Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

Odeezee.7362:

Ragion.2831:

Necros are great at applying conditions. Anet has repeatedly said that necro is meant to bring conditions to the team.

is this a joke? Necro has access to a high VARIETY of condis, they are NOT great at applying them them though relative to other professions. Condi Warrior, Engie, Ranger, Rev beat Condi Necro.

Lol…
/15 char

Engineer trolling? Or just never actually played necro?

I just find it amusing because he seems to imply that it is bad. Sure there might be better in terms of output but does that somehow make what necro has bad? really? we are going back to that type of argument? combat is a lot more complicated than damage vs damage comparisons. I was just saying You can have your condi damage and then slide in the occasional (x)k gravedigger. Wouldnt you say its a good thing there is so much damage in one attack that you dont need to worry about staying in melee for so long to do high direct damage.

CCLegion.5936:

Filling out our crit% is already a nice boost, as are Gravedigger hits. Considering that we have evidence of 30k GD crits, with crits going up to 40k being reported.
That alone should give us respectable damage spikes while above 50%, pulling our overall DPS up. Below 50%, we can spam these hits, again helping the rather weak non GD hits out. While I have done little more than Mk1 Eyeballing the numbers, it looks like GS will beat out dagger in pretty much every scenario due the combination of Gravedigger and Nightfall.
That being said, it looks like new PvE encounters will require more mechanical knowledge than straight up DPS. Vale Guardian had a rather small HP pool for its role. 22 million is not that high when you have 10 people and 7-8min to do it. That is going by the one boss encounter we know though. Not enough data for accurate predictions.
As for the Reaper as tank, Death Magic helps, especially through “Rise!” with a bit of Spectral Armor for Protection uptime.

Don’t forget the phases it’s more like 6-7 mins, but still you don’t need insane DPS.

Certainly didn’t seem shabby and I’m sure they would agree they could do even better. We still haven’t had time to really figure out optimal rotations and what not.

Ragion.2831:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

Odeezee.7362:

Ragion.2831:

Necros are great at applying conditions. Anet has repeatedly said that necro is meant to bring conditions to the team.

is this a joke? Necro has access to a high VARIETY of condis, they are NOT great at applying them them though relative to other professions. Condi Warrior, Engie, Ranger, Rev beat Condi Necro.

Lol…
/15 char

Engineer trolling? Or just never actually played necro?

I just find it amusing because he seems to imply that it is bad. Sure there might be better in terms of output but does that somehow make what necro has bad? really? we are going back to that type of argument? combat is a lot more complicated than damage vs damage comparisons. I was just saying You can have your condi damage and then slide in the occasional (x)k gravedigger. Wouldnt you say its a good thing there is so much damage in one attack that you dont need to worry about staying in melee for so long to do high direct damage.

If our entire class is boils down to using 1 skill to achieve high DPS then Anet has utterly failed our class.

A full condition build takes significantly more skill to execute over pressing 1 button over and over, yet it does significantly less dps, and offers no additional utility against the new defiant bar boss meta.

Since they first announced the Reaper I knew that we would again be kitten on the group support. My suggestions: give Chilling Nova a component that allows allies to gain some type of benefit to allies for hitting a chilled foe, and allowing Chilling Victory to apply might to allies as well. Or better yet, let allies benefit from Decimate Defenses, giving them crit chance per vuln stack as well. Some of these traits are no brainers for group support, but were intentionally made selfish.

Gnat.9405:

Since they first announced the Reaper I knew that we would again be kitten on the group support. My suggestions: give Chilling Nova a component that allows allies to gain some type of benefit to allies for hitting a chilled foe, and allowing Chilling Victory to apply might to allies as well. Or better yet, let allies benefit from Decimate Defenses, giving them crit chance per vuln stack as well. Some of these traits are no brainers for group support, but were intentionally made selfish.

I would second making Decimate Defenses a group buff. As for range, though… Not sure how to balance that. Because the trait is already strong, let alone if it gave a few other people free 50% crit chance with full vuln stacks. It’d be our way of buffing group dps

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

Odeezee.7362:

Ragion.2831:

Necros are great at applying conditions. Anet has repeatedly said that necro is meant to bring conditions to the team.

is this a joke? Necro has access to a high VARIETY of condis, they are NOT great at applying them them though relative to other professions. Condi Warrior, Engie, Ranger, Rev beat Condi Necro.

Lol…
/15 char

Engineer trolling? Or just never actually played necro?

I just find it amusing because he seems to imply that it is bad. Sure there might be better in terms of output but does that somehow make what necro has bad? really? we are going back to that type of argument? combat is a lot more complicated than damage vs damage comparisons. I was just saying You can have your condi damage and then slide in the occasional (x)k gravedigger. Wouldnt you say its a good thing there is so much damage in one attack that you dont need to worry about staying in melee for so long to do high direct damage.

If our entire class is boils down to using 1 skill to achieve high DPS then Anet has utterly failed our class.

A full condition build takes significantly more skill to execute over pressing 1 button over and over, yet it does significantly less dps, and offers no additional utility against the new defiant bar boss meta.

Well that is pretty much what everyone does for all classes to judge what they can do… o.m.g warrior can do x damage in x seconds.. well.. that’s only because of x skill.
Engi does x burn ticks… err mostly cos of x skill.
That’s why there is soo much down time between “big damage” cos they rely on one skill. Where as Reaper has more than one skill to hit big.
For example. RS (1*) 4 n 5 GS 2.
Then if you want to add other skills that leads to big hits we got RS (1**) 5 GS 3 n 4

()= When including Burning via trait
(*) = When including Might via trait

Saying we only have 1 skill for big hits and because of that it’s closed minded and pathetic when you don’t include how other professions play as well.

HardRider.2980:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

Odeezee.7362:

Ragion.2831:

Necros are great at applying conditions. Anet has repeatedly said that necro is meant to bring conditions to the team.

is this a joke? Necro has access to a high VARIETY of condis, they are NOT great at applying them them though relative to other professions. Condi Warrior, Engie, Ranger, Rev beat Condi Necro.

Lol…
/15 char

Engineer trolling? Or just never actually played necro?

I just find it amusing because he seems to imply that it is bad. Sure there might be better in terms of output but does that somehow make what necro has bad? really? we are going back to that type of argument? combat is a lot more complicated than damage vs damage comparisons. I was just saying You can have your condi damage and then slide in the occasional (x)k gravedigger. Wouldnt you say its a good thing there is so much damage in one attack that you dont need to worry about staying in melee for so long to do high direct damage.

If our entire class is boils down to using 1 skill to achieve high DPS then Anet has utterly failed our class.

A full condition build takes significantly more skill to execute over pressing 1 button over and over, yet it does significantly less dps, and offers no additional utility against the new defiant bar boss meta.

Well that is pretty much what everyone does for all classes to judge what they can do… o.m.g warrior can do x damage in x seconds.. well.. that’s only because of x skill.
Engi does x burn ticks… err mostly cos of x skill.
That’s why there is soo much down time between “big damage” cos they rely on one skill. Where as Reaper has more than one skill to hit big.
For example. RS (1*) 4 n 5 GS 2.
Then if you want to add other skills that leads to big hits we got RS (1**) 5 GS 3 n 4

()= When including Burning via trait
(*) = When including Might via trait

Saying we only have 1 skill for big hits and because of that it’s closed minded and pathetic when you don’t include how other professions play as well.

Well engineer has a 48 skill rotation, so yeah…

Warrior dps comes from rotating utilities, and using all of their attacks in addition to using their class skill asap, and for many builds swapping weapons as often as possible.

the class that comes closest is ele which can obtain ~80% of their dps using just 3 skills on staff, but their other high dps build (D/F or S/D or S/F) have 20+ skill rotations.

Reaper Shroud is very low dps (below even dagger auto) which is my point. That requires 3-4 skills and uses combo fields, but does bad dps again. Meanwhile SPAM GRAVEDIGGER is literally our best dps.

My condition reaper does Scepter 2→ dagger5→ CPC→BiP→Scepter 3→Dagger 4→ Swap to staff→ 2,3,4,5 → RS→ RS5,4,3,2,1 → RS1 until weapon swap off CD → Staff 2,3→ Weapon swap → Scepter 1

Yet this rotation does only 60% of the DPS as GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER

Does no one else see a problem with that?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

HardRider.2980:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ragion.2831:

Odeezee.7362:

Ragion.2831:

Necros are great at applying conditions. Anet has repeatedly said that necro is meant to bring conditions to the team.

is this a joke? Necro has access to a high VARIETY of condis, they are NOT great at applying them them though relative to other professions. Condi Warrior, Engie, Ranger, Rev beat Condi Necro.

Lol…
/15 char

Engineer trolling? Or just never actually played necro?

I just find it amusing because he seems to imply that it is bad. Sure there might be better in terms of output but does that somehow make what necro has bad? really? we are going back to that type of argument? combat is a lot more complicated than damage vs damage comparisons. I was just saying You can have your condi damage and then slide in the occasional (x)k gravedigger. Wouldnt you say its a good thing there is so much damage in one attack that you dont need to worry about staying in melee for so long to do high direct damage.

If our entire class is boils down to using 1 skill to achieve high DPS then Anet has utterly failed our class.

A full condition build takes significantly more skill to execute over pressing 1 button over and over, yet it does significantly less dps, and offers no additional utility against the new defiant bar boss meta.

Well that is pretty much what everyone does for all classes to judge what they can do… o.m.g warrior can do x damage in x seconds.. well.. that’s only because of x skill.
Engi does x burn ticks… err mostly cos of x skill.
That’s why there is soo much down time between “big damage” cos they rely on one skill. Where as Reaper has more than one skill to hit big.
For example. RS (1*) 4 n 5 GS 2.
Then if you want to add other skills that leads to big hits we got RS (1**) 5 GS 3 n 4

()= When including Burning via trait
(*) = When including Might via trait

Saying we only have 1 skill for big hits and because of that it’s closed minded and pathetic when you don’t include how other professions play as well.

Well engineer has a 48 skill rotation, so yeah…

Warrior dps comes from rotating utilities, and using all of their attacks in addition to using their class skill asap, and for many builds swapping weapons as often as possible.

the class that comes closest is ele which can obtain ~80% of their dps using just 3 skills on staff, but their other high dps build (D/F or S/D or S/F) have 20+ skill rotations.

Reaper Shroud is very low dps (below even dagger auto) which is my point. That requires 3-4 skills and uses combo fields, but does bad dps again. Meanwhile SPAM GRAVEDIGGER is literally our best dps.

My condition reaper does Scepter 2-> dagger5-> CPC->BiP->Scepter 3->Dagger 4-> Swap to staff-> 2,3,4,5 -> RS-> RS5,4,3,2,1 -> RS1 until weapon swap off CD -> Staff 2,3-> Weapon swap -> Scepter 1

Yet this rotation does only 60% of the DPS as GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER GRAVEDIGGER

Does no one else see a problem with that?

I don’t see any problems… Gravedigger is a good one because anywhere the whole bunch of corpses have to stay, don’t they?

The more graves digged the cleaner the battelfield

A 48 skill rotation, eh? They use 48 unique abilities to maximize their DPS? Apologies if I seem skeptical, it’s because I think you’re exaggerating for effect.

And even if they did, it would probably look something like this:

5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 1, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 2, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 3, 5, 4, 3, 2

Rotations are fundamentally basic, even if you’re using 48 skills. And if you’re only using something like 6, it’s hardly more interesting than if you’re using 2-3. That’s how I see it anyway. GW2’s combat seems to cater more towards PvP with complexity. For PvE, they should focus interesting mechanics on the fights themselves, not necessarily the damage rotations.

Cogbyrn.7283:

A 48 skill rotation, eh? They use 48 unique abilities to maximize their DPS? Apologies if I seem skeptical, it’s because I think you’re exaggerating for effect.

And even if they did, it would probably look something like this:

5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 1, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 2, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 3, 5, 4, 3, 2

Rotations are fundamentally basic, even if you’re using 48 skills. And if you’re only using something like 6, it’s hardly more interesting than if you’re using 2-3. That’s how I see it anyway. GW2’s combat seems to cater more towards PvP with complexity. For PvE, they should focus interesting mechanics on the fights themselves, not necessarily the damage rotations.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Engineer_-_Condition_Grenadier#Usage

Nothing basic about it. They have 5 skill bars they need to cycle through and 30 CD’s to manage. If they can pull it off then they deserve their high DPS.

Meanwhile necros are reduced to spamming 1 skill for maximum effect.

That “rotation” is supposed to look impressive, but that’s because it isn’t actually a true rotation. It’s a priority-based rotation using about 12 skills, it looks like.

“The engineer has the most complex DPS rotation in the game to memorize, and while there is an optimal way to order skills, it boils down to using the strongest skills across all weapons/kits on recharge. The three main skills that take priority for this condition damage rotation are Blowtorch , Fire Bomb and Shrapnel Grenade .”

Odds are if you used those 3 abilities on cooldown, while filling with whatever random abilities you wanted that applied conditions, you’d come close to the same DPS without much loss.

Engineers are also the special case is this game, so if you want a playstyle that does not throttle ability usage based on weapon/form cooldowns, go play Engineer. The best you’re going to get with a class like Necromancer is cycling through a few abilities, maybe flashing DS, and occasional utility usage.

Plus, even while spamming GD, you’d still be using your utilities and probably at least flashing DS for the weapon sigil trigger.

um. necro shouldn’t be the top tier DPS. the damage you can crank out of them is amazing, but it should not be top tier.

the difference is, none of the other top tier condi DPS builds can heal themselves while doing damage. Necro is about sustaining and efficiency, not burst, and always has been.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Battle grease. Necromancer is simply less risk in a glass cannon fight.

Also: are all these numbers taking into account life stealing?

roachsrealm.9284:

um. necro shouldn’t be the top tier DPS. the damage you can crank out of them is amazing, but it should not be top tier.

the difference is, none of the other top tier condi DPS builds can heal themselves while doing damage. Necro is about sustaining and efficiency, not burst, and always has been.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Battle grease. Necromancer is simply less risk in a glass cannon fight.

Also: are all these numbers taking into account life stealing?

I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Burst damage means nothing in encounters (at least generally speaking. In GW2 it means a lot due to poor content design)… it’s the sustain. This is something you’re saying the Necro should be good at, but its sustained DPS is well below that of other classes.

No one cares if you burst 20k dps instantly and then do 1k dps for the next 10 seconds or you do 3k damage a second. The result is the same. 3k DPS.

There are 2 things that matter in a group… utility and DPS. The more of one you have the less of the other you should have to keep things balanced and ensure each class has value to a group.

Typically, utility is broken down into sections like tanking, healing, and buffs/debuffs. In GW2, things have worked a little different over the past 3 years but ANet appears to be abandoning their original design philosophy and going with a more generic trinity approach.

So unless Necro/Reaper turns into a main tank in a game with no real agro mechanic and on a class with no control over their pets in an AE spam world, the Necro provides next to no utility. This should, therefore, justify higher than average DPS… be it burst or sustained.

roachsrealm.9284:

um. necro shouldn’t be the top tier DPS. the damage you can crank out of them is amazing, but it should not be top tier.

the difference is, none of the other top tier condi DPS builds can heal themselves while doing damage. Necro is about sustaining and efficiency, not burst, and always has been.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Battle grease. Necromancer is simply less risk in a glass cannon fight.

Also: are all these numbers taking into account life stealing?

Thiefs can heal themself via crits too if they make tons of dmg… Where is there the argument? S/P 3 → Evade + critheal (trait) + invis + blind on pistol end other weapons +x + y

Ilharn.6813:

roachsrealm.9284:

um. necro shouldn’t be the top tier DPS. the damage you can crank out of them is amazing, but it should not be top tier.

the difference is, none of the other top tier condi DPS builds can heal themselves while doing damage. Necro is about sustaining and efficiency, not burst, and always has been.

Pressure, pressure, pressure. Battle grease. Necromancer is simply less risk in a glass cannon fight.

Also: are all these numbers taking into account life stealing?

Thiefs can heal themself via crits too if they make tons of dmg… Where is there the argument? S/P 3 -> Evade + critheal (trait) + invis + blind on pistol end other weapons +x + y

Don’t warrior and guardian have heals that heal you the more damage you do too?

Just to help along the few people who think we do good dps, here is a calculation I got from the engineers:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

To summarize:

Necro(condition):
1k direct dps
6k bleed dps
2k poison dps
1k torment dps

total: 10k dps

Engineer(condition):
3.6k direct dps
6.8k bleed dps (can burst 14k ticks)
700 confusion dps
1.2k poison dps

hey look we do comparable dps…. oh wait forgot one…
8.6k burn dps…

gg

my point was that necro is not a burst class. it is a sustain class. the dps isn’t a huge spike, but it’s a constant threat.

and yes, some other classes do have ways to heal while doing damage, but with the exception of thief they all have to stop attacking in order to do so. the necromancer doesn’t need to stop attacking at all in order to heal.

necro isn’t top tier, but it’s certainly not kitten dps.

What are u talking about?

Only mesmers and probably rangers are doing less dps. Mesmers are a must have cause of their support, and the druid probably too.

But necros have nothing, worst support and worst dps (besides our two top tier support classes).

No need for them in a raid, dungeon or fractal. Burst or no burst does not matter. The numbers don´t lie.

Norjena.5172:

The numbers don´t lie.

The numbers don’t lie, you are correct. But people very often misinterpret/misuse them. It’s like the telephone game, only far, far worse.

@Zudet: I’d be interested in seeing the sheets that perform the calculations. I’d also be curious to see an analysis on how realistic it would be to reach this theoretical limit, and how much of an impact mistakes/latency/bosses moving/boss mechanics would have.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Norjena.5172:

The numbers don´t lie.

The numbers don’t lie, you are correct. But people very often misinterpret/misuse them. It’s like the telephone game, only far, far worse.

@Zudet: I’d be interested in seeing the sheets that perform the calculations. I’d also be curious to see an analysis on how realistic it would be to reach this theoretical limit, and how much of an impact mistakes/latency/bosses moving/boss mechanics would have.

Jerus gave me the calculation, he should be able to provide you with the details:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Jerus-4350

I’d say it is neigh impossible to reach this theoretical limit. It is a 48 skill rotation that requires aiming individual attacks. Not feasible in a raid. However there are simplified versions that do about 70-80% of the dps which are quite easy to reach, and you can probably get up to 90% efficiency if there are stand still burn phases (like the split part of vale guardian).

PlatinumMember.5274:

OP I don’t claim to know much about how damage is calculated.

Here are a couple of videos one from the scapper and one from reaper.
Reaper: https://youtu.be/AP859mpHF7o
Scrapper: https://youtu.be/zFAS7jPwPKk

I am not seeing what you are seeing, but like I said it is probably just me.

nekretaal.6485:

Pretty much. Even the Reaper is behind, and, using greatsword is a total glass cannon (the defensive value of a pull and a blind field I very small).

Do you or the OP have any evidence to support your claims or are two (you and OP) doing your usual routines?

Hi. I just watched the first 7 seconds of those fights and added up the damages I saw and divided it by 7. The engineer one was a bit difficult because there was more numbers flying all over the place, but it looks like I got about 7k damage per second for the reaper and 5k for the engineer. I don’t have time to double check right now, but feel free to check for me. I did 14s-21s on the reaper vid and 37-44 on the engineer vid.

“Necro(condition):
1k direct dps
6k bleed dps
2k poison dps
1k torment dps

total: 10k dps

Engineer(condition):
3.6k direct dps
6.8k bleed dps (can burst 14k ticks)
700 confusion dps
1.2k poison dps

hey look we do comparable dps…. oh wait forgot one…
8.6k burn dps…"

Like I already said, those aren’t optimal conditions. Under optimal conditions, Necros get a significant increase in DPS output while Engineers do not. And don’t think that raid groups won’t try their hardest to achieve those optimal conditions: once the theorycrafters get their collective heads out of their collective kitten and figure out just how much DPS Chronomancers provide to a group, the meta will shift to bringing 2 Chronomancers to a raid to maximize Alacrity and Quickness uptime. But theorycrafters are extremely conservative by nature and they’re unlikely to change their views until some guild crushes everyone on kill time by running 2 Chronomancers and having 100% uptime on Alacrity and Quickness on their entire raid group.

That being said, Necros also have a few advantages over Engineers, which could grant them a raid spot depending on the type of encounters anet releases. Necros are more tanky, can tank without hurting their DPS too much (if at all) by wearing Dire gear, can do near optimal DPS at range and have absolutely ridiculous AoE damage potential through Epidemic. If the Anet devs are any decent, we can expect a lot of fights in the future to have adds that need to be AoE’d down, where Necros will be among the top dogs. It’s bad practice to think we do “terrible dps” just because our single target DPS is inferior to others.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Just to help along the few people who think we do good dps, here is a calculation I got from the engineers:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

To summarize:

Necro(condition):
1k direct dps
6k bleed dps
2k poison dps
1k torment dps

total: 10k dps

Engineer(condition):
3.6k direct dps
6.8k bleed dps (can burst 14k ticks)
700 confusion dps
1.2k poison dps

hey look we do comparable dps…. oh wait forgot one…
8.6k burn dps…

gg

I know this is a PvE discussion, but in any given PvP fight, all that condi burst gets put back onto the engies themselves. You get a good chuckle out of watching them get almost insta gibbed.

There’s no doubt necros can use some better dps options in PvE. The issue with GW2 PvE is that it’s so easy it doesn’t matter who the top tier dps is unless you like to run with elitist snobs in dungeons in fast clears. As for raids, we still have yet to see what raids will require out of players.

My thought on 2 chronos, is well, it’s kind of unnecessary if you’re running 3 Engis, mainly in that holy hell can you imagine that rotation? Lets just take a rotation that no one can realistically pull off and make you do it 50% faster to optimize >.<

Personally I run 70-80% efficiency on the condi rotation from looking at my combat logs. I’m sure there are those out there running 80-90%+ but I doubt anyone is capable of 100% efficiency even on a test dummy, would love to be proven wrong though. Less if the boss is mobile (much less), and if I have to run defensively drop that even more (drop FT and offhand pistol for full defense, still good dps though).

Finally just to tease… that spreadsheet… technically not the max DPS If you bring a ranger with sunspirit that’s extra burning. Now it’s not really the Engi’s burning but still, funny stuff, but worth wondering if the better setup is 2 engi 1 ranger for your condi coverage in a raid. (~75% uptime of ~1k dps worth of burning across 2engis, for roughly 1500dps + whatever 2 other non condi users in group, make up for the difference between ranger/engi? I think so, and curious on the changes for ranger pets with condi damage now).

Jerus.4350:

My thought on 2 chronos, is well, it’s kind of unnecessary if you’re running 3 Engis, mainly in that holy hell can you imagine that rotation? Lets just take a rotation that no one can realistically pull off and make you do it 50% faster to optimize >.<

Personally I run 70-80% efficiency on the condi rotation from looking at my combat logs. I’m sure there are those out there running 80-90%+ but I doubt anyone is capable of 100% efficiency even on a test dummy, would love to be proven wrong though. Less if the boss is mobile (much less), and if I have to run defensively drop that even more (drop FT and offhand pistol for full defense, still good dps though).

Finally just to tease… that spreadsheet… technically not the max DPS If you bring a ranger with sunspirit that’s extra burning. Now it’s not really the Engi’s burning but still, funny stuff, but worth wondering if the better setup is 2 engi 1 ranger for your condi coverage in a raid. (~75% uptime of ~1k dps worth of burning across 2engis, for roughly 1500dps + whatever 2 other non condi users in group, make up for the difference between ranger/engi? I think so, and curious on the changes for ranger pets with condi damage now).

I agree with this in general, look at the other high dps class, revenant. They benefit very little from alacrity as virtually all their damage is sword AA. For Vale guardian time clears, arguably 6 rev’s, 3 engi’s and a druid could speed clear it without the need for a chrono at all. If you bring along PS war’s, ele’s etc, those classes could benefit from the alacrity.

That being said, 6 rev boon factory has most the good ones covered (e.g. might, fury) so you would;t necessary need the war. Quickness however, now the math needs to be done to see the dps boost from it vs the dps lost from mesmers filling 2 raid slots.

" Lets just take a rotation that no one can realistically pull off and make you do it 50% faster to optimize"

That was part of my point, Engineers won’t scale as well with Quickness and Alacrity because of the gymnastics required to pull if off. Another way to look at it is this way: why bring 3 Engineers when you can bring 1 or 2 and bring other classes with more utility that do similar or slightly inferior damage but benefit far more from group buffs or generate more group DPS which would end up resulting in the same net damage, if not more than a group with 3 Engineers.

It seems to me that there’s some sort of fixation on what happened with the first few kills of Vale Guardian and it seems like there’s some sort of consensus from the player base that the optimal raid group would be 5 revs 4 engineers and a druid or something silly like that. There’s no denying that works, but is it really the optimal way to set up a group? Why bring a Druid when you can bring a Celestial HGH Engineer who can provide the healing needed to his group while being the might provider and being the tank? Why bring a full group or Revenants when you can ditch one for a Chronomancer and give the other 4 Revenants perma Quickness, which would end up providing more DPS even if the Chronomancer is naked and only providing said Quickness? Why bring 3-4 Engineers when other profs can do 80%-90% of an Engineer’s damage on fights where you need ranged players or on fights where you need AoE?

In any case, what’s happening right now in GW2 reminds me of what happened so many times in WoW: the “top dogs” do something that everyone assumes is the optimal way to do things but it’s actually far from being what’s actually optimal. But everyone is fixated on doing whatever the “top dogs” are doing because in their mind, those players can’t go wrong. Which is untrue. It’s a dangerous trap to fall into because it limits objectivity and limits creative thinking. I can’t stress this enough: don’t go thinking that a group that is maximized for theoretical single target damage is going to be optimal when you don’t consider outside buffs and debuffs that professions bring, and don’t go thinking that a group optimized for single target damage like a Revenant/Engineer group is will perform well once we see different bosses. For all we know, the second boss splits into 6+ copies that take 2-3 minutes to kill when grouped up; your Revenant/Engineer group suddenly sucks compared to a group that is more versatile.

I don’t see too much discussion on what the current raid group was made of. The discussion has always been about what the Necro/Reaper brings and what, if anything, sets it apart from the other 8 classes.

No one cares that Necro is capable of 20k DPS for 10 seconds. The question is what is its sustained DPS over a 1minute period. And where does it rank with other classes over a similar period.

Atherakhia.4086:

I don’t see too much discussion on what the current raid group was made of. The discussion has always been about what the Necro/Reaper brings and what, if anything, sets it apart from the other 8 classes.

No one cares that Necro is capable of 20k DPS for 10 seconds. The question is what is its sustained DPS over a 1minute period. And where does it rank with other classes over a similar period.

Unfortunately an impossible question to answer right now. We don’t have the exact timings of things, we can’t practice rotations and plug them into spreadsheets, we just don’t have the time to optimize yet.

We do know that they’re at least good enough to be a part of the discussions which is a lot better than what we’ve seen for a while now.

@Zaroua, I completely agree, and I think those guilds would agree. We’re just scratching the surface, no reason to freak out right now. There are things that certainly aren’t in line (like full condi necro) and those are worth bringing up, but the compositions are just what they thought was best at the time and it worked.

And it being impossible from a practical standpoint is why theoretical dps spreadsheets carry so much weight here. And those theoretical samples tend to go the other way… that the Reaper isn’t a significant improvement over the Necromancer, and that the DPS and utility provided isn’t competitive with the other 8 classes.

It’s a shame too as it would take no effort for ANet to dump the combat log to a data file.

Atherakhia.4086:

And it being impossible from a practical standpoint is why theoretical dps spreadsheets carry so much weight here. And those theoretical samples tend to go the other way… that the Reaper isn’t a significant improvement over the Necromancer, and that the DPS and utility provided isn’t competitive with the other 8 classes.

It’s a shame too as it would take no effort for ANet to dump the combat log to a data file.

It is often a conscious decision to not allow things like damage meters in games. The arguments for/against being able to measure effective damage, healing, etc. are numerous and heated. I don’t think it is that ANet feels they can’t allow for measuring damage/writing to text, I think it is that they choose NOT to. Which, I personally feel, is the wrong choice if they want to have competitive PvE in their game. Maybe they don’t, though.

Also, people should not put weight into theoretical just because practical isn’t feasible. Why do we have to latch onto some ranking/composition mechanism right now? What if we try to influence ANet on balance based on theory, then in practice it all falls apart because of encounter design, evolving builds, etc.?

Without data, we shouldn’t be trying to drive decisions. And I really wish there was a damage meter.

Yup all the more reason for a damage meter

But with reaper, what I mean is that we should still know priorities and have an idea. There’s a lot of stuff I still have questions about, most of them are going to be answered with aftercast times. Right now ideally I’d want to do something like start GS 432 into Dagger and either locust or focus then auto for a while, dropping wells of course when they’re up. Here is where I have questions. How does RS compare to dagger? what about with Dhuumfire? Is it worth it to swap for GD and go into RS? Should I wait in dagger till nightfall is up? How fast will that be with alacrity? In RS are there any skills that are an increase over the 1 skill? What about with Dhuumfire?

Anyways, my point was that optimization can happen without it being just theoretical, knowing how to prioritize is also important and right now, personally I have ideas but no evidence to support those guesses.

Dps meters do exist.

There are two broad types out there, the first is a modification that reads the damage values you are putting out from memory, while the others are based around taking screenshots of your combat log and then adding it all up. The latter version has no interaction with the game and would not conflict with the terms of service as they currently stand. I’m sure that with a little bit of work you could rewrite one of them to output a text file of the log.

Anyway, the reason why spreadsheet values are used is because they eliminate variance. Depending on which hits crit if not capped you can have large variances in the dps done, and even when maxed out weapon base is not a fixed number but a band, so between recordings you can have differences in output. You still do live tests, but to get an understanding of the number of skills/skill order that you can reasonably obtain, not the raw numbers your doing.

I used to be insane enough to do that, not anymore

Is there a reliable source of aftercast information for all of the abilities? I tried the Wiki for a few but it didn’t seem to deliver.

Gravedigger and our auto attacks are easy, just measure how long it takes to proc 30 or so instances of damage. Other stuff is a bit harder, but good recording software combined with chaining the skill in question with an ability that has a known “to damage” time should help.

The wiki’s cast times aren’t reliable. Users often put remarks with the total time. Otherwise you’ll have to record it and measure the time yourself.

If you’re specifically looking for the Reaper, Spoj made a post a ways back I believe with the values.

I was looking for everything, not just Reaper. Bummer that it requires recording to figure out.

The game has the programming to calculate Damage delt, healing, kills, etc. Just look at the stats after a PvP match. I’m sure the game “could” support a DPS meter I just don’t think that Anet wants it.

If only there was a program that calculated your damage by screening your combat log without injecting into the game … oh wait.

inb4 infraction

If someone wants Reaper cast times, DEKeyz posted them on reddit here. Calculated damage values are no longer accurate though as they are still from BWE1. Same with cast time for nightfall, due to the animation change.

How much damage would minions do if you take them? From the vale guardian fight, the player pets/summons do not take aoe damage it seems and they can survive for basically the entire fight. How much of a boost would it be?

Warscythes.9307:

How much damage would minions do if you take them? From the vale guardian fight, the player pets/summons do not take aoe damage it seems and they can survive for basically the entire fight. How much of a boost would it be?

The biggest problem I see with minions is that they “steal” healing. Since all spells and buffs are limited to 5 “things” you could end up in a situation where your tank dies because all the healing went to your 5000 minions. I believe this can be mitigated by subgroups taking priority, but i’m not sure, do players always get priority over minions?

But since there is no minion limit, and they can be healed you could actually get up quite a bit of DPS from a minion horde. However I doubt they will be as good throughout the rest of the raid when there are multiple enemies and they do take AOE damage.

I’d love to do more practical dps measurements but it is very hard without a dps meter. Theoretical at least gives you a cap to compare, skill ceiling aside.

I am pretty sure players take priority over minions when taking boons and healing. If you just stick reaper into their subgroup then it should fix your concerns.

As for fights where they are multiple enemies, that’s where Reaper take their gloves off and start cleaving no?

“Rise!” sounds like a decent choice for a tank Reaper. Effectively double your armor as long as they stay alive and keep attacking. It’s also a way to “heal” the Reaper’s health pool through shroud, since the minion HP pool is pretty much an extension of your own. Not to mention that you can, effectively, gain 2-3x as much healing from friendly heals with only a few minions out as long as those heals aren’t needed elsewhere.
Not to mention that you’ll likely run Blood Magic for the teamwide sustain boost it gives. Thus, you also gain health from the minion lifesteal.

Warscythes.9307:

How much damage would minions do if you take them? From the vale guardian fight, the player pets/summons do not take aoe damage it seems and they can survive for basically the entire fight. How much of a boost would it be?

Rough values assuming no time wasted between attacks and against 2600 armor:
Blood Fiend: 80 DPS
Bone Fiend: 191 DPS (slightly higher due to cripple attack)
Bone Minions: 177 DPS (assuming you immediately summon and blow them up no time wasted)
Shadow Fiend: 233
Flesh Wurm: 238
Flesh Golem: 589

That’s with no buffs or anything like that, just their base damage. I’m not entirely sure how well they scale with might/power boosts, but they have a 4% base crit chance and base 150% crit damage.

If you have blood magic their DPS increases by roughly 27-78 depending on the minion used due to large attack speed differences.

Warscythes.9307:

I am pretty sure players take priority over minions when taking boons and healing. If you just stick reaper into their subgroup then it should fix your concerns.

Party>Player>minions (might be some other steps)

CCLegion.5936:

If someone wants Reaper cast times, DEKeyz posted them on reddit here. Calculated damage values are no longer accurate though as they are still from BWE1. Same with cast time for nightfall, due to the animation change.

Not bad, but pretty sure a lot of that is inaccurate, a lot has changed.

Changes were mostly for damage values. Only very few animations were touched. RS1 is slightly faster than given here due to a reduction in aftercast. Nightfall got a completely different animation but it’s still really quick.
Shouts are obviously inaccurate with exception of YSIM and NCSY, which weren’t touched to my knowledge.

CCLegion.5936:

Changes were mostly for damage values. Only very few animations were touched. RS1 is slightly faster than given here due to a reduction in aftercast. Nightfall got a completely different animation but it’s still really quick.
Shouts are obviously inaccurate with exception of YSIM and NCSY, which weren’t touched to my knowledge.

I believe when she posted the RS trait for speed was also bugged. And, wouldn’t be the first time there were more changes than listed, so I’m just not really confident in taking the information… appreciate the link and the work she did though just I’d like to see what it is once it’s live. I know Gravedigger got changed as well between then and now, I think it was just the damage and the reuse under 50% but who knows, it felt a lot less clunky to me this last BWE but I may just be getting used to it.

Actually a Necromancer can do a large amount of damage. But compared to other classes, the damage (direct, condition or mixed) is “low”.

Lesser condition damage and main conditions that will not affect (by damage or/and effect) the enemy in raids (chill and fear). Condition damage work in spvp why you can corrupt enemy boon and send back conditions, granting you a new source of conditions, out of your skills.
Good dps in direct damage but melee and still lower than other classes and with no defensive skills to grant you to stay melee all the time (I can simply mention Endure Pain or ranger’s signet).

With the Reaper, our strength will be the ability to spam vulnerability and chill, plus a 50%hp related spam of Gravedigger (not so much high damage than RS1 spam but still better).
The problem is that chill will probably not affect a lot of bosses (I mean the recharge rate of they’re skills) making that condition bad, it’s damage by trait is really low and vulnerability is over spammed by almost half of the actual pve dungeon builds.

Then we obtain a class with lower damage then others, that spam “useless” conditions (fear?) or over stacked conditions (vulnerability), that bring nothing to the team and is hard to heal (the reason why ANet give Blightered Boon to reaper, a “OP” trait that will grant him a lot of heal in team still while in RS to c ompensate the no-heal state), making the reaper always in risk to die if ANet keep the promise to make PvE Raids really really hard.

The only thing a Reaper can give to the party can be: Vampiric Aura, useful and useless at the same time why depend on the class and skills someone use, and is anyway a low effect buff. And the DS/RS skill 4 that heal AoE and grab the downed allies to you to make you heal them better. (that go totally against the ideology of a necromancer XD),
Other than that the necromancer can give… 8 stack of might AoE? Really usefull in teams that focus on spam might with eles and warriors by blast and guardian by staff.

Actually the necromancer is not really welcome in any high level teams, just a little lesser hated why vampiric aura seems to work as a good thing (while work really bad).
But with the reaper we will compete against classes like the Berserker that can still give banners to support the damage and spam the Rifle F1 to deal incredible AoE damage (or axe F1, really wow), with the Tempest that can spam might and Burn everywhere just pressing wh5+F1+wh4, the Druid that will be the best healer of GW2, and more.

The Reaper add a little amount of damage to the necromancer, but not enough to be chose instead of a warrior, a guardian, a engineer or a elementalist.

i will still play the necromancer and try the reaper, but I know that I will always be a second choice for every high level teams i want to join to do Raids in HoT.

In terms of raids, I think the days of only power and only condi will be gone. If the beta raid is any indication of direction, we need hybrid builds that can fill a few roles so we don’t have to spend hours getting the right composition. That is a place I think Necro shines as it’s so easy to spec into curses for condi and just throw everything else into power. Also, the burst heal with ressing potential and no bleed out is pretty amazing.