Guild Wars 2

I think this trait is garbage.

“You have a 33% chance to gain 1% life force on critical hits.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper's_Precision

If you go rabid, you get ~35-50% crit chance.

So 50% crit chance, with 33% chance of a crit getting 1%.

So 0.5 * 0.33 = 0.165 so 16.5% chance to get 1%.

All of our attacks are horribly slow. So the rate of life force you could get is really bad.

Now the devs looked at this and saw that thers a potential to get tons of life force if you use dagger right? True, if this got buffed power necros would get buffed a bit. But it requires dropping 10 points into a condi line. And the thing with life force is its not always the amount of life force, but rather what kills us is that we cant enter death shroud fast enough. 10s is a long time to not be in death shroud, 7s if traited. But even still death shroud damage output is low unless you’re power. But the casting is so slow you can outrange or run around a pillar, and if the two big CD’s (shackles, transfer) are off cd then you lose a lot of pressure.

Power necros also usually got to get real close, either 130 or 600 range to do damage so you’re eating a lot.

And getting enough life force to get back into shroud in that 7-10s is not easy.

A condi necro loses tons of pressure going into shroud, outside of their shackles.

So I’ll look at amulets.

Rabid = this trait is garbage, going into shroud loses tons of pressure
Carrion = you have no crit you cant use this trait very well
Shaman = no crit
Rampager = lack of power and lack of condi damage makes it very lackluster, lack of defense as well (i’ve tried many times)
Berserker = this will be a buff for power necros if you go into the condi line
Knights = buff

This trait should get buffed as the devs were saying “more life force generation!” as they’re going to nerf the damage of terror and/or dhuunfire.

Suggestions are up to 66% of a crit so It’ll sit around 33% chance to get 1% life force if you have 50% crit chance. Or to just go 100% chance of 1% life force on crit. But that might be a bit too much, but you won’t know unless you test it, either internally or public test server or something.

I complained about this trait months ago, is anyone taking it?

Signet of Undeath also gains way too slow I think. Though in sPVP its taken primarily for the rez, it’s passive should still be competitive on its own vs other signets and I don’t feel it is.

The devs are just so scared of any of our life force generating skills to get out of hand that they made them all extremely weak outside spectral builds. Almost to the point they were not worth having or having made them in the first place. If they are too scared to make LF regen fast and can’t get a handle on it, then it should not have been our class mechanic.

Only now in the most recent State of the Game are they seeming to realize that this was the avenue all along to buff us to make us toward what the supposed class philosophy was. And not to give us more offense to build a ‘kill or be killed’ style character.

But we’ll see if its all talk, and we just get another 1% more increase on our main weapon skill generators.

I’ve found it functional in a 100%-crit DS build in PvE. Makes sustain in DS decently viable.

Beyond that, I can’t see the trait being worth a whole lot.

Well, with the new 100% crit chance death shroud builds, I can see this trait finally getting use as it will indeed prolong your death shroud significantly (especially with Unyielding Blast).

That said, outside of those, I only throw it on in WvW as I’m running between battles to fill up on life force faster.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, with the new 100% crit chance death shroud builds, I can see this trait finally getting use as it will indeed prolong your death shroud significantly (especially with Unyielding Blast).

That said, outside of those, I only throw it on in WvW as I’m running between battles to fill up on life force faster.

You really don’t even need it in WvW. Killing ambients with Staff 1 as you walk by does the job quite nicely on it’s own.

Phenn.5167:

I’ve found it functional in a 100%-crit DS build in PvE. Makes sustain in DS decently viable.

Beyond that, I can’t see the trait being worth a whole lot.

But why would you be in the condi line for a DS build? All that condi damage is wasted and you get a bigger dps increase going into the power line to get the Close to Death 20% if <50%.

Ie, 30 0 10 0 30.

And even still with 100% crit chance, getting a 33% chance to get 1%? You deplete faster than you shoot. Its still a trash trait and not worth even going 10 trait points into, you’d rather just go for more damage.

Berullos.6928:

Phenn.5167:

I’ve found it functional in a 100%-crit DS build in PvE. Makes sustain in DS decently viable.

Beyond that, I can’t see the trait being worth a whole lot.

But why would you be in the condi line for a DS build? All that condi damage is wasted and you get a bigger dps increase going into the power line to get the Close to Death 20% if <50%.

Ie, 30 0 10 0 30.

And even still with 100% crit chance, getting a 33% chance to get 1%? You deplete faster than you shoot. Its still a trash trait and not worth even going 10 trait points into, you’d rather just go for more damage.

As should be abundantly clear, you can go 30 in spite, 30 in soul reaping, and 10 in curses to pick up this trait. 100 condition damage is far from build defining, and the 100 precision can still be useful if your goal is 50% crit chance before Deathly Perception.

I’m not sure I’d claim this trait to be good, but comparing it to the other minors in curses for a DS build, only Enfeebling Shroud springs to mind as an actual contender. And maybe you just want that 100 precision over toughness / boon duration. Besides, it’s not like that 100 condition damage is utterly wasted. Barbed precision will mean that most of your crits will deal a nice little packet of extra damage.

With 100% crit it’s still pretty sketchy. If 1% DS is worth .6% of your hp pool, that means it’s healing .2% of your hp pool every hit. If your hp pool is 20k, it’s ‘healing’ you for 40hp each attack. Less of a lifeswing than vampiric precision, so I guess if you think vampiric precision is too OP (without bloodthirst), you could use this instead.

If you don’t have 100% crit, multiply that 40 hp by your crit rate, i.e 58% crit = 40 * 0.58 = 23 ‘healing’ per attack.

Mammoth.1975:

2% of your hp pool every hit. If your hp pool is 20k, it’s ‘healing’ you for 40hp each attack.

*400 hp

0.2, not 2.0, I should have put the zero in sorry, those decimals are hard to see.

If someone with 20k health needed to take 120k damage to be knocked from 100 LF out of DS, it would be 400.

Mammoth.1975:

With 100% crit it’s still pretty sketchy. If 1% DS is worth .6% of your hp pool, that means it’s healing .2% of your hp pool every hit. If your hp pool is 20k, it’s ‘healing’ you for 40hp each attack. Less of a lifeswing than vampiric precision, so I guess if you think vampiric precision is too OP (without bloodthirst), you could use this instead.

If you don’t have 100% crit, multiply that 40 hp by your crit rate, i.e 58% crit = 40 * 0.58 = 23 ‘healing’ per attack.

For this scenario don’t think of it as more EHP.

Think of it like this: 1/3 of your crit Life Blasts will net you one extra Life Blast for free.

The trait is there to let you stay in DS longer and Life Blast stuff more. It assumes you aren’t getting hit.

If you’re not getting hit, there’s no dps loss when your deathshroud naturally drops and you have to axe2 anyway, so it actually kind of does nothing in that circumstance. Also, a full life force bar doesn’t get you 100 lifeblasts, it’s more like 25 or less, so it’s actually every twelfth crit lifeblast gets you one free lifeblast.

Ye PinCushion ur numbers are abit wrong, Mammoth beat me to the maths but LB crits do not grant 1 free LB.

If you want to see a substantial gain from this trait it would be through Wells or Life Transfer.

However, it’s obvious that this trait seems to help Power builds more than Condition builds, so looking at this trait compared to the other Adept traits on the Curses tree, it is kind of viable along with targeted wells and weakening shroud, but then those 2 traits may not fit into what you’re doing (pvp/e/wvw), so you take RP, although i will admit it being a tad lackluster.

Anet always feared the possibility of gaining lifeforce while in DS, presumably out of fear that a DS necro would rarely have to expose his actual, large, HP pool. However as shown by the latest patch, which allows spectral walk/armor to continue when entering DS, their restraint went too far.
Such is the case for Reaper’s Precision, too. 33% chance to gain 1% on crit is just an extremely poor deal. 1% LF on crit would be a much more sensible choice. I doubt it’d be OP, but if it was, you could give it for example an internal cooldown of 1 second, or limit of amount of times it can tick per second (both limiting the amount you can generate through AoE crits).

Mammoth.1975:

If you’re not getting hit, there’s no dps loss when your deathshroud naturally drops and you have to axe2 anyway, so it actually kind of does nothing in that circumstance. Also, a full life force bar doesn’t get you 100 lifeblasts, it’s more like 25 or less, so it’s actually every twelfth crit lifeblast gets you one free lifeblast.

whats the actual cast time of life blast? i read somewhere it’s 1.5secs (with aftercast).
if thats the case, you could fire like 17 life blasts with a full DS and no additional traits/incoming damage.

@doc orderly: i guess life transfer would be the only problematic skill, combined with deathly perception, with 9 hits per enemy.

It works nice for DS builds since they use axe as a primary weapon. Base axe attack hits two times, Claws hit 8 times and Feast us an AoE. I feel that RP is enough since it doesn’t have GCD so you have chance to get LF with every of these hits

Chesire.9043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Well, with the new 100% crit chance death shroud builds, I can see this trait finally getting use as it will indeed prolong your death shroud significantly (especially with Unyielding Blast).

That said, outside of those, I only throw it on in WvW as I’m running between battles to fill up on life force faster.

You really don’t even need it in WvW. Killing ambients with Staff 1 as you walk by does the job quite nicely on it’s own.

Yeah, but sometimes you’re not in an ambient-rich area (like just North of Hills) and you want to fill your life force. Turning this on and attacking with staff or dagger works well to quickly build up to full. Not that this trait contributes a whole lot, but it does help.

Rym.1469:

It works nice for DS builds since they use axe as a primary weapon. Base axe attack hits two times, Claws hit 8 times and Feast us an AoE. I feel that RP is enough since it doesn’t have GCD so you have chance to get LF with every of these hits

Please note the following response is based on purely using weapons with no DS trait

Ye this we all know, but the chance to get that 1 tiny % of LF with every of these hits is 33% of whatever your crit rate is, for a Powermancer or Conditionmancer you need to have all precision to be around 50% crit chance.

This is where 16.5% comes from, imagine if you built for some survivability, you would be looking at under 10% chance. In which case it just doesn’t hold any weight in value compared to other traits you may as well take instead.

Works quite well in a zerker 30/10/0/0/30 setup with life transfer and wells, but its mostly a useless trait, just like the 25% slower degen and 20% bleed duration for its slot.

I did some tests on golems, these were the results for people interested.

I used Life Transfer on 5 targets (49% Crit) just as my Life Force depleted and i gained:

Without Reapers Precision – 22% Life Force
With Reapers Precision – 32%/29%/30% – Average 30.3%

8.3% Extra Life Force from 5 targets @ 49% Crit.

Add 2 wells and you’d be looking at up to 15% Extra Life Force from 5 targets x5 pulses

Add DS 50% crit trait and you get double that.

Andele.1306:

Works quite well in a zerker 30/10/0/0/30 setup with life transfer and wells, but its mostly a useless trait, just like the 25% slower degen and 20% bleed duration for its slot.

Bleed duration isnt that bad. The slower regen is useless though.

And for all the people that go 10 in curses for zerkers, personally I can’t give up the staff. Only 1200 range weapon we got, its good in PvE, and PvP. I love it too much.

Personally I wish they’d just trakitten. Necrosis need more lf naturally, we don’t need it in our traits or utilities. Tired of being pinned down to specific things. Weapons just need to gain lf better.