Guild Wars 2

Lots of people believe that necromancers can’t do anything other classes can’t do better, that we don’t provide enough group support and that our DPS is mediocre at best, blah blah.

I would like to read opinions of HoT beta testers, both PvP and PvE, to see whether there is a chance for necromancers to finally become a part of metagame. My thoughts go with Reaper but it would be nice to get some insight into necromancer in general, not only its elite specialization.

What do you think? Any chance for the winds of change?

“Believe” isn’t accurate, it is a fact. PvE we’re in the same spot, but with better DPS. WvW we’re in a better spot, it is possible we’ll have a second build for zerging (one backline one frontline), and then roaming will have all the new builds that Reaper brings, which is a ton. PvP at anything short of top tier it is the same, tons of new builds all around, plenty of them strong enough to do well with. At the highest tier of PvP we’ll still be fairly mediocre but playable, Reaper won’t change much I don’t think, but if teamfights become meta a teamfight shout reaper will be meta as well.

In PvE, even with the amazing gravedigger damage according to Brazil’s math the dps output isn’t godlike. Good, but not engi or guardian tier. Condi-minion-mancer might be a thing if they don’t nerf rise + death nova, sort of a minion bomber 2.0

I heard that they’re nerfing dungeon rewards, so if that happens the dungeon speedclear meta won’t be the be all end all.

In PvE the reaper is very good, but is still with lesser dps than a lot of other classes, like engi, guardian, ele, warrior, and it’s melee, making it harder to use in dungeon if you have to stay in range. And if you have to stay in range we have only bad weapons to dps by range (axe is still bad, but the scepter is a little better than before) why RS is only melee.
But in melee the RS can deal insane damage! Lesser insane than other classes… but still better than before XD
The GS is good in PvE but it work well only if the enemy is under 50% HP, making you able to spam Gravedigger. But if you need to move, dodge, flee, active other skills, making you unable to spam Gravedigger everywhyere you lose a lot of dpd, much more than other classes or weapons. (if you interrupt Gravedigger to dodge and it go in partial cooldown you can waste 4-5 seconds before GD hit again, losing a really big amount of damage, that other weapons like the dagger don’t lose why it’s damage is all in it’s AA).

In sPvP the GS is more or less useless why it’s really slow and it’s damage become lower than the dagger AA. It’s good in big fight if you start to spam Gravedigger unseen and hit your enemy (a gravedigger can deal 8-10k!) or the only situation I’ve seen it good is in skyhammer to break the glass on the floor and grab the enemy with the skill 5, making him fall XD
But there’s a lot of builds that you can do with the Reaper, both dps (in direct, condition or hybrid damage) and bunker. it will add a lot of diversity to our builds.
But not all thatt efficence like we hoped or like other specializzations grant to other classes.

I’ve not tested it in www but I don’t like to use a total melee build that don’t have a single defensive skill into a zerg, it look like high risk and low reward. I will still play the old ranged build to be more shure to survive to the fight and deal better AoE damage.
But in roaming it can do great things, I belive.

In PvE the necromancer will not become a part of the metagame for shure why still don’t give anything to the team, deal lesser damage to the enemy than other classes/specializzations (in all condi, direct or hybrid builds), and if the rairds will be hard a pure melee build will for shure have some problems to deal it’s full damage and with a total lack of defensive skills will find hard to survive like others, expecially why the necro in DS/RS will not be able to be healed (reason why ANet add Blighter’s Boon trait, to make necromancers more able to obtain heal while in RS).

In www the reaper will be ok.

In sPvP the reaper will be funny.

Well I’d say the biggest thing holding reaper back from top tier PvP is that not a ton of people play necromancer at top tier, so not a lot of people have enough experience with the class to justify playing reaper over the thief/ele/guardian/warrior they’ve been playing thats had a widespread tournament presence for nearly the entirety of the game.

The only top tier player we really have that is highly visible is Nos, other like OPN play guardian more competitvely these days, others on NA are multiclassers, while others on EU don’t amount to much at all.

Usually when people at the top level pick up a new class that they have little prior experience with, its due to flavor of the month bias, which was especially common with cele engi in the past and mesmer more recently. Reaper, while strong in its own right, won’t have that same level flavor of the month bias, simply because marauder herald and chronomancer and scrapper all have stronger levels of FotM bias.

But besides that behavioral trend that I do predict, I do beleive that reaper will see a bit more exposure just from multiclassers alone. And Reaper has excellent synergistic benefits with boonspamming builds that form the backbone of competitive teams, allowing it to fit a teamfight DPS role better than a warrior or dragonhunter will likely be able to, while still being able to be a 1v1 hero with stacked life force.

I can only speak for PvP, but as far as how the reaper will influence it:
-Reaper really opens up and strengthens certain builds, particularly power necromancer and Minion master. Both of these will become more prevalent in PvP and see more play in all levels of PvP below the highest tier of PvP.
-In the highest tier of PvP, necromancer is still in a weird spot. At that level of play invulnerability, evasion, mobility, and focus fire are paramount to success. So necromancer will never really be a staple in higher tier PvP by design.
-Ironically though, by design necromancer is an excellent counter pick to a number of builds due to their de-buff, boon stripping, and general absorption qualities. If base necromancer is buffed in a few specific areas and reaper holds on to it’s strengths from the last BWE with a few more tweaks, we can see a wide variety of necro usage as a choice counter to other teams strats. This all depends on how balanced other builds though, and if we’ll see another meta as grossly saturated by one particular build as D/D ele has been that had no truly effective counter.

TL;DR
general PvP: necromancer and reaper will be doing fine
top tier PvP: necromancer won’t be a staple like 1 thief, but it might have a place as a variable counter pick.

. . .Ok I can at least talk about normal casual dungeon running PvE a little bit:
-In the kind of PvE environment 90% of player experience, necromancer will still be fine in the core dungeons. You won’t be kicked out of a group for being a necromancer as far as normal core dungeon runs now, and that won’t be any worse in HoT.

High end fractals and speed clearing core dungeons. . .I guess reaper will be a little bit better off, but those parties are more focused on buffing themselves and doing maximum damage through stackable damage amps that are shared, which necromancer by design won’t have.

New dungeons might be wildly different from how core dungeons work, the necromancer mechanics might be more valued in these new dungeons, so we will need to see how this plays out before making a judgment call.

Raids: I think people focus too much on how WoW raids work when they talk about the place necromancer/reaper will hold in a raid. GW2 has a very different combat system, so dedicated tanks/healers won’t work. There is also a hard limit on how many people can be affected by your positive buffs at a given time (5) so in instances where there are 15-20 people, having 3-4 necromancers won’t hold anyone back. We also don’t know how chill will work against raid bosses, or how valuable debuffs will be in a raid environment.

In the worst case scenario, honestly, raids have so many people, that having someone doing more or less damage doesn’t really matter. What is important is consistency, communication, and coordination. So if people are looking for more for a raid, with how difficult it is to get 15-20 people together, you won’t see anyone turn down a necromancer when they need to fill up some space.

Everything have been already told.

The Reaper give new possibilities to the necromancer but don’t cover what the current Necromancer lack when it come to teamfight. Neither the Reaper nor the Necromancer will be the best at something (except boon corruption).

Note that this statement is done based on revealed content from BWEs. Still the reaper spec is incredibly pleasant and effective to play against open PvE mobs from the HoT maps and RS is hundred time better at everything than DS (Except range attacking ).

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

WvW: Same Spot. You will still be using necromancer and it will still be good.

WvW Roaming: Necromancer is terrible (no escapes), Reaper is somehow worse.

PvE (open world): Anet seems to be making open world event trains a thing on all maps. Reaper will be great for this.

PvE dungeons: Dungeons are dead,

PvE Fractals: Gimmicks like unholy sanctuary will help the necromancer be part of the first few groups that “beat fractals” despite not enough AR. Otherwise same place (not good).

PvE Raids: Since Raids are designed by the teams that like to put everything on timers, Reapers In a bad spot. No team support, cant be healed, and not #1 at DPS. (DPS is all melee and axe sucks so any anti melee attacks on bosses will severely kitten reapers who have to face tank).

Tl;dr. Reaper not good. Needs axe to be fixed.

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

WvW: Same Spot. You will still be using necromancer and it will still be good.

WvW Roaming: Necromancer is terrible (no escapes), Reaper is somehow worse.

PvE (open world): Anet seems to be making open world event trains a thing on all maps. Reaper will be great for this.

PvE dungeons: Dungeons are dead,

PvE Fractals: Gimmicks like unholy sanctuary will help the necromancer be part of the first few groups that “beat fractals” despite not enough AR. Otherwise same place (not good).

PvE Raids: Since Raids are designed by the teams that like to put everything on timers, Reapers In a bad spot. No team support, cant be healed, and not #1 at DPS. (DPS is all melee and axe sucks so any anti melee attacks on bosses will severely kitten reapers who have to face tank).

Tl;dr. Reaper not good. Needs axe to be fixed.

Just to interject for a moment:
1. We can’t really call reaper worse in PvP, especially since the whole point is standing on a control point. Reaper can at least tank just as much if not more damage than base necromancer, and can simply absorb the ranged pressure until the point flips. Also RS2 can be used against a wall on a point to destroy the projectiles while capping.

2. Reaper actually has better “escape” capabilities than base necromancer because of RS2 as well. The lengthier chills also assist with peeling the enemy off of you.

3. PvE dungeons: No? we’re getting new dungeons with new mechanics, and we don’t even know how the new defiant bar mechanic will impact older dungeons.

4. Raids: we have no idea how raid bosses will play, and being top DPS in a raid doesn’t really matter with the number of people in it. What’s more important is coordination. The reaper also can bring party support in soldier runes with a shout build, or by running almost literally anything in blood magic, or just by running a well build using reaper (lots of whirl finishers and combo fields). If we ignore base necromancer traits and weapons, the GS brings a lot of whirl finisher and it’s dark field, which can lead to healing for allies (whirling in water or light fields) or additional damage+ healing (dark field).

striker.3704:

New dungeons might be wildly different from how core dungeons work, the necromancer mechanics might be more valued in these new dungeons, so we will need to see how this plays out before making a judgment call.

Ummm… what new dungeons? There have been no new dungeons announced as part of HoT (only raids and fractal 51-100). Also, a post yesterday by AN pretty much confirmed a good chunk of rewards (read loot/gold) will move from dungeons to fractals/ raids.

striker.3704:

Raids: I think people focus too much on how WoW raids work when they talk about the place necromancer/reaper will hold in a raid. GW2 has a very different combat system, so dedicated tanks/healers won’t work. There is also a hard limit on how many people can be affected by your positive buffs at a given time (5) so in instances where there are 15-20 people, having 3-4 necromancers won’t hold anyone back.

Raids are limited to 10 people…

striker.3704:

We also don’t know how chill will work against raid bosses, or how valuable debuffs will be in a raid environment.

Bosses with break bars are immune to chill, however they will still get the icon so you can proc traits and whatnot off of chill.

striker.3704:

In the worst case scenario, honestly, raids have so many people, that having someone doing more or less damage doesn’t really matter. What is important is consistency, communication, and coordination. So if people are looking for more for a raid, with how difficult it is to get 15-20 people together, you won’t see anyone turn down a necromancer when they need to fill up some space.

Like mentioned above, raids are limited to 10 (it’s not wow). With a limit of 10 people, reaper’s will compete hard for a slot and because of their lack of support and the fact they are not top 3 dps means it will be harder, but not impossible. They are in a better shape than base necro was though.

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

If vital persistance was made partially baseline, you could make a curses/spite cele reaper and destroy eles all day long. But besides the elementalist matchup that needs a specific synergy of traits and skills to work in our favor, reaper is much better than necromancer simply due to cleave and stability in teamfights alone.

Condi Curses/SR reaper should also have the upper hand for sure against elementalists/tempests, as well as heralds/chronomancers due to their lack of cleanse. I don’t really see much benefit to running zerk/marauder reaper builds due to their fragility and lack of active defense, meanwhile a soldier’s teamfight build (like bhawbs) will probably want to avoid doing anything besides tanking a node in a 1v1.

The biggest overall counter to reaper looking purely at 1v1s will be power ranger/Druid and dragonhunter due to the ranged DPS, and DH can also CC the reaper on a point quite well with traps. This however begs the question of the reaper’s on point prescence advantage. If the ranger/druid/DH stays at range and kites you from off-point the whole time they’ll eventually be able to beat you. If they go onto the point to try to contest it, then they’ll be at a disadvantage since reaper melee pressure far outdoes anything a ranger/druid can do in melee. DH will be able to handle it a bit better due to trap CC/pressure on a point and being able to burst with GS skills.

But besides that, your challenge in this scenario would be simply to survive and hold the point in the 1v1 until someone from your team comes to break the 1v1, and in most nodes you can LoS ranged damage to an extent without giving them an opportunity for a decap. You will have to watch out fro Dragon’s Maw decaps and LB4+ancient seeds decaps though. And of course in stronghold or WvW roaming, the range counter will probably feel a lot tougher to deal with where you don’t have the safety of the node advantage and as much LoS to depend on.

In teamfights, blighter’s boon with a boon spamming ally or two should give you plenty of incidental sustain. The real challenge there is to simply avoid being bursted at the start of the game.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the matter.

tl:dr-Reaper is disadvantaged against ranged, but capture point gameplay makes this less of an issue than it would be in something like WvW.

If we aren’t getting new dungeons I will be incredibly confused. I understand raids are their shiny new thing for the players, but that doesn’t mean dungeons should be ignored. The only thing we know about rewards so far is that high level fractals will get more rewarding and that the system we need to follow for legendaries will change to encompass the whole game world more.

my bad on the number of people, however 10 people still leads me to believe finding a spot won’t be that difficult. I also believe raids will be very different in structure than current dungeon running system we use (stack, mass buff, wipe out boss in 3 seconds) which should make survivability more valuable.

and chill durations are too short.

Every time i see you post this i wonder if you have played the Betas or watched many videos at all. Chill duration are far from too short.

nearlight.3064:

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

If vital persistance was made partially baseline, you could make a curses/spite cele reaper and destroy eles all day long. But besides the elementalist matchup that needs a specific synergy of traits and skills to work in our favor, reaper is much better than necromancer simply due to cleave and stability in teamfights alone.

Condi Curses/SR reaper should also have the upper hand for sure against elementalists/tempests, as well as heralds/chronomancers due to their lack of cleanse. I don’t really see much benefit to running zerk/marauder reaper builds due to their fragility and lack of active defense, meanwhile a soldier’s teamfight build (like bhawbs) will probably want to avoid doing anything besides tanking a node in a 1v1.

The biggest overall counter to reaper looking purely at 1v1s will be power ranger/Druid and dragonhunter due to the ranged DPS, and DH can also CC the reaper on a point quite well with traps. This however begs the question of the reaper’s on point prescence advantage. If the ranger/druid/DH stays at range and kites you from off-point the whole time they’ll eventually be able to beat you. If they go onto the point to try to contest it, then they’ll be at a disadvantage since reaper melee pressure far outdoes anything a ranger/druid can do in melee. DH will be able to handle it a bit better due to trap CC/pressure on a point and being able to burst with GS skills.

But besides that, your challenge in this scenario would be simply to survive and hold the point in the 1v1 until someone from your team comes to break the 1v1, and in most nodes you can LoS ranged damage to an extent without giving them an opportunity for a decap. You will have to watch out fro Dragon’s Maw decaps and LB4+ancient seeds decaps though. And of course in stronghold or WvW roaming, the range counter will probably feel a lot tougher to deal with where you don’t have the safety of the node advantage and as much LoS to depend on.

In teamfights, blighter’s boon with a boon spamming ally or two should give you plenty of incidental sustain. The real challenge there is to simply avoid being bursted at the start of the game.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the matter.

tl:dr-Reaper is disadvantaged against ranged, but capture point gameplay makes this less of an issue than it would be in something like WvW.

I use a similar Soldier build to Bhawb and I must say, it’s not really the beeest at capture point guarding. Good, but not great. However, it does do better at its intended purpose. That is, team fighting.. A Spite variation like mine actually really hurts the enemy team because you’re tanky enough to survive wading into the middle of the fight, but you put out so much vuln and self-might (NCSY is Grenth-sent for PvP teamfights) that you can really dissuade your opponents from pestering your team (I’ve found it also works better in Stronghold than in Conquest, because there’s more emphasis on group fights)

striker.3704:

If we aren’t getting new dungeons I will be incredibly confused. I understand raids are their shiny new thing for the players, but that doesn’t mean dungeons should be ignored.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-economy/

Read the paragraph on Dungeons. There are many threads and even WoodenPotatoes has a vid on the topic. Basically, they are moving away from dungeons.

striker.3704:

The only thing we know about rewards so far is that high level fractals will get more rewarding and that the system we need to follow for legendaries will change to encompass the whole game world more.

Legendaries will encompass PvP and WvW more with a new currency. However, the new legendaries will focus on items recovered from HoT not the main world. You may be confusing this with (old legendary) precursors which will now have collections which include the whole PvE world.

striker.3704:

my bad on the number of people, however 10 people still leads me to believe finding a spot won’t be that difficult. I also believe raids will be very different in structure than current dungeon running system we use (stack, mass buff, wipe out boss in 3 seconds) which should make survivability more valuable.

I’m not sure if you’ve seen raids but we got a feel for them in BWE3. They are different, killing them in <30s is not an option.

That being said, some (may be all) will have enrage timers. This means dps will be very important. The first raid has shown that you will want at least some condi dps as some bosses have extremely high toughness.

Currently the balance is something like:

• 1 Tanky Dps
• 4 Power Dps
• 3 Condi Dps
• 1 Support Dps
• 1 Extra Dps (Support/Condi/Power)
• 1 Healer

Reaper’s condi dps in PvE is nowhere near the other condi dps classes. They also have limited support. Some have suggested the tanking role, but personally I think quite a few other classes do it better and still have high dps. This leaves the 4 power roles – ele’s, rev’s, warriors will all be ahead of the reaper in terms of meta unless something drastically changes.

Reaper dps also heavily relies on GS 2 spam sub 50%, with moving bosses and the need to dodge often, it’s not the ideal skill to be spamming.

Will you want to bring a reaper to a raid? Maybe. It depends on what the other encounters are like. Right now though, reapers have slightly more dps than power rangers but less support so it’s a tight call. I haven’t even mentioned Guardians yet, so as you can see, reaper’s will have a harder time.

If you really want to raid as a reaper, I highly suggest finding a static (the best way to do it anyway).

Reaper is still Necromancer – characterized by low ranged damage, no mobility skills or stealth for avoiding engagement, lots and lots soft CC that is of little use against PvE bosses, mediocre healing skills, poor boon support, and terrible condition damage.

Uniquely useful and potent group support skills include Transfusion with its pull on downed players and ability to stand in one place and AoE multiple targets.

Necromancer/Reaper is a short range tower defense profession.