Guild Wars 2

Whats you all’s thoughts on Reaper’s damage reduction?

Me personally i feel like i am more Squishy than normal.

Also the Chill damage reduction thing never worked out for me in SPvP. Still would get bursted down faster than normal.

We dont know if a bug could be in play. But one thing i would like is a damage reduction against crits.

Bhawb, another Necromancer and I were discussing similar, felt like we were getting tanked rather hard. I think its a problem with builds though. For instance, Spite, Curses and Soul reaping has so much amazing synergy, and taking Reaper totally breaks that synergy without substituting much. They built reaper to be this chill master, and everything they have reflects it, then their chill is absolute garbage because of best-case-scenario balancing.

You essentially can’t run without Soul Reaping, it’s too mandatory. You don’t have amazing utility choices, and signets are significantly less effective without both curses and spite working together. Overall, it just feels like an incomplete package, leaving Reapers pretty pointless. They look neat, but they serve close to no actual purpose in PvP. Reaper Shroud 2 is terrible to use, RS3 fear resets the cooldown on the stability and isn’t instant and ranged, RS4 isnt bad, but RS 5 is slow and misses way too much.

Frankly, you spend a lot of time trying to keep up on people, and if you get focused you’re pretty likely to drop. GS and Shouts aren’t worth mentioning, really, at this stage. So that’s my feels. Has potential, needs lots of work. The game is too kitten fast paced for this slow stuff they keep pushing on Necromancers…

I agree that the soul Reaping trait line is mandatory. What;s worse is that in RS you have to compete against guardians and warriors who not only have more damage reduction via armor than you but also have blocks and invulnerability. If GS wasn’t awful and chill hadn’t been nerfed into the ground I might be able to justify reaper in spvp.

corrupters fervor and armoured shroud is kinda good on a toughness build….you apply vuln very fast to get the 10 stacks…thats +480 toughness for example on a knights build – thats a lot of toughness…and 14% of it goes into power…thats quite nice, thats what, like 2700 toughness on knight in total? + 400 power…not to shaby
and chilling / weakness is protection as well…

i agree tough that spite, soulreaping and death magic have very nice synergies…im figuring out myself which one to kick out for reaper…i think for a more defensive build take death magic and than spite if you plan more time outside of shroud and soul if you plan more time in the shroud…? but at least for pve i enjoy the reaper gameplay quite a lot…

ronpierce.2760:

Bhawb, another Necromancer and I were discussing similar, felt like we were getting tanked rather hard. I think its a problem with builds though. For instance, Spite, Curses and Soul reaping has so much amazing synergy, and taking Reaper totally breaks that synergy without substituting much. They built reaper to be this chill master, and everything they have reflects it, then their chill is absolute garbage because of best-case-scenario balancing.

You essentially can’t run without Soul Reaping, it’s too mandatory. You don’t have amazing utility choices, and signets are significantly less effective without both curses and spite working together. Overall, it just feels like an incomplete package, leaving Reapers pretty pointless. They look neat, but they serve close to no actual purpose in PvP. Reaper Shroud 2 is terrible to use, RS3 fear resets the cooldown on the stability and isn’t instant and ranged, RS4 isnt bad, but RS 5 is slow and misses way too much.

Frankly, you spend a lot of time trying to keep up on people, and if you get focused you’re pretty likely to drop. GS and Shouts aren’t worth mentioning, really, at this stage. So that’s my feels. Has potential, needs lots of work. The game is too kitten fast paced for this slow stuff they keep pushing on Necromancers…

I feel like this is an overall component of the elite spec concept as a whole. Every elite spec that I’ve tried out so far faces the dilemma of sacrificing a base class traitline to take it, so adapting the new content and skills to the current meta builds is difficult.

I’d argue its even worse for elementalists, since water/arcane is absolutely mandatory, and most of them are reasonably unwilling to part with the damage, easy mightstacking, and blind from the fire traitline and the offhand dagger skills have proven to be all around more useful than the new warhorn skills.

Trying cele reaper without curses is strange. Its mainly reasonable in that Path of Corruption is terrible with RS2 in its current state by only applying to last blinding strike at the end, but I feel like my build is suffering a bit against more condi heavy comps, and without the weakness, well the debuffing pressure is a lot lower. Thats why I feel a bit better using soldiers, so the lack of weakness isn’t as huge of a deal due to better innate tankiness.

The only elite spec that I feel doesn’t have this opportunity cost value problem is chronomancer, simply because the continnum split mechanic and several of the traits are stupidly strong, so you can make a PU zerker time mage that runs around bursting people from stealth while time traveling. Not only is that awesome, but its a synergy that actually works.

With reaper, I feel like the reaper shroud skills, even though they need some work, are the main draws to the spec and in general work great on brawler/bruiser specs that necro has had an awkward time filling before. So far though, blighter’s boon seems to be the only really standout trait in the line, the movement impairing condi trait isn’t bad, and neither are decimate defenses and chilling victory, but they’re not that great, and I feel like reaper needs stronger overall debuff potential with more condis besides chill, so basically I feel as though we need easier access weakness or blind through reaper traits. This would give us better damage reduction that doesn’t rely on hoping our allies can boonspam us to full LF.

Nemesis.6938:

corrupters fervor and armoured shroud is kinda good on a toughness build….you apply vuln very fast to get the 10 stacks…thats +480 toughness for example on a knights build – thats a lot of toughness…and 14% of it goes into power…thats quite nice, thats what, like 2700 toughness on knight in total? + 400 power…not to shaby
and chilling / weakness is protection as well…

i agree tough that spite, soulreaping and death magic have very nice synergies…im figuring out myself which one to kick out for reaper…i think for a more defensive build take death magic and than spite if you plan more time outside of shroud and soul if you plan more time in the shroud…? but at least for pve i enjoy the reaper gameplay quite a lot…

I’m running death, soul and reaper for this test weekend. But thusfar my survivability (and damage) is much higher with normal necro. I run spite, death and soul normally and it is has nice synergy with DS. RS though good is offset by the fact that I need to be in close and I lose far to much LF when in the thick of things. Not to mention the GS being too slow and gives far to little in the way of LF gen.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Nemesis.6938:

corrupters fervor and armoured shroud is kinda good on a toughness build….you apply vuln very fast to get the 10 stacks…thats +480 toughness for example on a knights build – thats a lot of toughness…and 14% of it goes into power…thats quite nice, thats what, like 2700 toughness on knight in total? + 400 power…not to shaby
and chilling / weakness is protection as well…

i agree tough that spite, soulreaping and death magic have very nice synergies…im figuring out myself which one to kick out for reaper…i think for a more defensive build take death magic and than spite if you plan more time outside of shroud and soul if you plan more time in the shroud…? but at least for pve i enjoy the reaper gameplay quite a lot…

I’m running death, soul and reaper for this test weekend. But thusfar my survivability (and damage) is much higher with normal necro. I run spite, death and soul normally and it is has nice synergy with DS. RS though good is offset by the fact that I need to be in close and I lose far to much LF when in the thick of things. Not to mention the GS being too slow and gives far to little in the way of LF gen.

what gear build are you using on your normal necro? scepter/dagger condi with rabid?
i am currently using a glass cannon sinister condi build on my necro…im dying really fast so reaper seems like a tank in comparison lol

Once again I don’t think the issue is Reaper itself, but the rest of Necromancer. The build I’ve been using depends on RS for all its damage really, and it does a good job of dealing massive damage and having decent sustain. The problem is I still lack those active defenses everyone else has, and whereas other glassy professions can deal with a few big hits here and there with blocks or invulns, I have to face-tank it all.

Reaper fixed a lot of our synergy issues, Shroud and GS are designed well with finishers/fields to play with each other, and I even think a lot of the traits play really well with the rest of our trait system, but it didn’t fix other issues like our overall bad weapon sets and lack of active defenses.

Reaper is going to need changes of some sort, right now the only thing you really gain from reaping trait line is reaper shroud. As is GS doesn’t fit the niche it was made for it does not hit hard enough to justify the slow attacks and high risk of using did slow attacks in a group of enemies. Shouts are under tuned also for the most part, you give up to much defense/lf gain from taking them over spectral skills and wells do more damage and if speced heal and give protection.

So far as designed. reaping gets play now for testing but will get looked overy or used very rarely. Well we will see.

Bhawb.7408:

Reaper fixed a lot of our synergy issues, Shroud and GS are designed well with finishers/fields to play with each other, and I even think a lot of the traits play really well with the rest of our trait system, but it didn’t fix other issues like our overall bad weapon sets and lack of active defenses.

I both aggree and disaggree with this reaper fixed a lot of synergy issues with the core profession at the cost of having little synergy with itself. The easiest way to describe this is with rise! rise has synergy with blood and death magic but the only synergy it has with reaper is the fact that it is a shout. Another example is Shivers of Dread the only synergy this has with reaper is with terrify and that costs u-your stability uptime.

I’m not sure its the defense that is needed. Though someone should experiment with shroud to see if the damage reduction is bugged.

The issue is damage. The thing with damage is that it is its own mitigating force. It is an observation I made within a week of buying the game. I call it the auto attack war. Basically it boils down to this: Each class has a certain “effectiveness”, which is the product of their damage and durability. No two classes are the same, so when one class fights another, one of them is winning by default.

Anyone who’s played warrior and elementalist probably noticed this. The elementalist has to constantly flip around and disable enemies just to stay alive. The warrior just has to chase people around, since their combined bulk and damage means they’re winning by default. You’re probably asking what this has to do with damage reduction. Well, it works like this: the “weaker” class has to spend their resources evading your abilities and attacking at a distance, only closing in at a precise time. This tactic does less damage, and also forces enemies to use non-damaging utilities and traits.

The Reaper isn’t much of a threat. Our auto attacks are so slow that we’re permanently stopped by blind fields. Our big attacks have such massive tells that people literally walk right out of them. Our aftercasts are so long that we’re helpless against counterattacks. Other classes can negate our damage with almost no investment, and have large windows in which to burst us down.

If you want to look at the statistical side, the Reaper is already bulky. Whether you’re using Decimate Defenses/Death Perception to have zerk damage in valkyrie gear, are using chilling force with blighter’s boon and vampiric traits to amass large amounts of life force and health, are using weakening shroud to inflict long term weakness, or are taking Death magic to add a bunch of toughness, the reaper can definitely take a hit. Especially if, in theory, long durations of chill can lock enemies out of their cooldowns. But with slow and mediocre damage, there’s nothing to use that bulk with.

The design philosophy of the reaper has a big, glaring hole: in order to work, the Reaper has to be the highest damaging melee class in the game. Currently, it is not, which is why other players bowl us over. We have one good burst skill in Executioner’s Scythe. That’s not enough. Once that misses, other players have no reason to run anymore.

Nemesis.6938:

snip… what gear build are you using on your normal necro? scepter/dagger condi with rabid?
i am currently using a glass cannon sinister condi build on my necro…im dying really fast so reaper seems like a tank in comparison lol …snip

Sorry for the late reply, I have to work weekends. I am using the standard (more or less) berserker build, with enough assassins to get me to 50% crit chance for deadly perception. I am tanky enough in WvW with it, my (current) build is as follows:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakjGapxaawxG4vxBuQJ7huOshtZA0C0zoNeWA-TVSBABU8EAKUfAlqqYmSwrU+5paFEt/wCHCAAOBABAQA2ZdWn7MwRP6RP6RPaXXnDdnDdnlCYslRA-w

It doesn’t need more damage reduction, it need infinitely better life force-generation in Reaper Shroud which will solve the issue.