Guild Wars 2

Just a precursor, I would appreciate if this wasn’t merged with the rest of Reaper/GS feedback as dev’s seriously need to consider PvP balance as a valid part of the game, especially considering the new PvP system to be put in place come HoT’s release.

After initially trying out Reaper and subsequently Greatsword in PvE for a few hours I decided to spend some more time in PvP. I find myself to be an average or slightly above average player as far as skill is concerned, and after about 6 hours of PvP and slightly modifying builds I ended up with roughly a 70% winrate on my Reaper running GS/Staff. To start things off I will make a few general comments about the Greatsword in a PvP environment.

The biggest issue is I never auto attack with GS, there is no reason to. I’m either interuppted, too far, not connecting autos because of the dreadfully slow cast time, and can’t be assed to try and chill someone on the final swing of the chain. Both guardian and warrior have higher base dmg with GS, more useful utilities off the 3rd swing, and have a FAR shorter cast time for the chain. Long story short do not autto attack, it does absoultely nothing and will hurt your DPS even in PvE as Reaper Shroud autos are MONSTROUS and much quicker.

The second largest issue is that while both of the Life Force generating abilities (3 and 5) work incredibly well for PvE and large groups of mobs, you have to be on top of the enemy player in pvp for them to ever connect. This further cripples the new Elite spec due to the absolutely unreliable and horrid Life Force generation with GS; if you make any mistakes there is very little chance to sustain RS unless you waste Spectral skills to generate LF. I believe moving Life Force generation off of one of these abilities and giving it to the auto attack would be a viable way to not make it too strong in PvE and give you better LF generation in PvP. Now to move on to some recommended changes for each individual greatsword skill.

Greatsword Auto Attack Chain:

- Desperately needs a cast time more in line with 1/2s, 1/2s, 3/4s (or even 1/2s). I’d rather not see the damage buffed, as it would be far more reliable and useful to have the chain cast speed reduced in both PvE and PvP.

- Remove the chill from the 3rd part of the chain if cast speed of the chain is not reduced and add 2 stacks of poison; would make AA far more useful and rewarding in PvP. If not increase the duration of the chill and again reduce the cast time of the overall chain; the chill is useless in PvP as you rarely ever AA using GS

- Add Life Force generation to the AA chain; I’d say 2%/2%/4% would be acceptable given a slightly faster cast time

Gravedigger:

- In all honesty i’m a bit lost on this skill, the damage is alright but considering its cast time the damage could also be considered subpar.

- Could use a small range increase

- Could also use a shorter cast time and more responsive animation; the skill itself is very floaty and clunky feeling

- Reset below 50% leaves you with a very odd downtime and a very disconnected feel with the rest of the GS kit

Death Spiral:

- Increase the cone width

- Increase the range from 170 to 200 or slightly more

- Reduce the cast time to 3/4s

- Add an area/range indicator

Nightfall:

- I honestly still can’t find anything wrong with this skill aside from interrupting it too easily sometimes

- Add an area indicator

Grasping Darkness (By far needs the most work especially for PvP):

- Increase the range to 800 or 900

- Slightly increase the projectile speed

- Make it a target cast, but still pull other enemies within the cone

- Remove poison and instead add a 4-5 sec chill to the skill

- Remove Life Force generation (give it to AA chain just like poison)

- Give it a range/cone size indicator

In it’s current form GS provides very little reliable damage in PvP as well as poor utility due to clunky and hard to aim skills. Again Life Force generation needs to seriously be addressed considering GS puts you on the front line and you’re not exactly a warrior or Guardian in terms of defenses. Now to move on to some quick comments about Reaper Shroud.

I do find RS to be quite strong in both PvE and PvP. When supported by the proper traits, runes, and armor, it is truly… “Terrifying”. When timed properly, even with the poor LF sustain from GS, you can quickly turn around a fight if you can properly line up burst and CC. With supportive traits from Soul Reaping you can sustain RS quite well when running Valkyrie for pvp, the only real struggle to be had is dealing with condi heavy teams which will tear a huge hole in your LF pool. Moving on to a few more short notes…

Shouts are bad in PvP. Chilled to The Bone would be great if the cast time weren’t 2 seconds, I feel 1 or 1.5 seconds would be great along with a dmg reduction to keep the shout from being too strong. I also feel it could use a 90 second cd instead of 120 to make it slighly more useful in PvP. All of this said, I rarely find myself using it as I die or get CC’d in the process. I find zero use for any other shout in PvP, they are not even worth mentioning, especially when you need spectral skills to sustain life force, and other utility slots for condi removal and stun breaks.

My last comment and suggestion applies to Death’s Charge in RS. I find the utility useful, the CD appropriate, and the blast to be very satisfying when landed properly, but because chill has such a short duration from the majority of skills I often find myself being put in the wrong place at the wrong time and will often lose my target. It’s hard to suggest making this a targeted leap or something similar as it would certainly make the damage off this skill too strong, possibly making it a channeled skill that you could interrupt may solve this issue.

Your post is a lot like the one I just made. Large, comprehensive, and many of the same points. We agree just about all around.

We’re basically best friends, now. Thanks for the post.

I am all but certain we’re going to see some greatsword buffs, likely due in part to members of the community expressing their impressions in a thoughtful, clear manner such as this.

Edit: I’d also like to say your suggestion to make Death’s Charge channeled is the best solution to that skill’s awkwardness I’ve heard so far.

Jackalrat.5493:

Your post is a lot like the one I just made. Large, comprehensive, and many of the same points. We agree just about all around.

We’re basically best friends, now. Thanks for the post.

I am all but certain we’re going to see some greatsword buffs, likely due in part to members of the community expressing their impressions in a thoughtful, clear manner such as this.

Edit: I’d also like to say your suggestion to make Death’s Charge channeled is the best solution to that skill’s awkwardness I’ve heard so far.

Thank you for the comments.

I do hope other more experienced PvP players would drop some comments, I really do not want the Devs to overlook Reaper and GS from a PvP aspect. Unfortunately it seems all of the elite specs were tuned for PvE and PvE only; I find myself disappointed and not surprised at the same time.

I wouldn’t totally lose hope. Chronomancer is doing well in PvP, and both Tempest and Dragonhunter are more viable than the Reaper currently is.

Wait a damage reduction on shouts? They weak as is…

also their effects are weaker than stock skills…

Knighthonor.4061:

Wait a damage reduction on shouts? They weak as is…

also their effects are weaker than stock skills…

The damage reduction was exclusively for “Chilled To The Bone”. If it received a shorter cast time and cool down, the base damage would be way out of line for an AOE stun, AOE chill application, and stability, on top of having a chance to almost crit for 2.5-3.5k depending on might stacks.

They loaded too much into the skill to also have a high damage attack to go along with all the utility. It would most certainly be too strong.

Well spoken, my friend. Greating job on pointing the flaws on greatsword precisely and adding effective suggestions to improve it

Good post. Generally agree with everything. Not sure if all your solutions are the best, but at least most of them either make sense, or are mostly in the right direction.

AegisFLCL.7623:

Greatsword Auto Attack Chain:

<snip>

Agreed. A lot of people want to see more damage on the GS auto chain. I think that an attack speed increase (or a combination of dmg / speed) would be the best way to go at it. It would smooth out the feeling a lot more. I love a slow hitting, big number weapon as much as the next guy; but currently it’s SO slow that it brings a lot of nasty side effects.
I prefer LF gen on the AA chain as well, though I’m not sure if that would end up being too strong. (If we want GS to be on par, or even better than dagger damage wise, the sacrifice of lower LF regen will have to remain).

Gravedigger:

[/quote]

My thoughts exactly. The damage is quite fun, but considering the 1.25 second pre-cast and 0.75 second after cast, it really isn’t all that.
The cooldown reduction sub-50% is suppose to make this your big burst execute, but it ends up feeling clunky.

Besides fixing the cast time and range. I expected more “umph” from this ability. Maybe they could balance this out by making some tweaks and increasing the damage.
I mean, the cooldown reduction is quite strong, but I’d probably have less cooldown reduction and more damage, so it feels like a big hit and doesn’t feel like it interrupts/interferes with the rest of the GS kit.

Death Spiral:

<snip>

Again completely agree. Not much to add here. The cone feels too small. Even with 2 mobs standing right in front of me, I can often only hit one of them. I think the cone is somewhere between 15-30 degrees. Would love to see it go up to 60-90 degrees.
Big hindrance as well is the cast time, as you mentioned. Makes it really hard to pull off in a pvp setting.

Nightfall:

Personally, besides the area indicator (which I really miss). I would love to see 2 things:
1) Remove the aftercast. It feels like you’re one of those idiots that got his sword stuck in the dirt and you’re struggling to get it out while the enemy laughs at you.
2) I’m not 100% sure on this. But it felt like the skill didn’t instantly affect everyone in the entire radius, but slowly creeps outwards (just like the animation does). I love the animation, but gameplay wise that’s a small gripe I have with the skill.

Grasping Darkness (By far needs the most work especially for PvP):

- <snip>[/quote]

Agreed on pretty much everything.
I think the biggest issue is that it needs to go in the direction of your target. And have a range indicator (which can be made instant for people who prefer that), so you can time it better.