Guild Wars 2

I’m personally not going to be running reaper as I mainly wvw and spvp. I find the skills to be powerful, but they telegraph like crazy. Gravedigger is like “oh hey I’m floating now, better dodge away”. I’m also not too keen on giving up plague blast on death shroud. It’s the only reliable ranged damage a necro has.
Also on a side note, I don’t understand why reaper gets a GS. The whole feel they were going for was 1. Slower swings 2. Bigger damage 3. Chills. That sounds a whole lot more like the HAMMER to me. Hammer would have fit the role they are trying to fill with the current GS, while also giving us a weapon that isn’t already used on many classes. But i digress (especially before the "but muh legundery GS is spaaaaaaace)
All in all I think reaper is balanced, but I just won’t be using it and wanted to see if any other necros would be sticking with the old ds

I don’t PvP so I cannot comment there. But for WvW zerging with the guildies I will stick with my necro well bomber due to liking to hit from range. In PvE I will run a reaper because the stupid AI will melt regardless so I may as well hit as hard as possible. However, both will use a staff as either main or off hand for having a ranged option.

On your side note though it seems ANet has always had it set up for us to get a GS seeing as some of the NPC necros got them already. It may seem to be more suited to hammer, but many of us (me) are happy it is a GS.

edit: spelling

Reaper has three major threat skills: Gravedigger, Executioner’s Scythe, and Chilled to the Bone. Landing either of the last two can guarantee landing the first.

So, in 1v1’s, sure Reaper can have a tougher time. But, while those are the big 3, they aren’t all you have. If they’re saving a dodge for one of the big 3, that means they’re down one dodge for anything else you may try. Take advantage of that.

And in teamfights? You’re probably going to land those 3 due to opponents having so much else that they need to dodge.

Reaper’s too good and too fun to skip for me. It took me awhile to get used to not having lifeblast & non-los lifetransfer. But the amount of mobility, survivability, stab, cc’s, blind, fast lifeforce regen, in-shroud heals, and hard hitting melee cleaves are just too much to pass up.

Yes gravedigger is hard to connect. Yes GS 5 pull isn’t reliable in its current iteration. But honestly lifeblast isn’t that much better. Necros not taking reaper will be knocked around like a ragdoll like we have been for the longest time, getting interrupted whenever you’re trying to use lifeblast or other shroud skills. And before you know it, your lifeforce is gone and you haven’t really connected too many lifeblasts.

I’m so glad I can move away from dagger auto & death shroud auto with Reaper…FINALLY. Thank Gee. I mean seriously, having fought necros on my reaper over the weekend, I can’t believe how long we’ve been playing such a b-rated class. Since BWE2 ended, I feel so slow, so immobile, so useless, so lacking lifeforce regen, so vulnerable to cc’s and knockbacks/downs. I get ganked while running to my raid in WvW, where as over the weekend my reaper was doing the ganking. I can’t believe we put up with such a crappy class design for so long. The expansion can’t come any sooner, I need my reaper back.

I don’t understand the “not going Reaper because GS is slow and clunky”. RS is amazing, and it was painful to go back to DS. I just hope that axe/scepter/focus will become interesting alternatives to GS. As for the 2nd set, I don’t see dagger/warhorn going anywhere, because of its unmatched LF generation; but the desire to stay in RS forever is probably clouding my judgment. :p

It is an issue I see a lot on the forums regarding specializations: Being in a specialization means, at minimum, you’re taking the traits. You don’t have to take the weapon or utilities.

That said, I’m not sure reaper is ever leaving my bar. Even if I don’t use the GS, the traits are too good for me to pass up.

:)

I actually started a Necromancer after my return to the game because I read they get to use a GS

For WvW raids with the Guild u can still use your Wells as a Reaper and imho most things in RS is better there then DS most so the Combos + Infuseing Terror, haveing that Stab is what DS just cant provide. FiG is nothing compared to IT.

So I mainy do WvW and PvP and I will swap to Reaper first avaible second, I think there will for sure be ppl that stay on Necro as it is now but in our Guild raids we mostly going over to Reaper. and btw GS works awesome in WvW u actually get pulls, gravediggers to hit when ppl dont see them comming

I’ll use Reaper everywhere, regardless of effectiveness

Many will stay as Necromancers because they need to map complete to gain all the hero points needed to fully unlock the Reaper. :-P

most have more then enough Hero pts without being close to map completion

Ravezaar.4951:

most have more then enough Hero pts without being close to map completion

I really hope I hit 80 with enough points for reaper without map completion. I want to play the basic pve content with a greatsword.

The Reaper isn’t a balanced character. It is a gimmick right now, and the melee damage isn’t good enough for a character that doesn’t have team support.

If axe and scepter (and focus) get buffed to the point where everybody doesn’t have to take staff, then I’ll go reaper. Until then, base necromancer is just a stronger character.

pepsis.5384:

Ravezaar.4951:

most have more then enough Hero pts without being close to map completion

I really hope I hit 80 with enough points for reaper without map completion. I want to play the basic pve content with a greatsword.

You wont hit 80 and get enough points to unlock reaper. You have to do some hero challenges.

pepsis.5384:

Ravezaar.4951:

most have more then enough Hero pts without being close to map completion

I really hope I hit 80 with enough points for reaper without map completion. I want to play the basic pve content with a greatsword.

Yea basicly my necro is 80 all unlocked and over 450 Hero Points so he be ok, but if u make a “insta 80” form scratch u need to go out and get those points.

I won’t not be going Reaper. At this point MM is the only build I’d probably want to play on base Necromancer, unless Gee makes some amazing base Necro changes, especially to Death Shroud.

Stability is kind of needed to be a good necromancer, and reaper has pretty much all of it.

I love Base Necromancer and Reaper, they have two completely different combat styles and there for different roles.
Which is why (also because I hate carrying 4+ gear sets around) have 4 necromancers.
My Base Necros will each fill different Necromancer roles, Wellbomber, and my roaming/havoc Perplexity Condi necro.
Same with 2 of them being, Power/frontline Reaper and Condi roamer/havoc Reaper.

I’ve always loved conditionmancer and base Necro does it better than Reaper. I will be sticking with base Necro for roaming but in zergs I may put together a build as a Reaper since it does well in groups. We’ll have to see how it performs before I decide but regardless, I mostly float around on my own in WvW so even if I do zerg as a Reaper it won’t be a lot.

I’m one of the few that seems to have not enjoyed Reaper much at all. Other than the look of the Reaper Shroud which I LOVE and how wonderful the animations feel, smooth like butter <3. But besides that, I didn’t care for it much. Base Necro has me sold because of the fluency of condition application. I’ve actually been thinking on making a short video on condition stacking just because I’ve run in to a lot of condi Necro’s in the past that can’t seem to stack more than 2 – 4 conditions.

Weird, the cele signet Reaper I was testing for roaming kept plenty of condis on my targets. Without even trying, targets I’m on always have large stacks of vuln, poison, chill, blind every 8 seconds or less, fear (which applies chill also), and I didn’t even take Dhuumfire which I should have. That would’ve been easily large stacks of burn application. I also didn’t take signet of spite either, nor ran Curses, which you can take if you want plague sending & weakness uptime.

You don’t need to be a full on condimancer to apply condi with reaper. And reapers transfer condi just as well as base necro, and that really is the strength of necros anyway more than condi application generated from necros themselves.

I do suspect though those that prefer more of a caster style, slower combat to enjoy base necro better. While those looking for better melee options and faster combat will likely enjoy reapers.

Pretty sure I’ll be running GS shouts/reaper in wvw. I don’t care if it’s optimal. It’s fun.

Warrior is much better warrior than reaper.

Lilly Satou.1482:

I’m personally not going to be running reaper as I mainly wvw and spvp. I find the skills to be powerful, but they telegraph like crazy. Gravedigger is like “oh hey I’m floating now, better dodge away”. I’m also not too keen on giving up plague blast on death shroud. It’s the only reliable ranged damage a necro has.
Also on a side note, I don’t understand why reaper gets a GS. The whole feel they were going for was 1. Slower swings 2. Bigger damage 3. Chills. That sounds a whole lot more like the HAMMER to me. Hammer would have fit the role they are trying to fill with the current GS, while also giving us a weapon that isn’t used on many classes. But i digress (especially before the "but muh legundery GS is spaaaaaaace)
All in all I think reaper is balanced, but I just won’t be using it and wanted to see if any other necros would be sticking with the old ds

Even if reaper was less powerfull than the current necromancer situation (which is definitly not the case) i will go for it just for wear my Greatsword haha

We touched a beta its gonna be updated obviously and the preview, at the moment, is very satisfying.

I’m not really amazed by Reaper, because it isn’t my idea of Necromancer, similary how I always prefered Affliction Warlock in WoW to Death Knights. It’s fun and I like Blighter’s Boon, it’s most likely more powerful and I will craft some builds with Reaper for sure, but that’s not Elite Specialization I’d be super excited for, maybe next time.

For now, I would like to see promised Scepter changes and improvements to basic, core Necromancer.

i will try reapers shroud maybe add it to my standard build but i will not even try greatsword. the hype train hasnt amazed me and making spamming gravedigger so rewarding is imo really disappointing but hey if somebody else gets happy from spamming one button more power to them but well thats all i do with my dagger anyways so why am i complaining ;D

Never having played a necromancer before the last beta event, I personally love the reaper and the greatsword.

I’ll be playing it when HoT launches.

on MM, i wont use Reaper(spite/blood/death is unbreakable)….but i will on everything else.

I’m gonna play around with Reaper but I don’t know that I can give up that sexy, sexy Dagger autoattack. I also really like our vampire build but Reaper has no room for Blood, so that’s another problem with it. We’ll see.

Relshdan.6854:

on MM, i wont use Reaper(spite/blood/death is unbreakable)….but i will on everything else.

Spite required for MM ? How long since last time you played ? :p

First of all, Reaper is not fully balanced yet. The BWE2 version of the Reaper might not make it into the final release. There would be improvements, but I expect there to also be some changes to the damage outputs too.
There is however the fact that when you go reaper, all you lose from the base necro is its death shroud and the inability to combine 3 core traits in the same build. Even if they improve core trait lines or skills, the reaper still has access to all of them. So the only way they can boost the base necro without making the reaper even more powerful is by either improving base death shroud or emphasizing on the inherent reaper weakness, that is ranged damage.
To be fair though, as someone who usually plays a variety of necro builds in PvP, I’m sure I’m going to play both base and reaper. There are simply builds that I like running that would not have good synergy with the reaper trait line or the reaper shroud.
So while the reaper provides the necro a lot of the things that it was lacking, it simply can’t cover all the roles of the base necro.

The only reason I’m holding off fully investing into Reaper just yet is my fear that it won’t be needed or desired in raids. Judging from the game design presented in dungeons and fractals at the moment, I’m just a certain kind of paranoid we’ll be, once more, the definition of bottom tier for PvE.

Mantraxx.5183:

The only reason I’m holding off fully investing into Reaper just yet is my fear that it won’t be needed or desired in raids. Judging from the game design presented in dungeons and fractals at the moment, I’m just a certain kind of paranoid we’ll be, once more, the definition of bottom tier for PvE.

Even if we are, I’m loving the hell out of the necromancer, and I love the hell out of the reaper.

I’ll probably skip raids anyway…I’ve seen the kind of people they attract.

Two problems I have with reaper:

1) It looks more damage based than condition based-Great sword and Rs is good getting close and personal. The chill is good but isn’t worth spec into that line where another useful line could be used and Greatsword does nothing for me Staff with soul mark can do better.

2)Rs can be kited/ LF loss is too great-Just to piggyback off the previous point, I’m fully condition based, not damage based meaning I have no reason to be in the middle of fight where I just melt to everything. That being said Rs is too predictable and easily kited out of it. It was said reaper was made for multiple group fights, yet when you get focus fired the LF drops dramatically and you die.

I’m going to try out swinging a GS on my Necro for sure! And I’ll see how it’ll do in PvE (I only PvE).

Though it’ll be hard to lay down my mainhand Dagger, haha.

You can’t reap with a hammer.

I swapped from guardian to necro (both classes I love) why guardian will obtain dragonhunter and necro reaper.
But I will play reaper only for PvE. Or at last, for the first time after the release.
if I see that I can also play it with my build in spvp i will try it in spvp.
But use the reaper without the gs seems to be a waste and the GS in spvp is really a bad weapon XD

CodeHavoc.7926:

Two problems I have with reaper:

1) It looks more damage based than condition based-Great sword and Rs is good getting close and personal. The chill is good but isn’t worth spec into that line where another useful line could be used and Greatsword does nothing for me Staff with soul mark can do better.

2)Rs can be kited/ LF loss is too great-Just to piggyback off the previous point, I’m fully condition based, not damage based meaning I have no reason to be in the middle of fight where I just melt to everything. That being said Rs is too predictable and easily kited out of it. It was said reaper was made for multiple group fights, yet when you get focus fired the LF drops dramatically and you die.

First off, yes, GS is a power weapon. Condi reaper is a thing though, it just runs scepter instead of GS. With Dhuumfire, combined with RS faster attack speed, stacking burns is pretty easy. Death spiral is also a very solid poison spike. (I was getting near 2k poison ticks with 0 condition damage).

Necro needed boost to Power Speccs, Condi was dominateing everything we did for basicly 3y except Large Scale WvW and well none of the necros were really high up in Pve like Dungeons & Fractals. Did I find it wierd that GS is basicly all Power based ? Yea kinda. Tho when u consider a high dps Cleave weapon u dont really see : Condi Dmg so makes sense.

Maybe they could have kept Poison on GS#5 tho, maybe. Iam very happy at the current Reaper form, will it keep it status to HoT release tho idk.

me, for the same reasons you said. skills are very easy to read, and players will adjust to them and evade, counter etc after a while. if casting speed isn’t decreased i’m not using GS. Guardian GS does more dmg than Warrior GS(aside Hundred Blade), but his casting speed isn’t increased as drawback

I’m the opposite, I won’t ever be going back to core necro. It’s so under-par compared to reaper that I can’t stomach it anymore. If I want ranged options I’ll just use scepter/staff. Nothing says you are forced to use GS if you go reaper.

i’m not even going to go necromancer. sorry but this class is way too weak and boring, i feel bad for you necro mains

I’m planning on having both. My brawlery big damage reaper and my plague master condi mancer build that I love so much.

It is looking like I wont be buying HoT, so I’ll stick to my little Necro.