Guild Wars 2

Congrats guys, we get the awesome Reaper!

So as the title states, what are your immediate thoughts on the reaper and pve?

Based on what was released, it seems like a pretty good PvP/WvW specialization, but I don’t see how they fixed any of our issues in PvE.

One of our biggest issues was the inability for our skills to scale up to the amount of enemies we were facing, but they sorta touched upon that with the reduced cool down of shouts based on the number of enemies hit.

But then our even BIGGER issue was our inability to support the team in any shape of form in a PvE setting. Yet, based on the info shouts may only deal damage to foes and nothing more. So I would assume we stay out of the meta yet again? I dunno, there’s not enough info yet to make this assumption.

HOPE: These shouts have negative effects towards nearby enemies & positive effects to nearby allies. This is my biggest hope because then, I would assume, there could be a total of 10 targets (5 that get hit with dmg and 5 that get hit with buffs). If this happens, then the synergy with the lowering shout cool down will be amazing.

Either way, I’m hoping that the devs actually paid attention to our MAJOR issues and didn’t just think we were ok with more dps. Because, in the end, we might just be back to square one but with pulls and heavy CC. xD

What are your thoughts/hopes for tomorrow’s announcement?

I hate it. I hate everything about the specialization. From its scythe, to the name to the slow attacks and especially the shouts. Well, they solved the simple UI problem I was talking about earlier. By making them harm foes rather then help allies through something like orders.

Scythe in this new “Death shroud” is basically arena net’s way of saying “NO! we’re never bringing back scythes. STOP ASKING NEVER AGAIN!” so that is dead and buried, so no hopes there.

We attack slow. It really doesn’t matter if we deal tones of damage, one of our issues was how easy a tell we are. We are also insanely predictable. So guess what? We’re going to remain predictable. People will think its good for a while then be like “Mmmm. Nope, continue to focus fire necros.”

When the necromancer is really lacking supportive options we’re given offensive options. Good job arena net, you changed nothing about the profession and made it no closer to what it was in the first game.

Even if they fix the stupidity that is the zerker meta in PvE and stacking, necromancers have no place in that format what so ever. And the’ll still struggle to see competitive PvP because being aggressive against focus fire still means your going to get snuffed out against focus fire.

In PvE the only thing that matters is single target DPS and group utility. While it’s nice to have some AEs and cleaves, most content of note is single target and takes longer than 10-15 seconds to kill so burst skills don’t mean much. So if you agree, do you think these areas improved?

From the video, it would appear we have gained no new group utility as the shouts appear to be offensively focused and don’t appear to give any group boons. But we only know about 1 or 2 of them, so it’s too early to say. But given the gap between what we offer and what the top 4 classes offer, it’s safe to say we didn’t gain enough.

The next area of concern is DPS, which the Necro is pretty far behind the top classes as it is. The amount of damage our attacks would have to do to even bring us up to Thief or Ele levels is substantial. From the blog post it sounds like our attacks will be slow but powerful attacks. On paper this sounds fantastic, but in reality I’m not holding out much hope. Afterall, an attack that has a 2.00 coefficient but also only attacks every 2 seconds is only giving you 1.00 DPS. This is what an untraited Ranger longbow (or a lifeblast at point blank range) yields and we already know this isn’t enough to be taken seriously.

But then when you consider that we have limited/no utility and are only brought for damage? Well in that case you’d expect the Necromancer’s damage to be at a premium. Well above what an Elementatlist was capable of given all the utility they bring. It’s hard to imagine the greatsword will be capable of closing that large a gap.

Time will tell though.

I think without a defiance bar this specialization will never be played. In PvE we still offer no support, and unless this new spec does more damage than a warrior/ele/thief there will be no place for us in the PvE meta.

PvP things look even worse. Slow attacks with no mobility is a death sentence. A long cast can be interrupted, blocked, dodged, CC’d, blinded, or just walked away from. With no mobility and no defiance bar, a Reaper will essentially be an innaidmant object that you get to kill over and over for extra points. If we do get a defiance bar, and it works against blinds then the reaper may have a place in PvP if they have enough access to chill and can close the gap.

My biggest hope is that there is support hidden somewhere, the spec is very very high damage, and we can trait a defiance bar.

I don’t know whether to be disappointed or happy. The DPS and hitting of multiple enemies is welcome, plus lots of chill going around.

On the other hand, as I mentioned before, chill is an inferior game mechanic. And we really need party support and defense, because our core mechanic (DS) is a load of Dolyak droppings. We need an invulnerability skill, stability, and reliable disengage.

The name is kind of lacking in imagination. I guess it is not as bad as Dragon Hunter, but it is not exactly a name that a lot of thought went into.

PVE seems mostly fixed Perma chill is something thats difficult to bring with any max damage oriented build, cleave and AoE seem to be part of the greatsword’s forte, the rest well see tomorrow.
Chill can become the protection of tomorrow :p

The thing is we know exactly ONE shout, which is Damage + Minios. Next could be damage + fear, and then Damage + AOE might per enemy hit, next could be damage + buff your allies next attacks with bleed and chill… The damage on shouts is the BASIC thing they do. There will be bonus effects on them, and we have no idea which ones yet. So calm your horses and wait until you watched tomorrows PoI before going ragemode.

Don’t know enough to know if Reaper will be handy in Dungeons/Fractals…. but it doesn’t look very good. In parties we need high support and high DPS. If you can do only one you’ll be less looked for in the LFG process. Leaving out group support will leave the Reaper out of a lot of LFGs… unless their DPS is just insane.

Open world PVE it doesn’t matter 99% of the time what kind of build you run because it’s just zerging anyway.

let us be reminded that HOT PvE might not be like vanilla gw2

Dps may not be the king anymore, you might need hard cc stuns, soft cc conditions, healing tanking support instead.

As long as killing things is the goal, DPS will be king. CC/Support might move up in importance but they will not be more important than DPS.

Also keep in mind that condis are being reworked, which may dramatically change the dps output of even the core Necro. It’s quite possible that pve viability will go up significantly just from that, by fixing the dps shortfall, even if it still falls short of top tier due to lack of support, and then there may be things in the Reaper traits or HoT content that get the rest of the way.

We have to see everything all together to get a good sense of where things will end up.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

As long as killing things is the goal, DPS will be king. CC/Support might move up in importance but they will not be more important than DPS.

Overall group dps is king, not individual dps. If people are dying because there’s no support, overall group dps goes down. If Necro/Reaper can survive stuff that other classes can’t because, say, mob sustain dps goes up and 100% avoidable burst damage goes down, and Deathshroud and/or chill negates much of that, even if they don’t provide as much group support or another class can spec to out dps them on paper, their dps survivability mix may actually be optimal for that content since they can stay focused on damage. Etc, etc.

I didn’t specify group vs single because it’s obvious that the individual DPS makes up the group DPS. That’s why I like to run in zerker groups because overall of the group is higher, than say, cleric group DPS. Need active defenses (that’s good support) such as blinds, etc, then that combined with dodging people shouldn’t be dying. Of course, player skill has to be there. So, I imagine that if the DPS is high enough I wouldn’t mind bringing in my Reaper. Think of it this way, why should I bring my Reaper vs Dragonhunter? How will having a Reaper in the group benefit the group MORE THAN having a particular other spec/build for the encounters? That’s what one has to weigh when considering group composition. I need reasons to bring the Reaper over over classes.

What if one of the shouts provides a unique debuff on enemies that, for example, increases the chance the target will be crit by 20%? Like a unique de-buff Fury that works with the Fury boon. Suddenly it’s like Necros are providing group Fury, but they aren’t actually overwriting/adding onto the same Fury someone else might be giving.

Team support doesn’t have to mean “boon sharing” or “unique boons on allies”. I don’t necessarily think this will happen, but it could.

Also, after all of the complaints I saw about not having cleave, I’m really surprised to suddenly see that apparently cleave wasn’t a big deal. I suppose the big deal was <insert thing Necro class didn’t get>. I always figured cleaving down trash even quicker would contribute to the speed run timing as well, but apparently this game is just about boss kill speed now?

I really don’t understand competitive PvE in a game where it isn’t about difficulty of content, but just slamming your face through the content as fast as possible.

I agree that the Defiance Bar will be a must for this class. It looks fun and strong. Imagine Wells + that melee power.

But they have to be carefull with the bar. More than 2 shots for interrupts is a no-no. Although, depending on QQ they might make it 3 just to balance it later on.

In PvE we will fit the same role we actually have: unwanted.
1) Shouts that instead of give support deal damage? Why? We already have Wells that deal a very good damage.
2) Chill is the second worst condition in pve, second only to cripple. That’s why almost all the mobs that you find aren’t affected by chill, expecially for the dungeon boss.

Then why take whith you a class with a dps build that inflict high damage but still don’t give a single boon to the team?

Silv.9207:

In PvE we will fit the same role we actually have: unwanted.
1) Shouts that instead of give support deal damage? Why? We already have Wells that deal a very good damage.
2) Chill is the second worst condition in pve, second only to cripple. That’s why almost all the mobs that you find aren’t affected by chill, expecially for the dungeon boss.

Then why take whith you a class with a dps build that inflict high damage but still don’t give a single boon to the team?

Agree. Well, I also suspect that it won’t be “High damage” but “slow single hit that produce high numbers”. In other words, it will be a slow hitter that does balanced damage in the line of other profession damages.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I didn’t specify group vs single because it’s obvious that the individual DPS makes up the group DPS. That’s why I like to run in zerker groups because overall of the group is higher, than say, cleric group DPS. Need active defenses (that’s good support) such as blinds, etc, then that combined with dodging people shouldn’t be dying. Of course, player skill has to be there. So, I imagine that if the DPS is high enough I wouldn’t mind bringing in my Reaper. Think of it this way, why should I bring my Reaper vs Dragonhunter? How will having a Reaper in the group benefit the group MORE THAN having a particular other spec/build for the encounters? That’s what one has to weigh when considering group composition. I need reasons to bring the Reaper over over classes.

If you’re looking at current content, that holds, because there’s minimal sustain and cc and dodges can effectively reduce damage to zero, but you have no idea what new content looks like. Full Zerker may not be viable at all in HoT; if sustain damage from mobs is high enough, that is, there are higher rates of skill activation, fewer big avoidable spikes but lots of consistent damage output, and mobs that can’t be spiked down ultra fast, then blinds and dodges aren’t going to help enough because you’ll run out of them; under those conditions, chills and death shroud provide significant utility.

Necro and Reaper would be able to avoid having to respec as heavily into defensive gear since Life Force regeneration would offset a lot of that need under those conditions, and high Chill uptime would go from being fairly unimportant to an effective replacement for protection.

Group DPS isn’t just a factor of maximum on paper individual dpses being summed, it’s the maximum sustainable dps uptime of the entire group and it depends also on the content design; you can only run full zerker groups because of the existing mob behaviors and skill sets. Under certain content models, having lower dps characters that fill a specific role to help maintain overall uptime will optimize to higher group dps than simply maximizing individual dps.

And to be clear, I’m not saying that’s what HoT content is going to look like either, mind, but until we have a sense of what’s coming with HoT and with the condition changes, it’s pointless to speculate on whether something will be part of the meta or not. We can talk about how the mechanics are good or bad against hypothetical types of content, but not what the meta will look like. There’s too much that goes into determining that that we know is going to change but not how it’s going to change.

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I didn’t specify group vs single because it’s obvious that the individual DPS makes up the group DPS. That’s why I like to run in zerker groups because overall of the group is higher, than say, cleric group DPS. Need active defenses (that’s good support) such as blinds, etc, then that combined with dodging people shouldn’t be dying. Of course, player skill has to be there. So, I imagine that if the DPS is high enough I wouldn’t mind bringing in my Reaper. Think of it this way, why should I bring my Reaper vs Dragonhunter? How will having a Reaper in the group benefit the group MORE THAN having a particular other spec/build for the encounters? That’s what one has to weigh when considering group composition. I need reasons to bring the Reaper over over classes.

To point it bluntly :
You can easily see a DH with 55% damage increase against a foe from the very start of the fight.
You can hardly see the necro with more than 30% damage increased and thus when it’s foe is finally under 50% health pool.

That’s the very difference there is at the moment between the DH and the Necromancer. Which mean that the Reaper traitline need to give at least 25% damage modifier to the Reaper to make him on par damage wise with the DH.

And I’m just talking about damage, I’m not bringing utilities on the table.

Dadnir.5038:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

I didn’t specify group vs single because it’s obvious that the individual DPS makes up the group DPS. That’s why I like to run in zerker groups because overall of the group is higher, than say, cleric group DPS. Need active defenses (that’s good support) such as blinds, etc, then that combined with dodging people shouldn’t be dying. Of course, player skill has to be there. So, I imagine that if the DPS is high enough I wouldn’t mind bringing in my Reaper. Think of it this way, why should I bring my Reaper vs Dragonhunter? How will having a Reaper in the group benefit the group MORE THAN having a particular other spec/build for the encounters? That’s what one has to weigh when considering group composition. I need reasons to bring the Reaper over over classes.

To point it bluntly :
You can easily see a DH with 55% damage increase against a foe from the very start of the fight.
You can hardly see the necro with more than 30% damage increased and thus when it’s foe is finally under 50% health pool.

That’s the very difference there is at the moment between the DH and the Necromancer. Which mean that the Reaper traitline need to give at least 25% damage modifier to the Reaper to make him on par damage wise with the DH.

And I’m just talking about damage, I’m not bringing utilities on the table.

keep in mind that the strongest DH modifiers are hard to maintain in a pvp setting (UC, SA, Big Game Hunter) and we’ll have to give up either virtues or radiance to pick up DH.

Dadnir.5038:

To point it bluntly :
You can easily see a DH with 55% damage increase against a foe from the very start of the fight.
You can hardly see the necro with more than 30% damage increased and thus when it’s foe is finally under 50% health pool.

That’s the very difference there is at the moment between the DH and the Necromancer. Which mean that the Reaper traitline need to give at least 25% damage modifier to the Reaper to make him on par damage wise with the DH.

And I’m just talking about damage, I’m not bringing utilities on the table.

That makes assumptions about the baseline damage numbers those percentages act off of that we can’t make yet, not just on Reaper skill dps, but also on how the condi changes impact baseline Necro dps.

Vizardlorde.8243:

keep in mind that the strongest DH modifiers are hard to maintain in a pvp setting (UC, SA, Big Game Hunter) and we’ll have to give up either virtues or radiance to pick up DH.

This thread is about PvE, so that’s not overly relevant.

Eolirin.1830:

Vizardlorde.8243:

keep in mind that the strongest DH modifiers are hard to maintain in a pvp setting (UC, SA, Big Game Hunter) and we’ll have to give up either virtues or radiance to pick up DH.

This thread is about PvE, so that’s not overly relevant.

Well the damage modifiers thing is bogus then, but losing out on either radiance or virtues will definitely have an impact on Guardian PVE. Losing radiance means reduced crit chance, no Blind+might spam from renewed justice. Losing virtues we lose boon on virtue use, consecration traits, absolute resolution, group stability and stunbreak on VoC.
So picking DH is not a braindead choice you either go balls out dps and lose a lot of support or lose a lot critical to have about keep about the same damage and support that we have now.

Cogbyrn.7283:

What if one of the shouts provides a unique debuff on enemies that, for example, increases the chance the target will be crit by 20%? Like a unique de-buff Fury that works with the Fury boon. Suddenly it’s like Necros are providing group Fury, but they aren’t actually overwriting/adding onto the same Fury someone else might be giving.

Team support doesn’t have to mean “boon sharing” or “unique boons on allies”. I don’t necessarily think this will happen, but it could.

Also, after all of the complaints I saw about not having cleave, I’m really surprised to suddenly see that apparently cleave wasn’t a big deal. I suppose the big deal was <insert thing Necro class didn’t get>. I always figured cleaving down trash even quicker would contribute to the speed run timing as well, but apparently this game is just about boss kill speed now?

I really don’t understand competitive PvE in a game where it isn’t about difficulty of content, but just slamming your face through the content as fast as possible.

I’m quite happy Reaper will be getting cleave… but a lot of trash is skipped so… The end game is about what one wants it to be about, I guess. If you want it to be about speed runs it can be. If the Reaper can buff group DPS or with boons, well, either would be great.

Eolirin.1830:

And to be clear, I’m not saying that’s what HoT content is going to look like either, mind, but until we have a sense of what’s coming with HoT and with the condition changes, it’s pointless to speculate on whether something will be part of the meta or not.

Yeah, so, pretty much ignore the first three paragraphs before that. Got it lol

Anyway, I’m referring to current PVE content since that’s what we definitively know. I’ll need a reason, like I said, to bring the Reaper over Guardian, Warrior, Ranger, Druid, Dragonhunter, Chronomancer, etc. What can the Reaper do just as well or better than those? Hopefully, we will get an answer (or something close to an answer) tomorrow.

Silv.9207:

In PvE we will fit the same role we actually have: unwanted.
1) Shouts that instead of give support deal damage? Why? We already have Wells that deal a very good damage.
2) Chill is the second worst condition in pve, second only to cripple. That’s why almost all the mobs that you find aren’t affected by chill, expecially for the dungeon boss.

Then why take whith you a class with a dps build that inflict high damage but still don’t give a single boon to the team?

Holy kittening jesus mother of god chill the kitten out, and wait for the PoI. Who says there will be ZERO group support? The wording was “more on hurting enemies than bolstering allies”. “More…than”, not “Instead of…” . And even debuffs that hurt foes can aid allies greatly. Eg. a debuff that increases damage done to hit enemies by x% per foe struck. So one that doesn’t clash with vulnerability and/or might. Maybe there will be a boon on shouts via a trait, like bleeding on the DH traps. Maybe the heal, the elite and 2 utility shouts will hurt enemies but 2 utilities have buffs on them. Nobody knows yet, so await the PoI and rage AFTER that. Seriously.

Chill is an important tool if we want to be melee “attrition” class, but it is still useless if we don’t have access to good movement skills, since chill doesn’t stop people from using a blink and disengaging with a single click.

Also if dark path is getting replaced by an actual movement skill, that actually hurts us, since dark path isn’t effected by mobility conditions since its a blink, but the movement skill will be.

We need MORE movement, now replacing what we have.

Also I don’t know what anet is thinking with giving us slow, terrible cast time.
This is objectively terrible, I don’t know what they’re thinking. We already suffer hard from getting CC’d all day because no stab, so this, plus the new slow condition? ahahha.

Shiki.7148:

Silv.9207:

In PvE we will fit the same role we actually have: unwanted.
1) Shouts that instead of give support deal damage? Why? We already have Wells that deal a very good damage.
2) Chill is the second worst condition in pve, second only to cripple. That’s why almost all the mobs that you find aren’t affected by chill, expecially for the dungeon boss.

Then why take whith you a class with a dps build that inflict high damage but still don’t give a single boon to the team?

Holy kittening jesus mother of god chill the kitten out, and wait for the PoI. Who says there will be ZERO group support? The wording was “more on hurting enemies than bolstering allies”. “More…than”, not “Instead of…” . And even debuffs that hurt foes can aid allies greatly. Eg. a debuff that increases damage done to hit enemies by x% per foe struck. So one that doesn’t clash with vulnerability and/or might. Maybe there will be a boon on shouts via a trait, like bleeding on the DH traps. Maybe the heal, the elite and 2 utility shouts will hurt enemies but 2 utilities have buffs on them. Nobody knows yet, so await the PoI and rage AFTER that. Seriously.

Do you really think that ANet will make a personal debuff to apply to our enemy to deal more damage to then and that all our allies can use that bonus to deal more damage? Do you speak about Signet of Vampirism, right? In fact everyone love it and if I go in dungeon everyone immediatly ask me to use it. Because we can only be good to inflict Vulnerability, nothing more to help our allies. It is possibile why one of our trait give vulnerability when we inflict chill. But a warrior can do the same without a specializzation. We can inflict Weakness, but nothing more.

I really hope that shouts will not only inflict damage but also can be use to support our allies. But ANet don’t want to make us able to support our allies. The same way they don’t want to give us good movement skills and a single real survavibility skill (immunity, block) or stability.

We have only to hope in tomorrow’s revelations.

Silv.9207:

Shiki.7148:

Silv.9207:

In PvE we will fit the same role we actually have: unwanted.
1) Shouts that instead of give support deal damage? Why? We already have Wells that deal a very good damage.
2) Chill is the second worst condition in pve, second only to cripple. That’s why almost all the mobs that you find aren’t affected by chill, expecially for the dungeon boss.

Then why take whith you a class with a dps build that inflict high damage but still don’t give a single boon to the team?

Holy kittening jesus mother of god chill the kitten out, and wait for the PoI. Who says there will be ZERO group support? The wording was “more on hurting enemies than bolstering allies”. “More…than”, not “Instead of…” . And even debuffs that hurt foes can aid allies greatly. Eg. a debuff that increases damage done to hit enemies by x% per foe struck. So one that doesn’t clash with vulnerability and/or might. Maybe there will be a boon on shouts via a trait, like bleeding on the DH traps. Maybe the heal, the elite and 2 utility shouts will hurt enemies but 2 utilities have buffs on them. Nobody knows yet, so await the PoI and rage AFTER that. Seriously.

Do you really think that ANet will make a personal debuff to apply to our enemy to deal more damage to then and that all our allies can use that bonus to deal more damage? Do you speak about Signet of Vampirism, right? In fact everyone love it and if I go in dungeon everyone immediatly ask me to use it. Because we can only be good to inflict Vulnerability, nothing more to help our allies. It is possibile why one of our trait give vulnerability when we inflict chill. But a warrior can do the same without a specializzation. We can inflict Weakness, but nothing more.

I really hope that shouts will not only inflict damage but also can be use to support our allies. But ANet don’t want to make us able to support our allies. The same way they don’t want to give us good movement skills and a single real survavibility skill (immunity, block) or stability.

We have only to hope in tomorrow’s revelations.

As I said, await tomorrow. After that you can rage all you like. And as for the special debuff, why not? It’d be simply “cloning” vulnerability and renaming it so it doesn’t stack with each other (in my example). Sure, I doubt it too, cause Mesmers apparently got Alacrity as “compensation” for only getting two skills via Offhand, but hey, they made the effort to change all DS skills and make new special particle effects for them, too. It was simpyl and example to show that currently anything is still very much possible.

War Mourner.5168:

Also if dark path is getting replaced by an actual movement skill, that actually hurts us, since dark path isn’t effected by mobility conditions since its a blink, but the movement skill will be.

No maybe not. Dont forget that if your enemy dodges/avoids the dark path projectile you dont get the teleport but chances are this will not happen with death charge, meaning the gap closer always works.

Muchacho.2390:

War Mourner.5168:

Also if dark path is getting replaced by an actual movement skill, that actually hurts us, since dark path isn’t effected by mobility conditions since its a blink, but the movement skill will be.

No maybe not. Dont forget that if your enemy dodges/avoids the dark path projectile you dont get the teleport but chances are this will not happen with death charge, meaning the gap closer always works.

Yep. Pros/cons. I’d rather have a mobility skill that I know will activate, even without a target, than a slow-moving projectile that can be dodged/etc. and completely fail. That’s just my personal preference.

The ideal would have been to have both.

Dark path stands out especially when you’re rooted or chilled. It also (based off 90% of current movement skills) has a better reach.

The new skill doesn’t rely on a projectile hitting, which makes it more reliable and can also be better used for escape. It is however vulnerable to mobility impairment (which is a pretty significant issue, for example, getting entangled).

It also sacrifices dark path’s great AOE chill for AOE poison. This is especially odd considering the elite spec seems to have a rather large focus on chill…

will reserve judgement until after tomorrow, but so far what we know will not make us desired in parties/instanced content that exists in the CURRENT game. 25 vuln is nice, and high chill uptime will be nice vs. mob packs w/ non-glacial attack rates………but block and reflects and unique offensive ally buffs are needed for necro to be considered.

that said, my just for kittens&giggles solo/open world zealot MM just became more immortal and gained a bunch more damage options. so overall, i won’t be too upset if they leave us out of the instanced content meta again (which, of course, doesn’t take into account what the HoT pve meta will be).

War Mourner.5168:

The ideal would have been to have both.

Dark path stands out especially when you’re rooted or chilled. It also (based off 90% of current movement skills) has a better reach.

The new skill doesn’t rely on a projectile hitting, which makes it more reliable and can also be better used for escape. It is however vulnerable to mobility impairment (which is a pretty significant issue, for example, getting entangled).

It also sacrifices dark path’s great AOE chill for AOE poison. This is especially odd considering the elite spec seems to have a rather large focus on chill…

They specifically call out the fact that the Dark Path replacement doesn’t have chill. They mention another Shroud ability gets chill. The video also shows what looks to be an AoE or conal stun that appears to leave chill on the targets.

Come on now the Reaper is for role playing.

Seriously let’s save the feedback for after PoI, if money can’t make them fix core issues of necro/DS and prevent reaper growing on them then we get a good role playing character.

Tobias.8632:

The only possible way this could turn out to be good is if all future endgame content is designed more like SW farming, where cleaving crowds of mobs is more important then being able to cheese a boss with reflect or having to find ways of not dying to giant oneshot monsters like lupi.

I remember in the previous class changes livestream, despite the shown necro changes being glossed over and generally disappointing because it was clear the people showing the changes had never played necro and didn’t give a ****, one thing that stuck out to me was that necro would have a really good source of self might generation when attacking. All this needs is to be changed to be like that one warrior spec that constantly provides might to the whole group and necros would be great for dungeons since not even eles seem to be able to find time to spread might to their allies in a fight that lasts longer then 15 seconds.

O_o what kinda eles have you partied with that cant blast might midfight? were they staff fire campers? cause that’s the only thing i can think of.
I am pretty bad with my ele but i can still pull off 12 might in mid combat.

After maining this class since beta, I’ve learned to not get my hopes up. Let’s just wait and see what they show us tomorrow before we turn into a ravenous mob (Pitchforks included!).

As for what they’ve shown us, I like the idea of Vuln being our thing. However, It’s not enough for us to match up to the top tier classes, even with more damage (Unless It’s A LOT of damage, even above the thief, I HIGHLY doubt it). But at least we have cleave now… That’s one problem solved.

I’m more concerned with Reaper’s Shroud. I was really hoping they’d give us a NEW mechanic for the Reaper, cause Anet can’t balance DS worth a crap. Two health bars DO NOT equal the loss of mobility and good utilities.

Truefrost.6815:

I’m more concerned with Reaper’s Shroud. I was really hoping they’d give us a NEW mechanic for the Reaper, cause Anet can’t balance DS worth a crap. Two health bars DO NOT equal the loss of mobility and good utilities.

yeah…. i was really hoping for a different way to utilize life force, instead of just a melee DS.

like give us a new bar of 5 skills that replace DS and have them be spammable with lifeforce as a resource similar to theif initiative…..or having the 5 skills be toggle auras the drain your lifeforce. you could use one at a time or any number of them all at the same time in combination(all 5 auras at once will drain you lifeforce very fast.)

Eolirin.1830:

Dadnir.5038:

To point it bluntly :
You can easily see a DH with 55% damage increase against a foe from the very start of the fight.
You can hardly see the necro with more than 30% damage increased and thus when it’s foe is finally under 50% health pool.

That’s the very difference there is at the moment between the DH and the Necromancer. Which mean that the Reaper traitline need to give at least 25% damage modifier to the Reaper to make him on par damage wise with the DH.

And I’m just talking about damage, I’m not bringing utilities on the table.

That makes assumptions about the baseline damage numbers those percentages act off of that we can’t make yet, not just on Reaper skill dps, but also on how the condi changes impact baseline Necro dps.

Sorry but let’s face it. Reaper will be designed to be a slow hard hitter specialization. And the developper will do their balance job and make it so the base damage per second will be on par with other profession. Which mean that like now, each and every damage modifier will count.

That’s the very reason I’m saying that Reapers will have to gain at least 25% damage modifier from their Elite spec traitline. What’s sad is the apparent lack of party utilities (Blast finisher and usefull combo field). Otherwise, I think they could force themselve to add a trait that increase party ferocity in this traitline since it could fit it, but that’s all…