Guild Wars 2

A lot of these have had topics about the reaper and whether it will be viable (though I think it will be fine) but I wanted to ask what your guys’ thoughts were on the viability of the GS. Now obviously if it does a ton of damage, then it’s gonna be viable but this is assuming that the GS damage ends up not being all that fantastical (we know its possible).

In my research thus far on potential Reaper builds, I see two main types of builds in existence:
1 – Builds that use the reaper traitline to enhance their current build
2 – Builds revolving around reaper shroud.

If someone goes with the #1 route, then they’ll likely keep their old weapons. If they go with #2 route, Dagger autoattack generates life force whereas GS AA doesn’t (again, this is assuming that GS damage is comparable to dagger and not significantly higher).

Just want to know people thoughts on how viable they think the GS will be and what it will take to ensure that it is indeed viable. I, personally, am praying that the GS does well so I can have Twilight on my Necromancer and go to town. Let me know your thoguhts

I think in pve it will be viable if the numbers are right.

For pvp it is hard too say. GS is rather slow which is a bad thing generally but it still can work if the skills are good (seen in warrior/guardian hammer). I just fear that GS will have a hard time getting LF due the slow casttime of the skills that generate LF. Because of that i would probably reduce the casttime of GS 3 to 1/2 second or so.

Sigmoid.7082:

Bhawb.7408:

Greatsword isn’t even that slow compared to the rest of our profession. Gravedigger is, but the rest is no slower than the rest of what we’re used to dealing with.

Agreed

Its auto attack is about as fast as warrior hammer.
Gravedigger has a total cast time of about 1.8s including after cast but has a purpose of being aoe backstab spam.
Nightfall casts as fast as mesmer Gs #3
Reapers grasp cast as fast as guard GS #5
Death Spirals 1s we are already used to.

Lf wise as a reaper you never have to worry as you generate enough lf. Far more than currently at its best potential.

Pvp: It’s slower than guardian hammer which is not viable because it is too slow. It doesn’t CC like guardian hammer does either.

You get a pull on greatsword (good), but you are giving up access to better utility by taking it.

Your life force generation on reaper looks terrible in Pvp. You only get life force on the long cool down #5. You have two life force generating traits, but if you need to take these just to get decent life force, then the new class offers you nothing in terms of traits.

And look at those two traits. You get life force when you hit a chilled target (how is the target getting chilled?) or you get life force when you spam boons on yourself (where are the boons coming from?).

The damage numbers on the greatsword better be out of this world good.

Edit: we are most definitely not used to having to be in melee with such terrible cast times. You can hide terrible cast times with range (sorta, not really), but melee is a different story.

You generate a lot of LF in PvE as a Reaper. It will be rather difficult to connect with GS3 with all hits to generate LF in PvP contexts. I genuinely still think that WH5 is going to be necessary to build LF to a starting point before trying to generate it with GS3.

Anyway, I fully expect GS to be viable and meta in PvE for the Necromancer. It will not save the class, nor will it give them Elementalist-level DPS, but it will be better than what we’ve got now.

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: It’s slower than guardian hammer which is not viable because it is too slow. It doesn’t CC like guardian hammer does either.

You get a pull on greatsword (good), but you are giving up access to better utility by taking it.

Your life force generation on reaper looks terrible in Pvp. You only get life force on the long cool down #5. You have two life force generating traits, but if you need to take these just to get decent life force, then the new class offers you nothing in terms of traits.

And look at those two traits. You get life force when you hit a chilled target (how is the target getting chilled?) or you get life force when you spam boons on yourself (where are the boons coming from?).

The damage numbers on the greatsword better be out of this world good.

You do realize meta Medi-guard uses Hammer, right?

Rising Dusk.2408:

You generate a lot of LF in PvE as a Reaper. It will be rather difficult to connect with GS3 with all hits to generate LF in PvP contexts. I genuinely still think that WH5 is going to be necessary to build LF to a starting point before trying to generate it with GS3.

Anyway, I fully expect GS to be viable and meta in PvE for the Necromancer. It will not save the class, nor will it give them Elementalist-level DPS, but it will be better than what we’ve got now.

I don’t think we’ll ever get Elementalist-level DPS as nice as it would be lol. Though my necro is FAR less squishable than my Ele so I guess trade-offs are always mandatory. :p

Reaper will be nice for PvE.

PvP I foresee it having serious problems.

It basically takes away your ranged burst potential & forces you into melee without giving you any way of reliably closing gaps (leaps, teleports etc…)

Add to that the fact that chill was recently nerfed and you can guess where it’s going.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: It’s slower than guardian hammer which is not viable because it is too slow. It doesn’t CC like guardian hammer does either.

You get a pull on greatsword (good), but you are giving up access to better utility by taking it.

Your life force generation on reaper looks terrible in Pvp. You only get life force on the long cool down #5. You have two life force generating traits, but if you need to take these just to get decent life force, then the new class offers you nothing in terms of traits.

And look at those two traits. You get life force when you hit a chilled target (how is the target getting chilled?) or you get life force when you spam boons on yourself (where are the boons coming from?).

The damage numbers on the greatsword better be out of this world good.

You do realize meta Medi-guard uses Hammer, right?

Meta medi guard is quickly vanishing in favor of shout builds.

Eneldiar.9670:

Rising Dusk.2408:

You generate a lot of LF in PvE as a Reaper. It will be rather difficult to connect with GS3 with all hits to generate LF in PvP contexts. I genuinely still think that WH5 is going to be necessary to build LF to a starting point before trying to generate it with GS3.

Anyway, I fully expect GS to be viable and meta in PvE for the Necromancer. It will not save the class, nor will it give them Elementalist-level DPS, but it will be better than what we’ve got now.

I don’t think we’ll ever get Elementalist-level DPS as nice as it would be lol. Though my necro is FAR less squishable than my Ele so I guess trade-offs are always mandatory. :p

Necro may be able to survive quite well but IDK if I would compare it to a well played ele.

I have seen many an ele survive team fights and focus fire that would flat out destroy a necro due to their aoe healing, aoe protection, CC, damage and ability to escape.

Eneldiar.9670:

In my research thus far on potential Reaper builds, I see two main types of builds in existence:
1 – Builds that use the reaper traitline to enhance their current build
2 – Builds revolving around reaper shroud.

If someone goes with the #1 route, then they’ll likely keep their old weapons. If they go with #2 route, Dagger autoattack generates life force whereas GS AA doesn’t (again, this is assuming that GS damage is comparable to dagger and not significantly higher).

What weapon do you pair with greatsword?

Probably Staff. You need the range. You need the conditions transfer and you need the fear (please disable weapon swapping while feared). Both staff 3 and 5 will chill. You’ll want that.

But staff has awful life force generation.

How much of our current life force generation comes from Warhorn? Most of it? You are giving up that and the quick life force from dagger auto.

I don’t think Reaper has enough chill for the chill trait to generate much. (And it will generate life force in ‘snowball’ situations when you dont need it). That leaves the Reaper depending on blighter’s boon. But where are your boons coming from? Do you get boons more than once every five seconds (spite might is snowball situation dependent. It’s not going to help when you need it)

The fix Reaper needs is for anet to finally get up and fix axe and focus.

Axe needs greater damage scaling coefficient and finisher on 3 (it should be a utility weapon because it nerfs your shroud damage. Vulnerability generation is not useful if necromancer doesn’t have the defensive tools to survive in a team fight).

Focus seems to exist now as a “set up an enemy for a team damage spike.” weapon. But if the necromancer can’t survive in these situations, it sees no use. Spike strategies in general are bad in a game with no strong healers.

It should be made a spammy control weapon. No bonus damage, 2 boons corrupt (one less than now), one second less chill, .75 cast time, 12 second cool down on 4. Focus 5 needs to be brought in line with Mesmer greatsword #2. (The Mesmer skill provides its own bounce with the clone, so it’s just a lot easier to use in addition to being better in every other way).

If axe and focus are fixed you could have reliable aimed chill for your traits or could still take Warhorn and a (low) ranged weapon.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Eneldiar.9670:

Rising Dusk.2408:

You generate a lot of LF in PvE as a Reaper. It will be rather difficult to connect with GS3 with all hits to generate LF in PvP contexts. I genuinely still think that WH5 is going to be necessary to build LF to a starting point before trying to generate it with GS3.

Anyway, I fully expect GS to be viable and meta in PvE for the Necromancer. It will not save the class, nor will it give them Elementalist-level DPS, but it will be better than what we’ve got now.

I don’t think we’ll ever get Elementalist-level DPS as nice as it would be lol. Though my necro is FAR less squishable than my Ele so I guess trade-offs are always mandatory. :p

Necro may be able to survive quite well but IDK if I would compare it to a well played ele.

I have seen many an ele survive team fights and focus fire that would flat out destroy a necro due to their aoe healing, aoe protection, CC, damage and ability to escape.

I was thinking in more PvE than PvP or WvW. There’s no doubt that the necro isn’t as mobile as it could be. I think the main advantage of necromancer survivability is that it has a very low skill requirement (lots of vitality) whereas elementalist survivability is almost solely skill-based. With vigor and good dodging/positioning, an ele definitely could have survivability compared to a necro, but it’s definitely dependent on skill.

GS will be very good in PvE, expecially in dungeons.
The skill 2 will recharge if you hit a enemy under 50% of hp, that will transform you into a spinning top that deal a very high damage (very very high) and do always a whirl finisher.

It can be thinked to be used in www, into a zerg, to hit a large number of enemies and deal high damage. But if you’re in frontline without RS you die quickly, if you’re not in a full soldier and the AA and the skill 2 and 4 don’t give LF, then you have only skill 3 and 5 to obtain LF. If you hit 3 enemies you recharge 36% of LF with skill 3, every 10 seconds, and that can be good, but into a zerg you can have to use only it and only to go back immediatly in RS to don’t die.

in spvp it all depends on what’s the situation. In mid it can be used if you’re 4vs4/5vs5 why you can find enemies near you and catch them. Chill cna also be good to help you in that.
But a slow weapon that telegraph to your enemy every skill, making him able to evade it… no, it’s not the best melee weapon that you can use.

It will be very goos in PvE (also hard dungeons like fractal and big bosses). But it will not be the best weapon for PvP.

But I want to try the Reaper!
A necro with a GS can be very cool.

This just goes to show how very important it’s going to be to actually beta test these changes. Not only in PvE, but in WvW and PvP as well.

I still have my reservations about the general theme of the class. Others like Bhawb and Drarnor seem to think the class will function in a front line role. I’m not convinced but god I hope they’re right because the only other role left for a melee is a backline ganker and god knows the class doesn’t have the tools for that. So that’s just the general idea of melee.

As for greatsword in particular, the skills don’t really seem that great. The auto is fine and gravedigger, so long as it’s DPS is considerable, should be ok as well. The other skills I’m less pleased with, but we need to beta test them to see their actual effectiveness.

nekretaal.6485:

Eneldiar.9670:

In my research thus far on potential Reaper builds, I see two main types of builds in existence:
1 – Builds that use the reaper traitline to enhance their current build
2 – Builds revolving around reaper shroud.

If someone goes with the #1 route, then they’ll likely keep their old weapons. If they go with #2 route, Dagger autoattack generates life force whereas GS AA doesn’t (again, this is assuming that GS damage is comparable to dagger and not significantly higher).

What weapon do you pair with greatsword?

Probably Staff. You need the range. You need the conditions transfer and you need the fear (please disable weapon swapping while feared). Both staff 3 and 5 will chill. You’ll want that.

But staff has awful life force generation.

How much of our current life force generation comes from Warhorn? Most of it? You are giving up that and the quick life force from dagger auto.

I don’t think Reaper has enough chill for the chill trait to generate much. (And it will generate life force in ‘snowball’ situations when you dont need it). That leaves the Reaper depending on blighter’s boon. But where are your boons coming from? Do you get boons more than once every five seconds (spite might is snowball situation dependent. It’s not going to help when you need it)

The fix Reaper needs is for anet to finally get up and fix axe and focus.

Axe needs greater damage scaling coefficient and finisher on 3 (it should be a utility weapon because it nerfs your shroud damage. Vulnerability generation is not useful if necromancer doesn’t have the defensive tools to survive in a team fight).

Focus seems to exist now as a “set up an enemy for a team damage spike.” weapon. But if the necromancer can’t survive in these situations, it sees no use. Spike strategies in general are bad in a game with no strong healers.

It should be made a spammy control weapon. No bonus damage, 2 boons corrupt (one less than now), one second less chill, .75 cast time, 12 second cool down on 4. Focus 5 needs to be brought in line with Mesmer greatsword #2. (The Mesmer skill provides its own bounce with the clone, so it’s just a lot easier to use in addition to being better in every other way).

If axe and focus are fixed you could have reliable aimed chill for your traits or could still take Warhorn and a (low) ranged weapon.

A ranged weapon does seem like a must-have for a Reaper and giving up D/W is iffy, but you could always keep a staff in inventory in case you need range.

I think for the moment reaper has quite a bit of chill if specced right. GS AA has cleave chill and if you have the trait where your crit spreads chill and high precision than you’re doing pretty good. RS 3 and 5 can give chill with rights traits and with 100% crit chance, every AA would give chill.

I absolutely agree on the axe thing, though. It gives range, skill 2 can give LF, but 1 and 3 aren’t really that helpful. If axe got a good buff, I would almost certainly use that as my secondary weapon.

Sigmoid.7082:

Sigmoid.7082:

Bhawb.7408:

Greatsword isn’t even that slow compared to the rest of our profession. Gravedigger is, but the rest is no slower than the rest of what we’re used to dealing with.

Agreed

Its auto attack is about as fast as warrior hammer.
Gravedigger has a total cast time of about 1.8s including after cast but has a purpose of being aoe backstab spam.
Nightfall casts as fast as mesmer Gs #3
Reapers grasp cast as fast as guard GS #5
Death Spirals 1s we are already used to.

Lf wise as a reaper you never have to worry as you generate enough lf. Far more than currently at its best potential.

Sorry but i am not convinced of that yet in a pvp setting. Death spiral with a 1 second casttime is easy to dodge and Chilling force and blighters boon may seem much but against good player i doubt that they are that reliable.

Eneldiar.9670:

I think for the moment reaper has quite a bit of chill if specced right. GS AA has cleave chill and if you have the trait where your crit spreads chill and high precision than you’re doing pretty good. RS 3 and 5 can give chill with rights traits and with 100% crit chance, every AA would give chill.

But the thing with chilling nova is that you would have to give up relentless pursuit. And that trait is in my opinion to good to give up in pvp.

Muchacho.2390:

Eneldiar.9670:

I think for the moment reaper has quite a bit of chill if specced right. GS AA has cleave chill and if you have the trait where your crit spreads chill and high precision than you’re doing pretty good. RS 3 and 5 can give chill with rights traits and with 100% crit chance, every AA would give chill.

But the thing with chilling nova is that you would have to give up relentless pursuit. And that trait is in my opinion to good to give up in pvp.

I can see how that would be a crappy thing to give up for PvP.

I think great sword is designed for PvE and will work very well for mobs without Defiance. The pull will help in stacking situations. Unfortunately, there are a number of knock-backs like PBS people love to spam.