Guild Wars 2

Lots of people have been playing celestial signet reaper by dropping curses for reaper and thinking that signets and dhuumfire will let them do work. But no, this is suboptimal for several reasons.

1. You don’t get any significant mileage from the healing power on celestial.

2. You need to spam weakness to stay alive as a necromancer with celestial stats, akin to elementalists/tempests/scrappers spamming protection. You have to lose your weakness to get reaper, so you’re sustain plummets.

3. Signet of Vampirism is a kittenty excuse for a heal skill. No one ever touched it before the signet traits got merged and buffed to faceroll mightstacks. Its cast time and cooldown are too long for the low healing it gives you.

4. Blighter’s Boon nerf- this was the one thing giving cele reaper the illusion of being good, and post-rebalance, healing 183 health per autoattack in shroud (up from 139+ally boons) isn’t worth it. Don’t let the 330% heal value buff scale number in the patch notes fool you, its still a really crappy heal when only you can provide the boons for it! Thats even lower than the healing values at equivalent healing power for unholy sanctuary of all the useless things under the sun!

5. Builds with 1200 power can stack might just as fast as a celestial build can and canhave similar damage output. Anything with 25 might will hit like a truck.

You can’t just slap reaper on the old “meta” build and expect to wreck face. The synergies don’t apply, and celestial necromancer relied on a specific set of synergies to get bye. Soldier’s reaper and carrion chill spam forever reaper are both much better in the current metagame in my opinion. The only things that can succesfully run celestial right now are versatile healer-dps builds such as aura-spam tempest and druid, and mightstacking builds with high tankiness and mightstacking such as scrapper (from protection/adaptive armor).

braces self for the wave of "nhuh nearlight, you’re such a scrub and you’re so wrong qqqq

I’m in the mood for some maths…

with 1200 power, 4% crit chance: 2200 * ( 1 + 0.04*0.5)= 2244
+ 50% crit (DS): 2200 * ( 1 + 0.54*0.5) = 2794
+ 25 might : 2950 * ( 1 + 0.04*0.5) = 3009
+ 50% crit (DS) + 25 might: 2950 * ( 1 + 0.54*0.5) = 3746

with cele: 1560 * (1 + 0.307*0.87) = 1976
+ 50% crit (DS): 1560 * ( 1 + 0.807*0.87) = 2655
+ 25 might : 2310 * (1 + 0.307*0.87) = 2926
+ 50% crit (DS) + 25 might: 2310 * ( 1 + 0.807*0.87) = 3931

So basically at 25 might and with 50% crit, cele is stronger than 1200 power. Outside of shroud (without crit), both are quite close. If you can have fury cele is even better.
And since a part of the damage comes from condition (staff, transfers), the gain is more clear.

However, for reaper, cele would typically use dhuumfire instead of crit, and the gain is actually even more important.

Interestingly, it feels like the meta would have less conditions output (because guardians are moving away from burns), so the need for condition stat may be decreased.

And as you said, the healing power is not particularly useful for cele reaper. I am still happy they increased the scaling of BB with healing power.

At the end, this may be why Nos used soldier instead. With the support from his revenants, the only thing he needs is to survive the 10-ish seconds before his shroud is back off CD, so he only needed “burst survivability” which soldier provides.

edit: I don’t think my message contains any… message. It is more my reflections on the question.

That’s all well and good, but the relatively minor increase in damage doesn’t make up for your much weaker sustain for the reasons I mnetioned.

Thanks for the Math though, I appreciate it.

That comparison is basically assuming soldier’s which is much tankier than cele. Knight’s is also tankier (less than soldier’s) but should give you more damage than cele for power damage.

Knights works well too

All I know is that noscoc was favoring a cele reaper build in the beta and from my experiences playing it, it feels very strong. It’s worth trading everything curses gave you for shroud skill 3 being literally plague form on an 18 second cooldown.

Well that’s assuming the old blighters boon. And nos clearly didn’t favor it that much when he decided to run a soldiers build instead.

He was probably working from what he’s used to and trying to translate his old build to new functionalities. That he favored it for (very) short periods of time doesn’t mean much.

Dead.5829:

He was probably working from what he’s used to and trying to translate his old build to new functionalities. That he favored it for (very) short periods of time doesn’t mean much.

Yeah but still my point is, we can’t just add reaper to the old build and expect it to still be good. The old syneries are broken, so we have to discover new ones. The problem is that the blighter’s boon nerf may overlimit build diversity more than it should.

My point was referencing his favoring of the cele reaper build, so it supports yours :P

Hopefully the BB nerf is the beginning of a change to other systems such as more boon generation in other spec lines.

Dead.5829:

My point was referencing his favoring of the cele reaper build, so it supports yours :P

Hopefully the BB nerf is the beginning of a change to other systems such as more boon generation in other spec lines.

Hahahah… no. It was just a BB nerf, the end.

Drekor.5217:

Dead.5829:

My point was referencing his favoring of the cele reaper build, so it supports yours :P

Hopefully the BB nerf is the beginning of a change to other systems such as more boon generation in other spec lines.

Hahahah… no. It was just a BB nerf, the end.

It’s not necessarily the end, we have to adapt to the new world of the game by exploring new options and synergies instead of mindlessly tacking reaper onto an old meta build.

Condi builds are better than ever with reaper for he chill spam, and many various types of power builds (Knights specifically) get a lot out of going reaper with reaper’s onslaught.

I personally think a soldier/crusader bruiser reaper, with full (or almost) shout is great. Just jump on mid and stay there until the end of times (basically). The sustain is quite high and damage too.

nearlight.3064:

It’s not necessarily the end, we have to adapt to the new world of the game by exploring new options and synergies instead of mindlessly tacking reaper onto an old meta build.

Aka, once again Necromancers are shafted by a knee-jerk reaction and now have to make due with what we’ve got left.

Silverkey.2078:

I personally think a soldier/crusader bruiser reaper, with full (or almost) shout is great. Just jump on mid and stay there until the end of times (basically). The sustain is quite high and damage too.

I avoided soldier reaper because no ferocity and no crit, the damage really is all that?

Ragion.2831:

I avoided soldier reaper because no ferocity and no crit, the damage really is all that?

Decimate Defenses + Death Perception = 100% crit chance in shroud, which was already your high damage period.

I playing Cele but not Signet build, I have better version, use lots of shouts/chills my friend and need the crit chance of the Cele amu, I am nearly unkillable 1vs1 and keep my ground quite a time versus 1vs1.

When people stop copying Nosc I think they will figure out.

posthumecaver.6473:

I playing Cele but not Signet build, I have better version, use lots of shouts/chills my friend and need the crit chance of the Cele amu, I am nearly unkillable 1vs1 and keep my ground quite a time versus 1vs1.

When people stop copying Nosc I think they will figure out.

People copy Nosc because He is kinda in the best NA Team going, so by assumption we all know he generally knows what hes doing with the proffession, I dunno how much ground that really stands, but at the end of the day he wouldnt use a suboptimal build as a tournament player tbh.

It might not be the best build it might be the best, i dont feel we can rly compare ourselves to Nosc as hes in a much higher MMR to us, plus generally runs Scrims and 1v1s to test his stuff out, so without fighting Players on his Level u wont really know which actually comes out on top, because u can use GS and win if u can outskill the enemy at the end of the day.

This Cele Signet styled play seems to have been going for quite a while now, and was the meta for Dagger/Warhorn Power previously, so the build itself cannot be realistically that bad in my eyes.

By my assumption, the Reason signets are used, is purely for its boon rip combined with the capability of reducing all their CDs, this provides you with constant boon rips which are quite useful against quite a few builds currently, and a great way to remove Quickness/Ferocity and Might from enemies lowering their damage output against you and your team.

My second reasoning is to counter the Reapers slow nature with Signet of the Locust, this will allow you to move faster passively giving u a runspeed buff as with the new shroud we’re very melee, it is a noticeable difference in catching people.

Finally:

The Reaper if playing like Nosc is a 1v1 fighter, the shouts are that great without multiple enemies, so if ur playing outside the teamfight and being some form between a bunker/Solo Fighter ur going to want utilities which will fight best when ur alone v someone, against high skilled players, the likelyhood is if ur too outnumbered their combinatino of proffessions etc etc would bring you down very quickly with pure focus and CC.

As Chaithe said, with Blighters boon Nerf we’re being pushed further into a 1v1 proffession, and to a extent Signets are stronger then Shouts for a 1v1 or 1v2 terms, the Shouts are more teamfight based as a whole with their increased scaling against the more foes.

and Finally.

Signet of Vamperism actually the active stacks with your reaper form unlike any other Heal, the Siphoning etc etc will actually work within reaper form giving you a passive healing for a duration, which does prove useful (how useful never measured it), i have been curious to the Shout heal though, never tried it tho the instant lifeforce could prove useful.

I mean im not calling anyone wrong, so far i havnt tested many different builds, but i feel like there is a Reasonable explaination to beleive Nosc and use his builds currently, realistically, saying we have moved from “old meta” is wrong.

GS has been proven inefficent, So we’re back to the D/W + Staff combination, so we’re usding the Exact same abilities now as we were before, our only difference is actually the shroud and thats it realistically, and considering shroud doesnt need to combo with anything as its a seperate form with no weapon use nothings going to synergise that.

I am not saying I am better then Nosc because I am not.

His build and blighter boon before nerf was the best prob specially for his team comp, look to the ESL 2 revenants feeding him with boons, he was like a immortal terminator.

Now that is gone, probably he will still play Signet Necro in ESL because it fits what he does for that comp but look to his twitch channel, when he play Signet Necro in yolo queue and ganked he directly logsout and switch to power necro.

Cele/Signet Necro is really susceptible to ganking and I think not a good fit for Yolo Queue but feel free to disagree I am quite happy with my build.

May i ask, What build would u say I should be using in replacement of the Cele Signet?

To say the truth I got the build from another player in Yolo Queue, I had such a hard time killing him, I asked his build and as a friendly gesture he accepted to give me, so I don’t want to get a credit by publishing it here.

If you are Ok with not publish it openly, PM me I will send you the build.

I am not the type to copy the meta. I typically play my own builds, not because I want to be different, but simply because I play what suits me.

However, I must say I have hard time getting away from signets. Shouts are pretty much the only thing I feel I can use instead.

Our best condi transfer + stun break: signet
Mobility if you can’t trait for it: signet
Our best boon removal: traited signet

Added to the fact that spite-soul reaping-reaper is one of our best combo even without BB… Spite = more chill + might to the roof.

Why would I copy nos when his MM build sucks

But yeah, Nos doesn’t just pull random builds out of thin air, most of what he runs are things other people come up with individually, because they are the most appropriate builds for what he’s doing. People just can’t separate coordinated and non coordinated play, and the different builds used.