Guild Wars 2

As in topic. Is there a solid reason not to go into that specialization? I wasn’t playing BWE but i heard that it was a blast to try out Reaper. Would our other lines be competitive/interesting enough not to end up with all Necros playing as Reapers?

If we had access to 4 trait lines at a time then no, there’d be no reason not to pick it. But there are some good combos that can’t be made while taking Reaper. Especially a combo of blood magic, soul reaping, and death magic. If I could add reaper as well I’d be an unstoppable force lol

There are many situations that call for a long range playstyle (mostly PvE/WvW). In this case, DS can be better than RS. Other than that, the only other downside is that you give up 1 specialization line which ends up interfering with the synergy in many current builds.

sAdam.5876:

As in topic. Is there a solid reason not to go into that specialization? I wasn’t playing BWE but i heard that it was a blast to try out Reaper. Would our other lines be competitive/interesting enough not to end up with all Necros playing as Reapers?

As of LAST BWE (things could change), Reaper was actual sub-optimal to standard Signet Necromancers believe it or not. Also, Reaper is very melee-oriented, so if that is not a personal goal, chances are you will find yourself not wanting to play Reaper, and I’m sure that will be a decently common thought process.

Lastly, and this is just my current feelings, but Reaper doesn’t have the same level of inner synergy with the other traitlines, and taking Reaper breaks up a lot of the synergy that already existed like the synergy between Spite and Curses, where S/C/Reaper is not much of an option due to Soul Reaping dependencies to function well in PvP.

The only reason not to take reaper is the fact that once you do you have nearly 0 ranged pressure. Life blast and some other skill general filled this role but with Reaper you lose all of that.

The only other option I see base necro good for is going 100% bunker BORING!

Other than that Reaper is almost a no brainer and would be foolish not to take it even if you become weak to ranged foes. Unless the devs do something to the base necro DS skills to make it more tempting to use its not going to be worth keeping other than the two above stated options imo.

Reaper should offer another option but I think most will agree with me that it feels more like a total buff we necro players are going to be forced into taking to stay viable. If you look at dragon hunter its awesome but not so awesome that everyone sees its worth taking over base guardian. If you look at mesmer and chronomancer playing one to the other gives off the feeling of “Hey these are cool new options I can play around with!” In the case of necro you take reaper or you become full tank/support or irrelevant. Because to me it felt like Reaper was nearly a whole new profession. “OMG THIS IS OP” not “These are new options i have to possibly work with.”

Just honestly how I feel. :I

Think it depends on your playstyle, me I’m very interested in being more melee oriented, but none of the current heavy armor professions really clicked with me as much as the necro, and the reaper finally scratches my insatiable itch. But I don’t think it is straight up better than main necro, it does fix or just flat out eliminate base necromancer weaknesses, but you have to go take a while bother trait line, which limits you to only two others. So….well yeah, mainly it sorta limits your building options.

No reason to not take Reaper unless you expect to play 100% ranged. Even in WvW ZvZ, Reaper will be superior due to much better LF regen, sustain, chill, stab, stun, and leaps. You range haze mostly using staff anyway, DS is really only used when zergs clash or as a defensive tool.

Losing out on 1200 range lifeblast sucks, but note that lifeblasts hit like a wet noodle at that range anyway, you’ll quickly get used to not having it. Losing out on lifetransfer sucks, because it’s an aoe that does not require los and useful at hitting people behind walls and objects. But I think most people will find the trade off worthy and learn to live without it.

The new proposed changes to shouts will make at least 1 or 2 of them worthy of loading on your utility bar.

I see no reason to not go Reaper. Reapers patch up a lot of holes with necros. Ever since BWE I find it hard to play my necro because of how weak he is, and how lackluster & boring the gameplay is without the Reaper.

Reason is old condi necro, soul reaping/curses/spite with swalk/cboon/wurm is still tons of fun and still competitive, best necro spec ever (for me).

Rapper shroud is totally useless and rapper traits are bad.

Yes.

Death shroud is a good ranged option, and the Reaper has no good ranged options on weapons, leaving it one dimensional melee instead of a balanced character.

Greatsword is no defense glass cannon, shouts compete for space on a crowded utility bar, the elite has too long cool down. So the question isn’t “what do you give up to get reaper,” but really is “what does the reaper give you.”. And the answer is more damage in melee range, but not enough to be top tier and with none of the scaling defenses that classes need to have to survive melee combat.

Junkpile.7439:

Rapper shroud is totally useless and rapper traits are bad.

ICE-T disagrees with you.

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Do kittenty dps but have the option to be safely at range with DS. Or, do just as kittenty dps but now I have to be in melee to do anything.

hmm, choices, choices.

There are plenty of reasons not to go reaper to be frank.

Spite, Curses, Soul Reaping and Blood Magic are 4 excellent trait lines that a lot of builds will still want to opt in; or rather have trouble ditching.

Going reaper traitline gives you access to:
a) The reaper traits
b) Greatsword
c) Reaper Shroud

A) isn’t all that special. There are some really good traits in there, but frankly I think the traits of the 4 aforementioned trait-lines are overall more impressive.
Reaper traits are pretty good if you want to go for a chill oriented build or if you want to go a melee build.

B) Is also up for grabs. The greatsword is great fun and will probably be pretty good after the last changes. But there are a lot of builds / situations where you don’t really need it. For DPS the dagger might still be preferred. Condimancer want to grab scepter and probably staff. Ranged power necros (wellbombing or something) will probably want to keep staff and maybe the axe to keep the distance a bit.

C) Reapershroud is really fun, but again very melee oriented. I still hope they reduce the casttime of Life Blast, because the only reason the reaper is SO much more attractive, is because it has viable damage (both for condi with dhuumfire as well as for power).
But even without that there will be builds that will skip on reaper in favor for more sustain (blood magic) or straight up damage (curses/spite).

Not to mention that reaper often “forces” you into soul reaping for the boost to Reaper Shroud.

It depends heavily on your playstyle. I will be extensively testing the reaper simply to see if I will finally be given what I was promised three years ago, that being attrition. However I will still use my base necro for WvW zerg balling simply because the skills come quite naturally to me and making mistakes in the middle of a scrim is deadly; especially for an older guy.

I will of course try different builds in the future, but until I have had a chance to truly test different styles, I will stick with what works in WvW. In PvE, save high level fractals and dungeons speed clears, anything works so I will use it as my testing grounds.

TheLastNobody.8319:

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Yeah, if the degen part of vital persistance where baseline, it would make a lot of sense. I’m hoping that some of this is alleviated somewhat with LF gen being added to the GS, but scepter/dagger still has bad LF regen and staff does without soul marks.

I mailed Gee about that. I really wish VP degeneration rate was baseline. It alone makes build diversity really hard. The rest of the tree is give or take no big deal, still good but not mandatory, but VP in pvp is so hard to not run.

ronpierce.2760:

I mailed Gee about that. I really wish VP degeneration rate was baseline. It alone makes build diversity really hard. The rest of the tree is give or take no big deal, still good but not mandatory, but VP in pvp is so hard to not run.

Its for that reason lots of other traits were base baseline so i believe it should be because…i mean is there a single build that doesnt take that one trait?? Literally every build i have seen takes that one trait because of the -50% degen.

Our build diversity would increase tenfold if that trait was made baseline.

ronpierce.2760:

I mailed Gee about that. I really wish VP degeneration rate was baseline. It alone makes build diversity really hard. The rest of the tree is give or take no big deal, still good but not mandatory, but VP in pvp is so hard to not run.

Cool hopefully we will get a response. I honestly don’t think they will work too much on the current traits and weapons till at least after HOT is released, but we can hope.

Sigmoid.7082:

ronpierce.2760:

I mailed Gee about that. I really wish VP degeneration rate was baseline. It alone makes build diversity really hard. The rest of the tree is give or take no big deal, still good but not mandatory, but VP in pvp is so hard to not run.

Its for that reason lots of other traits were base baseline so i believe it should be because…i mean is there a single build that doesnt take that one trait?? Literally every build i have seen takes that one trait because of the -50% degen.

Our build diversity would increase tenfold if that trait was made baseline.

Yay ron, VP not being baseline is the biggest problem I have with necro build diversity!

Anyway, the only builds I can think of that don’t use Soul Reaping (for pvp) are Minion builds, and even then they have the option of taking either that or spite, so many run it regardless. I’ve tried making variations of the “meta” cele signet builds that take blood over soul reaping for the extra suport, heals, and the blood bond proc signet, but it just honestly quite sucks without soul reaping, mainly due to the lack of vital persistence.

As someone who did play the BWE: Yes.
While it is a beautiful thing for AoE damage, things with anti-melee AOE fields(like threshers in SW for example) become absolutely brutal to attack. Because of the frequent short chills though, teragriffs became much easier.

One note: as was mentioned, GS was massively under-tuned and really wasn’t worth using in the BWE, as such, hopefully in the next BWE and in release, RS won’t be the only reliable source of damage for shroud knights, which should lessen the need for the soul reaping line.

You steer towards Soul Reaping and Spite for lines. You can’t get rid of soul reaping because:
a) Vital Persistence.
b) Vital Persistence.
c) Either a good, reliable source of extra vuln(and thus extra crit if you have decimate defences), or an excellent source of crit.
d) Vital Persistence.
Did I mention Vital Persistence? Realistically, half of VP’s LF decay reduction should be made baseline for RS, and VP updated to only provide half the decay reduction in RS, so that the skill is still useful, but not outright required for Reaper.

Equally, and particularly in a boon-base shroud knight, you are gimping yourself without might on RS-AA and might on signet use that spite provide.

Now, in a boon build I noticed that the LF gen is fast enough that you can swap out Vital Persistence for another line.

As for weapons, if you’re running GS, you’re not running dagger/WH unless you really like being a helpless pinball without any range ability at all.

Overall, if you like playing from range, or have to for certain bosses, you will not be using shroud knight.

Seeing how reaper dps is lower than dagger spam, and you lose the only group utility in the blood magic we have. As of the iteration of the reaper I played in BWE 1, it is just plain awful.
I am unsure if the buff will be enough to justify enough reason to go reaper and untrait from the only group utility we have.

sAdam.5876:

As in topic. Is there a solid reason not to go into that specialization?

Because you want fears that last more than 1s.

TheLastNobody.8319:

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Maybe the 2% degen per second should be made base line for RS only but then people would still take vital and soul reaping line anyways making it a1% degen which is just tooo strong. I would like to have a baseline 2% degen though. But it would only make another useless trait necro would have like Unyielding blast

ZDragon.3046:

TheLastNobody.8319:

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Maybe the 2% degen per second should be made base line for RS only but then people would still take vital and soul reaping line anyways making it a1% degen which is just tooo strong. I would like to have a baseline 2% degen though. But it would only make another useless trait necro would have like Unyielding blast

I don’t honestly think unyielding blast is useless with reaper, simply because of decimate defenses. With the amount of but you can put out simply from that one trait, you’ll have so much crit chance. I wanna try to make a decent death magic reaper, just going to have to see how I can.

TheLastNobody.8319:

ZDragon.3046:

TheLastNobody.8319:

zapv.8051:

This actually illustrates the problem with soul reaping for me. Basically, every single build needs vital persistance, and last gasp along with wanting soul marks. For reaper that means you’re automatically locked into 2 trait lines, and since most might generation is in spite you probably want that too. It would be nice if the reaper line provided enough damage, life generation or might to not take spite or soul reaping, but they are pretty much both required.

Agreed, it would be nice if theb2% life force defen was made baseline, or we were given unique utilities in shroud that drained life force and Vital persistence just reduced the cost of using them.

Maybe the 2% degen per second should be made base line for RS only but then people would still take vital and soul reaping line anyways making it a1% degen which is just tooo strong. I would like to have a baseline 2% degen though. But it would only make another useless trait necro would have like Unyielding blast

I don’t honestly think unyielding blast is useless with reaper, simply because of decimate defenses. With the amount of but you can put out simply from that one trait, you’ll have so much crit chance. I wanna try to make a decent death magic reaper, just going to have to see how I can.

I think people underestimate the potency of being able to stack close to 6 vuln every 2 seconds. RS can reach 16-25 vuln stacks alone with that, it’s a quick way to boost your hybrid damage especially. Vulnerability is pretty potent these days now that they can add to Dhuumfire (also stronger with RS), plus the advantage of, which is always ignored, condition coverage which is very useful to maintain pressure.

2 vuln and 1-3 might on hit with cleave and LF gen (plus heal if BB).

My god.

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

Reaper shouldn’t be taken for two primary reasons:

1. You need Death Shroud over Reaper Shroud, which would be the case for needing ranged shroud or more condi-focused/safe setup
2. Your build doesn’t need to use any part of Reaper (shroud/GS/shouts/traits), and you can take 3 core traitlines happily

Right now the first will definitely be true in some situations. Zombify mentioned it to me during BWE that he actually really wanted to be able to use core DS with the new trait line, because the lack of range was really hurting condi builds, as well as the lack of an instant fear. Also situations like pure glass DPS Necro in WvW most likely won’t want Reaper. They want the damage mods from Spite, well trait from Blood Magic, and DS damage boost of Soul Reaping, plus ranged DS > melee RS most likely, as it keeps you away from the melee train.

The second is likely to happen a fair bit as well. Look at the above example, a build works really well with 3 of the current traits, and doesn’t gain much from Reaper. In an ideal world, especially once some of our current lines get balanced a bit more (looking at you Death Magic GMs), Reaper would only be mandatory if you needed the skills it gives, or needed traits for specific synergies. Otherwise it would be a valid choice as a 3rd trait line (most 3rd trait lines are generic increases, by the 3rd you tend to lose out on heavy synergies), but not needed.

As a side note, VP isn’t remotely required. I played a lot of BWE with a heavy shroud focused build and didn’t use VP at all, and had plenty of success. Unless they rework DS heavily, to have a much smaller cap, heavy degeneration is needed otherwise the amount of LF generation we see right now is simply oppressive 1v1, and in teamfights the degen matters little. Until they rework DS, if they rework it, VP is fine.

nekretaal.6485:

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

I used to pre patch but I didn’t go in Soul Reaping at all and right now FoD and SM aren’t really better you now get reduced CD on shroud skills too soooo..

nekretaal.6485:

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

Pre-patch I never used vital persistence.

If they were to again split the choice between vital persistence and the ability to have shorter cooldowns in DS/RS I would not use it now. Having DS/RS drain slower means nothing to me if my skills are on a long cooldown. Sure, both are handy and I am glad they are incorporated within the same trait now, but I survived for over 2 years without the trait, so it just was nice having it as a freebie.

If your build doesn’t run any chill, or you like fighting in the back line, reaper really isn’t for you.

Also, I feel like reaper doesn’t have any synergy with a corruptions focused condition damage necromancer.

Shadowmoon.7986:

Seeing how reaper dps is lower than dagger spam, and you lose the only group utility in the blood magic we have. As of the iteration of the reaper I played in BWE 1, it is just plain awful.
I am unsure if the buff will be enough to justify enough reason to go reaper and untrait from the only group utility we have.

What are you talking about? Shroud skill 4 still heals when you use it. I was healing my buddy for 3-4 k.

nekretaal.6485:

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

I never used soul reaping in a build. Yet when I was testing the Reaper I found that the LF decay was really fast and I had to use vital persistence to stay in reaper shroud for any amount of time. I even pointed it out in my feed back that I think the defense may be bugged. Next BWE I will run a test with out vital persistence and time how long it takes to decay a full lf bar as reaper vs death shroud. If someone who does videos could do the same it would be awesome.

nekretaal.6485:

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

50% degen speed and 15% cd reduction on shroud skills is too good to pass up. It means I can camp shroud a little longer when a thief or mes stealths. It means I’m gonna get doom pretty much every time I go into shroud, and tainted shackles every other time almost. It also means I don’t get punished nearly as much for using my profession mechanic, and that’s why it is understandable that people want the degen rate baseline.

Just cause you can go without it doesn’t mean you should or that you want to.

apoidea.7095:

There are many situations that call for a long range playstyle (mostly PvE/WvW). In this case, DS can be better than RS. Other than that, the only other downside is that you give up 1 specialization line which ends up interfering with the synergy in many current builds.

what in pve requires range?

Samhayn.2385:

Shadowmoon.7986:

Seeing how reaper dps is lower than dagger spam, and you lose the only group utility in the blood magic we have. As of the iteration of the reaper I played in BWE 1, it is just plain awful.
I am unsure if the buff will be enough to justify enough reason to go reaper and untrait from the only group utility we have.

What are you talking about? Shroud skill 4 still heals when you use it. I was healing my buddy for 3-4 k.

So you replaced spite or soul reaping instead of blood to get reaper?
That lowers your dps even further below dagger spam because you are either trading 5% from DR or 5%(25% below 50) from spite for life stealing, that get worse the slower your attack is. So to keep same group utility as a dagger necro, you get more kitten dps as a reaper.
Reaper and blood magic has poor senergies. If they made life stealing a % instead of a base value, then it will behave better. But as for now blood magic will get the best benefit from dagger.

i’ll stick to weapons i use now. slow attack speed is huge disadvantage in pvp. the dmg skills(autoattack and Gravedigger) have long cast times and it’s easy to predict and evade

Shadowmoon.7986:

Samhayn.2385:

Shadowmoon.7986:

Seeing how reaper dps is lower than dagger spam, and you lose the only group utility in the blood magic we have. As of the iteration of the reaper I played in BWE 1, it is just plain awful.
I am unsure if the buff will be enough to justify enough reason to go reaper and untrait from the only group utility we have.

What are you talking about? Shroud skill 4 still heals when you use it. I was healing my buddy for 3-4 k.

So you replaced spite or soul reaping instead of blood to get reaper?
That lowers your dps even further below dagger spam because you are either trading 5% from DR or 5%(25% below 50) from spite for life stealing, that get worse the slower your attack is. So to keep same group utility as a dagger necro, you get more kitten dps as a reaper.
Reaper and blood magic has poor senergies. If they made life stealing a % instead of a base value, then it will behave better. But as for now blood magic will get the best benefit from dagger.

I have to agree with this… blood magic was over hyped for what it really is. Its to low to be fixed numbers. and should be % based. Fixed numbers is not true lifesteal. In every game ive ever played lifesteal effects have always been based on a % of the damage you were able to dish out.