Guild Wars 2

I’m very interested in Reaper. It’s a fun spec. I love the greatsword (got my fractal skin waiting on it), and Reaper Shroud is pure awesome. However, I just can’t find any situation in which I’d use any of the shouts over wells. This is purely from a PVE perspective. What do you guys think?

I think Rise! could be a key element of a tanking Reaper, and making your attacks Unblockable could be useful in certain situations. The Elite might be useful in certain situations as well if you want to AoE stun/chill a group of mobs as part of a CC chain.

Otherwise, I don’t think it’s a bad thing if Shouts aren’t integral for every PvE situation, as I think they are very useful in teamfight PvP as well. They shouldn’t be good at everything, so if they’re niche at one thing like PvE, I think that’s fine. Wells on the other hand excel at PvE since mobs are more controllable/will stand in the well, whereas in PvP, they’re more niche because players will get out of dodge as quickly as possible.

Rise is amazing on MM reapers.

It highly depends on what PvE content ends up being. As of right now? No real use for any shouts. However, if they make PvE different then the shouts could be very useful, YSIM has potentially the highest healing per second, NCSY can provide long-duration unblockable if there are enough mobs that block, Rise! would be great for defenses against groups of enemies, CttB provides a strong AoE CC/Stab, and YAAW provides might and weakness. These are all potentially useful if ANet changes PvE situations. But yes, Shouts are currently geared more towards PvP/WvW than PvE.

I use the following shouts in dungeons and have great results.

“You are all weaklings!”
AOE weakness = 50% damage reduction
Stunbreak = oh kitten button
5+ might = Universal damage increase

I use this if I get knocked down or otherwise disabled. Great for group fighting or trash runs

“Suffer!”
As a reaper, useful for keeping 100% chill uptime. Also, very easy condi transfer. Again, great for fighting trash (AOE dps decrease and condi transfer) or trash runs

I pretty much just used shouts all through the beta weekend. While not useful in all situations, I found them good enough to slot a couple on my bar. Namely YSIM, RIse, YAAW. Suffer was sorta up in the air, and NCSY I didn’t find much use for. Chilled to the Bone, loved, absolutely loved.

TheLastNobody.8319:

I pretty much just used shouts all through the beta weekend. While not useful in all situations, I found them good enough to slot a couple on my bar. Namely YSIM, RIse, YAAW. Suffer was sorta up in the air, and NCSY I didn’t find much use for. Chilled to the Bone, loved, absolutely loved.

Suffer, in my opinion, was a good replacement for Plague Signet. In AoE fights, it gave a more reliable condi removal (plus chill), and then cooldown reduction when traited. The rest were amazing, although the boon stripping one with Vuln seems useless.

TheLastNobody.8319:

I pretty much just used shouts all through the beta weekend. While not useful in all situations, I found them good enough to slot a couple on my bar. Namely YSIM, RIse, YAAW. Suffer was sorta up in the air, and NCSY I didn’t find much use for. Chilled to the Bone, loved, absolutely loved.

Suffer, in my opinion, was a good replacement for Plague Signet. In AoE fights, it gave a more reliable condi removal (plus chill), and then cooldown reduction when traited. The rest were amazing, although the boon stripping one with Vuln seems useless.

The problem is Suffer is strictly a weaker Plague Signet in every situation. The only thing it has is use in shout builds, otherwise it has no stunbreak, removes less conditions except in ideal conditions, has a longer CD, with the only benefit being damage/chill baseline. I honestly can’t see myself ever using it, since Trooper/Soldier runes are amazing on shout Reaper for the condi removal spam.

Suffer and Plague Signet have the same base cooldown, Bhawb.

Dunno why I thought it was 40, but probably due to never using it.

I went tank Reaper for the Beta. Being as how much of my time was spent in shroud during raids, I needed something that was relatively quick and only used so I could build up LF and get back into shroud. “Your soul is mine” was great for a little top off and a boost to LF, although I can see other heals being better in situation where you are not a tank. As an added bonus anytime a water field was placed and I pressed one of the three spin to wins a necro has I just shot cleansing bolts in all directions, greatly reducing the amount of condi clearing anyone needed. YAAW adding might and stab to tank were super critical since I was in another party by myself with the added bonus of having not party buffs. “Nothing can save you” is great for unblockable crits which seem to happen 5000% of the time while in shroud. Placing a few traits into MM is great with “Rise” giving you longer lasting minions that mitigate 50% damage. It was very rare for all of my horrors to die before being able to use the shout again which causes nearly 100% uptime of 50% damage mitigated. Being as how I didn’t want a crap golem running around, or to be in lich form/ plague form for any of the fight, because 5000% crits, I used “Chilled to the Bone” giving me more stab and just adding another cc for the red orbs and a breaker bar fun time with the boss. After casting all of those in quick spam succession and not in that order, I maximized shroud uptime, which maximized crits and damage mitigation. In fractals where I swapped up gear and wasn’t required to tank, I settled for some of the other utilities that condi cleared or helped out somewhat in whatever fractal happened to be up.

Tank build (may be changed due to number swapping by anet, also be aware that I made the whole raid be under 1600 toughness, which worked out great for those wanting to be more damage orient i.e. Berserker/ Sinister):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNBHhFUomGYvxC1gJFAKZps4PYJsFSVCqBXKA-TRSBABUcKFC4AFonWGLV/JRdBXt/QXK/WUJIAPBASBYuOL-e

DPS Build (this was my “fractal” build, swap out the shouts for anything that the fractal needs):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNBHhFUomGYvxyvgFnEfiXRqnwXIYBl0CAfAA-TBSBABUcKFC4AFon+GLV/5q9HwS53iKBB4JAQKgI2ZB-e

Side note: I know that there is no precision causing me to have like -5000% crit in normal form…but with the crits of shroud being what they were I decided to have a highly survivable necro in any situation and just stack the hell out of ferocity because when I started seeing crits of 20k or higher I thought I broke necro since that isn’t normal for us. Go with the flow and stack what stats are best for you but for a super survival, high dps necro with a royal crap ton of crit…why not.

I got great use out of YSIM and YAAW while weilding a Greatsword. The Elite (suffer?) is good but I still find myself using Plague the most.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is Suffer is strictly a weaker Plague Signet in every situation. The only thing it has is use in shout builds, otherwise it has no stunbreak, removes less conditions except in ideal conditions, has a longer CD, with the only benefit being damage/chill baseline. I honestly can’t see myself ever using it, since Trooper/Soldier runes are amazing on shout Reaper for the condi removal spam.

I do agree, but one small niche on suffer I like is that since it isn’t a stun breaker, it can transfer fear back, which I think could be very helpful when dealing with pesky thieves in WvW.

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is Suffer is strictly a weaker Plague Signet in every situation. The only thing it has is use in shout builds, otherwise it has no stunbreak, removes less conditions except in ideal conditions, has a longer CD, with the only benefit being damage/chill baseline. I honestly can’t see myself ever using it, since Trooper/Soldier runes are amazing on shout Reaper for the condi removal spam.

Why would you need condi-cleanse on a necro? that’s lowering your damage because you’re removing conditions instead of transferring them. Suffer can also remove conditions, and it applies Chill which is super important for maintaining 100% uptime on chill (which deals damage, already trumping plague signet). I hardly worry about getting stunned, because I have reaper stability and that when i deal most damage (and i know how to dodge a stun, thank you).

Soldier runes amazing on reaper? each skill has a 25s or MORE cooldown. thats 1 condition removed every 25s baseline, or if you have all 3, its like 3 conditions removed every 25s. big freaking deal. you can remove them ALL from you with Suffer, up to 5. You can land it better than Plague Signet without drawing allies’ conditions.

Suffer is very underrated in PvP. Also, if you think Soldier runes are better than something like Nightmare runes for a condi reaper, then wow.

Caine.8204:

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is Suffer is strictly a weaker Plague Signet in every situation. The only thing it has is use in shout builds, otherwise it has no stunbreak, removes less conditions except in ideal conditions, has a longer CD, with the only benefit being damage/chill baseline. I honestly can’t see myself ever using it, since Trooper/Soldier runes are amazing on shout Reaper for the condi removal spam.

Why would you need condi-cleanse on a necro? that’s lowering your damage because you’re removing conditions instead of transferring them. Suffer can also remove conditions, and it applies Chill which is super important for maintaining 100% uptime on chill (which deals damage, already trumping plague signet). I hardly worry about getting stunned, because I have reaper stability and that when i deal most damage (and i know how to dodge a stun, thank you).

Soldier runes amazing on reaper? each skill has a 25s or MORE cooldown. thats 1 condition removed every 25s baseline, or if you have all 3, its like 3 conditions removed every 25s. big freaking deal. you can remove them ALL from you with Suffer, up to 5. You can land it better than Plague Signet without drawing allies’ conditions.

Suffer is very underrated in PvP. Also, if you think Soldier runes are better than something like Nightmare runes for a condi reaper, then wow.

….he’s saying that soldier runes are great for supporting allies in team fights, while at the same time throwing out pressure to the enemy team. If you take YSIM, that’s a heal and Condi cleanse on a 12-20 second cooldown.

And we’re not saying suffer is bad, it’s just not as good as plague signet for what it does, I.E., Condi cleansing, and plague signet still has the advantage of being a stun breaker, and when traited, 24 second cooldown, corrupting 2 boons and giving 3 might.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Caine.8204:

Bhawb.7408:

The problem is Suffer is strictly a weaker Plague Signet in every situation. The only thing it has is use in shout builds, otherwise it has no stunbreak, removes less conditions except in ideal conditions, has a longer CD, with the only benefit being damage/chill baseline. I honestly can’t see myself ever using it, since Trooper/Soldier runes are amazing on shout Reaper for the condi removal spam.

Why would you need condi-cleanse on a necro? that’s lowering your damage because you’re removing conditions instead of transferring them. Suffer can also remove conditions, and it applies Chill which is super important for maintaining 100% uptime on chill (which deals damage, already trumping plague signet). I hardly worry about getting stunned, because I have reaper stability and that when i deal most damage (and i know how to dodge a stun, thank you).

Soldier runes amazing on reaper? each skill has a 25s or MORE cooldown. thats 1 condition removed every 25s baseline, or if you have all 3, its like 3 conditions removed every 25s. big freaking deal. you can remove them ALL from you with Suffer, up to 5. You can land it better than Plague Signet without drawing allies’ conditions.

Suffer is very underrated in PvP. Also, if you think Soldier runes are better than something like Nightmare runes for a condi reaper, then wow.

….he’s saying that soldier runes are great for supporting allies in team fights, while at the same time throwing out pressure to the enemy team. If you take YSIM, that’s a heal and Condi cleanse on a 12-20 second cooldown.

And we’re not saying suffer is bad, it’s just not as good as plague signet for what it does, I.E., Condi cleansing, and plague signet still has the advantage of being a stun breaker, and when traited, 24 second cooldown, corrupting 2 boons and giving 3 might.

Soldier runes are still worthless in SPvP. Your teammates will remove their own conditions, and the trade off for going down the Spite tree isn’t worth it imo. Reaper-Soul Reaping-Curses for Condition, and Reaper-Soul Reaping-Spite for power. If you’re running power, the signet trait is trash tier compared to the others, and if you’re running Celestial, it’s still not great – especially if you’re taking the trait for JUST plague signet.

ultimately, Suffer is going to be better than Plague Signet baseline against a good pvper, the chill effect from Suffer and the condition cleanse in team fights is nice, you don’t need to aim it, you just burst and you’re good to go.

Staff 4, Dagger 4, and Consume Conditions and Suffer will be more than enough to remove all your conditions, and the Suffer will increase your damage (chill deals damage) and is an AoE slow. Plague Signet does nothing if you have no conditions, and has to be traited to be even somewhat worth it. If you trait it, you’re going to be running other signets, not shouts. If you just take the trait for Plague Signet you’re not a good necro…

That, and using the healing shout in PVP is going to completely kitten your build. Consume Conditions is LEAGUES ahead of all the other healing skills currently. Being able to remove all the conditions from yourself and basically go from 20% to full health when your being bursted? yes please. I’m not going to take soldier’s runes to get 4~ condition cleanse, with the loss of:

Suffer: Reliable condition cleanse, AND chill, instant
Consume Conditions: Removes all conditions, massive heal if conditioned.
Nightmare runes: condition duration loss, and condition damage loss

Basically you’re trading a lot of damage for a gimmicky spec that doesn’t work as well as it looks on paper. You have enough life force taking Soul Reaping that you won’t ever need to use your healing shout that generates LF… basically making it useless.

You’ll end up with MORE conditions on yourself, LESS conditions on the enemy, and a lot more time spent laying on the ground dead.

In WvW and even in PvP I will use CttB, the effect tho with 90sec apart is just to good not to take. Every Nec in our WvW Guild useit and will do so in HoT. The other Shouts is very weak in general, basicly cause the effect for just 1 target hit is to low imho

Caine.8204:

Why would you need condi-cleanse on a necro?

Wat.jpg

Caine.8204:

Suffer can also remove conditions, and it applies Chill which is super important for maintaining 100% uptime on chill (which deals damage, already trumping plague signet). I hardly worry about getting stunned, because I have reaper stability and that when i deal most damage (and i know how to dodge a stun, thank you).

Because every build uses Deathly Chill? That is a niche use right away, and Condi builds would still prefer Plague Signet because our condi is all about burst.

Caine.8204:

Soldier runes amazing on reaper? each skill has a 25s or MORE cooldown. thats 1 condition removed every 25s baseline, or if you have all 3, its like 3 conditions removed every 25s. big freaking deal. you can remove them ALL from you with Suffer, up to 5. You can land it better than Plague Signet without drawing allies’ conditions.

A shout build would run 5 shouts plus traiting, and be able to remove 2.5 conditions every 10 seconds from every ally including themselves. You think condi is fun? Try killing my team when I passively double their condi cleansing. Or did you forget when Shout Warrior invalidated condi builds for months? And that comes at no cost to my build, I can throw a single rune set onto my build and go from no condi cleanse to so much that I get top stats for both conditions removed and conditions removed from allies.

Caine.8204:

Soldier runes are still worthless in SPvP. Your teammates will remove their own conditions, and the trade off for going down the Spite tree isn’t worth it imo.

What? Shout just needs one trait in Reaper, that’s all the traiting it relies on. Spite/SR/Reaper can do the shout setup just fine. And again, Soldier runes invalidated an entire damage type for months on their own, saying they are worthless is complete BS.

Caine.8204:

Staff 4, Dagger 4, and Consume Conditions and Suffer will be more than enough to remove all your conditions, and the Suffer will increase your damage (chill deals damage) and is an AoE slow. Plague Signet does nothing if you have no conditions, and has to be traited to be even somewhat worth it. If you trait it, you’re going to be running other signets, not shouts. If you just take the trait for Plague Signet you’re not a good necro…

You’re listing niche situations to justify a skill’s use widespread. Epidemic is an amazing skill if we do that, yet still it remains absent from nearly every non PvE hotbar. Also, you assume I want to run staff or dagger offhand. A Soldier rune-d Necro doesn’t need either of those, I can drop offhand dagger for warhorn, I can drop staff for a real weapon.

Caine.8204:

That, and using the healing shout in PVP is going to completely kitten your build. Consume Conditions is LEAGUES ahead of all the other healing skills currently. Being able to remove all the conditions from yourself and basically go from 20% to full health when your being bursted? yes please.

Untraited YSIM is better than Consume Conditions healing per second up until you remove 3 conditions. That is before LF.

Traited YSIM in a Soldier build gives up to 618 effective HP per second, not including the fact that LF takes half damage. That is 50% more than even a full wipe with consume conditions.

Suffer needs to be much better at chill if thats going to be its focus.

spoj.9672:

Suffer needs to be much better at chill if thats going to be its focus.

The skill needs more to it either way. Either more chill or more condi removal because the way it is now both are quite low. As a Shout it should get similar treatment to all the others making them ok 1v1 but so much better 1vx.

YSIM went from where it is to LF base + Per target hit
YAAW went from might per hit to base might +might per target hit
RISE went from where it is to summons one anyways +1 per target hit
NCSU already worked the way the others now do
CttB should do something base + something per target hit but that may be a future change.

I say Suffer do the same. Something base + something on hit per target. That way it would have more value on its own and not be a poor mans PS. Transfer/remove 2~3 +1 per target hit or something along those lines.

If they go with the chill options…maybe a second or two more and it would be something.

You really think the fact that they’re not worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE is a problem?

Spectral skills and corruptions and signets also aren’t worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE, but those skills all have their places, just like shouts do.

Tobias.8632:

You really think the fact that they’re not worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE is a problem?

Spectral skills and corruptions and signets also aren’t worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE, but those skills all have their places, just like shouts do.

I found shouts to be largely useless in PvP, PvE, Raids and roaming. So that leaves zerg fights?

Aktium.9506:

Tobias.8632:

You really think the fact that they’re not worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE is a problem?

Spectral skills and corruptions and signets also aren’t worth taking over wells in a power build for PvE, but those skills all have their places, just like shouts do.

I found shouts to be largely useless in PvP, PvE, Raids and roaming. So that leaves zerg fights?

He was addressing the OP, who specifically mentioned PvE. Others have mentioned they found use for Shouts in PvP specifically. Discussion has popped up here and there around using some Shouts in Raiding for tanking purposes, and when roaming, unless you only ever fight duels and refuse to hop into even small scale engagements around camps/etc., I can see Shouts being used there as well.

Or maybe they don’t suit your style. Does that mean they don’t have their place?

I like the idea of tagging a baseline buff effect to shouts, like Suffer should have a baseline beneficial effect. Aside from that I’m mostly happy with the shouts. I wouldn’t mind seeing higher damage from shouts though.

It would seem in PvE people always want more dps, more dps, MORE DPS. It’s of course hard to balance things when PvE just wants more dps. People talk about group beneficial effects but I get the sense that the PvE necro community wouldn’t really be happy with group beneficial effects. Because ultimately, people rolled a necro to do more dps in PvE.

I don’t have any ideas, other than that I think it’s a good idea all shouts be given a baseline beneficial effect (even better if this beneficial buff can be made group oriented)

Cogbyrn.7283:

He was addressing the OP, who specifically mentioned PvE. Others have mentioned they found use for Shouts in PvP specifically.

I used them extensively during the BWE. YAAW does nothing because you’ll get maxed might by rolling your face across the keyboard when specced into Reaper anyways, the stunbreak would be nice but Spectral Walk/Armor are simply better stunbreak skills regardless of build. NCSY looked awesome on paper but the only time it ever felt useful in practice was against Engi due to frequent Gear Shield shenanigans and the odd shoutbow Warr with shield. Suffer is just a worse Plague signet. Rise had some niche utility but it’s basically a minions skill parading as a shout. It would be tons better if it was just a minion skill.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Discussion has popped up here and there around using some Shouts in Raiding for tanking purposes,

Cleave will make short work of Rise minions. You could have a whole party of Droods spamming heals and one AoE will still wreck them because they can’t dodge.

Cogbyrn.7283:

and when roaming, unless you only ever fight duels and refuse to hop into even small scale engagements around camps/etc., I can see Shouts being used there as well.

I don’t mind small fights in the area of 2v2-4v4, but not in a million years will I trust my servermates. They do more harm than good simply by being awful 9/10 times. So I do actively tend to stay away from them. It never ends well for me when I try to help.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Or maybe they don’t suit your style. Does that mean they don’t have their place?

Apart from Rise, I don’t see how they can fit any style.

Aktium.9506:

I used them extensively during the BWE. YAAW does nothing because you’ll get maxed might by rolling your face across the keyboard when specced into Reaper anyways, the stunbreak would be nice but Spectral Walk/Armor are simply better stunbreak skills regardless of build.

Not exactly accurate. YAAW’s 8 second weakness is pretty big deal for any builds that do not roll Curses. I rather enjoyed roaming in WvW with YAAW acting as stun breaker, weakness application, and instant might stacking which sets you up for a nice spike.

I don’t consider the other options superior, I consider them different and all viable. But YAAW is very viable to take as an utility slot. And like I said, especially so if you don’t run Curses.

gavyne.6847:

Not exactly accurate. YAAW’s 8 second weakness is pretty big deal for any builds that do not roll Curses. I rather enjoyed roaming in WvW with YAAW acting as stun breaker, weakness application, and instant might stacking which sets you up for a nice spike.

Weakening Shroud has better uptime on weakness and CPC is arguable better long duration weakness even if the self-weakness is worse than hitler and pol pot combined. A single long duration weakness stack is likely to just get cleansed before it does any good. The might is just superfluous. Now, if we could stack might to 50 I’d say it was a good skill. I would personally like to see the shout revamped. Quickness or something else we aren’t already good at getting would be nice.

gavyne.6847:

I don’t consider the other options superior, I consider them different and all viable. But YAAW is very viable to take as an utility slot. And like I said, especially so if you don’t run Curses.

Well, at least it’s not Suffer. I’ll give you that. I’m quite pleased with Reaper as a whole. My only complaints about it are some QoL stuff with Death’s Charge and Grasping Darkness. But shouts are incredibly lacklustre in comparison to the rest of the package. Trooper runes are not a valid reason as to why they should be as insubstantial as they are.

Aktium.9506:

gavyne.6847:

Not exactly accurate. YAAW’s 8 second weakness is pretty big deal for any builds that do not roll Curses. I rather enjoyed roaming in WvW with YAAW acting as stun breaker, weakness application, and instant might stacking which sets you up for a nice spike.

Weakening Shroud has better uptime on weakness and CPC is arguable better long duration weakness even if the self-weakness is worse than hitler and pol pot combined. A single long duration weakness stack is likely to just get cleansed before it does any good. The might is just superfluous. Now, if we could stack might to 50 I’d say it was a good skill. I would personally like to see the shout revamped. Quickness or something else we aren’t already good at getting would be nice.

gavyne.6847:

I don’t consider the other options superior, I consider them different and all viable. But YAAW is very viable to take as an utility slot. And like I said, especially so if you don’t run Curses.

Well, at least it’s not Suffer. I’ll give you that. I’m quite pleased with Reaper as a whole. My only complaints about it are some QoL stuff with Death’s Charge and Grasping Darkness. But shouts are incredibly lacklustre in comparison to the rest of the package. Trooper runes are not a valid reason as to why they should be as insubstantial as they are.

YAAW is actually really nice if you’re running Blighter’s Boon, as you can just about instantly get 50% plus LF back (plus, yeah, short duration might but if you happen to be just outside the range of the might stacks of your teammates, you’ll still be able to fight just as hard until the next might burst comes in

Shouts real power comes when used with trooper runes. That added aoe condi clear is super valuable, and makes reaper even more obscene in teamfights. Some of them could still use a little work, but overall they are pretty good right now.

rise and the elite both seem very playable.

Bhawb.7408:

Caine.8204:

Why would you need condi-cleanse on a necro?

Wat.jpg

Caine.8204:

Suffer can also remove conditions, and it applies Chill which is super important for maintaining 100% uptime on chill (which deals damage, already trumping plague signet). I hardly worry about getting stunned, because I have reaper stability and that when i deal most damage (and i know how to dodge a stun, thank you).

Because every build uses Deathly Chill? That is a niche use right away, and Condi builds would still prefer Plague Signet because our condi is all about burst.

Caine.8204:

Soldier runes amazing on reaper? each skill has a 25s or MORE cooldown. thats 1 condition removed every 25s baseline, or if you have all 3, its like 3 conditions removed every 25s. big freaking deal. you can remove them ALL from you with Suffer, up to 5. You can land it better than Plague Signet without drawing allies’ conditions.

A shout build would run 5 shouts plus traiting, and be able to remove 2.5 conditions every 10 seconds from every ally including themselves. You think condi is fun? Try killing my team when I passively double their condi cleansing. Or did you forget when Shout Warrior invalidated condi builds for months? And that comes at no cost to my build, I can throw a single rune set onto my build and go from no condi cleanse to so much that I get top stats for both conditions removed and conditions removed from allies.

Caine.8204:

Soldier runes are still worthless in SPvP. Your teammates will remove their own conditions, and the trade off for going down the Spite tree isn’t worth it imo.

What? Shout just needs one trait in Reaper, that’s all the traiting it relies on. Spite/SR/Reaper can do the shout setup just fine. And again, Soldier runes invalidated an entire damage type for months on their own, saying they are worthless is complete BS.

Caine.8204:

Staff 4, Dagger 4, and Consume Conditions and Suffer will be more than enough to remove all your conditions, and the Suffer will increase your damage (chill deals damage) and is an AoE slow. Plague Signet does nothing if you have no conditions, and has to be traited to be even somewhat worth it. If you trait it, you’re going to be running other signets, not shouts. If you just take the trait for Plague Signet you’re not a good necro…

You’re listing niche situations to justify a skill’s use widespread. Epidemic is an amazing skill if we do that, yet still it remains absent from nearly every non PvE hotbar. Also, you assume I want to run staff or dagger offhand. A Soldier rune-d Necro doesn’t need either of those, I can drop offhand dagger for warhorn, I can drop staff for a real weapon.

Caine.8204:

That, and using the healing shout in PVP is going to completely kitten your build. Consume Conditions is LEAGUES ahead of all the other healing skills currently. Being able to remove all the conditions from yourself and basically go from 20% to full health when your being bursted? yes please.

Untraited YSIM is better than Consume Conditions healing per second up until you remove 3 conditions. That is before LF.

Traited YSIM in a Soldier build gives up to 618 effective HP per second, not including the fact that LF takes half damage. That is 50% more than even a full wipe with consume conditions.

lol. did you try it in pvp? do you pvp often? none of this is viable, at least not at the moment. As a condi necro, I can easily apply more conditions than you can cleanse. In addition, my fear combos and stuns can overwhelm your ONE stun break, which you so preciously hold onto.

Shout warriors are very different from necros – they heal with their shouts. They grant boons, and they have 3 shouts with a base 20s cooldown and then Fear Me. I played shout warrior. It was good.

However, necro doesn’t offer much with shouts. You claim to want to run 5 shouts but also use plague signet? you cant have both. if you run all 5 shouts, you’re seriously gimping your build. Your LF will always be capped out, which is completely unnecessary. You have okay survival, but to be completely honest 2.5 conditions every 10 seconds is still horrible condition removal. Again, you can remove 3 instantly on a 20s cooldown with the corruption trait. you can remove 5 instantly with suffer, and when traited it has a very low cooldown (lower than plague signet). Against at least 2 people, it’s still just as good as plague signet because you can eat the conditions or transfer them back. You can run warhorn, but doing PvP without staff? LOL. Now i KNOW you don’t pvp.

Staff is basically, THE required item, for ANY power/condi build. It dishes out massive power damage in addition to poison/chill… fear for interrupts. Condi cleanse.

Scepter/Dagger is required for condi builds.

In addition, congrats on your 2.5 conditions removed every 10s. Good luck spamming your shouts to survive as I dish out more conditions than you can handle. 1v1, you’re nothing but fodder, 5v5, you cant be killed but your damage blows because you’re running celestial. I’ll just focus the other teammate who will die before you have a chance to cleanse, pop on my stability, and stomp him.

Oh, you gonna fear me/corrupt my boons and rez him? i’ll just dodge, use my stunning scythe skill on the corpse, and spin on you.

It’s not viable to run 5 shouts. It’s okay to run some shouts and plague signet. But don’t pretend that plague signet completely trumps Suffer in any situation, because it doesn’t. Suffer is awesome and I like using it for the chill and reliable condi-removal – whereas people with builds like yours get eaten for breakfast by my condi necro.

good luck in pvp

Caine.8204:

You claim to want to run 5 shouts but also use plague signet? you cant have both

Plague Sending, lad. I care none for your argument, but 5 shouts and Plague Signet is definitely possible due to Plague Sending.

Why do people always make a point to say that more conditions can be applied than can be cleansed? Of course that’s the case. It’s like saying “I can use more power-based attacks than you have dodges/blocks”. Imagine how terribly designed it would be if that weren’t the case.

Also, after just a couple beta weekends, I don’t think anyone can say for absolute certainty whether or not some of the new things will be viable. You never know what someone else who isn’t shutting the idea down immediately might concoct.

Caine.8204:

You can run warhorn, but doing PvP without staff? LOL. Now i KNOW you don’t pvp.

Staff is basically, THE required item, for ANY power/condi build. It dishes out massive power damage in addition to poison/chill… fear for interrupts. Condi cleanse.

If you want to try to make it some kind of kitten measuring contest feel free, but don’t make idiotic statements like staff deals massive power damage.

If you love Suffer, feel free to use it.

I was playing shout cele reaper to great effect in the beta with 4 shouts and soldier runes. I do also run staff, but that’s more for the aoe fear, chillblains, the transfer and the massively underrated regen on mark of blood. The only mark with decent damage is the condition transfer. Also, realize that in good scenarios most of the shouts can get to 20 second cds easy. Pretty strong imo. Personally, suffer could stand to do just a little more, and the unblockable one needs to apply to allies, but otherwise they are good.

last bwe i was running mm reaper in pvp. greatsword / staff, with ‘Your Soul is Mine’, ‘Rise’ and ‘Chilled to the Bone’ (with bone fiend and bone minions). Worked out pretty well. I dont recall which rune/amulet I was running though. Still, I look forward to tweaking it further after HoT goes live. It may not be any kind of “optimal” but it was fun as hell.

I didn’t test many elite specs during any of the weekends since I want to save the enjoyment of learning them for release, but I did test out reaper for a bit and I found a few shouts useful.

I actually like “Your soul is mine!” it has the lowest cooldown aside from the minion, and when traited and hitting 5 targets it’s 13s and since it gives you life force for shroud I feel like it could really increase your ability to stay in fights if there are multiple enemies.

“Rise!” would be nice for MM’s but also just as a damage alleviation for tanky builds.

“Nothing can save you!” has some use in fractals now, you can use it to put some CC on the Grawl Shaman through his block to make it easier to prevent him from getting to the civilians on the sides, you could use it with GS 5 pull or a fear to CC the Ooze in the reactor out of his blocking phase too I’d imagine. Also hopefully navigating through active defense will become more prominent in newer content. You can use it on the groups in Urban fractal to corrupt their might stacks from monks too on a lower cooldown than the well of corruption.

“You are all weaklings!” could be used for an initial burst for trash, it’d weaken them to negate some damage but if you put the 2 dps wells down and use it for might to increase their damage without having to stack it though the auto attack.

“Chill to the bone!” Gets a bit of a bonus for me for not being a form or a minion. It’s cooldown is lower than everything but flesh golem, and the burst of chill and stun help you with some other traits.

They’re definitely not good in every situation, and I’m sure I’ll still use wells quite a bit but I do like some of the stuff they can do. I’ll probably at least try using the heal and elite since I’m not fond of 1 spam in lich form.

OP, Reaper may not seem like it but I found the specialization highly dependent on external support. Dps and sustain ramped up quickly with new support specializations like Druid, Tempest, Chronomancer, and Dragonhunter. With boons and healing Necro does not have, Reaper became a shredder. However, when support scattered, XD

Aktium.9506:

Caine.8204:

You claim to want to run 5 shouts but also use plague signet? you cant have both

Plague Sending, lad. I care none for your argument, but 5 shouts and Plague Signet is definitely possible due to Plague Sending.

rolls eyes yeah use the signet trait for just the passive Plague Sending. brilliant.

He didn’t suggest you trait signets, no one is suggesting you trait signets just for one signet.

Caine.8204:

Aktium.9506:

Caine.8204:

You claim to want to run 5 shouts but also use plague signet? you cant have both

Plague Sending, lad. I care none for your argument, but 5 shouts and Plague Signet is definitely possible due to Plague Sending.

rolls eyes yeah use the signet trait for just the passive Plague Sending. brilliant.

I don’t understand why you’re making up a conversation that isn’t happening.