Guild Wars 2

My personal detailed feedback and suggestions for Reaper. Feel free to discuss.

Reaper’s Shroud

RS1 (Life Rend/Life Slash/Life Reap): Pretty good right now, but could use a bit more damage. Current coefficient per second (CPS) is 0.96 (0.6+0.6+1.2 over 2.5s), low compared to Dagger (1.33) or Greatsword (1.2). I would increase it to at least 1.12 CPS (0.7+0.7+1.4), or 1.2 CPS if feeling generous (0.75+0.75+1.5). I would also increase the Life Force gain per target on the third hit to at least 2% (3% if feeling generous). Being melee, RS tends to melt away more quickly than Death Shroud and so it could do with more LF generation for sustain.

RS2 (Death’s Charge): Numbers are fine, just needs bugfixes and QoL improvements. Specifically, many others have mentioned how it will currently throw you in random directions if untargeted; that needs to be fixed (or have the skill’s functionality changed to a ground-target charge a la Whirlwind Attack/Fiery Whirl). Also, as someone else mentioned, you pause for a bit at the end of the leap, which slows you enough that (if using it as a pure mobility skill) it’s not actually any faster than just running. Smoothing that out would be excellent.

RS3 (Infusing Terror/Terrify): Great skill. Making Terrify instant-cast would be very useful, but even without that it’s still quite good. Also, why does the initial tooltip list a 2s Fear? I think that’s just a tooltip error.

RS4 (Soul Spiral): Direct damage is a bit low for a 3s channel skill with a tooltip that mentions “dealing high damage”. I would buff it similarly to RS1, for a total coefficient of 3.3-3.6 over the 3s channel (1.1-1.2 CPS) plus the poison stacks. I would also make it grant 0.5% LF/hit, for a total of 30% LF if you hit the maximum of 5 targets 12 times each. Not only does this add a bit more LF gain to RS, but how does Transfusion make sense if Soul Spiral doesn’t siphon?

RS5 (Grasping Darkness): The stun is excellent, and the larger hitbox makes it much easier to connect. However, as of right now, it deals strictly less damage than Gravedigger regardless of the target’s current HP, and it’s only single-target. Not sure how much the stun compensates for that. Perhaps make the coefficient 2.5/3/3.5 for >50%/<50%/<25%, or if 3.5 seems too much, just make it 2.5 > 50% / 3 < 50%. Also, if the “Reaper’s Frost” unbreakable stun is intended, which I assume it is (given that said effect did not previously exist), please change the tooltip to reflect this.

Greatsword

GS1 (Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe): Greatsword autoattack is in a pretty good place now, damage-wise. It would be nice if Chilling Scythe was a bit faster; that windup is spectacularly long, and it’s very easy to whiff (in PvE quite often the target simply DIES before you hit it), which loses you the backloaded benefits (damage, chill and life force). If you do lower the Chilling Scythe activation time, say by 0.25s, reduce the damage a bit to keep the chain at 1.2 CPS (0.9+1.1+1.3 for an autoattack cycle time of 2.75s?). Could also do with a bit more LF generation, perhaps 1%/2%/4% at the current attack speed. Obviously that should also be tweaked downwards if attack speed is increased (say 1%/2%/3% for a cycle time of 2.75s).

GS2 (Gravedigger): Reasonable as-is. I might increase the radius to 300 to match suggested range of GS3 and max radius of GS4. That would be mostly because I’m trying to make the ranges a bit more uniform for consistent performance; right now every skill is a different range. Increased radius would also make it a bit more forgiving to land. The skill activation and aftercast is rather long (2s total), but the CPS is in a good place right now.

GS3 (Death Spiral): Pretty good right now, but could do with a bit more range. Say 300 range?

GS4 (Nightfall): What exactly is the radius on this thing for the various pulses? Right now, if you’re at maximum greatsword autoattack range, the first pulse will miss the target (tested on dummies in PvP lobby), so I suspect it’s 120/180/240/300. If so, increase the radius of the initial pulse to 130 to match the autoattack range. Also, pretty please with a cherry on top make this a player-based mobile field/AoE like Flames of War. That would be amazing and flavorful (a slowly-growing field of clinging darkness oozing outwards from the Necromancer? drools).

GS5 (Grasping Darkness): Quite good going by the numbers, but needs some serious QoL improvements/bugfixes. Using it in PvE, I had a lot of issues with “No line of sight” popping up or the skill firing in a non-optimal direction due to target movement. Making this skill a ground-targeted cone AoE would fix both of those problems. Also, the pull is really, really unreliable on uneven ground (or apparently-even but buggy ground, like various parts of WvW). Either fix pulls in general, or if you can’t, make it a knockdown+forced shadowstep to your location to bypass the issues. A cooldown reduction to 25s might also be nice.

Shouts

“Your soul is mine!”: While the recharge is low and can be traited to be even lower, the healing just feels a bit weak, especially if you are spending a significant amount of time in RS and thus cannot use it on recharge. With both skills untraited, Consume Conditions heals for more health over time if you consume at least 4 conditions (plus however much effective healing you get from the removal of said conditions). I’ve seen others suggest that it be increased it 5,240+1.0*(Healing Power), and that seems reasonable to me. I suppose you could increase the base recharge to 25s to compensate if simply increasing the amount healed seems too powerful.

“Suffer!”: Seems a bit lackluster at the moment, doesn’t really feel like the targets are actually suffering all that much. Option 1, increase it to 2 conditions transferred per target struck, producing a fairly powerful condition transfer. Option 2, leave the condition transfer alone or remove it, but make it apply a damaging condition to each target (5 stacks of Torment, 5s duration?), thus giving condition damage-based Reapers a useful utility skill (none of the shouts currently apply any damaging conditions) and flavorfully causing the targets to “Suffer!”. Note that I personally favor Option 2. Additionally, you could increase the direct damage of the skill or the chill duration; this could be combined with either of the other options. Additional note, this skill appears to grant life force when used – not sure if that’s intentional, given that it’s not mentioned in the tooltip. That could be removed or kept as you see fit.

“You are all weaklings!”: Mechanics are good, but 5s duration on the might is simply too short to get anything done. Make it 10s and this is an excellent skill for both power and condition-based Reapers. Great synergy with Blighter’s Boon. Also, please check that the stun-break functionality works – I swear I remember seeing this skill go on “cooldown” along with my other skills while I was hit with a control affect, more than once. Or do stun breaks not work against things like Launch, where it’s a control affect plus forced movement animation? The Xocotl Stompers send you pretty far into the air. Instant cast on this skill would be nice but isn’t absolutely necessary.

“Rise!”: Okay, I admittedly didn’t use this one much. From what I’ve heard from others who did, the damage reduction is nice, but there is a substantial delay in getting the effect up (the minions have to move to your current target and attack successfully at least once, which takes time and is not guaranteed), and the shambling horrors can die extremely quickly to AoE in either PvE or PvP (possibly even before they get their effect up). Not sure what would be the best way to deal with this. If they were disposable, easily replaced meatshields like GW1 minions it wouldn’t matter so much, but most GW2 minions are clearly intended to survive and attack for a decent period of time in order to be useful. It might be a good idea to give minions (and other NPC allies like Ranger pets or Elementalist summoned elementals) some level of resistance to AoE damage. You could also have “Rise!” apply the Dark Bond effect for a short duration initially to cover the time between the shambling horrors being summoned and their initial attacks.

“Nothing can save you!”: Another skill I didn’t use much. I mostly did PvE, and didn’t notice too many enemies with substantial boons and blocks that would make this skill useful, but that could change in the future. In PvP it seems like it would be quite good already. No suggested changes.

“Chilled to the bone!”: As of right now, the effect is quite good. Main suggestions I have been seeing is to reduce the recharge time to 90s, and possibly reduce the activation time to 1s.

Traits

—Minors

Shroud Knight: The “you can use the specialization” minor trait. Doesn’t do anything else, but neither do any of the similar traits in other Elite Specializations.

Shivers of Dread: Rather lackluster. Guaranteed to affect precisely three skills (Terrify, Reaper’s Mark, and Spectral Wall). The latter two you don’t even necessarily have access to, and (in WvW) are often used to force people to move in specific directions (e.g. off a cliff), where the reduced movement speed of Chill actually makes them less effective. On the other hand, in PvE (and possibly elsewhere on occasion) you might just want the disabling control effect of Fear, and having your target run away is unhelpful because it means you have to follow them, so the chill is useful. I would add some other effect to this trait to make it more generally useful, perhaps “Deal 10% more damage to chilled foes”.

Cold Shoulder: Pretty good. Decreases incoming damage to keep you alive in the thick of the fight and increases your chill duration. No changes suggested.

—Adept

Augury of Death: Still not that great. Should really grant shouts some additional functionality in addition to reducing recharge (compare this trait with Signet Mastery). Not sure exactly what, presumably it should be something flavor-appropriate to Necromancer. Recharge reduction should either be shifted to base plus multiple target bonus (15%+4%/target?) like several shout effects were, or changed to a flat 20% like other recharge reduction traits.

Chilling Nova: Underwhelming in its current form, but I think some number tweaks could fix that. My suggestion: increase damage (to ~1k?), increase chill duration to 3s base, increase number of targets to 5, increase radius to 240. Internal cooldown remains 10s.

Relentless Pursuit: Fairly typical anti-soft-CC trait. No changes suggested.

—Master

Chilling Force: Terrible for might stacking in its current form. The ICD is just long enough that it only triggers on every other greatsword autoattack, and the might duration is incredibly short (the same as Forceful Greatsword, which has no ICD at all and gives a 10% damage increase/20% skill recharge reduction on top of the might). In addition, Necromancer greatsword hits much more slowly than Warrior greatsword. Suggestion: increase the might duration to 10s and remove the ICD. If this provides too much LF production, that can be adjusted separately (either with an ICD for the LF generation only, or simply reducing the amount produced). If the might production is also too high, that can be tuned downwards later as well.

Decimate Defenses: Very good trait. No changes suggested.

Soul Eater: Terrible in its current form, especially when compared to Decimate Defenses. The health siphoning is tiny for a weapon that attacks so slowly, and substantial cooldown reduction only occurs in optimal circumstances (in the worst-case scenario you may have only a single target which is above 50% health, e.g. early in a boss fight, resulting in almost no recharge reduction at all). If you have a foe below 50% health and can freely spam Gravedigger for substantial accumulated reduction, you should probably just keep spamming Gravedigger, so the cooldown reduction for other skills is irrelevant. I would increase the life siphon to ~100 per hit, change the recharge reduction to a flat 20%, and give it a 10% damage boost to greatsword skills.

—Grandmaster

Blighter’s Boon: Amazing sustain, synergizes incredibly well with self-provided boons and team-provided boons. No changes suggested.

Deathly Chill: Clearly intended to be the “condition damage option,” but the damage is frankly terrible, even after the boost. It can be easily outdamaged by two stacks of burning. On top of that, damaging chill has the same non-stacking issues that other damaging conditions did before the June 23rd update. It’s also competing with two other excellent Grandmaster traits. Options include a huge numbers boost, to the point where it’s worth taking despite the issues. This is probably the worst option, as you could end up with multiple Reapers overwriting each other’s damaging Chill, to the displeasure of all involved. Alternately, the chill damage could be removed and the trait could be given an effect along the lines of “Chilling a foe also applies [damaging condition],” with the type, number of stacks, and duration of the damaging condition being subject to balance decisions. As a third option, some other functionality entirely could be added, perhaps something that makes foes you chill take increased damage from all sources (fits with the Necromancer’s theme of debuffing enemies and would give Necromancers a unique party damage boost). Make sure it applies to conditions as well as direct damage to maintain usefulness for condition-focused Reapers, and/or leave in the “Chill deals damage” effect . Not sure what would be the best way to code/display this – perhaps a trait effect applied when the Necromancer chills the target, which ends if the target is no longer chilled (to ensure it can be removed by condition cleanse, as trait effects are not conditions). The damage-boost effect might also need a limited duration of its own to encourage the Necromancer to specialize in applying chill frequently, and prevent the effect from being maintained indefinitely by chill from characters that are not Reapers with Deathly Chill.

Reaper’s Onslaught: Excellent trait now that it’s fixed – allows you to use RS skills faster and more frequently. No changes suggested.

Other

Make Vital Persistence baseline already to reduce dependence on Soul Reaping, although that’s technically a “base Necro” change. When you spend one specialization on Reaper and another on Soul Reaping, there’s not much room left for build diversity.

Fix the fact that anything with a breakbar is immune to Chill application (at least with reference to other traits that depend on Chill being applied to the target, it doesn’t have to actually affect them otherwise).

Very detailed Son of Urza well done.

I agree with most points.

1. I would really like to see RS shroud #3, the second use ability (Terrify) become an instant cast stun break with the 1 second Fear.
2. GS4 (Nightfall) Make it into player-based mobile field/AoE like Flames of War.
3. You are all Weaklings, Robert thanks for the cast time reduction to 1/2 second but as a stun break having it instant cast is what people want in a reliable stun break.
4. Suffer, this shout has had its damage cut in half in order to be instant. Please consider adding the Torment condition x5 stacks per target for 5 seconds.
5. LOVE the new Rise.
6. Final AA chain attack to 3/4 second to smooth out the chain at 3/4, 3/4, 3/4.
LOVED the new GS changes!

yes anet plz listen to this guy

It seems like a lot of people are about in the same boat on a lot of points.

1.) RS damage on certain skills seems low.
2.) Death’s Charge needs reliability fixes and a smoother animation end.
3.) RS3 (Flip Terror skill) would be better as instant to allow us to keep that fear-combo aspect we love from Death Shroud, but with less range and duration, sacrificing stability.
4.) Speed and after-casts (mostly aftercasts) need reduced on several GS skills.
5.) Nightfall should follow the Reaper!!!!!!!!!
6.) RS5 is buggy and would be better utilized as a forced shadow-step pull.
7.) Cooldown reduction traits need streamlined and GS trait is pointless essentially.
8.) Shivers of Dread affects too little. (I propose merging Chilling Darkness into it, as Reaper Shroud 2 provides a much better utilization of the general effect.)
9.) Chilling victory might is far too short.
10.) Vital Persistence needs to be Baseline for diversity (just the degeneration portion).

These 10 things, to me, are some of the more commonly seen issues across the many reaper feedback threads. I hope they really consider this big 10, because that’d help a lot.

Honorable mentions: “Suffer!” is a little weak, though I enjoyed it personally, and “CTTB!” cooldown is too long.

I agree with most of your suggestions but I would prefer we NOT have another ground targeted aoe for GS 5 as we already have enough on staff and I am always loosing my cursor. Chilling force should indeed be looked at, the might stacks could easily be upped and still not compete with reapers might (spite adept) as you need to hit chilled opponents for it to fire.

Make grasping darkness pull everyone arround you in radius of 400.so we get focused more often.

“Current coefficient per second (CPS) is 0.96 (0.6+0.6+1.2 over 2.5s), low compared to Dagger (1.33) or Greatsword (1.2).”

Dagger hits 2 targets and only has autoattack going for it, greatsword is a lot slower than life rend so it’s pretty obvious why it has higher coefficient. Didn’t bother with the rest after this.

bump for great justice

Killyox.3950:

Dagger hits 2 targets and only has autoattack going for it

Your latter point is not particularly relevant; if the non-autoattack skills of a weapon are not useful, that means those skills should be improved, not that it should have a powerful autoattack to compensate.

I mostly mentioned dagger because I like to extrapolate from more than one data point, and it was the only other melee weapon available to necromancer. However, you are correct that it does not hit the same number of targets and thus is not directly comparable. I am willing to discard the comparison.

Killyox.3950:

greatsword is a lot slower than life rend so it’s pretty obvious why it has higher coefficient.

Were you even reading what I wrote correctly? I am fully aware that GS1 is slower than RS1. GS1 has coefficients of 1.0+1.2+1.4, for a total of 3.6, and a cycle time of 3s. 3.6 coefficient / 3 s = 1.2 CPS. RS1 has coefficients of 0.6+0.6+1.2, for a total of 2.4, and a cycle time of 2.5s. 2.4 coefficient / 2.5 s = 0.96 CPS. By the numbers, RS1 does 20% less damage per second than GS1, and I felt that this decrease was excessive and should be reduced.

Note that going by tooltip skill activation time only, GS1 has a cycle time of 2.5s, and RS1 has a cycle time of 1.5s. Both of those values are incorrect, as are the values for almost all autoattacks, because they do not take into account aftercast times (which are not actually listed anywhere, you simply have to test them). Necromancer skills in particular often have spectacular aftercast times (as an example, the staff autoattack takes nearly twice as long to cycle as it says in does – around 1.4s vs 0.75s).