Guild Wars 2

I’m back in sPvP after 5 months of pause from the game and after some weeks of play, I found my Reaper weaker than ever.
I tried different builds and learn to play in that new meta. I learn that now the necro is killable in 6-10 seconds by a revenant or a guardian, that it’s only role is corrupt boons (losing all the dps aspect), that it’s damage is lower than ever and harder to inflict, that if you’ve not an engi to ress you every 10 seconds you’re at 75% of tine a free kill for the enemy team and now they don’t even need a Focus to kill you, they just need a skilled revenant, guardian or even warrior to kill you easy with insane direct and condi damage and survavibility.

ANet will never make the necromancer able to defend himself because we have a “second hp bar” and they think that is enough to make us able to survive in PvP. The best class to survive actually is the full block guardian, that have only 17k of HP but a insane amount of block, immunity, blind and selfheals that make him unkillable.

The only way to restore a little the strength of the reaper is to restore it’s Chill damage. ANet already reduced the Chill spam by a large amount, step by step, if they restore the chill damage we’ll turn back with a decent dps.
The actual necromancer have not survavibility and no good damage.
The only way for the necro to inflict a good amount of damage is to make the RS5+RS4 combo, that inflict a little more damage than the old Chill (1,3k of damage/sec) but is the easiest combo to evade in all the game. Out of that, is really weak, expecially why is forced to use the scepter and the staff, the two worst weapons to inflict damage of all the game. A revenant can steal half of my hp with a single staff skill 5 while CC me for a mile and I’m forced to use a combo that grant me weak damage, is the easier thing to evade/dodge ever and at 99% of times the enemy make you hit him only with 1/3 or 1/2 of the hits, making you lose damage and time.

Also corrupt boons don’t increase our damage or survavibility. The only thing that increase our survavibility is to corrupt stability, that is a hard thing to do with all the boons that some classes can spam, and still make the enemy flee for 1 second, then he’s back again to kill us. Also, of all the boons you can corrupt, there’s only 2 that grant you damage conditions: Regenenration and Vigor. Burn is inflicted by corrupt Aegis, but how many times do you corrupt a block boon that last more or less a moment in a fight? Then regen grant you a single stack of poison and vigor 3 of bleed. But also, how many classes spam vigor, and how often, to make corrupt damage a real way to increase your damage?

The reasons why the reaper was feared in sPvP was it’s boon corruption and it’s dps. The people feared to fight me, still while I was not the best class to 1vs1.
Now the reaper is so weak in damage (and so easy to avoid), with a general absurd amount of dps in all the other classes, that any enemy that see me abandon his previous target and run to me, knowing that at 75% of time I’m a free kill.

If ANet don’t want to grant us a survavibility skill set, at last let us inflict a good amount of damage.
Chill damage is not the definitive way to make the Reaper good in this meta but at last will increase damage, making us able to fight someone.

What do you think?

Thing you seem to forget is that: Necro is not a class that should be “alone” in the team. Your team has to back you up to be effective.
Necro – especially Reaper – is still in a “decent” spot. It does good dmg, easily stacks up conditions (I mean #2 scepter and #3 + just switching into RS already stacks like 6 bleeds, 4-5 torm + cripple + weakness) and removes boons as easily with his auto-attacks on scepter. Necro is a teamplayer, never forget that.
The problem is that at the moment so many people run condition warrior which is simply overpowered atm and a pretty hard counter vs necros. They have loads of stuns, burns, conditions, blinds and CC and are almost all the time immune to conditions because of resistance or berserker-stance.
It’s not that Necro is not in a good spot – some other classes simply deserve a slight nerf to their accessability to condi-denying functions (wink wink condi-warr)

Greetz

I would still like power necro to be viable. Having only condi/corruption necro be viable…

I wonder over how such a small “build tolerance box” as scepter / corruption defines class balance.

Balance, please.

Revs should never kill a necro 1v1.

I do miss chill damage, I was able to use an axe instead of scepter in a condi build and still kill people faster than my scepter now. Scepter is such a blah weapon.

Hesacon.8735:

Revs should never kill a CONDI necro 1v1.

corrected it.

Ravezaar.4951:

Hesacon.8735:

Revs should never kill a CONDI necro 1v1.

corrected it.

them feelerinos when glint heal inside your wells

Ravezaar.4951:

Hesacon.8735:

Revs should never kill a CONDI necro 1v1.

corrected it.

I’ve never played power necro in spvp (because I don’t think any of the amulets would allow them to… work), but I play condi in spvp and power in wvw. In either case, revs get slaughtered by necros.

I love when u start a Ghastly Claws to finish off a low Rev and he pops his Heal mid-channel & outcome is health fully restored. A Condi Nec should twist any rev inside out, for Power thats just not the case.

OP: agree on your points concerning the state of the profession. I’d say it is now the least viable one – eles can at least provide a lot of support if they spec for it.

The current chill trait on reaper in itself is VERY week for its slot – I’d say it’s at best as good as the minor in spite that gives vulnerability on chill. The obvious thing to improve it would be make it apply a condition with higher dps, but lower duration. For all the boon corruptions that condi necros have right now, they don’t really work as a condi class since they do very little actualy condition damage. For instance a condi mesmer will do more dps than a condi necro by just popping 2-3 clones and autoattacking with staff .

What I think should definitely happen either way is that they rework the corruption tables. The current corruption tables are quite obviously outdated and should have been changed when they made burning and poison stack. For insance , you can only inflict 1 (!) stack of burning for 1 (!) second from corruptions – and this only (!) if you corrupt aegis. NOTHING gets corrupted into torment. I also think that the result of corrupting boons should at least in some way (maybe not for all, but at least for some boons) scale with the number of stacks / duration of what you corrupt if necros are to work as a ‘boon hate’ profession. It would be fine that there is little direct condi damage if boon corruptions provided a viable source of dps.

Either make chill deal damage again or let the chill trait cause burning. Name it “frostburn” or something.

Narrenwinter.2637:

Either make chill deal damage again or let the chill trait cause burning. Name it “frostburn” or something.

While that would be natural, I think it likely won’t happen bacause of immidiate associations with Dhuumfire that the devs will have.

The funny thing is, since the game came out necros were only ever strong for quite brief periods of time – the dhuumfire and the chill damage eras both actually did not last long. Every other profession had far longer periods of time where they were top tier and some (guardians for instance) AT NO POINT EVER left the meta, at least not that I can remember. The devs appear to have a rather skewed perception of the necromancer class in general.

Narrenwinter.2637:

Either make chill deal damage again or let the chill trait cause burning. Name it “frostburn” or something.

“FROSTBOURN!” I like that idea more than bleeding because of a cold snape.

While having chill do damage may work in pvp, it doesn’t in the rest of the game, because of how stack sources of chill from multiple sources works (duration not intensity). We might as well not even have damage on chill because someone else’s chill will override ours.

Please keep that in mind. The current trait is better for most of the game because at least its damage actually gets applied. If you want to improve on it, go for it, but going back to what it was will screw over alot of us.

Ravezaar.4951:

Hesacon.8735:

Revs should never kill a CONDI necro 1v1.

corrected it.

This is actually a misconception. At high level, a rev can make very easy work of a Necro in certain situations.

Zero Solstice.9754:

This is actually a misconception. At high level, a rev can make very easy work of a Necro in certain situations.

+1, I welcome anybody to go 1v1 on a point vs Toker. A good power rev can work a necro without lifeforce before you can blink. You have a much better chance if you have lifeforce. You have to dodge Surge of the Mists, or it’s usually gg if it’s a good rev.

gavyne.6847:

+1, I welcome anybody to go 1v1 on a point vs Toker. A good power rev can work a necro without lifeforce before you can blink..

You shouldn’t be going 1v1 with no life force to begin with tho.

Deathly chill in it’s original form was the only thing making staff viable as actual condi weapon. poison, chill (with damage), bit of bleeding and fear (with terror + chill damages) were a reason no not attach a suction cap to your staff and sell it off as toilet plunger. Now….anyone having pipe issues?

Aktium.9506:

gavyne.6847:

+1, I welcome anybody to go 1v1 on a point vs Toker. A good power rev can work a necro without lifeforce before you can blink..

You shouldn’t be going 1v1 with no life force to begin with tho.

To be honest often you don’t have a choice, as a good rev would always hunt down a necro as target #1 in any solo or team fights. They have perm swiftness, and with Phase Traversal, you don’t get to choose that engagement.

gavyne.6847:

Aktium.9506:

gavyne.6847:

+1, I welcome anybody to go 1v1 on a point vs Toker. A good power rev can work a necro without lifeforce before you can blink..

You shouldn’t be going 1v1 with no life force to begin with tho.

To be honest often you don’t have a choice, as a good rev would always hunt down a necro as target #1 in any solo or team fights. They have perm swiftness, and with Phase Traversal, you don’t get to choose that engagement.

Tru, but getting mowed down in a teamfight because you had no life force is a whole different thing than picking a fight with a rev 1v1 with no life force.

In the former it’s just the way of things, you’ll get downed, there’s no real way around it and mostly likely you’ll get picked up again if there’s a druid or engi nearby. And then you’ll actually have some life force. In the latter it’s the necro being a dumbkitten and feeding instead of just going somewhere where he can be of use.

Not to continue offtopic but just saying, the quote I responded to was “Revs should never kill a CONDI necro 1v1.”

gavyne.6847:

Zero Solstice.9754:

This is actually a misconception. At high level, a rev can make very easy work of a Necro in certain situations.

+1, I welcome anybody to go 1v1 on a point vs Toker. A good power rev can work a necro without lifeforce before you can blink. You have a much better chance if you have lifeforce. You have to dodge Surge of the Mists, or it’s usually gg if it’s a good rev.

Toker is better then 99% of the players that play this game even a the pro-level.

The problem of Chill is big. Yes, the Chill damage transformed into Bleed made good things for PvE, or eventually wvsw, but in PvP there’s need for some better conditions.

Burning will be too strong. With RS5+RS4 we’ll be able to stack 12 burn in the enemy in 1 second, inflicting 4k/sec. That will be too much.

But Torment can be an appropriate option. We still inflict Torment with the scepter, then it fit our design. And inflict a ChillingTorment woul be great!

ZOMG YES! I WOULD TAKE TORMENT ANY DAY!

Silv.9207:

The problem of Chill is big. Yes, the Chill damage transformed into Bleed made good things for PvE, or eventually wvsw, but in PvP there’s need for some better conditions.

Burning will be too strong. With RS5+RS4 we’ll be able to stack 12 burn in the enemy in 1 second, inflicting 4k/sec. That will be too much.

But Torment can be an appropriate option. We still inflict Torment with the scepter, then it fit our design. And inflict a ChillingTorment woul be great!

Chill bleed is literally the worst thing ever in WvW. Condi Reaper can barely even tickle some of the small scale meta builds. Don’t lump it in with PvE.

During the time I was gone they Nerfed Chill duration and took away its condi dmg and at the same time they gave Confusion a dmg-tick… makes sense Anet.

Maybe thats why basicly there is a Condi Mes in every match and a Condi Mes around every corner in WvW. Not gonna tell u howto do u job but a clear cut indication of the number of Condi Mesmer vs Chill Necs would give u a clue…

What makes a Mesmer special is insanely strong and at same time what u said what makes a Reaper special has bin nerfed both in dmg & duration.

and honestly u think u balanced this well ?

The problem is that in the procious meta there was a Large amount of conditions all around the game. Now the classes that use conditions are lesser than power builds.
Why was the necro7reaper strong?
Few reasons and no one on it’s own stregth.

-Corrupt boons: the ele meta was so much a pain that ANet make necros the elekiller class. Able to destroy it’s boon strategy into a bunker meta, they lose all they’re damage and defence by corrupting might and protection+regeneration. Also the low damage of the necro was good into a bunker meta, why was enough to kill an elementalist before he was able to kill him, expecially why the necro was able to send back all the Burn he stacked on the necro. But now the meta is fast, there’s not enough time to stack our few conditions stacks to reach a good damage (unless RS5+4 combo, really easy to evade) and there’s not so much of boons for different classes to be Bunker, still with zerk amulets. And there’s also a insane amount of boon smap abilities and condi clean skills in this game, making our job harder.
Basicly, our boon corruption is good only to corrupt Stability.

- Send back conditions: That was our main strength. Into a condi meta we was able to send back almost all the enemy damage on themselves, killing them with they’re damage.
In that meta, the Chill was a permanent 1k damage and that was too much, I admit that.
But now there’s few conidi to send back, or not enough time to do it properly why the only classes able to spam condi (warrior) can Burst with them.
Then also our second best ability fell off and we’re weaker than ever.

That two reasons make us even weaker, unable to inflict the damage as before and unable to be useful as before.

The point is: Our two best ability totally depend on our enemy and they not even grant ous the chance to use it properly. And we’ve no more the only source of damage that was directly ours. That’s why we’re weak in this meta.

Simple fix. Deathly Chill applies 8sec of bleed and 5sec of torment on chill.