Guild Wars 2

The two main points I would like to focus on: Lack of damage reduction while using great sword AND the lack of stability.

During BWE2 I played Reaper exclusively and used several builds in PVE and PVP. I played 25 hours of Reaper for a total of 55 hours.

While the Reaper has greatly improved there are in my estimation, based on actual gameplay experience some changes that should be considered.

Great sword

1) While using a great sword and not in shroud damage received is too high
Casting a gravedigger in pve results in a 5-10k health loss. In PvP being outside shroud basically kills you.

2) Grasping Darkness when working as intended ignites the feeling of revenge in my necromancer I have been looking forward too. However, Grasping Darkness is still tough to target and cast reliably as a pull. It will work as an interrupt.

3) On Great sword auto attack, I still barely used this. Its so incredibly slow and plays into the low damage reduction of a light armor class in melee, namely it doesn’t feel good getting blasted.

Reaper Shroud
1) The auto attack seems too weak.
2) Executioner’s Scythe seems to have had its damage lowered in favor of a hard CC. I prefer the change but the CC needs to be 2 or 2.5 seconds if the damage is too remain low.
3) I quickly grasped the new death’s charge mechanic and didn’t have a problem using it, although I wish it went further or added swiftness.

Shouts and Augery of Death
1) YSIM Doesn’t heal enough when all five targets are present. I would like to see this become a monster heal around 4 targets hit.
2)Augery of Death should allow for 3 seconds of stackable stability per shout.

In closing the two main points I would like to focus on: Lack of damage reduction while using great sword AND the lack of stability.

Thank You guys So kitten Much for working on this game. After 3 years you guys are still doing it!!

I’ll post in this thread instead of starting my own.

(1) Reaper Greatsword is still a total glass cannon. GS4 & 5 offer almost nothing for defense.

(2) I think the damage on Greatsword is too low. Right now it is doing PS warrior level damage, (and far below icebow which outclasses everything by miles) but the class offers nothing for the team.

(3) I played a lot with shouts. My survivability went way down when I took shouts instead of spectrals, my damage went way down when I took shouts instead of wells. Surprisingly, my survivability also went down when I took shouts instead of wells due to Dark field plus RS 4 combo. Shouts offer very little.

(3a). The elite shout doesn’t feel elite.
(3b). I’d like to see an additional condition removed on Suffer.

(4) The heal shout still has too long cast time.

(5) The reaper seems a lot more vulnerable to conditions than base necromancer.

(6) Reaper shroud autoattack doesn’t do enough damage. I tried it with 2 grandmaster traits boost it and it’s not enough.

(7) The class needs needs needs improvements to axe and focus and scepter. Staff at range is awful. Axe/focus/scepter need to be good enough to be alternate choices to staff.

(8) I had trouble tagging mobs with reaper. Some tags require a crit or 2 normal hits and the mobs don’t live that long. (GS is slow, RS 1 does bad damage by itself)

(9) Fire Field plus RS 4 is perhaps the first OP thing the necromancer has ever gotten. (please nerf burning damage).

(10) Elementalists needs a nerf, and the best way to do this is by buffing necromancer/reaper to the point where elementalist actually has a counter.

(11). The chills don’t stick. They are all too little duration/pointless (except maybe for whirl finisher chills). What’s the point of having 20 different ways to chill if you cant chill your enemy long enough to close the gap and get one attack in?

(12). Did RS 2 have it’s range decreased? It hardly seemed to move you.

Kyoshiro.6735:

The two main points I would like to focus on: Lack of damage reduction while using great sword

I think the designers of Greatsword realized that it had glass cannon issues, and that’s why they put life siphon on the Greatsword trait. In theory, landing a #3 grants you a decent heal.

Of course, that’s not the way it works out in actual game conditions.

I feel after playing Reaper that there is no pay off for using the great sword because we didn’t consider putting a low mobility low armor class profession on the front lines.

Adding in a baseline damage reduction for wielding the great sword would give us time to fight longer with it. As of last BWE it is more of a death stick for us.

The Stacking stability on shouts would allow us to get to the fight and use our wind up abilities effectively.

These are the two most critical concerns I had running the reaper. The ability to BE in the fight and stay there.

Stay Frosty!

There’s no need for base damage reduction on greatsword, if you were building properly you were more than tanky enough to be on the frontline.

I had absolutely no more trouble staying alive with GS than any other weapon in either PvE or PvP. We have blind on GS4 and RS for tankyness and stab.

The GS is a high risk high reward weapon, if the stikes were always easy to land and it hit as hard as it they do it would just be OP, i think it needs the weakness of slow predictable strikes to make up for the meaty hits not only for balance but also to make it interesting. If you don’t have to worry about your surroundings and getting that 8 sec CD it’s literally just spamming 2.

And Executionors scythe can hit frickin hard if their HP is low, i think my max hit in PvE was 14k and considering it stuns AND chills i think it’s perfectly fine as is, more than fine i think it’s awesome.

I never had an issue with not being tanky enough (though Id didn’t try ZvZ fighting). I had long portions of fighting in PvP (like 5 minutes long) where I would drop below half and then just not die through cycling heals, blinds, and shroud.

Of course, one of the opponents in that match was a longbow Ranger, so the projectile destruction on Death’s Charge was a huge help.

nekretaal.6485:

Kyoshiro.6735:

The two main points I would like to focus on: Lack of damage reduction while using great sword

I think the designers of Greatsword realized that it had glass cannon issues, and that’s why they put life siphon on the Greatsword trait. In theory, landing a #3 grants you a decent heal.

Of course, that’s not the way it works out in actual game conditions.

I think the greatsword trait would be alot more appealing if it also granted the life siphon on RS attacks.

Or if it added a functionality like landing gravedigger on a chilled target would spread chill to all targets hit. This would then add a bit more defense to great sword with the damage reduction we receive from chilled enemies.

It’s important to note that we are all passionate and interested in the Reaper’s balance.

Damage reduction while wielding the great sword and stacking trait stability on shouts addresses most feedback; certainly all the feedback related to great sword skills1-4 and gap closing in general.

It is not my intent to offer suggestions that interface with other game balance.

Stay Frosty!!

I will also reply here instead of creating new thread which just makes things harder to keep in line for people to read.

My issues with Reaper are:

1. Greatsword actually worked well in PvE for me. I can’t say I would have anything to change or add. Fighting larger number of mobs even puts GS in front of dagger in my opinion because it has the damage but also it has high utility thanks to skills 4 and 5.

However in PvP and WvW GS is completely useless or maybe not useless but really poor choice. I wrote after BWE1 that the problem with GS is not the damage. You can make GS one hit anyone, but I would still not use it due to how slow it is and how hard it is to land those hits. So again I repeat increasing damage on GS will not make it more fun to play or better option in PvP and WvW because this is dynamic game where slow things are just BAD.

Oh and I must add that skill 5 is bugged. in 50% of times it didn’t activate at all, even though I went berserk pressing the button (and yes, I am sure target was in front of me and in range). Just to be clear, I am not talking about it not pulling anyone because I was blinded or interrupted or enemy dodged. In one occasion I had enemy cleaving me face to face and I started pressing 5 to cc him and it never went on cooldown at all and he was right there in front of me. If he had stability or ANYTHING it would not pull him but it should be on cooldown.

2. Reaper Shroud is awesome but I still feel it drains faster than Death Shroud. I also started to think it is due to a fact you are cleaving more so you are under more damage, but in PvP it’s 5 ppl one way or the other, in 1 v1 situation you take same damage no matter if you are in RS or DS. I didn’t test so I can come forward with numbers (because I usually don’t have a lot of time so I wanted to play the game instead of playing with numbers) but it is just personal impression that I can’t shake off since last beta weekend no matter how many times I tried to find reasonable explanations for it.

Maybe it degrades faster as it is made that way in code, maybe skills cost more LF (just speculating), maybe Vital Persistence is not working as intended…I can’t tell for sure, but it just feels that the issue is there.

3. Shouts are better than before but still I would not take them over the wells, or spectrals, or some signets, so I am not sure in which build they would fit as preferred option.

The issue is that their damage is low. It is very situational whether you will get that cooldown reduction or not (making them bad choice especially in PvP or any small scale fights). Also, choice between Augury of Death and Relentless Pursuit somehow always goes in favor of Relentless Pursuit so it is another thing that discourages you to go for shouts.

Apart from low damage there is also cast time (with some, especially elite shout which is the only one I can say I regret not being able to use it as viable option since without the trait 120s CD is just too long for such short effect). As if that wasn’t enough benefits you get through condi transfer and especially with boon gain are so weak because they end before you notice them. They just don’t feel like they are worth taking in almost any scenario.