Guild Wars 2

Or its just a pure pve crap weapon? Wanted to play with reaper gs for a while already but nothing seems to work at all for me.

Pve.. It’s far from a crap weapon.
and in pvp.. It works for me. I do a combo of gs/staff

It can work in pvp, it’s just not optimal. Attacks are slow and telegraphed, so works best in a teamfight build.

HardRider.2980:

Pve.. It’s far from a crap weapon.
and in pvp.. It works for me. I do a combo of gs/staff

Wat build? ;o

I personally tried to pair that with axe..but the axe is just..meh.

I run a 5 shout Spite Soul Reaping Reaper build in PvP atm. Usually using either a Valk or Cav depending on the enemy composition. Works as a team fighter as long as there aren’t too many tempests around. (Diamond skin kittens up power reaper almost as much as it does condi reaper. You don’t really realize just how important chill and vulnerability are until you cant stack them. They are a BIG part of our PvP dmg….especially as a reaper (lot of slow but heavy hitting attacks that benefit massively from vuln)

Edit: also kitten shocking aura.

But against non tempests. Especially when +1ning a fight. You can absolutely destroy someone or cause them to be destroyed in a few seconds.

I ended up taking speed of shadows since i wasn’t running warhorn. The ability to get in and out of Reaper shroud really fast combined with lower reaper shroud skill cooldowns ended up turning it into a really fun playstyle around building life force and shredding people. It SEEMS to work well against its condi reaper counterpart. Though its so telegraphed evade spamming builds can be annoying (Staff thieves…you HAVE to land chill on them)

I am using gs/staff power reaper in pvp. It’s rly strong in small area fights (places like Clock Tower) and deadly in 1v1. Having lot of fun with it.

A few days ago, noscoc on stream won a 1v1 against a regular condi reaper with GS power.
The interesting thing was,

He.
Didnt.
Land.
A
SINGLE
ABILITY,
from his GS set.

Not like a challenge, it was full on “slowest class necro vs slowest class necro”, on point, he used and tryed all of the GS skills.

So….
Dont let anyone tell you the thing is PVP viable
if you win you won purely from ReaperShroud and other abilities.

Yes, most poeple arent ProLegaue level, but with GS – at any level – youre better off with any random pick of dag/axe + Wh/dag/focus.

Is there a VoD of that?

GS is “viable” if you play in the amber, emerald, ,sapphire…and maybe even ruby level. This is because in these divisions, people pretty much play whatever they want and some people use some of the worst builds possible. But above that, you’ll be laughed at and will find it difficult to use effectively.

If by viable you mean, “I can use it.” Then yes, it is viable.

If by viable you mean, “remotely comparable to other weapons.” Then no, it isn’t viable.

As soon as you run into a good player they will literally /laugh when you start the gravedigger animation and still dodge it.

So the conclusion is..buff the kitten gs so i can play power reaper cus i wont touch condi with a stick O.o i hope some changes are coming to gs at this point.

Burtnik.5218:

So the conclusion is..buff the kitten gs so i can play power reaper cus i wont touch condi with a stick O.o i hope some changes are coming to gs at this point.

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

zapv.8051:

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

In which League bracket?

In Scrub league I use GS specifically for killing Revenants. It is pretty funny but also means you only have one weapons set most of the time.

I basically only switch to GS if I see a Crystal Hibernation. Then I swap to a greatsword with an sigil of intelligence spam Gravedigger and use “Nothing can save you.” This kills the Revenant.

Dead.5829:

zapv.8051:

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

In which League bracket?

Does it even matter? I’m only in sapphire, but yesterday my team played 4 legendaries and a diamond. I honestly don’t think the rating system is successful at all, half the diamonds I see are bad. Having said that, I would say marauder loses its effectiveness against really well played teams. Despite that, against average players marauder carries the teamfight better than anything else in my opinion. Since I normally play for home and mid, that’s what is important so I’m prolly biased. With blighter’s boon your around the same tankiness as you are in Carrion, and the burst damage is really useful for killing downed targets (which is often very difficult in the current meta).

Try this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWnc0Al3gd2AW2A0biFcBjKN0GeWQXtAQLI+K2FDjA-TZBFABAcFAKZ/BBOEAiXGogHAAA

25might stacks and 100% crit chance in shroud for days. You can throw in a valk ammy and use decimate defenses instead of chilling victory for more sustain and a kittenLOAD more crit dmg. I’m still trying to figure which is best but, chilling victory has better synergy with blighter’s boon. It’s a tradeoff in the end, you either go for higher crit dmg but less life force regen and hp regen because of lesser synergy with blighter’s boon, or a significant dip in crit dmg but more life force and hp regen. I also feel like the edge valk ammy gets while in reaper shroud is very significant because of the flat 50% crit chance increase. You can swap sigil of strength on GS (Don’t rly know why I’m using it tbh, just more might lol) for a sigil of int if you’re confident you can land a gravedigger, I mean elite stun→swap→gravedigger is obvious but still.

First utility is optional, I take corrupt boon to kitten with bunkers that spew boons out of their kitten every second. But yeah GS telegraphs are big, if they weren’t though the weapon would be the biggest kitten ever -__- every skill in the GS auto chain can go for 3k on crit…that’s like a full GS warr’s auto chain. Add to that that gravedigger is just stupid dmg and essentially denies any sort of rezzing unless they CC u hard. #3 is nice though, big amount of vuln + rly nice life force regen. #4 can be good when stomping out of shroud (why would you do that, really >.>). As pointed above Nothing can save you + gravedigger can catch people with their pants down very well if they pop a block but don’t realize you have the unblockable buff. I mean yeah sure telegraphs are huge but most people are eventually gonna run out of dodges, and really you don’t wanna eat any of the GS chain attacks/gravedigger/death spiral.

I use Staff/GS. Got to legendary division with it.

Shadelang.3012:

I ended up taking speed of shadows since i wasn’t running warhorn. The ability to get in and out of Reaper shroud really fast combined with lower reaper shroud skill cooldowns ended up turning it into a really fun playstyle around building life force and shredding people. It SEEMS to work well against its condi reaper counterpart. Though its so telegraphed evade spamming builds can be annoying (Staff thieves…you HAVE to land chill on them)

Speed of Shadows is much better on the reaper than core necromancer, I agree, particularly for WvW. Flickering shroud and using GS as filler for high DPH and control at melee opens up a lot of doors for safer heals and utility casts. I actually run this with Reaper’s Onslaught for a build focusing on very heavy mobility and strictly better shroud uptime, since you can proc Life Reap more often, and any stray kill will reset Death’s Charge’s cooldown to nothing and will reset your stability and scythe much more quickly. In small groups, one kill simply leads to another which leads to another, and soon enough that thief realizes he will have trouble outrunning you with the amount of resets you’re getting, and even while not getting them, you still have much higher base mobility than expected.

@Topic: I’d argue there’s too many quick-access invuln effects in the bunker meta of sPvP right now to make GS as good as it could be. That said, Nightfall and Grasping Darkness are very powerful abilities when used correctly, and the auto-attacks are extremely potent; you can deliver absolutely devastating burst by flickering out of shroud, since GS 1 and GS 2 have extremely high DPH. I’ve flickered shroud after stacking might to hit people for 8-10k with each of these abilities in WvW, and these can be secured through one well-played Grasping Darkness.

What makes the greatsword so good in PvE (Gravedigger) is imho the worst skill the GS has for PvP environments. It’s simply too slow, and honestly, the damage dealt isn’t much better or at a much shorter timing than autoing with the GS or autoing in Shroud. Trying too hard to use this ability in PvP will just get you killed, despite the amazing damage. I prefer only to use it when someone is ressing a downed target; neither are moving, and it delays the res time since the downed target will proc the CD reduction, and it can potentially drop the resurrecter as well or simply force them to stop and step back while you cleave the downed target rapidly. Nightfall is also really nice for stomps as it’s functionally a bigger, badder black powder.

Shout build and the usual wellmancer build works great with gs

I play a GS/Staff carrion reaper, with 5 shouts. I run spite/sr/reap with dhuumfire, decimate defenses, pulsing vuln in shroud, death augury, blighters boon and soldiers runes for vit and toughness, plus the consistent cleanse on shouts. I love it so much!!! It’s killer in team fights but preforms fairly well in 1v1…the biggest issue with the build is mobility, but you can’t have it all lol

zapv.8051:

Dead.5829:

zapv.8051:

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

In which League bracket?

Does it even matter?

Sure! Mainly I’m asking because as I climb rankings, I find I’m having to prune more and more builds out of my bank. Possibly because they don’t work, possibly because I’m not good enough to make them work : (

Whenever I run one of the less sturdy amulets, I find I’m just food for thieves and shatter mesmers.

Back before I quit I played a cele deathly chill GS build but since cele is getting removed I think it could work with the new power/condi damage amulet since you didn’t need the healing power on cele anyway (the the ferocity was amazing) and just put it with scepter to autoattack your way to victory

The most success I’ve had with GS has been with a cele amulet, deathly chill, and blood magic. The healing power definitely doesn’t do anything for me, given that siphons scale horribly with it, but here’s hoping we get a new Grandmaster or scalability.

GS is viable as a pre and post reaper shroud weapon. The key is sigil of agility. Pop into GS for a quick spiral or nightfall, then into reaper shroud. Spend 9 seconds in RS and pop out for a quick GD.

It takes a lot of patience to run a build with GS. It works best when you +1 or team fighting. Wouldn’t recommend 1v1 with it unless you are proficient at setting up combo chains, primarily to build up life force combo first, then landing that Gravedigger combo second.

The build I use works for me, but only after a whole lot practice with it. And even then, it probably won’t work for other necro’s playstyle. I run a Viper GS+S/D based build powered by blighters boon and vampiric aura. Most damage dealt is still physical followed by poison then either burning or bleeding. Excellent life force recovery, weak corruptions, good condition removal, decent mobility, very good health recovery.

Ramoth.9064:

The key is sigil of agility.

Which is pretty sad. Imagine if necro had anywhere near the access to quickness that some other classes do? GS would be legit.

Is there a viable build? no there isn’t because what ever build anyone posts here will lack something that you need.

You need spec grasp to set up gravedigger and other combos, pull people from ledges or interrupt somsone close to you quickly since GS is so slow . Using GS without it is quite difficult. You need to be able to make your attacks unblockable because nearly every class has a lot of blocks.

You need some way to effectively protect yourself from attacks from multiple people.

You need at least 3 sources of condi clear, meaning you will use at least one utility slot for that. You may think, well consume conditions but that 30 sec CD is pretty long considering you will have to use marauder or berserker. So that means using curses. At least there’s plague sending so thats 2 condi clear sources but that already limits your build options.

There just isnt a build that can hold all the things you need because there are too many things you need. Unlike other classes that use mobility/stealth or negates to compensate, necro can’t so we need to use more skills.

Ragion.2831:

Is there a viable build? no there isn’t because what ever build anyone posts here will lack something that you need.

You need spec grasp to set up gravedigger and other combos, pull people from ledges or interrupt somsone close to you quickly since GS is so slow . Using GS without it is quite difficult. You need to be able to make your attacks unblockable because nearly every class has a lot of blocks.

You do realize Greatsword effectively comes with a Spectral Grasp built in, right? And it’s AoE? Yes, you do lose 450 range, but it can’t be sidestepped easily.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ragion.2831:

Is there a viable build? no there isn’t because what ever build anyone posts here will lack something that you need.

You need spec grasp to set up gravedigger and other combos, pull people from ledges or interrupt somsone close to you quickly since GS is so slow . Using GS without it is quite difficult. You need to be able to make your attacks unblockable because nearly every class has a lot of blocks.

You do realize Greatsword effectively comes with a Spectral Grasp built in, right? And it’s AoE? Yes, you do lose 450 range, but it can’t be sidestepped easily.

With the way the animation works, timing it is really strange, the delay between the animation and the effect generally throws me off. After I cast it, seems like an eternity before the pull works, its almost like there is a huge gap of time in between the cast where im just waiting while my opponent gets off a skill or two. The whole thing just feels like lag to me. When fighting a fast class, it is a real problem just depending on it.

Doesnt work against someone on a ledge unlike spec grasp (last i checked anyway). It is also on a 30 second CD when Gravedigger is on 8 seconds. This is the main reason why spec grasp with GS. The 2 pulls means you will often be able to set up the Gravedigger instead of hoping your opponent doesnt dodge it. Grasping darkness really should be 15 seconds not 30 but our beloved studio just wanted to make our lives difficult.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ragion.2831:

Is there a viable build? no there isn’t because what ever build anyone posts here will lack something that you need.

You need spec grasp to set up gravedigger and other combos, pull people from ledges or interrupt somsone close to you quickly since GS is so slow . Using GS without it is quite difficult. You need to be able to make your attacks unblockable because nearly every class has a lot of blocks.

You do realize Greatsword effectively comes with a Spectral Grasp built in, right? And it’s AoE? Yes, you do lose 450 range, but it can’t be sidestepped easily.

Actually, GS5 misses quite often people who aren’t even trying to avoid it. It needs a wider arch. I have a better time pulling foes when I manually aim it to lead targets.

I find it ‘misses’ less and fails to pull people more, unless I specifically set it up. It DOES have a lot going for it, though, and doesn’t take up a utility slot that Ragion brings up has to be used for something else to fill the holes in our weapon/passive functionality.

Imagine if we always had 2 or 3 buttons next to shroud that gave us, say, projectile destruction, an evade, and healing or condi removal/transfer? : D