Guild Wars 2

I’m primarily a PvP player, and while I usually play the cele signet build, I get bored pretty easily, so I always try to switch things up and try out new builds every once and a while.

But one thing that irks me is that in every build I make, I take soul reaping, since in PvP I feel kind of helpless without it. And I don’t think thats a good thing, since it hurts necro build diversity overall. One of the main points of the specialization change was making half of the class mechanic buff that you got from a traitline like soul reaping baseline, so you could make more viable builds without that traitline. But I still feel inexplicably and irrevocably bound to soul reaping. And the reason is simple.

Vital Persistance.

That one trait is such a necessary trait, that without it, I don’t think I could make a pvp necromancer build that felt right to play. Its such an important part of sustain in general, that it feels horrible to play a necro build without it. While other traits, like death perception, or soul marks or foot in the grave have their strengths, I feel like I could play a good necro build without them, but I don’t think I could play a good necro build without vital persistence, since life force degeneration is too much without it to have decent sustain.

The other main reason that this is problematic, is that when Heart of Thorns comes out, our options will be expanded as we’ll also have reaper competing for a spot in our builds. Furthermore, as reaper is a very shroud-centric addition to the necromancer, soul reaping will still be entirely necessary to enhance reaper shroud, but mainly through vital persistence. To add to this, you’re also shoehorned into running spite to make better use of blighter’s boon. Hence I predict that the majority of non-condi Reaper builds will be reaper, soul reaping, and spite. And thats just not healthy build diversity.

I think that vital persistence, or at least the life force degeneration reduction part of the trait should be made baseline, while some other trait can fill its gap. PvP necromancers (and WvW necros and a great deal of PvE necros) will run soul reaping until the end of this game’s life as long as a trait so vital and necessary for basic survival is there.

So what do you guys think about this? Did you try reaper builds without soul reaping, and if so, do you think blighter’s boon provided enough sustain to make it a nonissue? Lets have a healthy discussion about necromancer build diversity for now and for the future.

i’d love for vital persistance to become baseline.. as is every build i try to make will have soul reaping in it just because of that one.

Well vital persistance has not always been mandatory. Terrormancers could run master of terror instead but I think that was more because it was a wvw build and starting with 100% life force in every fight was possible in wvw.

Now in this meta I think soul reaping is mandatory for 2 traits: last gasp and vital persistance. Last gasp is easily forgotten but the impact is huge: protection, stun break and life force. Removing one of them to baseline may help but we have to consider what can happen to our builds. The biggest issue with making vital persistance baseline is that necro’s may stay in soul reaping because last gasp is there plus they can take spectral attunement which is a huge sustain buff since especially since spectral armor isquite popluar as well.

So I suggest making vital persistance partially baseline. So we degenerate at a rate of 3%/second and vital persistance reduces it further to 2. Cooldown reduction is also boosted to 20% to make trait budgetting fit.

This is a problem for a lot of classes in pvp. Warriors want fast hands etc. I do agree that things like these should be baseline to open up for more interesting quirks. A lot of traits after trait system update have become take this or the skilltype is bad. It’s mostly 10%dmg or 20% recharge. Some of them are good like removing condis on shouts. If I would design the traits I remove all dmg and recharge and have quirks instead that actually makes skills work differently instead of being the same but more effective. That would be harder to design though and make the game more complex which I feel they wanted to move away from.

That was something which felt even more obvious with reaper. I really agree it should be baseline. It’s not like if necro is OP right…

Tim.6450:

Well vital persistance has not always been mandatory. Terrormancers could run master of terror instead but I think that was more because it was a wvw build and starting with 100% life force in every fight was possible in wvw.

Now in this meta I think soul reaping is mandatory for 2 traits: last gasp and vital persistance. Last gasp is easily forgotten but the impact is huge: protection, stun break and life force. Removing one of them to baseline may help but we have to consider what can happen to our builds. The biggest issue with making vital persistance baseline is that necro’s may stay in soul reaping because last gasp is there plus they can take spectral attunement which is a huge sustain buff since especially since spectral armor isquite popluar as well.

So I suggest making vital persistance partially baseline. So we degenerate at a rate of 3%/second and vital persistance reduces it further to 2. Cooldown reduction is also boosted to 20% to make trait budgetting fit.

Yeah I could agree to that compromise as spectral bunkers could get a little out of hand that way. I just hate how necromancers have to put so much traiting into shroud that they lose out on other useful things.

I don’t actually think Soul Reaping is mandatory at all, especially not with Reaper. I wouldn’t argue that other lines are taken equally at the moment either, because it can be fit into any build, and as such if you don’t see a trait line providing much for you, Soul Reaping fits anyway. It is less an issue of it being too good to pass up, and rather it fits into every single build and so since it is always an option it shows up more often. This happens for a variety of reasons:

1. It is a nice, generalist trait line that provides both damage and defense that is relevant for everyone, there isn’t a single build that can’t use Soul Reaping
2. Other lines are too specific, often because of GM traits have one or two choices that are specific to skill or build types, and then the generic choice is bland. Soul Reaping instead has a great trait that literally anything can use (FitG), and then one trait each that any power/condi build can use
3. Soul Reaping is based on Death Shroud, which is universal, better DS = better Necro
4. Last but probably most important, Soul Reaping had its balance figured out a long time ago, most of its traits have existed very similarly for over a year, so the recent update was just a polish passover. Other lines had to have their entire setup reworked, and are still in a state of needing to be balanced.

I guess what I’m getting at is while I have good build ideas that don’t have room for soul reaping, they tend to be ineffective because vital persistence is such a good trait, and while the traitline as a whole is great, I feel that vital persistence is the reason I can’t drop that traitline to try out other things.

nearlight.3064:

Yeah I could agree to that compromise as spectral bunkers could get a little out of hand that way. I just hate how necromancers have to put so much traiting into shroud that they lose out on other useful things.

Spectral bunker is a bit exagerated, even celestial signet necro gets a significant boost. Protection uptime from 24% to 45%, life force/cooldown from spectral armor/ last gap boosted with 87.5% and an extra 10 life force every 40 seconds.

Tim.6450:

nearlight.3064:

Yeah I could agree to that compromise as spectral bunkers could get a little out of hand that way. I just hate how necromancers have to put so much traiting into shroud that they lose out on other useful things.

Spectral bunker is a bit exagerated, even celestial signet necro gets a significant boost. Protection uptime from 24% to 45%, life force/cooldown from spectral armor/ last gap boosted with 87.5% and an extra 10 life force every 40 seconds.

I’m going to test out spectral mastery in place of vital persistence on my soldier’s build, which is basically cele signets with the rez signet and blood over curses, to see if the sustain is better or worse.

While I agree with the OP in a broad sense, I don’t think it’s that the Soul Reaping line is too mandatory so much as the weakness of the rest of the lines and their lack of synergy with Reaper Shroud that makes it feel that way. Granted, I’m a fairly new necro who only really started looking into the class extensively with the Reaper announcement, so maybe all of my observations are all wrong.

Spite’s biggest draws are might on Shroud Auto, and the rest is pure synergy with Reaper Shroud/Reaper as a whole.

Curses is the condi/corruption line that’s best done playing along with the defensive options.

Death magic is pretty much entirely a defensive line, and while very strong, is difficult to use with Reaper due to the Reaper’s low ratios on most skills (needing spite) and dependency on Life Force (dependency on Soul Reaping).

Blood magic’s gotten a ton better, but again, it’s another supportive and defensive/sustain line. It’s got decent life force management, but at the cost of pulling conditions which in the current state of condis can easily get you killed, while also not having a lot of damage potential for the Reaper.

Necro’s emphasis on shroud complicates a lot of things; make it too easy to build life force/not need shroud, and the class just becomes an unstoppable monster, but make the trait lines not give much synergy into shroud, and the entire class feels underwhelming. Maybe less-shroud-focused builds are where the class design needs to go, such as improving the utilities or out-of-shroud effects and perhaps punishing players more for being in shroud? I don’t know. It looks like a tough nut to crack in regards to the necro’s current balance state.

I don’t think soul reaping is mandatory at all either.

Certainly Vital Persistence isn’t mandatory either. Get used to playing without it. You’ll live.

Last Gasp is one of the best traits on the class. But other than that, soul reaping is a collection of strong, but by no means mandatory traits.

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

nearlight.3064:

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

MM doesn’t need to use it, anything support related doesn’t have to either, and well builds don’t have to. Again, less an issue of the trait line itself being needed to make builds work, and more that you’re stuck using it because the other options don’t necessarily boost your build.

Bhawb.7408:

nearlight.3064:

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

MM doesn’t need to use it, anything support related doesn’t have to either, and well builds don’t have to. Again, less an issue of the trait line itself being needed to make builds work, and more that you’re stuck using it because the other options don’t necessarily boost your build.

Okay, now I understand your point. So while it may not be needed to make a good version of one of those builds, it ends up being taken because theres say for example, little point in taking death magic for a well build or curses for a minion build or something of that nature.

I was actually just thinking this for the past couple days. Really the only reason Soul Reap is taken is for vital persistence (degeneration decrease mainly). If this became streamlined, so many builds would open up for optimal play styles. Especially with the introduction of the reaper, now with more melee oriented play, life force absolutely just gets chewed through with out it, even with blighters boon.

It’s not like there arn’t somewhat viable builds that don’t need it but most do as it greatly boosts survival. I can easily find myself playing without Death perception and I haven’t used FiTG in ages (or dhuumfire..cough). With this baseline, it would really allow the necro to branch out.

nearlight.3064:

I guess what I’m getting at is while I have good build ideas that don’t have room for soul reaping, they tend to be ineffective because vital persistence is such a good trait, and while the traitline as a whole is great, I feel that vital persistence is the reason I can’t drop that traitline to try out other things.

You are totally correct, soul reaping is mandatory it is the first trait line you have to put in, if you want to make use of an effective death shroud.

Soul marks is also ridiculously good, if soul marks and vital persistence were somewhere else I would probably take something different.

I agree vital persistence should be mandatory. I would argue soul marks should also be as well.

Bhawb.7408:

nearlight.3064:

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

MM doesn’t need to use it, anything support related doesn’t have to either, and well builds don’t have to. Again, less an issue of the trait line itself being needed to make builds work, and more that you’re stuck using it because the other options don’t necessarily boost your build.

The mm build I use does, personally it’s the best mm build I have tried I’m willing to try others and be proven wrong.

The life force generation from staff, the amount of time you can stay in death shroud and the stability are mandatory for my build anyway.

But my build plays as attrition bunker. Which personally I have found to be the most effective.

pvp perspective

in my opinion necro has to low lifeforce generation in general without investing in traits and skills, wich boost the lifeforce generation and therefore it is like necro need to have specific traits to not to feel awful bad without them

not to forget, that shroud is also necros defensive mechanic, keeping necro alive and as a necro i want to fill it up as quick as possible and becouse of this i rather choose traits/skills, wich allow me as a necro to gain lifeforce, or to sustain the shroud, even if i have to put aside other traits/skills, wich doesnt increase lifeforce generation, or decrease lifeforce degeneration

my conclusion is, that i have to play with soul reaping, even more as reaper, becouse rs fights in melee range and gs has to low lifeforce generation

nearlight.3064:

Okay, now I understand your point. So while it may not be needed to make a good version of one of those builds, it ends up being taken because theres say for example, little point in taking death magic for a well build or curses for a minion build or something of that nature.

Exactly.

bile.7560:

The mm build I use does, personally it’s the best mm build I have tried I’m willing to try others and be proven wrong.

The life force generation from staff, the amount of time you can stay in death shroud and the stability are mandatory for my build anyway.

But my build plays as attrition bunker. Which personally I have found to be the most effective.

I’m aware that MM can take Soul Reaping, but it is as comfortable taking Spite. It shifts the focus of the build, if you go SR you are extremely defensive, you can bunker for ages, and even hold out against multiple enemies, however compared to the Spite variant you will have significantly less damage. What ends up happening is SR MM is great at holding points, but Spite MM is much better at debunking them. One of them prefers to be pretty stationary, holding points your team already has, the other likes to go decap.

My point with it, is that MM has an option, DM/BM are pretty much mandatory, but once you hit that third line you have no more direct minion synergies worth noting. So you have a choice to make: Soul Reaping to increase a lot of LF gain and make DS stronger and you very tough to kill, or Spite to load up on vuln/might and boon stripping to increase your damage. Both work, but SR isn’t mandatory to making MM work.

If Soul Reaping didn’t exist in the game MM would still function as a build, even if it might be weaker. This couldn’t be said of DM though, without DM’s traiting MM can’t work. This is true of a lot of builds, SR is really only mandatory for spectral and DS builds, everything else can use it, but doesn’t depend on it for the build to function.