Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Manijin.3428

Manijin.3428

With the newest line of Elite Specializations, it seems that ANet has really zero’d in on the trend of having each line of a specialization be focused around a specific theme, and for the most part they have created powerful abilities that are thematic and fun.

But reaper still has its place as a condition specialization where it isn’t supposed to be, and fixing that, in theory, should be fairly feasible. Currently, the reaper lines are centered around three ideas:

The top line (Augury of Death, Soul Eater, Blighter’s Boon) is based around shouts and self sustain, the middle line (Chilling Nova, Chilling Victory, Deathly Chill) is based around the Chill condition, and dealing damage with it, and the bottom line (Relentless Pursuit, Decimate Defenses, Reaper’s Onslaught) is about… something. I’m going to guess its chasing foes down and hitting them harder.

So, here’s my suggestion: Purify the trait lines, making them very distinct in their function, and remove all hints of condition damage from the reaper itself while still providing a unique playstyle for the necro.

Top Line: Probably the best line of the bunch. It does the “self sustain” thing well, but doesn’t apply enough boons for it to be worth it. The change? Roll the Chilling Victory trait into the grandmaster trait, Blighter’s Boon. Now it’s self-sufficient, still relies on the Greatsword and Shouts as part of its sustain, and most importantly, keeps the central theme of chill-matters while putting the support element of it in the support line.

Middle Line: This line works… but not in a way that is thematic with the specialization. Power isn’t rewarded enough, and might generation is nice, but mostly unnecessary, particularly in PvE. To aid in this regard, we change a few things: 1) Chilling Nova’s internal cooldown gets reduced. As-is the trait is nice, but doesn’t do much. By reducing the cooldown to 4 or 5 seconds, it procs more consistently, but not often enough to maintain permanent chill on its own. 2) Chilling Victory is changed. It now uses the effect of Decimate Defenses, which has natural synergy with Chilling Nova’s critical-based effect. 3) The biggest change here is the change to Deathly Chill. Conditions may be easier to balance around, but Reaper shouldn’t be a condition specialization. Instead, we change the effect of Deathly Chill to work in a way that is similar to pulmonary impact on the daredevil: Whenever you chill an opponent, that opponent gains a stack of Deathly Chill. After X period of time (say, 1 second or so), the Deathly Chill deals direct damage. Importantly, however, this damage CAN critically hit (and consequently, should likely be relatively low at its base). This trait could also grant increased Ferocity against chilled foes, and take that portion of Reaper’s Onslaught for itself. This IS the damage trait, after all.

Bottom Line: The bottom traitline synergizes around catching your target, removing movement impairment, increased movement abilities, and resisting CC. To that end, we do the following: 1) We have a new major master trait: Unrelenting Reaper. This trait has two effects. First, it pulses stability and swiftness to the necromancer while in Reaper’s shroud. Secondly, it causes the reaper’s Death’s Charge and Soul Spiral to Cripple and Chill foes it strikes. 2) Reaper’s Onslaught is a nice trait, but its damage dealing functionality makes little sense. We remove the ferocity, put with the actual crit-oriented DPS line, and add the following functionality: Striking a Crippled or Chilled foe reduces the cooldown of reaper abilities. It would likely be a small reduction, with a short internal cooldown to prevent abuse (say, 1-2 seconds), but would do what the line really wants to do, which is camp reaper’s shroud and be unstoppable via movement.

Sure, it isn’t perfect, but I think it is much more thematic, capitalizes on different uses in different game modes, and overall makes the elite spec more cohesive. I’m sure some things would need to be tweaked, but overall I think it could work.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

Honestly, I think you are wrong, reaper is a melee spec not a power or a condi spec. This is a spec that was designed to take a grab at your foe and then force it to stick to you while you try to slaughter it. As for Scourge, it’s not a condition spec, it’s an area denial spec.

It’s to short sighted to put these spec into the a power folder or a condi folder. These spec are designed around a gameplay not a specific kind of damage. If reaper had been a power spec, we might have had something like the wever have, some direct damage increase on adept, master and grandmaster trait position.

The designs are the following :

However, there is none, instead reaper focus on chill and try hard to stay close to it’s foes, taking advantage of the tools that have been given to him : a greatsword, shouts and a melee shroud. The reaper is slow and cold murderer that take you into it’s chilling embrace to deliver the death blow.

Similarly, the scourge focus on the ability to controle conditions and boons in the battlefield : the sand shard, the punishment skills and the range torch skills. The scourge controle areas where they decide who will stand strong and who will wither.

No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Crinn.7864

Crinn.7864

I really hope they don’t kill Deathly Chill as a condi applying trait. First off I do not believe in pigeonholing specs into specific types, and this is especially true for elite specs.

Secondly Deathly Chill as a condi trait will becoming very interesting in PoF with the new Griever’s stat set. (main of Power and Condi, with minors in precision and ferocity) such a stat allocation allows for the mixing of condi and power weapons and opens up interesting build options for PvP such as a scepter/GS.

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Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Manijin.3428

Manijin.3428

Honestly, I think you are wrong, reaper is a melee spec not a power or a condi spec. This is a spec that was designed to take a grab at your foe and then force it to stick to you while you try to slaughter it. As for Scourge, it’s not a condition spec, it’s an area denial spec.

It’s to short sighted to put these spec into the a power folder or a condi folder. These spec are designed around a gameplay not a specific kind of damage. If reaper had been a power spec, we might have had something like the wever have, some direct damage increase on adept, master and grandmaster trait position.

The designs are the following :

However, there is none, instead reaper focus on chill and try hard to stay close to it’s foes, taking advantage of the tools that have been given to him : a greatsword, shouts and a melee shroud. The reaper is slow and cold murderer that take you into it’s chilling embrace to deliver the death blow.

Similarly, the scourge focus on the ability to controle conditions and boons in the battlefield : the sand shard, the punishment skills and the range torch skills. The scourge controle areas where they decide who will stand strong and who will wither.

Necromancer has enough tools in the base class to fill the condition-inflicting role, and the proposed changes still allow a character to make use of the indomitable, melee bruiser abilities. Add to that the natural synergy between condition-inflicting shroud traits and the reaper, and you still have the ability to be focused on condition damage if you choose to.

What the changes I suggested do is allow a power-based reaper to do power-based things. The greatsword having no damaging conditions on it should be evidence that, on some practical level, the reaper ought to have power-oriented traits, and even if the reaper lost the chill->bleed trait, it would still work with the other trait lines by using the cleaving reaper’s shroud abilities to inflict lots of conditions.

I’m talking about giving the elite spec a purity of purpose to make it distinct, rather than forcing it to have lackluster power. Looking at it as a whole, you could put classify the reaper as a self-sustaining, hard-hitting, unrelenting juggernaut, and all I’m advocating for is the ability for it to do those things, and it shouldn’t need condition damage, the base necromancer’s strongest trait, to do it.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

Well, but that’s the issue, you want a hard hitting spec that the reaper is not. The reaper have hard hitting tools, but it’s focus is on chill not on power damage. I personnally don’t think it’s healthy for the profession to have elite spec that focus on just one kind of damage. Hybrid damage kind of elite spec are what’s needed to be able to truly open a large number builds.

The area that need fix when it come to power/direct damages is the core necromancer not the reaper. The reaper is bad at doing power damage for one and only one reason : the core necromancer suck at supporting him to do these damages. And all power e-spec will suffer the same issue whatever is done.

If you look at other profession and especially profession that are good at dealing power damage, they all have a wide number of damage increase trait scatter along all teir traitlines while the necromancer’s traits are few and often brided. Even the siphon traits that are obviously considered damage boost trait by the dev only improve marginally the necromancer’s power damage.

And no! The reaper is not the self sustaining hard hitting juggernaut, the reaper is the unrelenting ruthless cold hand of death. The key word on the reaper have always been the cold which is slow, hard to get rid off and cripple it’s foes by chilling them. That is the “purity of purpose” of the reaper, this monster that chill your heart, cuting off your legs in your fear of it’s deadly promise.

All roots of the issues that the necromancer encounter come from their core traitline which are not good enough to support the elite traitlines in support and power damage.

No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Manijin.3428

Manijin.3428

So you think that Scourge will have the tools to be viable as a power spec within the traits themselves?

I’m not sure I see that, given the obvious pull towards stacking condition damage built into the traits themselves.

And nothing I’ve said prevents the reaper from specializing for conditions any less than the scourge can specialize towards power. In fact, if you look at my proposed modifications, the reaper will probably be applying chill and cripple MORE frequently than it already does, assuming you spec for it. I just think it’s a great way to give the reaper a power option without forcing a redesign of the rest of necromancer.

Again, it still does chill and cripple, and tons of it. I just advocated for options granting stability (very useful in melee) and the option of using Power instead of feeling forced into condition damage.

What it does, despite being power-centric, is give the reaver MORE options, not less, by making the purpose of the reaper, from a build perspective, clear, while still allowing for creativity on the part of the player.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Flumek.9043

Flumek.9043

Dadnir said it best

Reaper = melee
Scourge = area denial

Here are some solutions you probably want
-Make power reaper better , ex. the onsluaght GM trait would get its 5s bonus everytime the CHARGE HITS. so you could really keep charging chasing but still melee and no chill trait
-Make scourge have less condi burst but more support and survival
THeres been decent power build promise with scourge, just conid had oneshot bomb, the main drawback is our lackluster power weapons

PvP guild [YUM] -apply- (EU) http://muffinspvp.shivtr.com/

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Brujeria.7536

Brujeria.7536

I tried the same thing a few days ago. You are right that the traitlines are not clear, some seem rather similar as well. And reaper isn’t really strong for the most part, currently its that chillfield onetrick for dps, it could be so much more. I’ll just copy what my idea for a traitline rework are here:

For me, the 3 themes im aiming for are:

  • Damage – Being a slow and deadly killer machine with good recovery
  • Chill – Being a master of debilitating conditions to deny escape and heavily hinder your enemies.
  • Tank – Being an unstoppable and sturdy danger to enemies.

Damage

  • Adept: Augury of Death – Reduce the cooldowns of your shouts. Your critical hits heal you for x% of the damage done. This heal is increased by y% for each vulnerability stack.
  • Master: Decimate Defenses: Striking a foe with vulnerability increases your critical hit chance. Applying vulnerability steals health – power scaling.
    * Grandmaster: Reapers Onslaught: Increases your crit damage by x%. Increases your attackspeed by y% when wielding a Greatsword or while you are in reaper shroud. Hitting an enemy below 33% health with Executioners Scythe is a guaranteed crit and deals double damage. If Gravedigger hits an enemy that is downed execute him.

Chill:

  • Adept: Chilling Nova: Now roots targets hit by this skill if they are already chilled.
  • Master: Chilling an enemy also causes x seconds of slow and weakness (icd)
  • Grandmaster: Bitter Chill: Chilled enemies deal 15% reduced damage. Chilled enemies are knocked down and take power damage (scaling) when they dodge. [Possibly damage for removing chill as well]

Tank

  • Adept: Deathly Advance: Reduces Shroud cooldown by 30%. Death’s Charge now casts 33% faster and has 3 charges
  • Master: Reapers Bullwark: Hitting a chilled foe generates 1% lifeforce. Overcapped Lifeforce is gained as a barrier. Lifeforce lost by natural decay in shroud is gained as barrier when you leave shroud.
  • Grandmaster: Unstoppable Abomination: Increases your thougness by x. Reduces incoming stuns and dazes by 50%. Incoming movement impairing conditions are converted to boons: Cripple = Swiftness, Root = Superspeed, Chill = Quickness, Slow =Alacrity (possibly icd to balance)

Some ideas might be too strong, but i guess you get the point what themes these traitlines and reaper in general should be about.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: ZeftheWicked.3076

ZeftheWicked.3076

Agreed with Dadnir. Making a spec condi/power etc as it’s primary design is bad. A spec should be focused around a given playstyle, with traits giving multiple ways to do so.

In that regard reaper is hands down best elite spec in HoT. It’s not about type of damage, but about being a melee frontliner that cleaves, chills and gets stronger the more numerous the enemy is.

Being able to do it as power reaper, condi reaper, tank reaper etc is proof of excellent design. Which still could use some love for power numbers, but not at expense of killing condi side of it.

Another good spec that follows this healthy design is the renegade for Revenants. As much as they kitten about their new legend skills, a good look at traits shows no particular damage type is enforced. Both condi and power builds benefit from renegade which is about strong dps and offensive support for allies at expense of his defenses (certainly not herald level).

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Substatic.6958

Substatic.6958

Agreed with Dadnir. Making a spec condi/power etc as it’s primary design is bad. A spec should be focused around a given playstyle, with traits giving multiple ways to do so.

In that regard reaper is hands down best elite spec in HoT. It’s not about type of damage, but about being a melee frontliner that cleaves, chills and gets stronger the more numerous the enemy is.

Now just if the dps wasn’t trash and not seen as meme class in PVE.

Regarding Reaper & Design Philosophy

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Posted by: Dadnir.5038

Dadnir.5038

So you think that Scourge will have the tools to be viable as a power spec within the traits themselves?

Sure I do!

The scourge can take all, absolutely all, the dps tools of the core necromancer and put it’s shroud skills direct damage on top of this tools without beinkittened in any manner. It’s huge! It already mean that you will have a higher direct dps as a scourge than you’d have as a core necromancer and thus with ease.

Desert shroud if you are properly traited and supported by alacrity have a bit less than 70% uptime of it’s damaging component and it’s just free damages, without any cast time needed.

As it stand, I’m pretty sure that a power Scourge already outdps a power reaper on large health pool boss. It’s probably even deadlier than a reaper with it’s greatsword against a player.

If anet was willing to change the focus skill#4 into something more fiting for dps in group content, a D/F power Scourge could probably contend on a dps spot and be more legit than a power reaper.

I can’t even believe that someone didn’t see something as obvious as those almost free damage that this desert shroud give without any afterthought. Anet would probably hate it that I point it, but that’s pure power creep for a power necromancer.

Now just if the dps wasn’t trash and not seen as meme class in PVE.

Sadly that’s an issue that come from the core profession. Power reaper would have been good if it wasn’t for the fact that the core profession is a bad choice when it come to power damage. It’s probably been made like this because the necromancer have an access to minions and they are an extra source of dps (a lot like what happen to the ranger) but these minions, having their own stats, are not fit to help us in reaching wat would be considered a good spot when it come to power damage.

No core profession should be balanced around an optional elite specialization.

(edited by Dadnir.5038)