Guild Wars 2

I do not know how many of you saw this..

I largely agreed with this review. I did Love Reaper shroud and though I tried very hard to make all aspects of the reaper work for me this weekend I could not get past the shout and great sword issues mentioned in the article below.

I think Reaper has a lot of potential but in general, it seems this article appropriately reflects the general consensus.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/preview/guild-wars-2-reaper-first-impressions

I think he’s got a generally good idea. Reaper looks cool, has a great design, but mostly fails in execution except for Shroud. Nothing particularly new or special, basically everyone and their mom has said it, but it warrants repeating.

reaper as a concept is awesome but yeah they did go overboard with having just about everything it does super slow. the “hard hitting” stuff should be slow and pack a punch but everything else dont have to be.

they have to rework greatsword for sure and other weapons also or necro will be just another forgotten class like rangers now……I mean I rerolled to mesmer year ago and now I tried chronomacer and I had to stop it because I dont like to win just because I play most OP class in the game (except cele elies hello)

Mmm, seeing all my woes voiced in TTH article. Yeeesss.

Greatsword buffs are surely just around the corner. Surely. Thanks for posting.

Reaper Shroud is darn-near perfect, so much so that I will use it even if everything else remains the same. But the goal should definitely be for shouts and GS to be just as much fun as RS.

On the whole, spot on analysis which echoes what the majority of people have been saying (on these forums, on Reddit, in-game).

As I was saying to someone in-game earlier today, we’re talking about a greatsword here – the damage should be devastating, not underwhelming. And the slow cast times would be acceptable if the payoff was hit-like-a-truck damage, but right now it isn’t.

I main necro and I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it for 3 years now, and for most of the BWE I played Reaper because I think there’s genuine potential there. Reaper shroud is where it shines (or pulses with green-tinged deadly intent) and if they can bring greatsword and shouts into line with it then we’ll have something pretty special.

I don’t know how big that if is though …

Think he did a good job of summing up what everyone is thinking and complaining about with reaper, but there is one statement I don’t agree with and that is, that big slow and heavy hitting doesn’t fit into Gw2’s combat. I think that honestly it does, and it can, it’s just that ANET is for some reason afraid of letting that happen, what with the changes to mobility and the constant nerfs to our chill application and chill itself.

Well at least getting attention on the reapers flaws on tth may help, yet it reads much like the review that was done on base necro also so…

Samhayn.2385:

Well at least getting attention on the reapers flaws on tth may help, yet it reads much like the review that was done on base necro also so…

Yes but hopefully since this is a beta it means we’re ripe for changes and shifts…in the good way this time hopefully. -_-

I wish he had touched on the chill line as well.

There is a whole line in the reaper traits that is dedicated to chills and conditions, yet the chills are terrible, have no synergy and the “grandmaster” trait gives a whopping 2 stacks of bleed worth of damage. Compare that with other grandmaster traits that give professions a 20% damage increase. To put that into perspective, they would need to increase the damage from chill by >5x to match a 20% overall damage increase.

The class also seems to tie chills in with fear, yet reaper gets no access to fear, and even with staff you are looking at a total of 4s of fear every 40s or so. This makes the minor trait essentially useless for every spec except a pure terrormancer spec, and even then it still isn’t great.

My suggestions would be the following:

1. increase the duration and availability of chill back to what it was. You already nerfed chill multiple times, there was no need to nerf the reaper skills on top of that.

2. Increase the damage from chill 5-10×. This is a grandmaster trait, it shouldn’t do less than a single auto attack from every other profession.

3. Give reaper an additional fear. Either through traits, in a shout, or on a weapon. No one is going to “fear the reaper” because he doesn’t have any fear.

We have all seen this before as Necromancers: Start off nerfed to oblivion and creep up on viability. Buff something a little too much and nerf the snot out of something else that worked really well.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I wish he had touched on the chill line as well.

There is a whole line in the reaper traits that is dedicated to chills and conditions, yet the chills are terrible, have no synergy and the “grandmaster” trait gives a whopping 2 stacks of bleed worth of damage. Compare that with other grandmaster traits that give professions a 20% damage increase. To put that into perspective, they would need to increase the damage from chill by >5x to match a 20% overall damage increase.

The class also seems to tie chills in with fear, yet reaper gets no access to fear, and even with staff you are looking at a total of 4s of fear every 40s or so. This makes the minor trait essentially useless for every spec except a pure terrormancer spec, and even then it still isn’t great.

My suggestions would be the following:

1. increase the duration and availability of chill back to what it was. You already nerfed chill multiple times, there was no need to nerf the reaper skills on top of that.

2. Increase the damage from chill 5-10×. This is a grandmaster trait, it shouldn’t do less than a single auto attack from every other profession.

3. Give reaper an additional fear. Either through traits, in a shout, or on a weapon. No one is going to “fear the reaper” because he doesn’t have any fear.

Its been updated to talk about traits/chill

Nightshade.2570:

I do not know how many of you saw this..

I largely agreed with this review. I did Love Reaper shroud and though I tried very hard to make all aspects of the reaper work for me this weekend I could not get past the shout and great sword issues mentioned in the article below.

I think Reaper has a lot of potential but in general, it seems this article appropriately reflects the general consensus.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/preview/guild-wars-2-reaper-first-impressions

What do you guys think of Blighter’s Boon? I thought it was amazing as power, but I was playing in WvW and PvP. I can understand how weak it might be in Solo play.
But yeah, we have this guy saying it was underwhelming, and folks on the PvP forum screaming for a nerf as it offers too much sustain… Where do you guys sit?

Blighter’s Boon is awesome, if you don’t like it, you didn’t use it right. It may not seem as good soloing, but even in 1v1 situations I found it to be good. In any group or zerg situations, it’s a godsend. I can refill my lifeforce bar in matter of seconds. It’s our first and only passive LF regen. I find it awkward to play my necro now without it.

Blighter’s Boon is honestly competing with Death’s Charge as the best thing Reaper has to offer. It is fantastic. So much life force, if you’re running Spite, it’s a ton of health returned without worrying about Unholy Sanctuary or Blood Magic.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Blighter’s Boon is honestly competing with Death’s Charge as the best thing Reaper has to offer. It is fantastic. So much life force, if you’re running Spite, it’s a ton of health returned without worrying about Unholy Sanctuary or Blood Magic.

I wouldn’t go that far. It’s a highly situational trait that only really shines in a group environment when you’ve a heavy and constant influx of boons. If you’re by yourself, it’s pretty negligible. With a party however, it’s fab.

Blighters boon was a good trait and worked really well when I was running in spvp with my buddies boon share ele. It was the first time he could actually heal me well I was in shroud.

Samhayn.2385:

Blighters boon was a good trait and worked really well when I was running in spvp with my buddies boon share ele. It was the first time he could actually heal me well I was in shroud.

Absolutely – with someone else it’s brilliant.

I think Blighter’s Boon is the very first trait to have a defensive mechanic that scales decently. This, coupled with RS 3’s pulsing stability, finally allows us to really take part in teamfights. That’s huge! I would even say that, for necro, it’s revolutionary!

Misguided.5139:

Reaper Shroud is darn-near perfect, so much so that I will use it even if everything else remains the same. But the goal should definitely be for shouts and GS to be just as much fun as RS.

no it’s not near perfect. autoattack is very weak, skill 2 needs tweak cause it’s the only charge skill of the game that doesn’t have collision on target and passes through enemies, and skill 5 needs 50% less cast time. 2s is too much. players use their brains and take advantage of the 2s cast time and just evade it without sweat

The author raises a lot of good points: The shouts are underwhelming. GS doesn’t do quite enough damage to justify its slow speed (or, perhaps rather Necro doesn’t have enough access to stability to reliably get the hits off)

However, the author’s build linked in the update… kind of sucks. He simply took a Metabattle build, ripped out one trait line, dropped Reaper in its place, and presumably replaced either Dagger+Horn or the Staff with a Greatsword. While the build on Metabattle could be the best Necro build available in the live game, swapping out one of its trait lines and likely one of its weapons without making any other adjustments is a pretty bad idea.

He traits heavily for Chill and Chill damage without specifying if he’s a Condi or Power build, but then passes over other options to further enhance his chill. He ignores a lot of readily available vulnerability, and appears to not understand how Decimate Defenses even works as his “suggestion” would actually result in a lower crit chance for the Reaper most of the time. He makes bad choices (on-hit effects versus chilled when using the slowest weapon in the entire game) when amazing ones (Decimate Defenses) are available in the same line. He has an entire trait line devoted to Shroud, but then ignores the complimentary traits available in Spite and Reaper.

Reaper isn’t perfect. The author isn’t totally wrong, and many of his comments are entirely valid. But you can’t build a Reaper using old Necro stuff as a template. Most Necros run Dagger+X/Staff. Dagger attacks very quickly, making it great for on-hit effects. Axe hits fairly rapidly, too, which lends itself some overlap. Many Necros are also accustomed to mostly using Original Shroud for its AA spam or as a defensive tool, because its other abilities are situational (and in the case of 4+5, super-easily countered) but Reaper Shroud can be used much more proactively and offensively.

My original concept going into BWE1 was to stack 3 different life leech traits and stay in GS-form most of the time. Basically, I was going to rip one trait line out of my existing build and drop Reaper in its place. That didn’t work at all because the slow swings of the GS make it terrible for proc builds. Once I re-kitted and re-thought my build, and started weaving Shroud into my rotation rather than using it purely as a panic button, I fared a lot better. The Reaper is a vuln-stacking, auto-critting monster that also has ready access to a lot of self-stacked might.

Is it perfect or even “fantastic”? Of course not, at least not certain situations. But it also isn’t the roaring dumpster fire that people are making it out to be. I heard that the GS was currently operating at “dagger range” for BWE1 and that’s supposedly a bug, but I’m not 100% sure since I only heard it second-hand and didn’t see a dev comment about it.

And the shouts suck. That can’t be said enough. They need to do a lot more damage and/or have a lot shorter cast time.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Blighter’s Boon is honestly competing with Death’s Charge as the best thing Reaper has to offer. It is fantastic. So much life force, if you’re running Spite, it’s a ton of health returned without worrying about Unholy Sanctuary or Blood Magic.

I wouldn’t go that far. It’s a highly situational trait that only really shines in a group environment when you’ve a heavy and constant influx of boons. If you’re by yourself, it’s pretty negligible. With a party however, it’s fab.

Even with just yourself, it generates a very respectable amount of health just from Spite minors and RS3. The life force gain is really only noticeable with YAAW or with allies, but the health gain is significant regardless.