Guild Wars 2

(Continuation from last post!)
The shout heal “Your soul is mine!” is perfect except for one thing. The heal amount. It’s so weak. If Reaper is intended to stay in group fights they should have a heal that’ll support that. As of now it only heals 4k. That’s nothing in a 1vX scenario. Life force gain is fine,it’s just the heal that’s so weak.

“Heal yourself and strike foes around you, absorbing life force for each foe struck.”

Add this too it “Remove 1 condition and heal for x amount for each enemy struck.”

This will make it work kind of like “Consume Conditions” but it will be dependent on the number of enemies you face. Leave CD as is.

Traits I’m all good with,the Reaper Shroud I’m all good with. I love both of them.

Skill number 5 however,must not be working properly,there’s been several times where it won’t pull at all! Maybe a bug or something?

Also,for added mobility I think you should change how “Nightfall” work. This should imo be a teleport skill,which will greatly add to the “unstopable,unrelenting always on your back” movie monster.

900 range ground targeted teleport? Keep the cooldown,and the conditions plus the field it leaves,but make it all spawn where you teleport. This I believe would be a VERY welcomed suggestion for Reapers,which will fit nicely with our Shroud skill 2,for either escaping or catching up or sticking to our targets! Oh and keep the animation as well,the way you plunge your sword into the ground,looks epic (had an epic Eviscerate counter,Axe F1,the warrior leaped at me while I just plunged the sword down into the ground,blinding him. Making him miss,it made for several of my epic moments whilst beta testing Reaper this weekend :P )

Also,if you’re changing into a teleport it would be awesome if you would possibly add another effect whilst teleporting,considering we’re a very “dark” profession thematically and that Reaper only adds unto this with the movie monster theme it would be cool to give the actual teleport an added animation. Like perhaps the elementalists “Ride the Lightning”…maybe we could become a ball of dark-green energy moving fast (faster than RTL) and at end destination we do the Nightfall animation that currently is now,plunging our swords down into the ground,conjuring forth this dark spiral :P Idk,just a suggestion xD

That’s honestly all my gripes with the spec. since I understand what you’re trying to make it into,which you’ve already done (more or less). We’re very devastating in team fights,especially when people don’t take notice of our very telegraphed GS skills. But we’re kind of lacking in the 1v1 department though…But that’s all fine,swap to daggers or something when fighting 1v1’s and you’re all set,after all,we got this god awesomely kittening epic Reaper Shroud….great work on that one,both skills and theme!

Here are my thoughts on the Reaper after having played it most of this weekend, although my play time has been rather limited so I can’t fully comment on all the traits.

Greatsword
1. The auto attack chain feels very subpar atm, it either needs to be faster, hit harder or both.

2. Gravedigger feels pretty good I must say, although it could do with some more damage, or be a touch faster to activate as it’s such a cornerstone skill of the weapon.

3. Death Spiral is very good imo, great spike of vuln and reasonable damage for what’s mainly a debuff attack.

4. Nightfall is great, love the effect but please give it a standard AoE ring so we can see exactly where it is.

5. Grasping Darkness needs a LOT of work. It’s currently very hard to actually land the attack as it goes straight out from the direction your character is facing. Make it either go towards the targeted enemy or make it a line ground target skill. Secondly the pull effect is very hit or miss atm, often enemies are only knocked down by the skill or only pulled part way towards you.

Reaper Shroud

1. The auto attack chain feels very good if a bit light for damage and LF generation, Spite’s minor sort of offsets this however as the chain can build a lot of might very quickly.

2. Death’s Charge is very useful but it’s very easy to overshoot your target with it, perhaps have it stop when you reach your target (full distance very time if non targetted), or make it a line ground target skill?

3. Infusing Terror is fantastic, love everything about the skill.

4. Soul Spiral is quite nice and the poison stacking is a nice touch for the condition built reapers.

5. Executioner’s Scythe is very potent, I like it. The wind up feels alright given how strong the skill is.

Shouts

“Your Soul is Mine!” The life force generation is nice but the heal itself feels rather weak, especially with the cast time. Perhaps add an additional heal per target hit?

“Nothing can save you!” This one has a lot of potential I can see. Boon strips plus unblockable buff is quite nice for a lot of situations. Also the shortest cast times of any of our shouts is a plus.

“You are all weaklings!” All around alright. Stun break, might generation and aoe weakness. Does a lot of things so I imagine it will see use.

“Suffer!” The cast time and recharge are rather high for its effects. Could have use if Deathly Chill gets buffed.

“Rise!” Alright so as a hardcore Minion Master I was intruged about the potential of a “minion bomber” spec using this shout alongside bone minions. What I found was that I could achieve a pretty good burst using this then activating lich or plague form to instantly kill all minions for a massive stack of death novas. It’s a cool trick, very niche, and I’d like to be able to do it without triggering a several minute long elite cooldown. I’d suggest making a chain skill for this that lets you kill off all the jagged horrors summoned, this would make a reaper minion bomber spec more than a trick relying on massive elite skill cooldowns.

“Chilled to the bone!” This skill is weird. AoE stun that grants stability but has a massive cast time. You end up casting nearly as long as your enemies end up stunned and you really need the stability at the beginning of the skill in order to cast it reliably. I feel that in most situations where you would want a stun or stability you’d be better served using Reaper Shroud for Infusing Terror and Executioner’s Scythe.

Traits

Augury of Death: The recharge reduction can be good but it feels lackluster (perhaps due to the shouts themselves) Perhaps add an boost to shout activation time to let traited shouts be overall more useable?

Chilling Nova: A nice effect but gated behind too many mechanics, either drop the crit or chill requirement, with one or the other it would make the trait a lot more reliable.

Deathly Chill: Seriously needs a massive boost. The low damage of this trait really hampers every other chill related thing on the reaper. The damage could be over doubled and it wouldn’t be unreasonable imo.

The class isn’t ready for prime time yet.

The animations look fantastic. One small tweak that I’d suggest is a slightly different color shroud for Reaper vs Necromancer shroud. The specialization is very different.

The most important thing that needs to be done is fix axe and focus, so you have legit short ranged damage & single target chill spam & a blast finisher somewhere. Staff can’t carry the load of ranged by itself, and dagger/greatsword/reaper can’t fight in the AoE spam that the game has without melting.

The greatsword is poor in its current state. It needs more damage. greatsword doesn’t have the lifeforce/lifesteal/immobilize potential of dagger, and its skills are very easy to sidestep without even dodging, but with best in the game top notch damage, the weapon could be high risk high reward.

The other problems with greatsword are an ineffective #5 and not enough chill.

Chill is not a top tier control effect. It doesn’t stop leaps or dodges. It doesn’t stop or slow skill use. The classes most affected by greater recharge just got ways to reduce recharge. Plus traits that everybody has to take (because they reduce immobilize duration) also reduce chill duration.

Reaper shroud also needs a coefficient increase. The numbers are blah. I think the players who like it the most are playing condi.

1 fine, but needs more life force. A lot more life force if we’re still going to lose 4% second and can’t take healing in shroud. Also I don’t like the idea of skill that is subpar but ok, if you spend 4-5 traits on it.

2 works as an escape now. It can’t be targeted, runs though enemies, but does awful damage. An easy fix that a lot of us would like is to just up the running damage of the trait, and have the running damage proc path of corruption. Then this world be a good skill with ltp issues, without a major rework to functionality.

3 fear is disappointing. I miss doom. All of the theory crafters who said that pulsing stability would make up for zero cast long range fear and melee without blocks or the ability to get healed.

4. does not do what the tooltip says.

5. is spectacular. The highlight of the shroud, but its hard to hit. High risk high reward.

Traits are boring, some were bugged.

I played with the shouts. The big problem is that the skills aren’t worth asking without damage, and the damage is a DPS loss. If you set a shout to autoattack and end up canceling it a lot, the effect is soo annoying it is almost like trolling yourself.

Ok, this was on my mind for a long while.
Its a clarification to devs who maybe not play high MMR pvp, so skip this post if u want.
The topic is:

MOBILITY vs. “I will get you someday” necro

So, youre meleeing or general attaking an enemy. He feels pressured and teleports/leaps away to a better position? How do you deal with that? How can you fail? How can enemy react to your approach? Is it fair for both sides?

- – - – Counters to teleports, leaps —-—-
-use same blink to him
-win node by recovering enough health & CDs for reengagement
-use 1200 range attack that are better than his ranged
-blink bug lets ay 1/20
-interrupt in middle of leap
-immob/chill him, so he wont get far and u can CHASE him after
-chill/cripple dont work on leaps – → for warrior, not even Immobs
-PULL him back to you

OK, we clearly see which ways necros are designed to follow. So lets take a utility “Spectral Grasp” on our slot and see how it does.

- – - Counters to pulls aka “Spectral Grasp” vs. “Blink” —-—-
- cooldown: 30s vs 30s
- range: 1200 vs 1200 … sounds ok, the grasp actualy goes a bit further and ofc blinks can “use/abuse” the well known kiting/teleport spots…so lets continue
- cast time, can be interupted
- can be dodged – theres a tell and visible animation with cast+ travel time
- block, blind, invul
- Reflect , not listed , no finisher , but it is a projectile
- bodyblock
- Line of Sight
- Obstructed bug , lets say 3/10
- Getting stuck on a pebble bug , lets say 2/10
- SKILL COMPLETELY MISSING WITH A SIDESTEP,
or any slow or quick change of direction… or unpropper facing aka enemy walks through you
Extra effects:
Chill and lifeforce if it hits vs. reflect if traited.

RESULTS with MY OPINION
No discussion on winner.
In my opinion, it is ok for some of the above counters.
Dodging a big tell? OK, great.
Random blind/block? Still ok, tho I cannot not say: “stop throwing blinds out like candy, GG Anet….(blinding ashes and blind on shatter for clarification)”
Bugs? Fix them – for both sides. Skills should work EXACTLY as intended +90%
WHAT I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT FINE WITH:
Unfair game mechanics.

INSTEAD OF PLAYING AGAINsT ENEMY PLAYER – I AM PLAYING AGAINST THE UI AND GAME ENGINE

Where is Reaper in all this?
- exact same theme , same fails
- greatsword #5 , even better example: main pvp skill, they even said its fancy new tech —→ youd expect improvements and it actually working right?

FINAL WORDS/ PLEA TO DEVS:
-consider also ALL of these hidden, less known “possibilities of counterplay”
-put less of above “terms and conditions to be met before landing a skill”
on necro weaponsets
aka less
Cast,
LoS
and “Hit and target”
requirements.

Why does anet hate Necros? D;

I like reaper for the most part.
Here are my suggestions:

Speed up the autoattack a tiny bit.

Alter GS2 to hit multiple times instead of just once, since it appears as if you are spinning…

Alter shroud #2 to work more like the warrior’s underwater spear #5, where it locks onto your target…. because currently you just spin right through…. the attack should hit its target more times also, judging on how many times you appear to spin your weapon in the attack animation.

Rework the Shroud #3 to work as a stun break when it adds stability…. you can get cc’d and apply the stabo…. but are still lying there on the ground.

other than that, it feels like this specialization is pretty strong.

Marxx.5021:

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 :-)

Two things I forgot to add.

- make shouts usable in RS -> this would add a new unique way to play worth considering
- if you see GS as an utility weapon (like staff) it will work in PvE,WvW,tPvP but not in sPvP -> so asking for the same DPS as dagger is maybe to much ;-)

So, my take on the Reaper. Suggestions are in bold.

GENERAL:
+ Awesome concept.
+ Awesome awesome awesome animations.
+ I really dig the slow chilling reaping movie monster.
– For an elite spec so reliant on chill it certainly can’t keep it up.
– For such a slow powerful monster, it certainly doesn’t hit hard.

REAPER SHROUD:
+ Most skills are of very relevance and with much more utility than DS.
+ Good mobility and stability is gold.
+ Better synergy with traits such as Dhuumfire.
– Only melee (not necessarily a bad thing).
– Damage on RS1 is a bit low. Right now I’m not even sure it out-dps’s DS1. -> Increase damage in RS1.
– RS2 very hard to land and unreliable. -> RS2 should be something like war GS3 or Sw2. Also should have its damage increased a bit.
– Doesn’t have an instant fear -> Make the fear part of RS3 instant cast. The rest of the skill can stay as it is, that way, even if the fear is not instant it is a bit better.
– RS appears to be consuming more LF per sec than DS (even with VP). I hope this is a bug, if it isn’t I’d like it to be the same (if not, at least, increase LF generation on RS1). It also appears to not mitigate damage as DS does. I hope it is another bug.

GREATSWORD:
+ Nice concept, awesome animations.
– Very very very slow. This is very bad from a PvP point of view.
– VERY low DPS for such a slow weapon. -> GS1 should hit much harder. GS2 should hit harder and recharge fully when under the threshold (if 50% is too much, which I don’t think it is, make it 33%)
– Mediocre LF generation. -> Consider making GS1 give LF (1% per target hit with third attack of auto?).
– Low chill uptime for a class so reliant on chill. -> Consider increasing chill duration on GS1 slightly.
– No reliable gap closers (it is very different -and better- to close a gap by rushing to a target than pulling that target to you). –> At least GS5 should be able to be ground-targeted and aimed like war GS3.

SHOUTS:
– Good concept, but not original to Reaper (Ele received shouts too).
– VO doesn’t seem very frightful. Should be a darker, more reapish, tone.
– Cast times are too high, for the benefit they bring. -> Decrease or remove completely all shouts’ cast times. CttB should be maximum 1s to cast.
– YSIM (Heal)’s healing is too low. -> Increase YSIM base healing to at least the same amount of raw healing as WoB.
– CttB (Elite) cast time and recharge time too long. –> Decrease cast time to 1s and decrease CD to 80-100s.

TRAITS:
+ The traits make sense and synergise well. However:
– Augury of death not that useful in this iteration. -> Should be 20% CD reduction baseline + 3% per target hit (up to 5). That way it still caps as 35% as it is now.
– Chilling Nova as it is now is useless. -> Either revert it to the version we saw in Livestream or drastically reduce its CD.
– Chilling Force was too powerful in the livestream, however I find it underperforming now. -> Either increase the might duration for, say, 10s or decrese the CD per target too 0,5s.
– Deathly Chill is very weak, even when speccing fully into condi damage. -> Should scale better.
– Reaper’s Onslaught is bugged right now.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
– Let us chose between DS and RS, by making both available to reaper. Of course, they should share the cooldown and the LF pool.
– It would make sense if RS and DS had a breakbar (discussion in another thread, just a reminder). If this ever gets implemented, I’d like to see RS3 giving resistance instead of stability (probably with a smaller upkeep in resistance).
– Let us see or even use utility’s in DS/RS.

i’m really not a necro person but what i think would be nice i making Reaper a little more tanky and maybe stronger chill fields

I’m not going to go around and break down reaper skills,shouts,builds and whatever into some boring stats and say what needs to be improved.
I will just say i am enjoying Reaper much more than i have imagined.
He is fun to play,theme is now even better,Reaper Shroud has amazed me.
Maining necromancer since the start,this is by far the best update necromancer ever got,they just made most enjoyable class even more enjoyable.
Abit of tweaking will not hurt.Still i think developers did an awesome job on Reaper.
All in all 10/10 would play forever.

GS and RS issues have been mentioned, so I’m just reacting to the most underwhelming part of the reaper here: shouts.

A general problem is they scale completely from enemies hit, making them extremely underwhelming when fighting 1-2 enemies.
The Cooldown trait as well, should have a baseline of at least 10% reduction, 5% added for each enemy hit perhaps (with the current power of shouts that wouldn’t be a problem imo).

Most of all the activation times are just so long, I suppose this is all in-keeping with the ‘slow devestating reaper’ theme, but it’s completely opposite to what other shouts are.
Both warrior’s and guardian’s are nigh instant, they promote a very fast reactive frontline playstyle. This isn’t possible with reaper shouts, they are just too slow and easily interrupted.

The fact they do damage has been said to be another reason for the long activation times, but apart from the elite the damage is pitiful tbh, even compared to most auto-attacks.
I mean even the stunbreak has a 3/4 second activation, not being instant sort of defeats the purpose of a stunbreak. Beyond that it’s actually the best out of all the shouts imo, if it were instant I might actually use it, even if the cooldown was increased to 30-40 seconds.

I’d very much like to see a second trait in the reaper line buffing shouts as well to make the traitline look a bit more alluring. Possibly a grandmaster to replace deathly chill, which atm is so weak it might as well be folded into chilling force or chilling nova.

I played mostly in Verdant brink.

Reaper shroud feels awesome to play, it’s satisfying as much visually as for the ‘feedback’ of skills in almost every way, and I guess it’s one of the main thing that makes it appealing for most, for good reason.

That being said …

Greatsword overall feels underwhelming, it feels to me like wielding warrior/guardian hammer in terms of speed/weight but with far FAR less utility (stuns, CC’s etc …)
Overall damage feels a little low.

Death Spiral could use something so that you can better judge the distance, and the area in front of you where ennemies will be hit, I found myself being sometimes too far away, but not from much and others being really surprised to actually hit so many ennemies in a cone in front of me.

Grasping darkness seems quite unreliable against fast moving ennemies.

For reaper shroud, the only big issue I can see is life force generation, there is no way to really sustain it period, even less whe,n you consider that it puts you in melee range.
It affects the survivability aspect of it as well as it’s overall utility.

Reaper shroud granting access to some stability is nice (and potentially more utility against projectile from what was discussed), but needing to specialize reaper to have access to it with RS or ‘We are all weaklings’ is a bad idea.
The base class could use some love about those things too, restricting those kind of things to the reaper, as the class stands now and for the months/years to come seems like a very bad idea.

Chill overall seems like it doesnt do much, and is far from being the utility that was described to us even fully traited.

Shouts don’t seem very good I can’t say that I found them really useful at all, and their cast time really is an issue.

I specced blood magic for a bit and I was really surprised with how much I was able to heal with ‘Soul Spiral’ RS#4 which is quite nice and offers some good utility, it could be something really cool if that (and maybe overall leech) could be somewhat affected by some stats to have ways of improving it even further.

Reaper is supposed to have big payoffs if you land the blows with great sword but I felt the big windups were too slow for the payoff. Even auto attack feels too sluggish. It needs a damage buff or a cast time reduction same for reaper shroud. As it is now I do not feel like it is this force to be feared since by the time your blows land the enemy is already out of range even if you started casting right next to it. Especially in the new map where enemies are very agile my skills rarely connect and when they do It still feels underwhelming. The chill duration on great sword auto attack is really low as well.

The shouts are really underwhelming especially considering their cast times and their payoffs. I do not see my self running any of these in their current state. Their effects need more impact. They feel underwhelming and I feel they should offer more self buffs or at least more condition damage and duration output.

If Reaper 2 work like Rev Staff5 it could be cool. But if not, it need a damage boost and add higher life force regen to this skill or something. I usually use it to run down enemies. Problem is its throws me all over the place. Like i said it needs life force regen. Because Auto-attack sucks for that.

GS damage needs to be buffed BIG time! I remember you guys saying you were going for that monster movie feel where the monster is slow but it’s always coming for you and once it gets you it’s all over like Jason. You can keep the attack speed the same but that damage you get once you get a hit needs to hit HARD to make up for how slow it is. It really is just not worth using over dagger.

Paintedawg.3740:

GS damage needs to be buffed BIG time! I remember you guys saying you were going for that monster movie feel where the monster is slow but it’s always coming for you and once it gets you it’s all over like Jason. You can keep the attack speed the same but that damage you get once you get a hit needs to hit HARD to make up for how slow it is. It really is just not worth using over dagger.

dmg buffed.
or increase the duration of that chilled effect so that the enemy attacks slower as well so that the dmg is brought down to the dmg level of the GS

Im a necro main and I got to say I love the reaper! But it does need a bit of love. I’ve mostly played in verdant brink and a few dungeons. So this is all based on what i’ve seen in pve.

Traits
- Augury of Death – I like this trait but the cd reduction could be a little higher, or make the shouts give a bonus to allies for each foe hit
- Chilling Nova – Way too long cd on this! Longer chill would be nice too
- Soul Eater – GS attacks too slow for this to be any good, so either speed up GS or increase the lifesteal and cd reduction
- Deathly Chill – Needs to be a lot more damage to be a GM

Shouts
I like the idea of the shouts but I feel they all need to do more dmg to compete with other skills
- YSiM – Needs to heal for more
- NcSY – Lower cd would be nice
- Suffer! – Longer chill or 2 conditions on each foe
- Rise! – Increase dmg a lot, summon 1 jagged even if you miss for a total of 6 on max targets
- CttB – Lower cd and cast time

Greatsword
I think with a few changes this could be one of our best weapons
- 1 – Longer chill, I feel it should be 100% uptime if you manage 2 full chains, more dmg too
- 2 – More dmg, add LF gain if target is under 50%
- 3 – Increase range
- 4 – Increase range
- 5 – Add chill on top of the poison

I don’t think Reaper needs big changes to make it great, just a few small tweaks should be enough. But im gonna love it anyway!

Not enough damage
Not enough chill
gS attacks can be sidestepped and are slow
Traits are bugged.
Not being able to take teammate heal is big problem
Shouts have too long cast times, little effect

I love the feel of the reaper. There’s a lot that works, and a lot that has potential.
Some stray observations:
-I actually like the greatsword. Yes, the casting times are slow, but overall I love the feel of a reaper lugging around a massive sword.
-I love Gravedigger. The mechanics are sweet. Cast time is a little slow and damage could be a little higher, but I realize that the numbers will be adjusted anyway long before the expansion drops. I also really love how you can move while channeling the attack: it helped when I could open with the attack and channel while bumrushing my opponent.
-I do agree that the auto attack is too slow. It’s not terrible in PvE, but it’s still hindering in it’s own way.
-I also agree that Grasping Darkness has some kinks. It goes out in relation to the direction the character is facing, which may not be as effective as going out in relation to the position of the enemy. It also did nothing when the enemy was fairly close, so it couldn’t work as an interrupt. Given the recharge time, I feel that this attack should be a lot bigger in terms of its effect (longer range on the pull, effective interrupt, maybe even a daze) to really leave the enemy helpless.
-Reaper’s shroud is super cool, and the effects are on point. Infusing Terror is a little over-the-top in terms of effects, but I remember Roy saying that he was playing with how “loud” this effect was going to be. Also, it seems that the life force drain in reaper’s shroud is too fast. I couldn’t last in the shroud long enough to feel like I was making a difference.
Overall, the reaper looks like it has the potential to kick some serious butt.

What kills the Reaper for me is the fact that we can no longer reach +100% Chill Duration without Buff-Food. The max we can reach without Food is 90%:

10% from Trait
30% from Rune of Ice/Svanir/Grenth
20% from Chill Sigil
10% from Condition Sigil
20% from Giver’s Weapon

Guess i will stick with Revenant, i can at least reach +100% Torment Duration without the Need for Food.

I have to say that I liked playing reaper a lot. The graphics of the class are very well done and it has a nice over-all feel to it.

The GS in itself is nice to play with, but as mentioned before the auto attack doesn’t hit hard enough for how slow it is. In the beta maps I often have the problem that mobs die and I didn’t even get one good hit in because it’s so slow. At least compensate with more damage since it was already said the GS is supposed to be a slow weapon.
Also Grasping Darkness (GS5) should focus on target when used and not simply follow the line of where the character is looking at that moment. It misses too often that way because you can’t always make sure that the mob (or the majority of the mobs) is standing exactly where you face when using it.

Death’s Charge (RS2) should be targetable as well, maybe in the way of either Warrior GS3 or Warrior GS5 where the character stops when the target is hit. At the moment the skill lacks control badly. It happens too often that you overcharge or miss your target alltogether.

And is the RS supposed to lose life force as fast as it does? To me it feels like I don’t have much time in shroud, especially compared to the normal DS of the necro. Can’t say if it’s intended or a bug, just wanted to mention it.

Other than those minor things I had a lot of fun playing reaper. The fast access to the RS and two weapon sets make the gameplay very intersting to me. You basically can change to another set of skills whenever you want, and as an Ele main player that really sells it for me

Hey guys I didn’t know there was a general thread started for reaper feedback as I had started mine late into the night when I was tired. Instead of retyping or copying and pasting another wall of text, here is a link to it so that you may read it at your leisure.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Lord-Abbadon-s-Reaper-Review/first#post5366459

played against GS necro.. was a nightmare.. couldn t kill em with warrior or thief.. medium difficulty with my necro, don t bother fight with shatter mesmer
didn t play with guardian, renger, engi,ele
i like new shroud, and i wanna try him soon as possible

GS is disappointing and underpower. slow attack speed(slower than hammer) and low dmg(dagger does more dmg and Ele dagger does x3 times more dmg). with that kind of low dmg the slow attack speed is unnecessary. since when the underpower turned to balance? Elementalist does 1.5k++ dmg on Dagger skills without count the condi dmg. this is unbalance and has to be nerfed. now that i think about it, why only Reaper GS have slower attack speed in the 1st place? this is preposterous and has to be tweaked and attack speed be equal with other GS classes. since you gave Reaper GS, it’s role should be offensive. this is completely underpower for offensive. Tempest shouts don’t have cast time. it was too much nerf so they’ve been added to Reaper instead. hahahaha

like GS, RS auto attack is very weak. the attack speed is understandable since it’s massive size, but the dmg is not. around 900 dmg crit with “25 might and 25 Vuln” wit full Berserker’s Ascendent gear? unacceptable

overall i’m very disappointed with Reaper. it’s underpower as hell(not even in condi dmg it’s good). leveling an Elementalist/Tempest

Tommyknocker.6089:

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.

I second this suggestion fully.

I thought the the shroud was nicely done. The skills were fun, though shroud 2 was a bit iffy to use depending on where you stood on the edges in the new map.

The great sword felt like it did very little damage and was far too slow. The chill effect on the auto attack was underwhelming. I get that the concept someone had was this slow moving, hard hitting movie monster, but GW2 has a fast paced combat system with high movement, dodges and so on. It is a case where ‘in theory’ and ‘in practice’ didn’t mesh well, in my opinion.

The animations are really nice, though. Hope they can re-tool this a little and perhaps let go of the movie monster concept to make it more practical in the fast paced GW2 system.

The “No Escape!” shout idea gave me a trait idea.
We drain life, so what about draining speed too ?
When you apply chill, gain super speed.

I would pretty much be repeating what everyone else said, so to keep it short.

Shouts
[Your Soul is Mine] needs something the heal is at the moment very weak and needs help, Either buff the amount it heals by or find some other way to help it either way.

[Rise] Just terrible it needs a complete overhaul either with the “No Escape” idea or a really beefy minion to summon.

[Chilled to the Bone] I actually like this but I think the cast time needs a slight reduction.

Reaper Shroud

This is good but you need to do something about how Reaper Shroud #2 works the “leap” is really awkward and should stop at the target if you have one.

Reaper shroud #5 I think just needs to hit the person you have as current target with the Stun/Ice-block or the nearest person to the middle.

Greatsword

[Auto Attack Chain] I barely used this at all in a PvP scenario it feels like the cast time on the 3rd chain (Chill) is to slow and the duration of the Chill is not worth it, Duration needs to be upped or the cast times need to be lower.

[Gravedigger] Needs to do more damage again I don’t think I used this to actually attack anyone seriously it got more use from me trying to get Leeching Bolts out of Nightfall.

The reduction on cooldown for hitting a foe below 50% needs to be a full cooldown. At the moment it just feels awkward.

[Nightfall] Could do with a wider radius I feel, Also the After-cast is a pain though you can cancel it with some practice it would be better to just not have it if possible.

[Grasping Darkness] This is odd. It really should go towards the target not like it is in the current incarnation or heck it could be an AoE pull like on Binding blade? Also why poison? Why not Cripple or a mobility condition?

Traits

[Chilling Nova] With a 15s cooldown it will not get taken as is the cooldown needs to be reduced wasn’t it meant to be 3 times in 10s? Why not this again?

Ok so lets get down to business, the whole idea of Reaper is Awesome I love it but as for some of the mechanics things need to change. First off Gravediggers whined up is painfully telegraphed and SLOOOOOW that any body with a brain can just step away not even having to dodge it, the same can be said for the number #3 ability and they can easily be interrupted. If A-net wants to keep the slow mechanics then they need to change some things. The number 4# skill IMO should have a chill and or a slight root if the person and or mob crosses threw it. We are so easily Kited its ridiculous even from other melee classes, So I had an Idea why don’t Reapers “Chill to the Bone” shout be like an Aura that say has a 240-320 radius that anyone with in that area gets chilled and makes it so we have a chance to attack them so any melee that has to attack us has to just stick and move and maybe make it so that there is a icy smoke like the Guardians Sig that shows its active? As for ranged attacks their are risen in Orr that have a ability that looks similar the Ele’s ride the lighting but its black smoke looking rather then lighting, but anyhow they use it to jump to their target why cant we have something similar. we need something for some distance closing cause #5 just isn’t doing it and half the time it only pulls them half way to me not even all the way.

My 2c
GS4 seems to firing the animation, then the actual skill. So that barring some very precise circumstances, if you break the animation firing, the skill never fires, aside a bug.

Fix the underlying issue in GS5 or make it fire like the various GS spinning sword charges where they have an overlay. Better option is to fix the underlying issue, because then all other other instances of this issue will also be fixed.

Reduce cast time on cttb to 1.5 sec, reduce cd to somewhere in the range of 150 seconds(which becomes 78 seconds in optimal situation.)

Give the other shouts either a baseline minimum effect, or reduced CD if you don’t hit anything with them.

GS1 – Either shorten the telegraph of the chill hit or let the second attack in the chain give a 1 sec, 2xstab(2x because GS is very obviously intended for AOE-only). The latter is personally the more interesting option as it provides a way to help get some of the longer casts off, as well as enforcing the whole movie monster feeling of impending doom.

Reduce reaper shroud LF decay by 50% of vital persistence, and have VP only provide half it’s decay effect(or similar effect). Purpose is to encourage build diversity, since ATM you pretty much have to take soul reaping for VP just to make Reaper shroud worthwhile.

Please make Ax 2 either a whirl finisher.

Reduce the CD on chilling nova to make it a more reliable trait.

Hi, i’ve tested the reaper and i thinkit need some changes but it’s close to be very viable.
First the shout, i like ’’Suffer’’ and ‘’ You Are All Weaklings’’ but it’s not gonna replace wells in wvw or pvp but can be good in pve (like anything else), in short too much casting time, too low damage, some changes are needed for shouts. The healing shout don’t heal enough both life force and health.
Second, reaper shroud, i like the fact that you can have frost aura and chilling bolts, it make you harder to kill and the bolts is good damage, the leap was needed and does good damage too.
Third the taits, it’s all ok traits exept Chilling Nova it just does’nt occur enough 15 icd maybe too much? Chilling victory don’t give you enough life force should be raised a little i think.
And the greatsword, the combo nightfall + gravedigger i really good, maybe if the combo field follow me it would be better kind of Locust swarm. Gravedigger is long cast time, in wvw it doesn’t land as often as i would like maybe with an evade it would be great (op?).
In wvw greatsword is’nt worth it right now, too slow, but reaper shroud is awesome especially with frost aura.

Has anyone posted that GS #5 the pull towards enemies should be wider and the range should be longer. since the reaper is such a slow class. I also think that the speed on GS skills should be a little bit faster because it can easily be disrupted or countered. Also, the shouts could go off quicker than what they are now.

Oddly enough, Reaper was the elite spec I was least looking forward to of the 4 revealed, and yet it ended up being my favorite one to play by far. Going to be so hard to go back to my normal Necro now >.>

Reaper Shroud is a ton of fun, the high mobility combined with the nice melee damage makes for a great and enjoyable combination (and different than normal Necro). And Greatsword is a nice “active” weapon, lots of good skill use rather than just auto-attacking, which I love.

Which isn’t to say I don’t have criticisms. Which mainly boil down to the following…

~ Greatsword ~

1 – Damage feels a bit low for being a slow, seemingly heavy-hitting attack. Which, to some extent is fine as it encourages more frequent skill use. But I still feel it could do with a slight damage increase. And maybe a bit longer chill uptime to help with nailing your other attacks.

2 – Really doesn’t feel rewarding enough considering the huge windup and lack of secondary effects. Damage doesn’t feel bursty at all, even when you drop below that 50% threshold and can “spam” it. I was running a Fire / Air sigil combination, and the only time the attack felt powerful is when one (or both) of those proc’d at the same time. Also, I’ll echo what others have said about the reduced cooldown being somewhat awkward as you can’t really do anything else but start your AA chain (then end it prematurely) in that 1-second time period, BUT I’d be fine with that personally if the damage was boosted to the point where it really feels deadly.

5 – Really needs to be cursor-aimed. In its current incarnation is so hard to hit with reliably due to its wonky trajectory, especially on moving targets. I’d also suggest that it needs to hit a wider arc. Not a massive increase, but maybe make it a 45 degree angle instead of what it is now (which feels like a 25-30 degree one). Both of these would really help you snatch moving targets, which would be really nice.

~ Shouts ~

- Your Soul is Mine is terrible for healing. I certainly appreciate the fact that its a heal skill that gives life force, that’s unique and I love it. But the heal still needs to not be terrible. Obviously it can’t be an amazing heal AND extra life force, but it doesn’t have to be quite as low as it is.

- Suffer seems to be kind of lackluster in everything. Brief AoE chill, a single condition transfer, a bit of damage… it lacks focus, just does a little of everything but does nothing particularly well. Also, none of it seems to fit with the shout itself. The rest of the shouts make sense with their effect (You are all weaklings = inflicts weakness, Nothing can save you = can’t save yourself with blocks + reaper gets a power boost, Rise makes minions rise up), but condition transfer / chill doesn’t really seem to fit with “Suffer”.

- Chilled to the Bone could stand to cast a bit faster. I get that its a large AoE stun, but it still seems like it takes an eternity to go off.

Shouts in general (including Augury of Death trait) – Too focused on multiple enemies. Its a theme, and interesting in general, but at the same time I think its a bit too skewed towards multiple enemies to the point where most of them are extremely lackluster to use at all unless you are fighting multiple enemies. Would like to see some of the base functionality increased and the scaling on multiples decreased. Still reward fighting multiple enemies, but keep them more useful against singles as well.

I found Reaper to be enjoyable in WvW. Overall, GS and Shouts need some love. I’d LOVE a leap on GS. I think GS #5 should be a targeted skill, the same for RS #2 (Necro-copter).

When I first saw Death Spiral it looked like the player was really thrusting the greatsword…

Increase Death Spiral range, please.

Nynuwe.5893:

Tommyknocker.6089:

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.

I second this suggestion fully.

I love this idea 100%!!! Becky dont trip!!

I wonder how it’s going to change. Lol

Well, with almost everyone saying the overall exact same observation about GS -IT NEEDS BETTER DAMAGE- I will dare say that the devs will be nice enough to boost the damage of GS, especially for GS1 and GS2. Followed by fixing the bugged pull and increasing its range, then increase the range for Death Spiral, then making RS2 smart target. Those have been the most often repeated suggestions.

Well, displeasure with shouts was also increadibly popular, but who knows how they will treat that kitten many people came with their own unique way of approaching it (personally I wish they replace Rise! with the No Escape! suggestion).

And other than that… your guess is as good as mine.

If they follow the most often said suggestions Reaper will be AWESOME (In the NOT broken way ofc!). Great animations AND effects? Necromancer may finally see the dawn of a new chapter in GW2 as not the unwanted three legged puppy of the game. Heck, if they followed that with AI minion bug fixes and improvements to base necromancer as Gee pointed he was thinking to do (specifically scepter and axe), we’ll start farting rainbows. Necromancers farting rainbows out of joy. Imagine that.

https://youtu.be/QEuJyFzJC2k devs pls look at brazil’s video here.. Reaper still lacks alot of dps if your description of hard hitting slow monster is to be true..

Famine.3164:

https://youtu.be/QEuJyFzJC2k devs pls look at brazil’s video here.. Reaper still lacks alot of dps if your description of hard hitting slow monster is to be true..

THIS. He has really looked into Reaper as Condi or Damage and brings out that Reaper is lacking in many places. Reaper is really fun to play but i think everyone who has played the game for some time felt that the spec is lacking in damage and by a lot, especially when Reaper had to bring support to the group through high damage. And its just too sad if people are forced to use other weapons like dagger over GS just to make some damage.

New idea for Shivers Of Dread:

Inflict Chill (2s) when you inflict Fear. Fear nearby foes when you break stun.

The first half is exactly the same as it is now. The second half is to not only give us another good source of Fear (and thus Chill), but also references the fact that, when you finally get a monster disabled or contained, the last thing you want to see is it shrug it off.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

New idea for Shivers Of Dread:

Inflict Chill (2s) when you inflict Fear. Fear nearby foes when you break stun.

The first half is exactly the same as it is now. The second half is to not only give us another good source of Fear (and thus Chill), but also references the fact that, when you finally get a monster disabled or contained, the last thing you want to see is it shrug it off.

I’m not sure about it being aoe (if the source can be traced back, it could be only the source) but the idea is certainly interesting.

I would actually love to see something weird an unique be done with the shouts. Like having “Rise!” have some sort of weird functionality such as : “Deal (x%) more damage to downed foes. Summon a Chest Burster for each downed or defeated foe struck, which inflicts 1 second of fear to adjacent foes upon being summoned.”. Something along those lines to bring quirky uniqueness to the speck while delving deeper into the “horror” theme. I ma sure the folks at A-net are creative enough.

ananda.5946:

I thought the the shroud was nicely done. The skills were fun, though shroud 2 was a bit iffy to use depending on where you stood on the edges in the new map.

The great sword felt like it did very little damage and was far too slow. The chill effect on the auto attack was underwhelming. I get that the concept someone had was this slow moving, hard hitting movie monster, but GW2 has a fast paced combat system with high movement, dodges and so on. It is a case where ‘in theory’ and ‘in practice’ didn’t mesh well, in my opinion.

The animations are really nice, though. Hope they can re-tool this a little and perhaps let go of the movie monster concept to make it more practical in the fast paced GW2 system.

shroud is not nicely done. autoattack needs some boost in dmg, skill 2 needs collision on target and increase in speed and distance, and 2s cast time on skill 5 is too much

GS dmg is indeed weak and slow. the cast time on autoattack is ridiculous, especially the 3rd one. sword Thief 3rd autoattack does 2sec cripple and weak and does more dmg than GS, and yet GS has low dmg and it’s slow and the effect duration is low. this is very bad and totally unbalanced(for GS ofc). ofc the whole concept of Reaper is bad, cause the game is fast paced etc you said, but i get the feeling that devs did it on purpose so that specialization is weak and not strong. if you increase the dmg as it should be done, decrease the cast times(3s full cycle for autoattack while hammer Warrior does it on 1.7s? can’t stop laughing. 1.25s cast time on Gravedigger? it’s not channeled or multi hit skill to justify the long cast time) and increase the effect duration where needed, class would be really strong and devs don’t want that

the animations are indeed cool, and here is the problem. some of the skills, including Elite and Reaper Shroud have unnecessary animations and they solely exist to cover up the long cast times. for example, Gravedigger does a swing that slices the air and then the actual attack starts. this is horrible, but people get blinded by the animation and overlook the reality. majority of this skill’s animation is useless and has to go away. if they don’t want to lower the cast time then make it multi hit. for a 1-hit skill 1.25s cast time is way too much. with 1.25s cast time that skill should hit at least 5 times(and i’m being very generous here). Warrior axe spin2win does 15 hits in 3.5s cast time, Mesmer GS does 4-hits in 1sec, Guardian GS does 7-hits in 0.75s and list goes on. if they don’t do it multiple hit then the cast time has to be decreased to 0.5s. no more than that

Chill is a big issue on the Reaper, it either needs to be applied on every hit or be removed entirely.
Having essentially a 3 second chanel to apply about 1,5 seconds chill is ridiculous.

Please give one of the shouts resistance. Kind of sad that the elite replaced it with stability but there’s no reason it can’t be on a utility shout. It’s extremely useful not so much for the damage condis but the soft cc. There’s a trait to help with soft cc but alternatives are always nice.

I really liked the Reaper as far as the idea and the graphics are concerned, and I was really looking forward to play it in the beta.

However, it was a bit of disappointment when I really played. A lot of points have already been mentioned in this thread, so I will concentrate on the topics that bothered me most:

Shouts
The new skills may be named shouts, but at 3/4 casting time they do not feel like shouts. They are more like PBAoE spells. The casting times are simply far too long.
I also tested the Tempest ele, and the 1/4 cast time used for the ele shouts is probably the maximum cast time that should be used for something called a shout. Though, honestly, I’d think a 0 would still be much better in case of the necro.

Greatsword
Slow? Yes.
Menacing … erm, no? The damage output is far too low to be somewhat near menacing. And even though the necro has a high lifepool, there should be an incentive for a scholar armor class to go melee, especially if you look beyond PvE.
And even in PvE… think about all those new high-mobility NPCs charging around the area (Stomeheads(?), the shadowstepping “Revenant-Mordrem”, good old Terragriffs and Thrashers…) … who would want to play a slow, low-armor class in melee without dealing much damage?
I tested the GS for quite a while, but then I simply went back to the staff.

RS2
While most of Reaper Shroud felt nice and fitting for the Reaper, the no. 2 skill was a bit of a letdown.
Considering that RS4 already has a whirl, it might be better to replace it with a direct shadowstep to a selected target, inflicting chill on impact.

Xelonir.5921:

RS2
While most of Reaper Shroud felt nice and fitting for the Reaper, the no. 2 skill was a bit of a letdown.
Considering that RS4 already has a whirl, it might be better to replace it with a direct shadowstep to a selected target, inflicting chill on impact.

RS2 needs collision on target and increased in speed & distance. i was watching pvp video with Reaper and 9.5/10 times he missed with RS2 cause he was passing through them. calculate the distance is not the solution since it’s the only charge skill that doesn’t have collision. the solution is very simple: add collision

This is what i would change/improve as solo/small scale roamer:

Greatsword:

1- Auto attacks need to be faster or hit harder. To keep the reaper aspect of scary movies, i’d go for hit harder.

2- Gravedigger looks alrighty for pressuring targets, but if you want optimal dps just go with other things.
What annoy me with gravedigger is the 1 second wait until you can use it again after target is below 50% health.

3- Death Spiral definitely need a bigger hitbox. I missed this skill like 90% of times which made greatsword lf regeneration poor and not a good weapon.

4- Nightfall i think is the best skill in greatsword, but the animation takes so long. You lose like 1 second or more after casting it.

5- Reaper’s Grasp has a nice concept. Only change i’d make is make this cast on your target and not where your character is facing. Okay, if you don’t have anything targeted so just cast where you are facing at.

Reaper Shroud:

1- This auto attack is awesome! The damage is okay and its faster than Life Blast, what we really needed. Only thing i would add to that is some sorta of chill. Maybe like greatsword: apply chill on 3rd chain attack. I found it pretty hard to keep on meele against majority of classes, specially rangers and mesmers.

2- Death’s Charge is my second best choice of best skills in Shroud. Its like an improved dark path. Which increased by a lot necromancer’s mobility. I was able to escape a good amount of fights without even have to use Spectral walk jukes.
Only change i would make is the same as Greatsword #5: make it cast on your target, but if you don’t have any target cast where you are facing at. Just like Warrior’s Greatsword #5.

3- Infusing Terror i found pretty useful. It’s a long stability uptime. Made necros good stompers, finally! But its terrible to apply fear. Buils like terrormancer you better just sticking to regular death shroud. Plus it doesn’t break stun, so FitG is still pretty useful.

4- Soul Spiral is the hell yes skill! Its my favorite of all times in Reaper Shroud. I was being able to stack up to 25~30 poison stacks on a target using that. It was like 4k damage per second.

5- Executioner’s Scythe has a great concept, you feel like a real reaper. BUT that cast time make it so predictable. People saw it coming every single time and dodged right away.

Shouts:

I find all the shouts bad, to be honest. You just have better options in other utility skills.
They may work in ZvZ, but since i don’t play it i can’t state.

I just want talk about a couple them which i have tested.

1- Your Soul is Mine is an okay heal if you know you are facing multiple targets. And has a lower cooldown than Consume Conditions.

2- Chilled to the kitteneally need to get some changes. Overall the skill is great but that 2 seconds cast time make it nearly to useless. It will only land if people are not paying attention on you or if they are completly clueless.
God kitten it! It’s an elite skill with 120 sec cooldown, we can’t have 2 seconds cast time on it and make it useless for another 120 seconds.
I would change it for instant cast stun and then 2 seconds later the chill gets appplied. Is not like you need a person chilled while they are still stunned and we make everyone happy(Anet dev’s and community).

3- Rise is seriously awful! By far the worst shout. Condition’s necro need some love compared to others classes and we get “Rise”. It summon a jagged horror for every person it hits up to 5. If you manage to hit 5 people with it you’ll get like 10 bleeds stacks? Just useless!
I don’t know what to change to make it better. Maybe increase the number of summoned minions or just give us different minions or a really really low cooldown(this one i still think its bad).

Traits:

1- Augury of Death seems fine, but as i said, it will only work in ZvZ … i guess.

2- Chilling Nova is awful! I don’t know who would take it after the nerf. Low chill uptime, low damage, high cooldown.

3- Relentless Pursuit this one i think its pretty sick! Saved my life a couple times while i was trying to disegange.

4- Soul Eater seems okayish if you are into greatsword, which is not my case.

5- Chilling force is good! Make you hit harder because of mights and generate life force which is always welcome.

6- Decimate Defenses is another good one. Nearly to permanent 50% critical chance since reaper applies so much vulnerability.

7- Blighter’s Boon is awesome! The sustain it provides is great.

8- Deathly chill is not good at all! It needs to get scaled from condition damage and power. So both builds can use it. Plus the chill damage is so low that isn’t worthy.

9- Reaper’s Onslaught was not working as intended in this beta but i can imagine it to be good enough. Gotta wait and see.

Sorry for my poor english and hope i didn’t let anything off.