Guild Wars 2

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t recall any need for boon corruption in BWE2…

Raids also weren’t in BWE2. Actually, no instanced content was.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t recall any need for boon corruption in BWE2…

Raids also weren’t in BWE2. Actually, no instanced content was.

I expect open PvE mob to be a good example of what you may encounter in instanced content. Don’t you think it’s legit to expect that?

Dadnir.5038:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t recall any need for boon corruption in BWE2…

Raids also weren’t in BWE2. Actually, no instanced content was.

I expect open PvE mob to be a good example of what you may encounter in instanced content. Don’t you think it’s legit to expect that?

Not really. Current open world PVE, I rarely even consider using active defenses. Really, I only do that at all at Golem Mark 2 to escape the lightning floor. In dungeons, it’s a lot more prominent.

It was a similar deal in BWE2: While it was (thankfully) harder than current open world, I still never had to use more than one of my dodges at a time. If Raids don’t require me to be wondering if I’ll have enough endurance, I’d say they’ve failed at making them challenging entirely.

I would be shocked if mass boon removal wasn’t necessary for something in raids.

Not really. Current open world PVE, I rarely even consider using active defenses. Really, I only do that at all at Golem Mark 2 to escape the lightning floor. In dungeons, it’s a lot more prominent.

Strangely enough, I do not think that the golem mark II is a good example of a hard openworld boss. The only need for active defense on this boss occure when he push back (because I’m lazy enough to not want to have to come back after being pushed back). Otherwise, avoiding the electric floor is super easy, you just have to stand in a corner of the electric field and do two step to the right or to the left when the electric field appear… I’m out of the subject here…

I was refering to what you can expect of trash mob not what you can expect of a situational boss. Because I would be shocked if trash mobs were kind enough to be skipped in raid as easily as they are skipped in dungeon. Beside there are boss in dungeon that actually boon themself to death (CoE golem and HotW P1 last boss). Do you happen to ask for a Necromancer to do these boss? The answer is no.

Dadnir.5038:

Not really. Current open world PVE, I rarely even consider using active defenses. Really, I only do that at all at Golem Mark 2 to escape the lightning floor. In dungeons, it’s a lot more prominent.

Strangely enough, I do not think that the golem mark II is a good example of a hard openworld boss. The only need for active defense on this boss occure when he push back (because I’m lazy enough to not want to have to come back after being pushed back). Otherwise, avoiding the electric floor is super easy, you just have to stand in a corner of the electric field and do two step to the right or to the left when the electric field appear… I’m out of the subject here…

I was refering to what you can expect of trash mob not what you can expect of a situational boss. Because I would be shocked if trash mobs were kind enough to be skipped in raid as easily as they are skipped in dungeon. Beside there are boss in dungeon that actually boon themself to death (CoE golem and HotW P1 last boss). Do you happen to ask for a Necromancer to do these boss? The answer is no.

Oh, I don’t think the golem is hard either, just that’s the only time when I usually dodge roll instead of thinking about if I should or not.

And the boon-heavy dungeon bosses don’t have necros brought for them because they literally reapply the boons every 3 seconds. There is no point to stripping them at all outside of a Chill of Death proc (and then, just because it’s decent extra damage).

Well, that’s my point.

Either it will be to many boons or they will be irrelevant. I don’t think you can end up with something that is balanced when it come to boon management in PvE. Beside, while it’s a great asess, heavy boon removal is very limited to a few professions and you know that having to take a specific profession to be able to finish a content is somewhat against the policy of play-what-you-want-to-play.

That’s what I really fear. A lot of us are heavily counting on an exclusive feature that should only give our party a slight QoL advantage. Granting that if it’s not doable by almost all professions, it shouldn’t be needed. Else, we will again fall into the trap of discriminations (even if it’s in favor of the necromancer).

Anyway, from what I’ve seen, modniir from the core game need more boon removal than HoT mobs.

There is a very simple middle ground, though, that will make boon removal important: Long duration boons provided on similarly long cooldowns.

If, for example, a boss gave himself boons with a 30 second duration on a 30 second cooldown, boon stripping would be useful, unlike giving himself 3 second boons on a 3 second cooldown. Both bosses have 100% boon uptime without stripping, but in one case, boon stripping is actually useful.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It’s always the case with duration-stacking conditions: if the stack cap is reached, the oldest get shoved off. If this weren’t the case, Bitter Chill would not proc Vulnerability on the 6th application.

Since now none of those naturally scale with stats other than condition duration, I would love to see ANet re-work them, with new stacks only kicking off old if they would last longer.

This isnt true. What happens is the condition is not applied, but the proc trait still procs. You can see evidence of this by fully stacking up immob and then applying 1 more. It wont increase in duration, change or refresh. It will just carry on ticking using the previous 5 stacks until the first stack runs out and leaves a space for a new application. This is why perma immobing is slightly harder than it seems in some groups. Because people waste an immob before the first of 5 has completely ticked down.

Proc traits just always work. Afaik its because they are tied to the condition/skill so they apply at the same time/before the condition. For example dredge are immune to blind but you can still get chilling darkness and blinding exposure to proc and apply chill and vuln.

Might and stacking conditions do however overwrite the oldest stacks.

Ahh, all right. My mistake, then.

Im surprised I was able to correct you on a mechanics related topic. Usually your the one correcting me/everyone else.

spoj.9672:

Im surprised I was able to correct you on a mechanics related topic. Usually your the one correcting me/everyone else.

To be fair, it’s not often that this particular one even comes up. Even with RS5+4, you’re dealing with a bunch of 1 second Chills, making it incredibly difficult to stack 6 chills before the first falls off.

spoj.9672:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It’s always the case with duration-stacking conditions: if the stack cap is reached, the oldest get shoved off. If this weren’t the case, Bitter Chill would not proc Vulnerability on the 6th application.

Since now none of those naturally scale with stats other than condition duration, I would love to see ANet re-work them, with new stacks only kicking off old if they would last longer.

This isnt true. What happens is the condition is not applied, but the proc trait still procs. You can see evidence of this by fully stacking up immob and then applying 1 more. It wont increase in duration, change or refresh. It will just carry on ticking using the previous 5 stacks until the first stack runs out and leaves a space for a new application. This is why perma immobing is slightly harder than it seems in some groups. Because people waste an immob before the first of 5 has completely ticked down.

Proc traits just always work. Afaik its because they are tied to the condition/skill so they apply at the same time/before the condition. For example dredge are immune to blind but you can still get chilling darkness and blinding exposure to proc and apply chill and vuln.

Might and stacking conditions do however overwrite the oldest stacks.

Immob is only 3 stacks. Just an fyi chill is 5 though. Other than that I believe you’re correct. Though I had to double check this on the Wiki and it’s saying for chill that longer duration stacks will replace older lower duration stacks, can’t confirm that though.

Nah that definitely doesnt happen. Was trying to max out chill duration by saving the big chill for last. But it never proced because of how it works.

And i just checked in Hotm. Im correct. It never overwrites no matter the duration. You have to wait for the initial stack to run out.

spoj.9672:

Nah that definitely doesnt happen. Was trying to max out chill duration by saving the big chill for last. But it never proced because of how it works.

And i just checked in Hotm. Im correct. It never overwrites no matter the duration. You have to wait for the initial stack to run out.

Cool, yeah I was under that same impression but while I was double checking the stack cap (never hurts to check, but I was right ) I saw that note and thought it was worth questioning.

I completely understand why break bars will be introduced as substitutes for actual conditions but still hope specific bosses have their break bars weak to one or two types of conditions and strong against a few others for the sake of variety and strategic build / skill use.

For example, Boss A’s break bar decays 50% more for burning but 50% less for chill. Other conditions do a standard amount. Boss B’s break bar may be weak to darkness/blind/siphon skills and combo’s but strong to light skills and fields, maybe stripping retal and regeneration.

Anchoku.8142:

For example, Boss A’s break bar decays 50% more for burning but 50% less for chill. Other conditions do a standard amount. Boss B’s break bar may be weak to darkness/blind/siphon skills and combo’s but strong to light skills and fields, maybe stripping retal and regeneration.

Burning does damage to health bars, not break bars.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Anchoku.8142:

For example, Boss A’s break bar decays 50% more for burning but 50% less for chill. Other conditions do a standard amount. Boss B’s break bar may be weak to darkness/blind/siphon skills and combo’s but strong to light skills and fields, maybe stripping retal and regeneration.

Burning does damage to health bars, not break bars.

Ah, sorry. You are right. That was a bad example, as was siphons but the point was still to have bosses with strengths and weaknesses players should learn to take advantage of.

Too much PvE is about hitting 111 and watching for a wave to jump. It is boring even if the fight has RNG elements.

I want more of having to adjust my build and group strategy for specific encounters.

Isn’t the problem simply that MMOs want you to kill ONE boss?
Let’s be honest, in 5v5, those situations would not happen. The game mechanics do not work on uneven situations. So instead of fighting one boss, we should fight 5.

Anyway, except for that, as Spoj said, the problem is that blind is more potent on one target than aegis. So blind and hard CC are dangerous, we get that. That’s why the initial defiant system was created.

But weakness, slow, chill etc… do not destroy a boss. The only thing is that their duration should be reduced (because it is easier to cap it when you’re 5v1 or 10v1). You can have a simple effect: “reduce duration of all incoming conditions to 20% (for example)”, compensated by 5-fold toughness increase on the boss (to keep balance of condi and direct damage) et voilà!

I really liked the twisted watchwork and molten alliance events because they involved multiple enemies.

Most of the time, players either skip or focus because a group vs group is too hard. Even in PvP, teamwork is difficult. WvW is just so often one zerg plowing into another.

GW2 is so simple compared to those “hard core” MMORPGs where skill choice, timing, and communication make the difference between an hour’s worth of work and several hour’s of struggling.

I miss the complicated skill combinations.

Silverkey.2078:

But weakness, slow, chill etc… do not destroy a boss. The only thing is that their duration should be reduced (because it is easier to cap it when you’re 5v1 or 10v1). You can have a simple effect: “reduce duration of all incoming conditions to 20% (for example)”, compensated by 5-fold toughness increase on the boss (to keep balance of condi and direct damage) et voilà!

Id just like to point out that current defiant actually does reduce weakness and vuln duration to 50% (specifically with unshakeable). Which makes weakness very underwhelming on bosses because its hard to maintain. Vuln used to also be a problem in this regard. But throughout the balance changes over the last year or so we have had major vuln creep so that issue is less of an issue. The arbitary condi duration reduction was one of the biggest complaints about current defiant. So im not sure its the best solution. Id much rather have reduced effectiveness but same duration.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

The Gee has spoken!

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

This does bring up the question of “how,” I’m afraid. Because last we heard (and from you, I might add), it just provided a DoT on a bar that’s only there for a short period of time.

Which really is quite useless.

Just because the primary boss won’t be slowed by soft CC doesn’t mean there couldn’t be a host of situations where soft CC is needed. You could have extra mobs that are extremely difficult/impossible to kill that must be held off, which soft CC could do, you could have something like mob-based instakill mechanics that can’t be killed/blinded (think mobile liadry zones you can slow), a mob with high health that will be consumed for boss HP if it reaches the boss, etc. There are a ton of ways to design raids where the boss is immune to a mechanic, but that mechanic is still really important.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

I’ve been thinking on it and there’s an interesting way to make Necromancers uniquely desirable in raids~

Give some raid bosses a unique boon with a small-to-modest benefit that corrupts to a unique condition that’s a fairly serious detriment to the boss. For example a “Hungry” buff that adds 25% to all bleed damage the boss inflicts. It corrupts to “Starved” which reduces all condition damage the boss inflicts by 66%

There are other classes that can strip the boon reducing the boss’ power. There are other classes that can steal the boon for themselves reducing the boss’ power and gaining it themselves. Only a Necromancer can corrupt the boon to trigger the much larger negative effect.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Dem adds.

spoj.9672:

Silverkey.2078:

But weakness, slow, chill etc… do not destroy a boss. The only thing is that their duration should be reduced (because it is easier to cap it when you’re 5v1 or 10v1). You can have a simple effect: “reduce duration of all incoming conditions to 20% (for example)”, compensated by 5-fold toughness increase on the boss (to keep balance of condi and direct damage) et voilà!

Id just like to point out that current defiant actually does reduce weakness and vuln duration to 50% (specifically with unshakeable). Which makes weakness very underwhelming on bosses because its hard to maintain. Vuln used to also be a problem in this regard. But throughout the balance changes over the last year or so we have had major vuln creep so that issue is less of an issue. The arbitary condi duration reduction was one of the biggest complaints about current defiant. So im not sure its the best solution. Id much rather have reduced effectiveness but same duration.

Before necro had too low DPS to be worth it even if he brought valuable vuln. Reaper has now a competitive DPS, it is just missing on the utility side. Vuln is as important as might for the group DPS and necro/reaper is one of the best class at applying it, but it is not taken because… vuln is easily maxed out already. My point is that vuln should require some investment to be maxed. People should say “oh I need a necro or an engineer for vuln” the same way they say “oh we need a phalanx warrior or an ele for might”. Weakness is also easy to max if people want to, it is just something they need to focus on, but they currently don’t except probably in high level fractals because we don’t need the condition.

I believe weirdly enough that by reducing the duration of vulnerability, it will make vulnerability more important.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Speaking of raid bosses, do they still have the 50% weakness/vulnerability duration reduction?

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Is that still true after a group skips all the trash mobs?

Combo’s – that is what I want. Complicated ones.

Dark field + water attack gives an ice blast and special ice field + poison attack = weakness and slow AoE blast

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Thank you for posting here. It does ease my worries but we need more informations. ;P
I’m really looking forward to Reaper and raids. I don’t want my favorite elite spec to be shunned from high end PvE like current necromancer.

So we can expect boss adds? Or DoTs to keep defiance regeneration in check? Maybe both? New boss specific condition mechanics like burning on Shoggroth in Arah P1?

Please tell us more!

BobbyT.7192:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Is that still true after a group skips all the trash mobs?

I am 99.9% certain that raids will be more like traditional MMO’s instead of GW2 dungeons.

In every other MMO i’ve ever played the trash mobs can’t be skipped, they auto aggro and never lose aggro until you kill them or wipe.

Additionally they specifically said that GW2 raids will be made up of part boss fights and part dynamic events. It could be that 50% of the “boss” fights are actually dynamic events where you need to hold an area from some crazy strong waves of “trash” mobs. These situations greatly benefit from weakness and chill since even if you have a bunch of stuns, you can’t keep everything stunned.

Trash mobs are actually somewhere that necros can shine since we can AOE weakness and chill. If the mobs don’t die in <10s then you can’t just burst them down.

I remember in wildstar dungeons some of the trash mob encounters took more skill and practice than the bosses did. I hope we see things like that in GW2 raids.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

This doesn’t really help at all unfortunately. It’s specifically why the effect being tied to the breakbar mechanic troubles me. Don’t want these effects on raid bosses, fine, no problem. But, what about all the other bosses with breakbars, or even trash with breakbars? What about slowing down Ettin/Mai Trin in fractals? What about chilling Imbued Shaman, Mossman, or Bloomhunger? Are these still getting breakbars?

Everything I’ve said I still stick by, I feel that the global application of immunity to breakbar is a mistake, one likely done to cut some corners and save some time (which I can respect, but still disagree with).

ZudetGambeous.9573:

BobbyT.7192:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Is that still true after a group skips all the trash mobs?

I am 99.9% certain that raids will be more like traditional MMO’s instead of GW2 dungeons.

In every other MMO i’ve ever played the trash mobs can’t be skipped, they auto aggro and never lose aggro until you kill them or wipe.

Additionally they specifically said that GW2 raids will be made up of part boss fights and part dynamic events. It could be that 50% of the “boss” fights are actually dynamic events where you need to hold an area from some crazy strong waves of “trash” mobs. These situations greatly benefit from weakness and chill since even if you have a bunch of stuns, you can’t keep everything stunned.

Trash mobs are actually somewhere that necros can shine since we can AOE weakness and chill. If the mobs don’t die in <10s then you can’t just burst them down.

I remember in wildstar dungeons some of the trash mob encounters took more skill and practice than the bosses did. I hope we see things like that in GW2 raids.

Well, there is barely any mob that are skipable in TA Etherlame and guess what? It doesn’t make the necromancer more wanted.

Trash are trash, not being able to skip them don’t give more meaning to any profession but if a profession allow you to skip them then it give more meaning to this profession (thief, there you are!).

The necromancer have this weird design that say that he “want to be hit” while in this game PvE, you absolutely don’t want to be hit. Now, if they design encounter where you actually want to be hitten by a boss in a contest of sustain against high health pool, then yes the necromancer will have an advantage over other profession. Otherwise, the shortcomings of the necromancer will always show themselve and the resulting meta will not be different than the current one.

Dadnir.5038:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

BobbyT.7192:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Is that still true after a group skips all the trash mobs?

I am 99.9% certain that raids will be more like traditional MMO’s instead of GW2 dungeons.

In every other MMO i’ve ever played the trash mobs can’t be skipped, they auto aggro and never lose aggro until you kill them or wipe.

Additionally they specifically said that GW2 raids will be made up of part boss fights and part dynamic events. It could be that 50% of the “boss” fights are actually dynamic events where you need to hold an area from some crazy strong waves of “trash” mobs. These situations greatly benefit from weakness and chill since even if you have a bunch of stuns, you can’t keep everything stunned.

Trash mobs are actually somewhere that necros can shine since we can AOE weakness and chill. If the mobs don’t die in <10s then you can’t just burst them down.

I remember in wildstar dungeons some of the trash mob encounters took more skill and practice than the bosses did. I hope we see things like that in GW2 raids.

Well, there is barely any mob that are skipable in TA Etherlame and guess what? It doesn’t make the necromancer more wanted.

Trash are trash, not being able to skip them don’t give more meaning to any profession but if a profession allow you to skip them then it give more meaning to this profession (thief, there you are!).

The necromancer have this weird design that say that he “want to be hit” while in this game PvE, you absolutely don’t want to be hit. Now, if they design encounter where you actually want to be hitten by a boss in a contest of sustain against high health pool, then yes the necromancer will have an advantage over other profession. Otherwise, the shortcomings of the necromancer will always show themselve and the resulting meta will not be different than the current one.

I have a feeling that’s exactly the kind of content they’ll be introducing.

And, there’s a big difference between necro and reaper, reaper is MUCH more damage. Necro seems to only have a range advantage (which may be wanted honestly), and maybe a little more build flexibility.

Blind is also OP on trash, I’d imagine they’ll be aware of that and likely we’ll see either lots of fast attacking enemies to prevent that trivialization or just immunity to blind (I’d put my money on fast attacks so we can’t dodge/block/aegis/evade through it easily).

Nike.2631:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

I’ve been thinking on it and there’s an interesting way to make Necromancers uniquely desirable in raids~

Give some raid bosses a unique boon with a small-to-modest benefit that corrupts to a unique condition that’s a fairly serious detriment to the boss. For example a “Hungry” buff that adds 25% to all bleed damage the boss inflicts. It corrupts to “Starved” which reduces all condition damage the boss inflicts by 66%

There are other classes that can strip the boon reducing the boss’ power. There are other classes that can steal the boon for themselves reducing the boss’ power and gaining it themselves. Only a Necromancer can corrupt the boon to trigger the much larger negative effect.

Interesting idea. I hope Anet reads this and atleast takes it into consideration.

Isn’t class specific stuff something they wanted to avoid, instead focusing on role dependent effects? If the conditions it inflicted were strong enough to warrant wanting a necro for 66% reduced, they’d be strong enough that you’d basically need a necro. If they weren’t that strong you simply don’t take a necro but maybe have someone with boon removal get rid of the extra 25% because it wouldn’t be that hard to work it in.

Jerus.4350:

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

This doesn’t really help at all unfortunately. It’s specifically why the effect being tied to the breakbar mechanic troubles me. Don’t want these effects on raid bosses, fine, no problem. But, what about all the other bosses with breakbars, or even trash with breakbars? What about slowing down Ettin/Mai Trin in fractals? What about chilling Imbued Shaman, Mossman, or Bloomhunger? Are these still getting breakbars?

Everything I’ve said I still stick by, I feel that the global application of immunity to breakbar is a mistake, one likely done to cut some corners and save some time (which I can respect, but still disagree with).

Completely agree with this. It doesnt fix that debuff conditions are useless dots on the actuall bosses. Debuffing should still be a real thing on actual bosses. Even if its harder and less effective it should still be a possibility.

And as Jerus said. It looks like every mob and its mum is getting breakbars. What happens to mobs which have breakbars that are temporarily inactive? Are they completely immune to all soft CC for the entire time? I really dont like this. It feels like the lazy way out to avoid imbalances caused by certain broken outlier conditions. Cough… slow… cough….

Jerus.4350:

Isn’t class specific stuff something they wanted to avoid, instead focusing on role dependent effects? If the conditions it inflicted were strong enough to warrant wanting a necro for 66% reduced, they’d be strong enough that you’d basically need a necro. If they weren’t that strong you simply don’t take a necro but maybe have someone with boon removal get rid of the extra 25% because it wouldn’t be that hard to work it in.

It’s an example, so the numbers could be tweaked of course – the goal always being to make a profession (every profession…) desirable but not mandatory.

I’m hopeful we’ll also see some raid fights were a well placed portal makes life significantly easier without being absolutely required -> Boom: a clear seat at the table for a Mesmer.

Maybe all uniqueness will eventually bleed out of the profession system as more Especs are added, but right now boon corruption is unique to Necros and can be leveraged to make them desirable but not mandatory in a capacity no other profession can fulfill.

Nike.2631:

Jerus.4350:

Isn’t class specific stuff something they wanted to avoid, instead focusing on role dependent effects? If the conditions it inflicted were strong enough to warrant wanting a necro for 66% reduced, they’d be strong enough that you’d basically need a necro. If they weren’t that strong you simply don’t take a necro but maybe have someone with boon removal get rid of the extra 25% because it wouldn’t be that hard to work it in.

It’s an example, so the numbers could be tweaked of course – the goal always being to make a profession (every profession…) desirable but not mandatory.

I’m hopeful we’ll also see some raid fights were a well placed portal makes life significantly easier without being absolutely required -> Boom: a clear seat at the table for a Mesmer.

Maybe all uniqueness will eventually bleed out of the profession system as more Especs are added, but right now boon corruption is unique to Necros and can be leveraged to make them desirable but not mandatory in a capacity no other profession can fulfill.

Mesmer already has a clear seat.

As a glorified alacrity/quickness buffbot with no damage whatsoever and whose main mechanic, illusions, are already more flimsy versions of minions that are dying upon spawn on something as simple as dynamic events. I don’t want to imagine raids.

Continuum Split’s rift often just dies the moment is spawns due to cleave and aoe, as do your illusions, so there goes all the effective use of shatters in any envionment where cleave/aoe is present.

It says something when the expected mesmer chrono build uses CHAOS, a condition traitline, on a power spec just for the boon duration increase while sitting on two deficient traits just to have a master trait.

Chrono and Reaper are two sides of a coin. One will shine for damage only with little group utility, and the other might as well not do any damage because you’re only there for the quickness/alacrity as even a warrior in knight’s gear can outdamage a mesmer in berzerker gear. Mesmer currently already does even less damage than a necromancer.

So if you like being a WoW vanilla totem/blessing bot ala shaman/paladin, you’ll enjoy Chrono as its mechanics currently stand.

I have a feeling many necromancers will stay reaper despite their complaints because at least your reaper has some modicum of self sufficiency and a mechanic that doesn’t evaporate in the presence of aoe/cleave.

If raids are anything like what I expect them to be (based on dev commentary giving some clues to speculate about) we’ll be looking at more of a WvW type system. We will have support focused players (Mesmers almost for sure) as well as Damage type people (Honestly necros may shine here if there’s lots of passive damage which I assume there will be), and then some tankier people frontlining holding up rushing enemy waves or keeping proximity/toughness agro on bosses (Reaper may be able to do something?).

But that’s just my speculative assumptions, could be and hope I am totally wrong.

Just hopped in a raid. Chill seems utterly useless since 90% of the fight the defiance bar is inactive and can’t be damaged.

Now I’ll go back to confirm if this first impression is right. Please share your experience with Reaper in raids.

Build I use in raid

Focus on reviving, conditions and minons. Really tanky.

Why do you think that?

Self might, permanent 25 stacks of vulnerable by himself, high cleave damage shroud, boss killing GS2 (once boss hp <50%, your dps becomes 2nd, spamming the damage equivalent to 100B with no CD )

How can people not want this kind of dps class?

This was actually an interesting thread to read, so I’m glad it was revived. I’d love to comment, but I haven’t kept up enough on raid design/break bars/etc., so whatever I say is going to be ignorant.

What I will say, is that the PvE I’ve enjoyed most has required the raiders to deal with interesting boss mechanics via positioning, timing, movement, etc. Beyond occasional interrupts, managing mechanics via debuffing the boss just doesn’t seem exciting to me personally, so I’d rather they design encounters around not worrying about the effects of cripple, chill, slow, weakness, and immob in particular. I might actually PvE if they make the fights more mechanically engaging.

Aomine.5012:

Why do you think that?

Self might, permanent 25 stacks of vulnerable by himself, high cleave damage shroud, boss killing GS2 (once boss hp <50%, your dps becomes 2nd, spamming the damage equivalent to 100B with no CD )

How can people not want this kind of dps class?

Because those are good traits only on unorganized pugs and those kind of pugs are doomed to wipe and fail.

I’ve just been in a more organized pug. I had perma 25 stacks of might and vulnerability without the need to lift a finger. I was explicitly told to not bother with might and vouln, they were right. Even at split it wasn’t an issue, you just need to survive long enough for them to clear one of the split bosses to then receive help.

Boon striping was needed but my reaper was laughable because you had to boon strip roughly every 10s so you burn trough your boon strips and fail your team <= reason why we wiped after we cleared the first split of the boss.

Necro’s siphons and heals were mostly useless, druid, ele, even warrior’s banner gave all the necessary heal to keep the zerkers alive. Same for protection on our wells, ONE herald pumped enough protection for 90% up-time.

Necro’s revive traits seem useless too, you either have enough heal spam to keep everyone alive and quickly ress who falls or you wipe anyway, blood magic traits or not.

The only useful party tools were well of blood and well +10% increased revive speed trait.

This was my experience thus far. It’s time to stop theory crafting and test things for real. I don’t want to hear "muh solo 25 stack might&vouln and revive port " anymore unless you have proven you can clear the kittening boss with your setup. (I’m not talking about you in particular Aomine)

I am afraid “no necro” meta will stay. Better change class now if you can.

I just attempted the raid with Blood/Death/Reaper and it went okay, considering we were unorganized and a man down. We didn’t win, of course. I should have attempted it with Curses.

Transfusion proved to be quite handy. Pulling downed people into the orange circles and jumpstarting their rezzing was valuable and given we were very condition-light, Vampiric Presence helped take down red.

Having two heralds and a tempest in the party meant there were no worres about Might whatsoever. Even without me stacking any Vuln or Might myself, we were capped on both.