Guild Wars 2

I have a feeling that I’ll use Reaper on my main Necro for the GS alone. It sounds pretty awesome. The shouts are something I’m not jazzed about, and I’m not sure on the “replacing DS” thing, but we’ll see. If I like it enough, maybe I’ll do it on my alt Necro too. :p

Chill is one of my favorite conditions. Confusion is the only other condition that edges it out for me so having a spec basically dedicated to chilling the enemy is possibly one of my favorite things that the devs have introduced into the game yet. I’m a mesmer main and I’m much more excited to test out things with this reaper spec than the chronomancer (not saying chrono is bad). I really think that with chill being as powerful as it is that it opens up very interesting and fun possibilities for necros.

Raunchy.6891:

Chill is one of my favorite conditions. Confusion is the only other condition that edges it out for me so having a spec basically dedicated to chilling the enemy is possibly one of my favorite things that the devs have introduced into the game yet. I’m a mesmer main and I’m much more excited to test out things with this reaper spec than the chronomancer (not saying chrono is bad). I really think that with chill being as powerful as it is that it opens up very interesting and fun possibilities for necros.

Can’t tell if serious or sarcastic…..

necro needed more access to stability, what it got instead was a traitline that made them into a warrior without the added benefits.

Lightsbane.9012:

necro needed more access to stability, what it got instead was a traitline that made them into a warrior without the added benefits.

Well we got more access to stability. RS 3 is actually quite good but the fact that it is in RS could cause some problems. While not the best due the kitten casttime, the elite also gives up to 10 stacks of stability.

Cecilia.5179:

I think I estimate Reaper rather well. Bad utilities are inexcusably bad. GS relies on the part of horror movies where the characters forget to use their brains. Chill is being nerfed constantly, making Reaper’s core mechanic weak. Reaper cannot approach or escape, but Reaper is a melee oriented spec. Condition Reaper relies on Condition Necro being improved and Power Reaper relies on Axe/Focus being improved, both of which Anet has claimed don’t need improvements. The core design behind Reaper is making Necromancer PvE viable.
Final Verdict: Farming Machine

Oh, Condi Necro definitely doesn’t need any improvements. And when the Reaper lands, you’ll probably get to see why.

And I know Anet employees will read this and go “is he in the closed betas?” “How dare he say that if he’s in the closed betas?” I can assure you, I am not.

I definitely won’t be using GS in PvP because I hate slow weapons. I’ll try it but doubt I’ll stick with it.
The thing I’m most looking forward to using is Reaper Shroud. Reaper Shroud is going to wreck so much face, you guys aren’t even ready.

Just thinking about it now, I don’t even need to go into RS to wreck face, I can do it from the outside. OMGAH! You naysayers aren’t ready.

wolfyrik.2017:

Raunchy.6891:

Chill is one of my favorite conditions. Confusion is the only other condition that edges it out for me so having a spec basically dedicated to chilling the enemy is possibly one of my favorite things that the devs have introduced into the game yet. I’m a mesmer main and I’m much more excited to test out things with this reaper spec than the chronomancer (not saying chrono is bad). I really think that with chill being as powerful as it is that it opens up very interesting and fun possibilities for necros.

Can’t tell if serious or sarcastic…..

Sorry that I’m not on the complain about everything bandwagon? Like I said I’m a mesmer main. I dont play this class competitively in the least so I dont know much about the issues you guys have I just play it because to me it’s fun and not too tryhard.

Mes should be excited about wells. Boom, minefield, better dodgeroll. My Mes will be part of GWEMN.

Lightsbane.9012:

necro needed more access to stability, what it got instead was a traitline that made them into a warrior without the added benefits.

The RS comes with stability, RS 3 specifically. Not only that, but it pulses, has a decent duration, a short cooldown (relative to other stability skills) and an AOE fear that you can activate on demand for an interrupt.

Another thing to note about the reaper spec, specifically the GS:
-Death spiral shows a 2% LF on a 6 hit attack. it generates 2% per hit, which would make it incredibly potent for life force generation in both PvE and PvP thanks to it’s 3 person cleave.
-PvE mobs pile up so it’s easy to hit 3 mobs 6 times each in a single swing which is an easy 36% life force
-PvP it’s easy to either hit a CC’d player, a downed player, and a player rezzing a downed player. If you hit someone trying to rez a downed player, that’s a cool 24% off a single blow.
-Reaper’s grasp also generates life force for each foe it hits. While it’s only a flat 4% per foe, that’s still yet another form of life force.
-Great sword is the only single necromancer weapon that has 2 skills generating life force.
-If you chill the enemy with greatsword, it has a LOT of multi-hit attacks which can generate a lot of life force through chilling force.

The only issue I can see with reaper, is that if condition cleansing stays as potent as it is, it might be difficult to lock an enemy down with chill for long enough to get a real grip before they simply use a leap skill, cleanse, and walk away.

Muchacho.2390:

The aoe pulsing blinds are scaling though atleast up to 5 enemies.The LF generating skills also scale up to 3 and 5 enemies. Not saying it will be enough but you do have some scaling defenses on gs.

It’s actually just a one time aoe blind, and that’s only assuming the targets are in the aoe at the end of its duration.

CambrianExplosion.6394:

Muchacho.2390:

The aoe pulsing blinds are scaling though atleast up to 5 enemies.The LF generating skills also scale up to 3 and 5 enemies. Not saying it will be enough but you do have some scaling defenses on gs.

It’s actually just a one time aoe blind, and that’s only assuming the targets are in the aoe at the end of its duration.

That tooltip was outdated when they showed off the reaper skills. It’s a 6s dark field that pulses blinds and cripple. They talked about how it changed on the stream. Used it as example as to how their development works.

Silverkey.2078:

Currently, I still have hope for reaper but its DPS does not seem high enough. Having such slow attacks on GS, the DPS has to be higher than dagger but this is barely the case right now. But this is just a number, so I still have hope. It looks awesome, which is already something

I don’t think GS dps should be higher than dagger. Seeing as how dagger is 1-2 target max. If GS would out dps dagger, it would leave the latter in a bad state.
GS should have more burst (with it’s execution moves) and it should have the big cleaves; but the dagger should remain the high dps weapon.
Axe needs an overhaul so that it becomes viable to use at range, that way it doesn’t need to do top DPS as you can damage from a safer distance (plus it should give better debuffs).

I’d disagree that GS shouldn’t have higher DPS. Because of it’s longer cast times, it certainly should have higher DPS, because a single miss/block/dodge will cost you to miss out on more damage than that missed attack on a dagger.

I agree with a lot of your concerns. But for healthy discussion ill try playing the devils advocate here.
Note though, that I’m strongly of opinion that we shouldn’t downplay (or upplay for that matter) the reaper too much without having some proper hands down experience with it. Some of these points are really hard to prove/disprove without practical experience.

nekretaal.6485:

We are very concerned about reaper because

1. Melee builds need survival tools that the reaper doesnt have
Frankly I think the necromancer is pretty beefy if it builds around that. I can see the reaper investing in 1-2 survival utilities to stay in the fray. Also depending on how LF generation is going to work, swapping between two life bars will help us out a bit there

2. Melee builds need chase down tools that the reaper doesn’t have
I think the reaper has a few of those tools (Spectral Grasp / Reaper’s Grasp / Death’s Charge). But I also think the reaper is build with the idea of being harder to get close from the necro perspective, but once we’re IN. It’ll be harder for the enemy to get away again. If we play our chill correctly and we have these grasps. I really think we need to experience this first hand.

3. reaper, at least greatsword reaper, may have really poor life force generation. Even if the grandmaster trait makes up for some of this, reaper should get something better from its grandmaster trait than life force to make up for the terrible greatsword life force.
This is one of my concerns as well. The LF generation seems poor, whereas the reaper really needs LF more than ever as a bruiser specialization.

4. Reaper GS chill access depends on a 4 second chain attack all hitting, but the attacks are slow and well telegraphed.
Good point. When people start getting used to dodging that 3rd attack in the chain (which is hugely telegraphed by an icy glowing GS), then the reaper might actually be done for instantly. That said though, we’re talking sPvP type of focus here. And I’m not quite sure if reaper is truly going to be effective there in the first place.
I agree this could be a problem though.

4a. Chill is supposed to be the main control tool of the reaper, but chill got nerfed hard that the condition will not fill this function very well.
I don’t really think Chill got nerfed that hard for a reaper build. Unless I’m completely misunderstanding the nerf (or your point); the nerf to chill where it now only goes up to 5 stacks, won’t be a real major thing for reapers.
The only case this will actually pose a problem, is in the fact we can’t stack chill duration above 15 seconds easily with this change. So if they can stay away from us for that long, we’ll have hard time. But frankly, not sure if that’s really that big of a deal.

5. If reaper damage is not best in the game top notch, then the whole class theme falls apart. Reapers, instead of being feared will be trying to run away from eviscerate warriors for example.
I don’t know. First of all. GS damage shouldn’t really ever be top dps versus a single target. It should be vs 3+ targets (otherwise it would sideline dagger).
Furthermore I don’t think the theme they have in mind is the high damage reaper; but rather the tanky reaper that is hard to get away from. I know that there are serious doubts we have that tankyness or that high uptime; but I do truly think that will be ANets approach. Between natrually high vitality, the ability to build toughness to attain power, the ability to switch to a secondary life bar and the ability to sustain chill on the target (making him do MUCH less damage and allowing you to stay in range) are HUGE factors not to make the reaper do top DPS.

6. Axe and Focus are needed more badly than ever. With Reaper shroud and greatsword both melee, there is a real need for a legitimate power weapon tools (staff doesn’t count). Unfortunately, those two got Dhuumfired in beta and still suck today.
*This has less to do with the reaper itself and more with the necromancer in general.
Axe needs a rework, simple as. Personally I would love to see the #1 do more damage (it’s single target, so despite the range it should rival the dagger at least). I would probably prefer the vulnerability on the #2, making it more bursty and allows us to swap to axe for quick vuln stacking. Either that or some other debuff as currently the #2 is a bit “meh”. #3 just needs a rework in general.
On top of all that the axe should get 900 range, same as the ranger.

Focus IMO isn’t that bad to be frank. The warhorn and dagger are often better suited for the task at hand and the necro often “requires” a staff as the secondary weapon.*

7. What OP said, shout and utilities don’t matter if we are going to be stuck taking (weak) stun breaks for utility.
Depends. There are some decently accessible stunbreaks through traits. (e.g. FitG). Most shouts frankly don’t interest me until they become on par with elementalist shouts. It’s simply kittened that all but 1-2 of their shouts are instant cast, and even those have only 1/3rd of the cast time of our shortest cast time shouts. How the kitten did ANet thought it viable to give shouts a 2 second cast time is beyond me.

8. The traits look very weak & boring, here’s what every Pvp & WvW reaper will take: (1) immobilize duration reduction (2) more life force to make up for greatsword life force sucking and (3) more life force to make up for greatsword life force sucking. That is very boring, even if the particular numbers turn out make the traits strong.
I doubt it to be frank. Because even the traits really don’t give that much LF. And even if they did. That’s hardly different from some other trait lines or traits from other professions. If you build around PvP it’s quite logical that certain traits always come back, simply because they’re the best. I think for a Reaper PvE build you might easily see different traits though.
On top of that don’t forget that the GS is 1 of 2 weapons. If you go with say Dagger/Warhorn as your offset weapons, you can stack LF back quite quickly.

9. No scaling defenses for team fights & no team utility for team fights.
This will never change as long as ANet is convinced the necromancer should be a selfish/self sustaining class.
I wouldn’t even be annoyed with that, if it wasn’t for the fact we get nothing in return for that weakness. We don’t have higher dps than other classes WITH a ton of utility. We don’t bring unique factors to the table (other than maybe life steal). And we frankly aren’t even more self sufficient than those classes; even though ANet claims we are.

Again agreeing with a lot of points. But I also think we’ll have to see it in action really. Because the whole LF flow (especially considering your 2nd set of weapons besides GS), uptime on target and the tankiness are really up for debate until we get to play around with it.

StAllerdyce.3941:

I’d disagree that GS shouldn’t have higher DPS. Because of it’s longer cast times, it certainly should have higher DPS, because a single miss/block/dodge will cost you to miss out on more damage than that missed attack on a dagger.

This is up for debate to some point.

A dodge means you can dodge multiple dagger attacks vs 1 GS attack. Sure you miss out on the big GS damage, but if you roll with daggers you might miss out on a few hits leveling the damage out.
Blocking generally works with charges, so there is a point there. Though there are a lot of blocks that come with a ramification if you make the hit. Which would also be easier to negate if you roll with GS.

I’m not convinced that slower hits should automatically mean you need to do more dps, especially not from a weapon that hits 3-5 targets with all its attacks PLUS having executes that can bring some serious burst sub-50%.

Maybe make those GS attacks unblockable? They are so slow and hard hitting that they just hit through a shield. Everybody should be able to dodge them so that wouldn’t be OP.

Honestly, I think there’s a fundamental issue with how slow the GS will be. If the damage is below dagger, you will rarely see it in PvP (and the focus on chill makes me think they were hoping reaper would be good at this…ignoring all the other problems with Chill and melee-reaper in an environment where enemies will, y’know, move), but if it’s higher than dagger, you will never see dagger in PvE…except maybe for building life force. We’ll get a better idea with the final numbers. Either way, one weapon will be blown out of the water.

Nyth.3492:

I’m not convinced that slower hits should automatically mean you need to do more dps, especially not from a weapon that hits 3-5 targets with all its attacks PLUS having executes that can bring some serious burst sub-50%.

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

StAllerdyce.3941:

Honestly, I think there’s a fundamental issue with how slow the GS will be. If the damage is below dagger, you will rarely see it in PvP (and the focus on chill makes me think they were hoping reaper would be good at this…ignoring all the other problems with Chill and melee-reaper in an environment where enemies will, y’know, move), but if it’s higher than dagger, you will never see dagger in PvE…except maybe for building life force. We’ll get a better idea with the final numbers. Either way, one weapon will be blown out of the water.

Reaper greatsword should be higher damage than dagger because it has a greater risk-reward.

Dagger has one thing the GS won’t be able to replace, and that is a secondary healing skill on 2. Dagger will always be king when it comes to a siphoning focused style of build.

Also Dagger has life force on the very quick attacking #1.

I think that the Reaper will be a disaster like shouts they showed to us lately. They already nerfed Curse Tree Trait Chilling Darnkess by giving it internal cooldown ( i believe its 5 sec now from 0 cooldown ) Also thing to note is change of chill mechanic. I think that the whole necro community will be dissapointed as they are now. Anet give a kitten bout the necro. If this will continue and Anet will force me to switch to other character ill stop playing this game. Its a shame that I have to make alts that I dont wanna play in order to get a party and with my beloved necro I can only solo dummies in the mists. Truth is Anet continues to diminish necro as a class.
Also thing to remember is introduction of new resistance boon – it will be a counter to our chill theme reaper , also mesmer can go back in time, elies will be immune to whatever immobilize you have, and get even more conditions cleansing.

I think people are right to be critical of the reaper right now. The shouts are weak and could have addressed some weaknesses for necro, but instead they are mostly selfish and have cast times. Especially the shout heal and elite could have filled needed roles, but didn’t. I don’t see them unseating signets, spectrals, and even wells.

Greatsword has some neat utility, but ultimately relies on one big skill for any life force generation. It has chill but in pvp, it won’t land a lot of the time. Compare that to dagger warhorn, which has swiftness, plenty of life force, and comparable cc.

Reaper shroud is cool, but losing the range on normal death shroud is going to hurt for anyone taking a melee set.

And lastly the changes to cc skills does hurt reaper to some extent.

Personally, reaper is my only real motivation to buy HoT, and as of right now I am not planning on getting it. Maybe if they revamp reaper a bit I’ll budge, but I’m not paying for a trait line and weapon I won’t use.

I agree that dagger and GS will be competing right now and the PvP/PvE comments made so far are very true: one of them will likely replace the other in one or the other game mode. If they balance it for PvP (they usually do), GS will need really high DPS not to be useless. Also, in order to play its role as a PvE necro-savior (which I think it is meant to), it also needs high DPS. So I would bet (and really really hope) for higher DPS in GS.

One thing which I had thought some time ago but that I think most people would be unhappy with was to change the theme of the dagger to become a hybrid weapon. Essentially a melee and thus more potent version of the scepter. I would barely reduce the damage coefs of the weapon but add condis to it. Its total DPS would be mostly the same in berserker as it currently is but the weapon would also be useful in condi builds. Just as an illustration, keeping the current coefs but adding 3 bleeds (6s base) and 1 poison (4s base) on the AA would allow berserker and rampager/sinister to have about the same DPS.

This way, all weapons would have their own niche. But I really think people would not be happy with this so…

Nyth.3492:

Silverkey.2078:

Currently, I still have hope for reaper but its DPS does not seem high enough. Having such slow attacks on GS, the DPS has to be higher than dagger but this is barely the case right now. But this is just a number, so I still have hope. It looks awesome, which is already something

I don’t think GS dps should be higher than dagger. Seeing as how dagger is 1-2 target max. If GS would out dps dagger, it would leave the latter in a bad state.
GS should have more burst (with it’s execution moves) and it should have the big cleaves; but the dagger should remain the high dps weapon.
Axe needs an overhaul so that it becomes viable to use at range, that way it doesn’t need to do top DPS as you can damage from a safer distance (plus it should give better debuffs).

Dagger vs GS I think GS should hit harder per swing and be on par for dps on a single target. It will be when you add in life siphon and procs that dagger will edge our GS if balanced well.

Simple logic can tell you that its normal that GS deal more dmg then Dagger but …… who would care about logic, right? I can understand that daggers deal great dmg on thiefs but if they deal more dmg on necro then where is my stealth and backstabs :P I would love to play necro as a bruiser, close combat warrior-ish Reaper but it seems that it just wont happen. Everysingle time when you will try compare yourself to warrior or guardian , your utilities will drag you to the bottom pvp and pve wise. I dont know if u agree with me but it is how I see things atm.
Also the sad thing is, we get promise of a great Reaper we buy the expansion and our dream will not be there. What happens next ? Shall we all switch to shatter mesmer , with the best burst in the game, stealth, dazes ( stuns if traited ) and distractions all over the place ? Also funny ( its also making me very angry ) is necros vs guardian , u turn his boons into conditions via corrupt boons and then he convert them again into boons. I am asking where is my second corrupt boon skill to make it even or even erasing boon skill. The more I play this game as a necro the more things makes no sense to me.

Same here was rater hyped about Reaper and stuff but now i’m just happy with change to DS still would be nice if it was just another version of shroud on F2 instead of overwrite.

Shouts hmm, we are probably only class that have cast time on them but not like they matter that much with stuff that we already have so no big deal.
And shouts are kinda lame anyway :P

GS seems like pve only weapon but who knows there is still time for stuff to change for better after beta events and considering that they have to announce spec. on missing classes i’d say it will take at least 2 more beta events.

We can only hope

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

IMO the strength of dagger should be higher DPS (= sustained damage) on 1-2 targets and increased LF generation
The strength of GS will be the 3-5 man cleave, bigger hits per strike (this is also an advantage unlike what some here think) and the bigger burst from your other abilities.

striker.3704:

StAllerdyce.3941:

Honestly, I think there’s a fundamental issue with how slow the GS will be. If the damage is below dagger, you will rarely see it in PvP (and the focus on chill makes me think they were hoping reaper would be good at this…ignoring all the other problems with Chill and melee-reaper in an environment where enemies will, y’know, move), but if it’s higher than dagger, you will never see dagger in PvE…except maybe for building life force. We’ll get a better idea with the final numbers. Either way, one weapon will be blown out of the water.

Reaper greatsword should be higher damage than dagger because it has a greater risk-reward.

Dagger has one thing the GS won’t be able to replace, and that is a secondary healing skill on 2. Dagger will always be king when it comes to a siphoning focused style of build.

The term “damage” is a bit ambiguous. You could talk about damage per hit, or damage over time, or burst damage. I think the term “DPS” is a better term if we talk about sustained damage.

IMO the siphoning from dagger #2 does not warrant lower dps in the slightest.
The only argument (IMO) that validates dagger as being stronger than GS, is that it generates LF really fast. That is a factor that has to be taken into account.
Other than that the dagger hits fewer people and has less damage moves on its non-#1 skills.

The way I hope the weapons to work out, is that GS gets the superior burst (mostly through it’s other abilities hopefully) and the bigger cleaves.
Dagger keeps the higher DPS on 1-2 targets with auto attack only and increased LF generation. That way I think they both have a very valid place.
In PvE you will prefer GS for trash and sub-50% maybe on bigger guys. In PvP there is also a very valid place for GS as it should hopefully bring some burst that dagger lacks.

That is just what I hope though. I wouldn’t be surprised if the GS turns out rubbish other than PvE cleaving.

Honestly, I don’t understand why the damage of GS is lower. The way I saw it was that GS was supposed to give a strong (much needed) boost to PvE by completely outranking the dagger for DPS while both weapons would be balanced in PvP with GS doing higher DPS but much easier to avoid. We should not forget that dagger usually has a warhorn to complete it, with nr 5 giving a lot of LF and some decent additional DPS. Right now, I may be pessimistic, but except for the potential chill play, I don’t see GS competing with dagger/warhorn.

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

Pretty sure dagger 1 isn’t even the highest DPS AA in the game

Dagger AA DPS coefficient is pretty decent compared to other AAs in the game (may even be one of the highest), but most classes have a weapon with strong burst (usually nr 2) on top of a decent AA. Dagger DPS ends up being much lower than the DPS from the best weapons of almost of all classes. GS would look similar to most weapons, with nr 2 being a strong burst, unfortunately it does not seem to beat our dagger AA

Bhawb.7408:

Pretty sure dagger 1 isn’t even the highest DPS AA in the game

You’re right lightning whip has higher dps and rev sword at the moment seems to have higher dps.

Silverkey.2078:

Honestly, I don’t understand why the damage of GS is lower. The way I saw it was that GS was supposed to give a strong (much needed) boost to PvE by completely outranking the dagger for DPS while both weapons would be balanced in PvP with GS doing higher DPS but much easier to avoid. We should not forget that dagger usually has a warhorn to complete it, with nr 5 giving a lot of LF and some decent additional DPS. Right now, I may be pessimistic, but except for the potential chill play, I don’t see GS competing with dagger/warhorn.

Why would they design a weapon to outclass another and that weapon you need to buy the expansion for? That is exactly not what they were going for when building these things. Its supposed to be strong but in a different way to the current stuff not make it obsolete or feel like an upgrade to it. They are meant mainly as play style changers and it does that giving much needed and greater cleave outside of shroud if using GS and again much needed cleave and better attack speed inside of shroud be it melee.

Silverkey.2078:

Dagger AA DPS coefficient is pretty decent compared to other AAs in the game (may even be one of the highest), but most classes have a weapon with strong burst (usually nr 2) on top of a decent AA. Dagger DPS ends up being much lower than the DPS from the best weapons of almost of all classes. GS would look similar to most weapons, with nr 2 being a strong burst, unfortunately it does not seem to beat our dagger AA

Indeed, I would have appreciated it if GS had some good use at least in PvE, since it seems to be terrible against a half-decent opponent in PvP (every attack will be blinded/dodged/interrupted unless you have a teammate to keep heling you set up big hits, and they do not even provide that high payoffs. You are better of taking a warrior if you are playing reaper for the pure DPS output.

As it stands, it will be a great weapon to cleave down trash with, and this is something the necromancer has always been god at regardless. Now that we have reaper shroud, this task will be even easier. Chill. blind and vuln are three conditions we do not have much of kittene for in a PvE group, so the utility provided by GS is not that great either.

I will have to test it for myself, but so far it looks like I will go Reaper because of RS, but use dagge/warhorn + dagger/focus for PvE, and staff + dagger/x in PvP. I hope that my pessimistic mindset skews my perception in the matter, though after years of dealing with A-net, I doubt it.

Sigmoid.7082:

Silverkey.2078:

Honestly, I don’t understand why the damage of GS is lower. The way I saw it was that GS was supposed to give a strong (much needed) boost to PvE by completely outranking the dagger for DPS while both weapons would be balanced in PvP with GS doing higher DPS but much easier to avoid. We should not forget that dagger usually has a warhorn to complete it, with nr 5 giving a lot of LF and some decent additional DPS. Right now, I may be pessimistic, but except for the potential chill play, I don’t see GS competing with dagger/warhorn.

Why would they design a weapon to outclass another and that weapon you need to buy the expansion for? That is exactly not what they were going for when building these things. Its supposed to be strong but in a different way to the current stuff not make it obsolete or feel like an upgrade to it. They are meant mainly as play style changers and it does that giving much needed and greater cleave outside of shroud if using GS and again much needed cleave and better attack speed inside of shroud be it melee.

Because it is situational. Dagger outclasses scepter or staff in PvE, right? The balance is for PvP because the roles are different, but for PvE where only damage matters (more or less) one is better. Currently necro is bottom tier in PvE, so ideally I would have loved it to be fixed in the main class, but if Reaper fixes it, so be it! The cleave is an improvement over dagger, but the damage (currently) is not.

Anyway, the beta event is precisely done for that: seeing how good the weapon behaves. I believe (but I may be wrong) that the DPS will be too low by a small amount. If so, we will report it and hopefully they would fix it like they did for revenant.

What are the damage ratios on GS skills? The wiki doesn’t have the actual ratios listed.

I noticed that the numbers listed on the wiki look extremely high but without knowing the power ratio those numbers could mean anything really.

Khristophoros.7194:

What are the damage ratios on GS skills? The wiki doesn’t have the actual ratios listed.

I noticed that the numbers listed on the wiki look extremely high but without knowing the power ratio those numbers could mean anything really.

The ratios are currently quite low for a slow weapon. For comparison, Gravedigger spam under 50% HP when it resets on hit is actually lower DPS than dagger AA.

Khristophoros.7194:

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

Necro dagger 1 has a really high damage rotation. But it still falls hilariously far behind compared to other classes, because dagger has nothing BUT the #1 dps.
I mean that’s how silly Necro weapons are at the moment; you’re stuck to using AA spam, because none of the other skills really have enough “umph” or utility to be worth wasting time on.

However because dagger #1 is melee only and basically has no other damage abilities on it’s #2 and #3, it has to do a lot of damage to be worth it.
The only saving grace for dagger main hand, other than the high dps, is the high LF generation and the 2 target cleave. Are those two enough of a factor to keep it in play if the GS would do more DPS single/dual target? I’m not so sure.

Silverkey.2078:

Because it is situational. Dagger outclasses scepter or staff in PvE, right? The balance is for PvP because the roles are different, but for PvE where only damage matters (more or less) one is better. Currently necro is bottom tier in PvE, so ideally I would have loved it to be fixed in the main class, but if Reaper fixes it, so be it! The cleave is an improvement over dagger, but the damage (currently) is not.

Dagger outclasses scepter and staff for multiple reasons. A big reason is that it’s melee range. Range is a huge factor in whether or not a weapon should do more or less dps.

That said, assume the auto attack DPS of both the dagger and GS were exactly the same. What would be the benefit of each, and which would you choose?

Dagger:
+ Has higher LF generation
+ Has faster attack speed

GS:
+ Does more damage per hit (can be of importance)
+ Hits more targets (3-5)
+ Has slightly longer range (170 vs 130)
+ SHOULD (as per dev info) have a #2 that does enough damage to warrant using it on cooldown pretty much

I know that we want the necro’s to make a comeback for PvE (believe me I really want that too). But I’m not sure if the best solution would be to make the GS really powerful and eclipse every other weapon in our kitten nal by default.
I realize that it’s impossible to make every weapon viable for every game aspect. But I think it should be the aim of developers to get as close as possible.

@Khristophoros
Damage coefs for GS from presentation stream.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Reaper-Auto-Wiki-Incorrect/page/2#post5304397

Nyth.3492:

I know that we want the necro’s to make a comeback for PvE (believe me I really want that too). But I’m not sure if the best solution would be to make the GS really powerful and eclipse every other weapon in our kitten nal by default.
I realize that it’s impossible to make every weapon viable for every game aspect. But I think it should be the aim of developers to get as close as possible.

Well, for what it’s worth, dagger is just a mainhand weapon so you could be more versatile depending on what offhand you wish to use. It will still be far more valuable in PvP than the slow and clunky GS, so it will have its niche there, which leaves a spot for great sword to be a strong PvE option.

Another option, assuming GS gets some sort of tweak, is having a situation where it is better to stay in dagger for most of the time, switching to GS only to land some hard-hitters when they are off-cd, before poppin back to dagger and continuing to auto attack. While this works for axe/x + GS warrior, the issue with necro would be that the dagger AA might just be replaced by RS 1 instead, while necros keep staff as their second set as a ranged option for some bosses.

Depends on the actual attack speed but GS might come close in DPS to dagger or maybe even beat it.

Let’s say you can do a full chain in the cooldown of gravedigger and then do gravedigger every 4 sec, so that’s 0.85, 0.85, 1.0, 2.0 every 4 sec for a total of 4.7 power coefficient every 4 sec. I think that’s better than dagger’s 1 spam but we’ll have to test the attack speeds and everything.

Also GS will have a trait that increases attack speed by 15%. That will be extremely useful because “attack speed” reduces the cast times on all abilities so you’ll get both DPS and reduced cast times from that trait, and of course dagger has no such trait. edit: I remembered wrong. It’s attack speed in reaper’s shroud.

But I dunno, really depends how they tune the numbers – we’ll see this weekend.

Khristophoros.7194:

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

You clearly haven’t played warrior mainhand axe, which cleaves 3 targets instead of 2 as well. It’s significantly greater damage output than necro dagger, just try it.

You clearly haven’t used ele lightning whip or fireball+lava font autoattacks.

This comment is pretty ignorant.

Necromancer dagger AA is only seen as strong because of PvP idiocy, dagger is one of the most mediocre weapons.

When a thief in PvE is getting 20k backstabs every 4 seconds in between his autoattacls, which do similar damage to necro dagger, it makes you reconsider.

Making GS a niche AoE weapon also makes it useless against most bosses in PvE, and dagger is already pretty mediocre.

Zenith.7301:

Khristophoros.7194:

Nyth.3492:

Tim.6450:

That’s the point it doesn’t. reaper gravedigger spam (meaning using nothing but gravedigger all the time) is weaker then dagger 1 spam.

If this is really true, they dun goofed.

To be fair, it’s really hard to make a weapon do more damage than dagger 1 spam without making said weapon disgustingly OP. Necro dagger 1 has hilarious damage ratios.

I think the thing that sets apart GS will be the chill spam tbh. It creates some interesting synergy with necro traits which will make it an appealing option. Also the fact that frequent application of chill is pretty strong in itself.

You clearly haven’t played warrior mainhand axe, which cleaves 3 targets instead of 2 as well. It’s significantly greater damage output than necro dagger, just try it.

You clearly haven’t used ele lightning whip or fireball+lava font autoattacks.

This comment is pretty ignorant.

Necromancer dagger AA is only seen as strong because of PvP idiocy, dagger is one of the most mediocre weapons.

When a thief in PvE is getting 20k backstabs every 4 seconds in between his autoattacls, which do similar damage to necro dagger, it makes you reconsider.

Making GS a niche AoE weapon also makes it useless against most bosses in PvE, and dagger is already pretty mediocre.

I have used warrior axe.

The warrior axe coefficients are all 0.7 except the final hit of the chain which is 1.5. The “double chop” skill says it’s 1.4 but it’s pretty misleading since it doesn’t come out very fast for a “double hit” type of skill.

Necro dagger is 0.9, 0.7, 1.4.

Thief dagger is 0.56, 0.85, 0.85. lol “similar”

Thief dagger is only good once a boss gets to low health and you spam heartseeker. If you want a strong autoattack chain try the thief sword. 0.8, 0.8, 1.3.

I’ll go test the attack speeds when I feel less lazy.

I’m really looking forward to reaper, mainly to test it and see if my hopes and dreams are dashed, or if there is a smidge of hope left. The upside is that, this will be a beta test, so that means that hopefully to Kami they will listen to us for once….because right now it seems like they’re still balancing us for idealized scenarios….the shouts are good examples of this, along with the fact they nerfed chilling darkness, which I will never forgive them for, because we would finally have decent access to AoE blind. And before people say it’s too strong, if you have 5 players standing next to me, not dodging or moving back as I start up my obvious as hell attack animation, then they deserve to get hurt…bad….especially with the fact necromancer has no stability outside of what we’ll finally get in Reaper Shroud, and I wouldn’t hold it pass ANEt to make it so that if we exit reaper shroud during infusing terror, we stop getting stability.

TheLastNobody.8319:

… and I wouldn’t hold it pass ANEt to make it so that if we exit reaper shroud during infusing terror, we stop getting stability.

I thought that was said during the stream and that they were debating to remove the stability all together.

@Khristophoros
Well you have to at least admit there is a reason for the fact that necro is the lowest DPS of the game: bad weapon damage + few damage multipliers. As I said earlier, the AA of dagger is one of the highest but we don’t have any additional burst skill. This means we have one of the most boring damage rotation of all (57811111111111111) and a low total DPS.
The way the GS is built, I’m fine with the AA being weaker than the dagger AA, but gravedigger should be stronger, while it appears it isn’t.

Silverkey.2078:

@Khristophoros
Well you have to at least admit there is a reason for the fact that necro is the lowest DPS of the game: bad weapon damage + few damage multipliers. As I said earlier, the AA of dagger is one of the highest but we don’t have any additional burst skill. This means we have one of the most boring damage rotation of all (57811111111111111) and a low total DPS.
The way the GS is built, I’m fine with the AA being weaker than the dagger AA, but gravedigger should be stronger, while it appears it isn’t.

I am not sure why people would be comparing a cooldown skill to an autoattack chain. Gravedigger is in addition to the AA chain. It doesn’t do all of your damage by itself.

I mean are you gonna compare hundred blades to an attack chain? It has a 4.21 coefficient which is good burst but on an 8s cooldown that’s pretty bad DPS. However, taking 3.5s out of your chain to drop that burst improves your overall DPS. The same concept will apply to gravedigger.

Yes, but the average DPS is the average of the AA + the CD skills which increase your DPS. And those CD skills make average DPS of weapons from other classes better than dagger which has only the AA. Then, the final nail in the coffin is the damage multipliers. At the end, necro has basically half the sustained DPS of some other classes in PvE.

Khristophoros.7194:

Silverkey.2078:

@Khristophoros
Well you have to at least admit there is a reason for the fact that necro is the lowest DPS of the game: bad weapon damage + few damage multipliers. As I said earlier, the AA of dagger is one of the highest but we don’t have any additional burst skill. This means we have one of the most boring damage rotation of all (57811111111111111) and a low total DPS.
The way the GS is built, I’m fine with the AA being weaker than the dagger AA, but gravedigger should be stronger, while it appears it isn’t.

I am not sure why people would be comparing a cooldown skill to an autoattack chain. Gravedigger is in addition to the AA chain. It doesn’t do all of your damage by itself.

I mean are you gonna compare hundred blades to an attack chain? It has a 4.21 coefficient which is good burst but on an 8s cooldown that’s pretty bad DPS. However, taking 3.5s out of your chain to drop that burst improves your overall DPS. The same concept will apply to gravedigger.

Because when a target is below 50% health, Gravedigger has no cooldown. And it is still lower DPS than dagger auto.