandmaster trait to get less than a single stack of burning on a condition that condition builds don’t have good access to? The damage here needs to skyrocket to be even considered as a choice.

3. Unstoppable Onslaught doesn’t even work! The trait doesn’t actually do anything right now, making this an awful choice. In addition, the on-kill reset being on a really short cooldown skill doesn’t help matters. Perhaps this should instead reset all Reaper’s Shroud skill cooldowns on a kill.

I’m not going to talk about damage numbers just observations during pvp gameplay.

Greatsword

1- I would reduce the 1st two swings to 1/2 and the final swing to 3/4.

2- I like the idea a lot of people have mentioned it’s meant to be our hundred blades damage wise it’s obviously not going to be close whether that’s something that needs to be tweaked I’m not sure.

You can move with it and it can be on a smaller cooldown.

3- Like it, if anything drop it to 3/4.

4- I get the logic, put this down use gs 5 pull them in gs 3 and 2. It just doesn’t work I would almost suggest placing this directly on the necromancer and move with him would not make it over powered.

5- Probably the worst skill on the gs, range is too short it never hits and is on a massive cooldown.

The concept I get it, stuff isn’t meant to get away from us, you could honestly put this on a 15 seconds cooldown and make it impossible to dodge/block/invuln and the majority of classes would still escape.

In theory Greatsword is most likely going to be competing against dagger(warhorn), Ignoring damage, dagger has an immob a daze and a swiftness/cripple swarm.

Greatsword just doesn’t compete with that.

Also there is no way to mitigate or ignore damage, you can’t trade blows in any sort of melee combat.

Multiple classes have blocks, invuln’s, ignore’s we are literally just eating damage until such times as those effects end, Its not as bad when at ranged but when trying to deal with these things in melee simply health pool/ds pool tanking it doesn’t work.

Reaper Shroud.

Great- love all the abilities reduce the cooldown on 4 and 5 as they are excessive. I would also like to have the ability to enter death shroud as well as reaper shroud, they can share the same cooldowns.

for example you use reaper shroud 5, death shroud 5 is also on cooldown this will allow for more skillful play and force kiting players to eat life blasts if required.

I’ve played some open world PvE, some dungeons and some PvP, and I’ve also been whacking a lot of pracice golems in HotM. Here’s my feedback on greatsword and Reaper shroud.

Greatsword: Great animations, but feels slow and clunky. The damage is underwhelming considering how slow it is, and life force generation could be better.

1. Auto Attack: The numbers are way too low. The attacks in the dagger chain hit for about the same, but a lot faster. The greatsword auto attack could use a slight increase in attack speed, and buffed damage values. The whole auto attack chain just seems pretty useless in both PvE and PvP at the moment.
2. Gravedigger: Animation on this looks incredible. 80% reduction feels awkward since other greatsword attacks are so slow you hardly get to do something (half an auto attack chain?), and it really breaks up the flow of your attacks and gimps your DPS. The reduction in recharge should be 100%, and it should either get a damage buff or cast time reduction. I found it quite hard to land in PvP. It currently does not feel worth using over the Dagger auto attack in most situations.
3. Death Spiral: Feels a little bit awkward to land, but otherwise good skill with nice burst vuln. Maybe consider slightly increased range.
4. Nightfall: The tooltip says 1/4 sec cast time but I’m pretty sure it roots you in place for longer than that, which makes it feel clunky and very risky to use in PvP. Faster animation or castable on the move would fix it. Otherwise a really useful skill.
5. Grasping Darkness: Looks awesome, but is incredibly unreliable when moving. This skill needs to home in on enemies or be ground target for it to be useful in most combat scenarios.

Overall I think the weapon concept is good, but it needs some good tweaking. Damage needs increase overall, and some adjustments to animation cast times. There should also be some way to gain life force on Auto Attack or Gravedigger.

Reaper Shroud: Feels amazing, but life force generation and damage could use some buffs. It looks to be intended for melee group fights, but the life force generation is not nearly high enough to withstand melee against larger numbers.

1. Auto Attack: Great feel to it. Life force generation is very low, and I don’t feel it hits hard enough compared to Life Blast when you consider that it’s melee range. It needs higher life force generation and slightly higher damage.
2. Death’s Charge (Necrocopter): Only seems good for mobility currently. It flies right past the enemy if it’s used in combat, and the damage is insignificant. It either needs a big damage increase and ground target (like warrior’s greatsword whirl attack), or it needs a small damage increase, and stop at its target and keep spinning until cast is over.
3. Infusing Terror: Loving it. I see little need for further tweaks.
4. Soul Spiral: The poison application is great, but the spin is too slow, pretty sure it’s longer than the 2 seconds it states in the tooltip. Make the spin faster and put some life force generation on it and it will be good.
5. Executioner’s Scythe: Loving it. A bit hard to land in PvP, but damage is good and combo field is really useful. Nice stun on it too.

Reaper’s shroud is good overall, and is mainly in need of some numbers tweaks. Necrocopter still needs a bit more work.

Here’s my feedback on shouts and traits.

Shouts: I’ve not really found any good use to most of them and I think Anet should consider giving them a considerable rework. Cast times are too long, and the effects seem very situational. I’ll give some feedback on the two shouts I thought were good in concept:

• “Your Soul is Mine!”: The heal is a bit low, but the life force generation is nice, especially when outnumbered. This was the only shout I found truly useful. Consider slightly more heal (or heal per target hit) and maybe a small cast time reduction.
• “Chilled to the Bone!”: When you actually successfully cast it the effect is quite devastating, but it is in need of some serious tweaks to numbers. 2 second cast time is way too long and always gets interrupted in PvP unless you’re catching an enemy by surprise. The stability does not serve that much use when your enemies are stunned anyways, and the stabilty really would be more useful during that long cast time. The cooldown is also really long. My suggestion would be to remove the stability (possibly replace with might or fury), reduce the cast time to 1 second and decrease the cooldown to somewhere between 60 and 90 seconds.

Also worth mentioning – Revenant has an elite skill which is basically a superior version of our CTTB shout. Jade Winds is 1 second cast time, 3 seconds stun (minus the chill) and has no cooldown.

As for the other shouts, they don’t seem very useful at all in most instances compared to other utilities. In their current form I see little to no reason for cast times on them. If any of the buffs affected allies, suddenly they’d become useful so I’d give that strong consideration if I was Anet.

• There also should be a shout that grants stability for each foe hit, but I really don’t think it should be the elite. I’d rather have it as a stunbreak shout on a relatively low cooldown.

Traits: Some really good traits to choose from, but others are not all that good. Minor traits look fine.

• Augury of Death: I’d suggest 10% instead of 7%, or maybe start with a base reduction and then add percentages depending on foes hit.
• Chilling Nova: ICD is too long. Change ICD to 10 sec, and up the damage a little. I’d also suggest adding a 5-7% damage modifier against chilled foes.
• Relentless Pursuit: This one is fine as it is.
• Soul Eater: Trait is bad because greatsword is bad. If greatsword is fixed this trait might be worth taking. Not sure if I’m a fan of recharge dependant on Gravedigger, but at least increase the percentage a bit. 5% might suffice.
• Chilling Victory: Looks good to me.
• Decimate Defenses: Awesome trait. Keep as it is.
• Blighter’s Boon: Great as it is.
• Deathly Chill: Damage is underwhelming as a condi reaper, needs way better scaling for condition builds.
• Reaper’s Onslaught: Trait is currently bugged so I can’t say much about it, and Death’s Charge is pretty wonky in it’s current state. Will probably be good if it gets fixed and Death’s Charge gets the tweaks it deserves.

In closing I’d like to say that I really like the concept, but in some cases it’s executed poorly. I see no major flaws in anything other than maybe the shouts. I think the Reaper has really good potential – I wish the team good luck with balancing it, and hope the community feedback helps!

Reli.4210:

Greatsword

Aesthetically I’m really enjoying the greatsword. The (human female) animations are great, I love the way they look and I do feel like my character looks like they’re this scary heavy hitter. The skills don’t really seem to back this up though.

Unfortunately, the charr auto-attack animations are completely the opposite. They’re downright terrible and don’t evoke the “scary heavy hitter” that you described at all. I made a detailed post about the issue here.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/could-Male-Charr-get-GS-animation-buff/first#post5360405

I hope this is just because it’s in beta and their chain attack animations will get revamped later on. As it stands, I seriously can’t believe it looks this bad.

Overall, I like the aesthetics of the reaper a lot, though some improvements are needed.
It seems like ANet had a clear design perspective for the class and it’s traits (an unstoppable, cleaving, melee heavy-hitter), but was very afraid of giving it too much.

The greatsword could attack faster, deal more damage, or both. It’s especially slow at generating life force unless multiple foes are around. The animations look great, but the numbers and just aren’t there yet.
As has been mentioned before, all users of (melee) greatsword have a gap closer (Leap of Faith, Swoop, Whirlwind/Rush) but reaper does not. It does have a pull, but this isn’t unique (eg, Blinding Blade-Pull) and is unreliable. The reaper pull is actually quite limited and difficult to aim & land. Considering the limited range and slow speed of the GS, a small gap closer would be useful.

The shouts are a bit meh. I’ve been using them, but rarely do I see them make an impact in (PvE) fights. The cast times, especially on the elite, are a bit too long, and the effects lackluster.

Reaper shroud is the best thing the reaper brings. The autoattack is at a good speed, though the damage could be upped slightly. I love the source of stability on RS#3. I wish RS#2 would travel up to the target selected rather than past it. Since RS#1 cleaves by default, I think DS#1 should pierce by default. Otherwise the Soul Reaping trait Unyielding Blast behaves differently depending on the specialization (ie, it gives base necros piercing but not reapers).

Trait-wise, some are excellent like Decimate Defenses and Blighter’s Boon, but others could use improvements like Soul Eater and Augury of Death. I was very excited for Reaper’s Onslaught, but as others have noted, this one is bugged.

Ravezaar.4951:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Ravezaar.4951:

GS is abit on the slow-side and we all feel that. But a big part of the GS trash I can clearly say is a l2p issue, some ppl here on Forums expect to master the GS instantly and that aint happening. Still after 5000+hours I think Focus is hard to land and Axe is un-useble so…

GS has dmg, cleave,defence(Nightfall) and CC imho it just needs higher LF-Gen and maybe abit shorter Cast time on Gravedigger and its fine. AND PRACTICE

It doesn’t take a lot of skill for players with a brain to simply walk away while your slow terrible skills barely hit.

Thats why u have range option, either in Utlity Skill or other Weapon Set, no skill in the world can avoid getting hit forever…. and a SKILLED Necro will hit with GS

Congratulations on being so “skilled” but I have come to realize on this forums that there is always someone who believes they are more exceptional than everyone else.

Why is the majority of opinions about the GS negative but somehow yours either ignore those points and start making excuse. You should not need more a second weapon to make another weapon effective.

(1/2)
I’m an all-rounder in GW. As a player, I sPvP most days as Necro, Mes, Warr, Engi, Ele or Ranger, do a daily Fractals 50 as a thief or ele and I WvW with a raiding guild 4 nights a week as my Necro normally, or as a Guard or Warrior. I’m gonna throw my 2 pence in from these perspectives. I’ll leave the number crunching to those who have the time to do so, and will keep observations in a realm of how the reaper ‘felt’. Excuse the rushed feel of the post, but I have a deadline due Wednesday and have to leave tomorrow (and miss the rest of the weekend D;), so I don’t have time to make check and polish it.

Greatsword: (Not enough LF gen, doesn’t hit hard enough)
Auto attack. PvE, PvP, WvW. Useless. To warrant being that slow it needs to hit like a kittening truck. In PvE it felt kitten porr, in PvP it was too easy for the enemy to avoid. In the WvW melee train it was okay but the damage was still too low.
Gravedigger: PvE, PvP, WvW: Good skill, seems alright. Wasn’t hitting hard enough for my liking. I like the CD reduction.
Death Spiral: Cool skill. PvE, PvP, WvW: Needs to pierce as well, as the cone (I think?) was too tricky to aim.
Nightfall: Any blind on a weapon skill is always appreciated. I like the skill, feels okay in all game modes. Dark fields are crap, but you told us you don’t want us having good fields so idk.
Grasping Darkness: Will have to compare to Guard GS. For a skill that is directional and only 600 range it’s CD is too long. Can be quite buggy. Due to yet another HUGE cast time, issues arise. It needs to land where you are facing at the end of the cast, not the start of the cast. ¾ of a second of facing one way? Doesn’t work out good to stay still that long. Also, seems to bugs on different elevations, meaning it suffers from the same crap as spectral grasp. 5 targets when it does land successfully seems overpowered.

Reaper Shroud: (Feels nice. Attack speed is good, damage is good.)
Auto chain feels lovely. Would love if the cleave distance matched the length of the scythe, but yeah, would be a little unfair. All in all, feels really nice in all game modes and looks freaking incredible.
Death’s Charge: What a pain in the kitten to land. Great gap closer. If it stays as it is I wouldn’t mind. The blind is nice and thank you for the projectile block. I would have loved an evade. I know you don’t want us to have evade, but w/e. Good skill, I like.
Infusing Terror: It’s good, but a bit more radius on terrify would be appreciated. When you’re waving that big scythe around it easy to feel like your radius is bigger than it is.
Soul Spiral: A little more radius maybe? Feels good. Doesn’t hit as hard as life transfer? Well, didn’t feel like it did anyway. I like the skill.
Executioners Scythe: This one seemed riddled with bugs, mostly involving elementalists. It lands, does no damage, get absorbed when the ele has no absorbs up. Tested this in arena, seemed to be linked to the diamond skin trait. While you fix it, change 90% to 95%, eh? Wouldn’t mind a longer cast time in exchange for more damage? Make it more kill shott-y? On a 30 second CD it needs to hurt.

Shouts: (Overall lacklustre. Didn’t find myself using many of them after testing them all. Damage is rubbish, not enough benefit, no utility, and cast times… more cast times… Mesmers wet dream)
Your Soul is Mine: LF gen is good. More damage or more healing please, one or the other.
You Are All Weaklings: Scrap the might and give us something else. We are good for might since the changes, so maybe some vigor or regen or something. Stab is okay but not exactly a good source or time on a 30 second cooldown.
Suffer: Either the damage needs a buff or the Cooldown needs a reduction to make this viable. I have other condi transfer that is better, why take this?
Nothing can save you: This is a good shout. Used it in PvP and WvW. I like it. Damage is low but once I dropped the greatsword for dagger in my PvP matches I didn’t mind th low damage as the other benefits are awesome.
Rise: Guys, why haven’t you fired the guy who came up with this kitten?
Chilled to the bone: Used for quite a while, I like it but it’s not my cup of tea in PvP. Went back to plague. Seems alright, but too much like so many other skills (Basilisk, Jade sea, etc etc) and just not that interesting. Needless to say the shouts were useless in PvE.

2/2
Traits: (I like the trait line but a few things seem like they should be baseline with the way the specialisation is at the moment.)
Augury of Death: No one is every going to run more than one of your shouts, so why not make baseline for Necromancer shouts They already suck compared to Tempest, Guard and Warrior shouts. Give them something special.
Relentless Pursuit: Amazing trait. You have to take it in WvW or PvP. Have to. You designed the reaper around an idea that can be countered by Immob, Cripple and Chill, then you force us to take a trait that reduces its effects?
Soul Eater: Life Siphon still sucks. That hasn’t changed. Seriously. Scale is properly or something.
Chilling Victory: We have so much Might. Thanks for more might. And more might. Maybe we could share some of this with allies? So people actually like us? I don’t mean give us a blast, I know you don’t want us to be THAT useful.
Decimate Defenses: Amazing, used it in WvW and PvE for power builds. Glorious trait. Don’t nerf it.
Blighter’s Boon: Awesome trait for WvW raiding with Guards, otherwise a bit weak.
Deathly Chill: Too weak. In a changing meta where condi’s are becoming king, and Necromancers have horrible condition application (we have the manipulation and its awesome. I’m talking about application), maybe give us our own really good condition? That is really strong?
Reaper’s Onslaught: Typical power choice. Cool trait.

The reaper feels nice. I like it. The greatsword sucks, so unless you change it’s damage by a large margin and change up some of the radii and cast times/directions I see power Necro’s sticking with dagger, which is a depressing sentiment. Reaper shroud is lovely.
PvE: Still no place for us. Guess we’ll have to see what challenging content brings, but I’m not hopeful.
sPvP: No way of seeing that far ahead. I had fun, but I always have fun PvPing my Necro and being underestimated by opponents. Fix GS if you want it to see it in sPvP. Shouts don’t have much of a place in Conquest, but Stronghold will see a couple of them used.
WvW: If the new borderland allows for teams for 15-25 to play in a GvG style to travel and fight successfully with melee trains etc, and the pirate ship finally gets sunk, I see reaper being a great addition to the melee train. It is just built for it. I had great fun on Saturday night raiding with my reaper, and really hope I’m able to on the new borderland.

I generally feel the same as above. GS is weak with little lifeforce generation.
GS5 rarely hits, doesn’t autotarget, and hangs up in the terrain.

Reaper Shroud is amazing, save for the fact that it requires 2 trait lines to be effective. Can the trait line share some redundancy with Soul Reaping for LF gen and drain to spec survival traits. It feels like I have to take Reaper+Soul Reaping plus one tree to use it.

Edit: Reading tooltips is useful.

Even though Reaper has potential it still needs a few “fix ups”. In my opinion, here are some notes I took while playing.

I can definitely see Greatsword being for PvE only because it just doesn’t do a whole lot of damage unless you use of course you use certain abilities and/or stack attack speed. Thus having to maybe change sigils.

I see with abilities like “you are all weaklings” , “Suffer”, “Nothing can Save you” (Maybe “Rise” but not good enough) to be mainly PvP. Not sure if it is just me but I think it would be more beneficial for that.

Death Spiral should be switched with Grasping Darkness or at least become a trait, half the time I am forgetting it is a buff technically. If anything those two should be put above the weapon abilities similar to the Guardian since they are mainly buffs and possibly add a minor heal similar to the Dagger ability.

If Death Spiral is not changed is should be an instant cast with maybe a 15 sec cd to make it even. I just think it is dumb to have something so minor be a cast instead of being instant.

Please for the love of god remove Death’s Charge because I can’t say how many times I flew off a cliff because I misclicked. Or bring me back the original Death Shroud.

Gravedigger should be similar to the Guardian move and not be so extremely slow.

Those are my only complaints/reviews. Like I stated before it has potential. I also have a noob question for anyone else who reads this, from what I see, does anyone believe that for Reaper it is more like heading towards a Rabid build? Thank you!

The problems I have with Reaper are mainly just the greatsword.

I would LOVE to have the leap from RS2 increased, but thats not my main concern. Greatsword is great for PvE right now, because enemies dont try to interupt you when you have large casts.

for PvP and WvW though, the greatsword suffers SO MUCH. I was raiding last night in WvW, and I just felt way to slow with it out. All other melee greatswords in the game have a skill to catch up to others, or a leap. GS5 is just too clunky, and it doesnt help catching up to people who are out of 600 range. With a leap you dont need a target to move, but with a pull you HAVE to have one.

Also, all of the skills have such long casts, that in the hectic mess that is WvW zerging, the damage output just doesnt feel up to par, with all of the cc getting thrown around.

And btw often it a bit hard to see if your target is over or under 50 % hp and this makes a huge difference. How about getting the reset thing after you dmg the target with your GS 2 so if your target is AFTER your GS 2 skill under 50 % you get reset not like now BEFORE attack if you target is under 50 %

So far this is what I have found:

• in WvW, reaper is not a contending spec, not as frontline anyway like they intended. Maybe shroud is getting melted faster like some mentioned, maybe we’re just getting focused harder (is that even possible at this point) but i have tried every variation of reaper builds in WvW and I get absolutely splattered in seconds.
• I haven’t really touched pvp with it yet so I don’t have a comment there, but having done small scale fights in WvW in ruins I got a general feel of how it might be and it doesn’t look too bad on that end. Keep in mind right now I’m talking strictly the specialization itself, I will cover shouts and GS in a min.
• In PvE, regardless of what I have seen others say, it feels great (again only covering the specialization itself and the related traits). Shroud is sooo smooth, works like you actually want it to most of the time. I did find it really odd that shroud 3 was not persisting out of shroud so I couldn’t flash. Maybe that’s intended, maybe a bug, idk. I have not yet had a chance to do high fractals with it, but I have done all dungeons so far and as long as you plan your utilities right you feel more viable to the team. Still have to mind those combo fields of course, but remember that’s not only your job, your teammates need to play intelligently too and not as spambots. I did get to do some 20-ish fractals last night and it felt ok, but like I mentioned above and like others mentioned as well, reaper shroud seems to be a lot more fragile than standard death shroud and I don’t really know why this is. I really don’t think being melee range has much to do with it.
  Now on to the less savory bits:
  shouts….. yes those ugly elephants in the room… I tried a full shout build and variations of mixed builds using shouts and here are my results-
• YaaW – this isn’t that bad of a shout, the fact they left the stun break on it really surprised me and makes it useful on a bar. The might you can get when surrounded is pretty impressive, so it scales pretty well. The weakness isn’t anything to brag about but it helps soften a few hard hits I suppose. One thing everyone is failing to realize, the stability on it is not meant to be actual “stab” like we think of. It works like well of power in that it just ensures we can complete the cast and not get stunlocked out of it. This of course could be simply fixed by making most of the shouts insta-cast like they should be (which seems to be a great weakness of shouts in general for necro).
• rise! I would like to say first and foremost, I do not hate this skill. Not in a pve setting anyway. It has no place in a competitive one of course, but in pve it has uses believe it or not. Consider this: the more you hit, the more horrors you make right? Well each one of those horrors actually does reasonably good bleed damage and out of all the minions they suffer less from bugged AI because they were meant to be hyper-aggressive since they have short lives. Another thing to consider: each one dies and gives you LF. I’ve used the little rats to replenish LF before by summoning them in heavy aoe so they die to get LF. If you run GS you know LF generation is a big issue for it and this actually helps. I would prefer to see some other type minion or a new minion, but what we have now isn’t unusable in pve. It will never see the light of day in pvp, and in wvw you’d never want to give up that slot for it.
• NCSY: in pve, this is useless. Foes just don’t have many boons and the ones they do are short lived, nor do they block much. WvW, this has some good uses if you can time it right. In a boonstrip build this could work. in pvp if you have the max targets around you as a necro, you’re dead anyway so I don’t see a whole lot of use there.
• Suffer , works pretty good in wvw and pve too, but again because of the target requirements, it is limited in pvp and if anyone considers using it just for the chill…..no…just no.
• YSiM I don’t like this heal at all…healing on it is so low it’s not noticeable. The LF gained from it really doesn’t do enough to bring it up imo. It’s a crutch used to try to supplement poor LF gen on GS and most likely won’t ever go onto my bar in any competitive format. In pve it can be used if you find a rune set with on-heal effects that can benefit you, but beyond that the other heals just outperform it.
• CttB this one i’m still unsure about. I’ve landed some really good hits with it but it really boils down to ideal situations. I think other elites would prob benefit more.It did come in useful during some boss fights that loved their spam kd, but I can’t really get behind this competitively.

• Now for GS
  Slow slooowww slllooowwww…… ok ok I know it’s supposed to be slow, but c’mon. Something that slow better be a deathstick.
• #1 really needs no aftercast, and it needs to be a little faster or either the chill last longer because landing those hits even in pve is downright painful. I gave up trying to use it in wvw, even as a finisher weapon because sidestepping can outplay it
• #2 is good, I love the mechanics of it, the related traits too, but the damage is way too low for how hard it is to land the thing.
• #3 is great too, but range is what limits this, plus it seems kinda buggy at times and not hitting things that are well within it’s cone. it’s vuln application is top notch. I like this one overall.
• #4 this one is great too but the fields needs to expand faster or the recharge reduced. Otherwise pretty much works as intended from what I’ve seen.
• #5 this one would be great if it had more range and cast faster (plus the buggy bits removed where it does nothing at all or goes full cd if they step slightly out of it’s area). Recharge on it seems passable and with the trait and #2 you can lower it some more which is good.

I won’t dig into specific traits just yet. there’s still a few builds I would like to test out first before I make my mind up about them.

in pve, i would love the elite shout on a 60-90 sec CD

Raziel.8072:

• rise! I would like to say first and foremost, I do not hate this skill. Not in a pve setting anyway. It has no place in a competitive one of course, but in pve it has uses believe it or not. Consider this: the more you hit, the more horrors you make right? Well each one of those horrors actually does reasonably good bleed damage and out of all the minions they suffer less from bugged AI because they were meant to be hyper-aggressive since they have short lives. Another thing to consider: each one dies and gives you LF. I’ve used the little rats to replenish LF before by summoning them in heavy aoe so they die to get LF. If you run GS you know LF generation is a big issue for it and this actually helps. I would prefer to see some other type minion or a new minion, but what we have now isn’t unusable in pve. It will never see the light of day in pvp, and in wvw you’d never want to give up that slot for it.

jagged horrors doesn’t give life force.

Tim.6450:

]
jagged horrors doesn’t give life force.

Anything that dies by being killed (not expiring from health degen or sacrificed) gives LF. So unless there were 5 deaths nearby each time I did it by some happy chance of luck, yes you will get LF when they are killed.

Raziel.8072:

Anything that dies by being killed (not expiring from health degen or sacrificed) gives LF. So unless there were 5 deaths nearby each time I did it by some happy chance of luck, yes you will get LF when they are killed.

Try letting some bone minions die (not exploding), you won’t get any life force.

2 seconds is a huge cast time for the new elite, drop it to 1.5 seconds at the very least.

Jedikuki.6534:

Even though Reaper has potential it still needs a few “fix ups”. In my opinion, here are some notes I took while playing.

Please for the love of god remove Death’s Charge because I can’t say how many times I flew off a cliff because I misclicked. Or bring me back the original Death Shroud.

eh, this gives the necro a type of mobility/leap/charge that didn’t exist for the class previously, can be used offensively and defensively.

Shouts and GS are really lacking, shouts are mediocre and GS does subpar damage given the cast times. With the current mobility/damage gs is totally unviable.

Pros:

- The amount of stability RS 3 offers is SO GOOD and the instant cast to make it usable while you do something else… I want to cry. Please make Foot in the Grave more potent for those who don’t go Reaper!
- Blighter’s Boon in teamfights with ele/guardian is borderline OP.

Cons:

Roughly everything else. A few specifics:
- GS felt like ball and chain in PvP, and I tried to maximize chill applications to drag opponents down to my level, to no avail. Also, life force generation is close to scepter level (laughable at best).
- Shouts weren’t helping survive nor put some pressure in big fights, and were dead weight in other situations. Only the elite could but, even with 2 stacks of stability, it is hard to successfully cast in the thick of battle.
- Traits are dull or underwhelming (except Blighter’s Boon of course).
- RS 2 should either stop at target or pickup the target on the way.
- RS 5 miss more than it should, or is there a minimum range ?
- Is it me or RS degenerate faster than it should ?

I REALLY want to like the Reaper, but I feel like the preview we were given doesn’t line up with the reality so far. It doesn’t really feel like there’s anything to dread. xD

Attacks and shouts don’t feel like they have the weight the preview suggested they might and overall I’ve felt like the Reaper is a bit less effective than the other elite specs in Verdant Brink. I’ve yet to take the Reaper into PvP, however (I’m not sure if I would expect much).
Damage doesn’t really seem high enough for the GS (at least with auto, maybe?) and the chill effect feels like it should probably be longer. I’m not sure I’ve tested shouts in the proper environments yet, but so far I’m feeling rather underwhelmed by them as well. I’m not feeling like I’m seeing a strong impact from any of them, whereas with Wells and other skill types I do.
I was hoping for greater impact from chill (especially with the new traits) and as others have said, it seems hardly noticeable.
Reaper Shroud, on the other hand, feels great and I’m really enjoying it, but GS and shouts just feel less than stellar to me at the moment.

xinkspillx.3914:

Reaper Shroud, on the other hand, feels great and I’m really enjoying it, but GS and shouts just feel less than stellar to me at the moment.

if the devs get one general thing out of this beta for reaper, its that. RS needs a few tweaks, but otherwise is fun to use and effective. the rest needs a ton of work.

my feedback is

i love it. but its 1 skill needs a longer chill time.
its 2 skill has a bug where if u use it while stationary u cant move. but if u use it while moving u can still move or stop.

and in general it needs some interupt immunity…cause its way to easy to interuppt
other than those.
I LOVE IT

I have to agree with the general feeling that chills aren’t as advertised. I don’t see them staying on players for long, I hardly notice their effects on people I’m fighting against in WvW. Trying to sell us Reaper as this crazy immobile monster that pulls people to us and keeps them within our grasp is just wrong. In reality, in real-time action combat, in WvW, none of this is true. It’s hard to stick to people, GS too slow and clunky, shouts are hard to use because of long cast time (2 second elite cast time are you kidding me? nothing should take 2 seconds to cast in PvP situations). The pull which was what I was excited about doesn’t work, it seems devs only tested it on stationary target dummies rather than in PvP/WvW where players actually move.

Reaper Shroud isn’t far from being a great implementation. But shouts & GS need a look at and lots of tweaking. Also please consider giving Reapers better defenses. You want us in middle of all the crap, you want us playing frontline, but you don’t give us what made warriors and guardians viable in the frontline in the first place. This includes but not limited to invulns, blocks, reflects, long leaps, knockdowns, knockbacks, reliable immob, etc etc..

Overall I really like the Reaper, after taking it through Fractals it seems like an amazing spec for PvE at least. But here’s a technical issues with one of the new moves:

Death’s Charge – Feels really awkward right now, with how it just dashes straight forward in whatever way your character is facing. Should either be target tracking (like Warrior Greatsword’s Rush) or manually targeted (like Warrior Greatsword’s Whirlwind Attack).

Keeping my feedback short:
1. Give greatsword auto attack more DPS than dagger auto attack or increase the number of enemies for all skills to be 5 people. Then I can use dagger for 1-2 enemies and greatsword for more enemies
2. I always jump past my target for Reaper Shroud 2. Can the skill stop when you reach your target similar to fire greatsword 4 on ele? I am missing a done of damage jumping past my enemy all the time

Mechanics of the great sword and Reaper Shroud seem slow and clunky. Nothing seems fluid. Lots of eye candy in the animations. The animations telegraph well and with the slowness of the attack even the unskilled players can dodge them. Damage seems low and slow as well.

Cecilia.5179:

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

This. This so much. I continued testing Reaper in sPvP after posting my feedback, partly because I felt so bad for it that I insisted that maybe I missed something and that perhaps I was the problem (conclusion: nah, GS really does suck, but not to the point that it needs a complete do-over. It just needs tweaks to numbers). And the first thing I did was put on some Runes of the Traveller. Sorry, Gee, but there was literally no better runes to run with Reaper than those especially when using GS.

GS does several different conditions, all of which would benefit from overall condition duration. And we need boons and movement speed to make up for our slow casting times and mobility (ie. if our attacks are slow it is more dire to somehow posess more ways to cover distance in between to keep up with our enemies because we are spending so much time just casting the kitten attacks on enemies that won’t stop moving for you). And I experimented with both energy and rage sigils. I went Carrion.

There just was not going to be any way that I would go and say “Hey, chill duration looks more awesome than runes that address Reaper’s weaknesses.” That theoretical situation flies out of the window when you address what actual player behavior would be. Common sense will lead many people to make the more sensible choice. What’s the benefit of a theoretical 60% or even100% chill duration when you know you won’t even land half of those hits since people can dodge or even just run out of the way? None, really, especially with the nerf. Our limitation in mobility, and better traits for conditions and boons outside of the Reaper line make a chill-focused GS build with chill runes too weak to be considered.

Going with the general consensus as it seems, I have to say that the damage is a little low for the cast times (which are a tad long) across the board. As for the specifics, I’ll start with the traits:

Traits:
-Chilling Nova: Could use a cool down reduction to at least 10 seconds or a buff to the effect, especially the chill duration to about 4 seconds.
-Soul Eater: Honestly, the life siphon is just too weak; it should siphon at least 100 points of health to provide any sort of reliable sustain (plus it does say soul eater not soul “nibbler”).
-Chilling Victory: I get the potential it has so I suppose an internal cool down is needed, but it should generate at least 2% life force.
-Deathly Chill: The base damage and scaling just need better numbers (I’m no math whiz so I’ll leave it at that).
-Reaper’s Onslaught: The attack speed increase is fine when it works, but the recharge of Reaper’s Shroud 2 is redundant since it has a low cool down. In my opinion it should recharge or partially recharge RS 5.

Reaper’s Shroud:
-Besides numbers, the only thing I can think of is increase the range and make Terrify on RS 3 instant. Also, RS 5 is unreliable at times so making it consistent would be nice. I forgot about RS 2 which should stop at your target instead of rushing past them.

Great Sword:
-GS 1: Increase the damage while keeping the slower hits, it should be different than the dagger for how it deals out damage, but Chilling Scythe’s cast time should be 3/4 of a second and have an increase to the chill time to about 2 1/2 seconds.
-GS 2: Increase the damage some and bring the recharge back to 100%, the slight delay is awkward imo.
-GS 3: The animation appears to give it more range, which I think it should, maybe 250-300 instead of 170.
-GS 4: I like the skill as is, but I’ve read some others’ ideas of making it a teleport, which could be interesting.
-GS 5: My favorite skill, although unreliable at times, I think it would be more useful to reduce the damage (mostly the poison damage) and reduce the cool down to 20 seconds so that it can be used more often while staying somewhat hard to land.

Shouts: Imo, shouts don’t fit the Reaper (except for Your Soul is Mine! and Rise! but not necessarily for their effects), regardless, the main thing to make them more useful, except for the elite, is to have a more impactful base effect regardless of how many people you hit. The elite could use a shorter cast time and cool down.

Anyways, that’s my two cents.

I spent about 6 hours in an empty pvp room with two other friends, doing 1v1 duels, testing our reaper builds. GS was so clunky that I pretty much at the end, called the verdict, and ditched it in order to win duels with a friend who did so from the beginning. Then for lolz (really, I had lost hope on DS by them), I decided to try one build idea for GS: minions. It goes against the impression I get that designers would like us to use shouts. But nah, those shouts are bad. Sorry. :/

The build looked more crooked and forced together that your 3rd grade volcano science project that fell off the table and put back together with Elmer’s Glue. Frankestein’s monster’s stitches looked more smooth than this abomination I created. I used Blood and Death Magic lines. And I ditched all the shouts, and picked up Consume Conditions, Shadown Fiend(Blind) and Bone Fiend(immobilize), Well of Power, and Flesh Golem(knock down).

It frigging worked to my surprise. The minions I picked provided me with more life force gain, complimentary healing, and they had CC. I could finally keep my friendly opponent in place to unleash more than half of the GS attacks. It worked even more consistently against a Revenant with Shiro because that kept the match strictly between two melee people. For when they moved away, especially more when they were playing as another Reaper not using GS, I simply switched to scepter/warhorn to keep the pressure and close distance with warhorn’s #5 skill. However, the matches took long as Reapers even without GS still doesn’t dish out much damage. Reaper Shroud is okay, but as I’ve learned through various and numerous testing, it doesn’t really outshine a well balanced normal DS build. If that isn’t the intention, then the RS damage just needs a tad more more unf. Just a tinsy bit more.

Reaper build in general even feels clunky tbh because so much of the traits hint you that you should be using Greatsword, but Greatsword is currently an extremely subpar weapon. So you are scrapping and pretty much forcing yourself to take whatever seems decent from that line and hope it works well with other weapons. And it does, but there’s so little synergy to it. I can’t even use other traits from other lines that at first appeared to pair well with Reaper because those were nerfed or limited from the beginning by a ridiculous internal cooldown. Wow, 5 second internal cool downs?

And I just had to laugh, because the clunkiest build I could make was the one closest to help GS even be sorta viable in an sPvP environment, specifically 1v1. Granted, I am 100% certain that a rampaging warrior or a chronomancer(which I also spent a good amount of time testing) would still ROFL-stomp me flat -then again I think any other class can claim this too- but this was the closest to making it possible to land stuff with GS, and keep the enemy close enough so that I could keep doing my pitiful underwhelming attacks on them. Minions, Gee. Minions worked better than shouts in terms of synergy with GS. Because CC and higher life force gain. I was able to enter RS more often with them. Minions.

But it still falls short. Terribly so. I was going against another clunky Reaper and a class -Shiro Revenant- that is forced to melee as well. I didn’t even think of trying it against a Dragon Hunter. That would have spelt immediate doom. That that was the best I was able to do with GS Reaper does not mean GS Reaper is in a good place. It’s not. In any case, it only illustrates just how much more work is needed to make Reaper’s additions work together well and with the rest of Necromancer’s traits. The shouts don’t help at all. And GS only serves to cripple Reaper because Reaper traits fail to make up for GS’s shortcomings. In fact, those traits shouldn’t be trying to make up for GS’s shortcomings. That’s not what traits at all should do for a weapon. They should make a weapon more powerful, not fix it. The weapon itself should be already good as is.

The good news is that GS s the weapon I foresee to have the easiest of fixes. It just a matter of numbers for the design and concept itself isn’t wrong, just that the numbers as is don’t make it worth it. Also the pull needs a lot of touch ups. It doesn’t pull my opponents to my spot fully. It basically drops them half way through.

PS: I know I mentioned this before, but RS2 really needs improvement. The necrocopter needs smart targetting like other leaps do.

Dignified Loser.7689:

Shouts: Imo, shouts don’t fit the Reaper (except for Your Soul is Mine! and Rise! but not necessarily for their effects), regardless, the main thing to make them more useful, except for the elite, is to have a more impactful base effect regardless of how many people you hit. The elite could use a shorter cast time and cool down.

Added to this, I feel that the trait shout should be baseline for traits. Both the shouts and their respective trait are so underwheleming.

Traits
Deathly Chill- The damage from chill seems a bit underwhelming.
Soul Eater- With the current attack speed for the great sword the life siphon from this trait doesn’t bode well. I would recommend changing the Life Siphon to “Increase Attack Speed by 15%”.

Great Sword
Currently damage feels underwhelming for the given attack speed of the weapon.

Reaper Shroud
Deaths Charge- Great Skill, however as said before it would be nice if the skill could stop at our target.

Shouts
Shouts are pretty fun, however the cast time on many of the shouts I believe are too long. With shouts increasing their effectiveness with the amount of players hit we are also that more likely to be interrupted by them.

Over all Reaper is fun to play. Just needs some tweaking

pvp perspective:

im liking reapers shroud more than deathshroud

my only concern with gs is the low lifeforce generation (in comparison to dagger/warhorn),
even with blighters boon and chilling force i wasnt able to generate enough lifeforce, becouse i didnt have enough chill to benefit from those traits (i played with death magic, soulreaping and reaper…, with knights and soldiers amu…, i came to the conclusion, that i need to use spite to benefit more from those traits and that i had to play more offensive to defeat enemys)

if i would specc for more chill, chill duration (with runes and sigils) i would lose a big amount of dps, thats why i didnt do it…, in my opinion it is more beneficial to deafeat the enemy as fast as possible, becouse if hes down he cant dps me back, or do anything else (the most fun with reaper/gs i had using zerker amu and bursting enemys down, but it feels to squishy, though)

i tried to play with shouts, but i came to the conclusion, that they arent good enough to defeat enemys, the existing utility skills are far better in my opinion to defeat enemys fast enough (shouts were good for bunkering a node against more enemys, but i wasnt able to bring them down and it wasnt fun to me, becouse i wasnt able to survive longer, if i would have used other utilities)

i like the shoutheal, though, but without enough condiclear i feel forced to use consume conditions (i tried to use death magic for more condiclear in shroud, but the dps wasnt high enough to benefit from that traitline…. i also think, that corrupters fervor needs further balancing to increase its utility, maybe duration increase, or more than 1 stack per condi, otherwise i dont see any reason to use this traitline, or shouts)

elite shout…, to long casttime and cd for me, i dont even feel, that the effect is beneficial enough in fights (i still rather use plague for safe stomps and resses…, and if i dont have any lifeforce and im using plague for its duration i have 55% lifeforce, when its end, becouse of pulsing stab and blighters boon)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…snip 5. “Arise!” sucks. It’s useless for literally everyone: Jagged Horrors are lousy with multiple foes and a 40 second cooldown to summon just one is laughably awful. Even Minion masters don’t want to run this shout. Scrap it entirely and replace with something else. My suggestion is “No escape!” knocks foes down and gives the Reaper super speed (2 seconds +1 second per foe struck). Takes inspiration from the fact that the horror movie monster catches someone because they tripped. snip…

OH PLEASE Anet make this so! No escape would be the perfect replacement and would fit the theme so well. +1 just for this suggestion alone.

My 2 cents. …

-GS 3 should be a gap closing charge. Not a long one, mind, but something. People escape reaper too easily outside of shroud.

-GS 5 needs a fix. It needs to follow what direction you’re looking, aiming it is wonky.

-The shout heal seems to be a very weak heal. Too weak, even considering its LF generation.

-Reaper shroud 2… I have no idea what I want with it. I kinda like that its a skill shot, but I’d like to see what it’s like with a lock on.

-GS auto in general seems TOO slow. Maybe my gap-closing-3 suggestion might make it feel like its lack of speed doesn’t matter with increased uptime.

Otherwise, great job on the spec anet! You really revitalized necro’s melee game!

I enjoyed the necromancer beta this weekend.

The good:

- visual effects and necro like theme
- access to combo fields and whirl finisher with GS/RS
- switch on/off stability in RS
- RS has good synergy with DS traits

The not so good:

- shouts -> I wouldn’t use them because there are better necromancer traits

Changes I would do:

- Increase dmg for GS autoattack:
it should be the same DPS as dagger even with hitting 1 target more it will also miss more often and proc less because of how slow it hits
- give GS autoattack some life force generation
- GS 3 (death spiral) range increase
- GS 5 make it more reliable to hit something
- make shouts into something I want to use :-)

Alright,here goes. My reaper feedback from a pvp perspective:

You definitely managed to hit the nail on the head when you aimed for your theme for the

Reaper. Slow,deadly,no mercy and on top of your foe. This is easily handled by chill and

greatsword 5. I like it. As I guess alot of other people do as well. I have some issues with

the Reaper though,as it stands now. For example,with all the conditions that’s always flying

around in pvp,even more emphasized by condition builds,you will eat up those conditions if

you’re running Greatsword and W/E else with shout utilities.

Sure,one of the shouts (Suffer) transfer one condition to each foe you strike. This is way

too little imo. This will only be useful in a 3-5v5 scenario. Which makes it VERY weak to

use even in a 1v2 match up when you take the cooldown into consideration,30 seconds. It’s

just as long as Plague Signet which I’ll honestly take with me instead,better team support

as well with it. Or even the well which turns conditions into boons. That one’s on a 50

second cd untraited! Even better team support than Plague Signet!

I’d say this would help it;
“Suffer!”: Leave the chill duration as is (if anyone wants to increase it think about using

runes and/or sigils instead!) but change how the condition transfer work,"Transfer 2

conditions for each foe you strike, to them." For example,in a 1v3 scenario you will be able

to transfer up too 6 conditions,but each enemy will only receive 2.

This will effectively increase the viability of that shout alot while at the same time won’t

make it overpowered for either the Reaper OR the enemy. It will be fair in every scenario.

5v5? You will have a condi transfer for 10 conditions at one single time,but each enemy will

only receive 2 conditions. I know 10 conditions sounds like alot but that’s only in a xv5

scenario! The shout will only increase exponentially with the number of enemies,while

simultaneously not being overpowering for the enemy nor for you,because,honestly,those 10

conditions will pop right back up on you after maybe 10 seconds. lol.

^ This will also make it viable in some kind of front liner build with the Reaper/Valk+x

gear setup! Everything else with “Suffer!”,leave as is.

I have one gripe with “Rise!”. Only one. Leave the Jagged Horrors but please,they shouldn’t lose health over time. Or at least decrease that health regen. The Jagged Horrors are useful for dying if you have the trait “Death Nova” equipped. They’re also useful for the added toughness AND condi transfers they give you,which is as I see it the only reason Jagged Horrors exist in this game.

Added toughness, and heavy condi transfers packed into one small tiny bomb (considering you’re running all the minion traits ofc). You know what. I’m fine with “Rise!” if you’d change up how total amount of minions work and the Jaggers work.

Add this line to “Death Nova” trait, “Jagged Horrors will not lose health overtime anymore.”
And maybe set a minion cap for Jagged Horrors on Necromancers/Reapers.

A cap of….10-15 jagged horrors? This coupled with the fact that they won’t lose health over time will certainly bring back a “true” Minion Master. Because,if you think about it,Jagged Horrors combined with the current MM traits is very useful,not for damage,but for toughness,condi transfer and death nova.