Guild Wars 2

vital persistence is currently a very important trait for any necromancer build, even more so if its reaper, i propose that it replace gluttony.

this would make soul reaping master less dead than it currently is(where people generally always pick vital persistence)

by replacing gluttony, it ensures that soul-reaping line always have vital persistence and people get more of a choice between master tier, also because removing gluttony would make the fact that a strong trait becoming minor would be slightly balanced

as for what should replace the current master tier i suggest a trait that, grant life force once in a while, for example:

Life Surge:
gain life-force while in combat:
life-force gained: 15%
cool-down 45 seconds

the use of such a trait is such that: when a necro enters combat, it allows the necro to gain life-force immediately for the necro to use, it is unique in that it permits necros who usually dont start with life-force and get spiked down at the beginning of a pvp match to utilize their shroud and help them survive even if just little while longer.

the trait has a long cool down because i want to avoid necros having more sustain then arena have been balancing around, also to prevent necros from using corruption skills to constantly gain life force

the balancing factor in this trait is that- after the necro have build up shroud, the trait would be of less value, however it is not useless as it does provide a spike in shroud if the necro is happening to be lacking shroud when the icd refresh

this trait is around 1% around every 3 seconds which at a 19k life force pool be 190/3second which is merely 66per second life-force gained.

is not game breaking but however, dulls one of the necro’s greatest weakness in pvp which is not be able to have any shroud at the beginning

Gluttony is just fine as it is. If anything needs to be done about Vital Persistance, which is certainly an argument, it would be making it baseline not making it a minor.

i would make vital persistance baseline, move one of the useless adept traits from blood magic there and add a new adept one to blood magic that would interact with dark fields more (additional effect when blasting your dark fields)
that would hopefully help the reaper in raids, as the meta specs will be spite, blood magic and reaper

btw, i would generally rework dark fields just like light fields were reworked – make a dark aura that makes you lifesteal each time you hit something and transfer a condi to foe whenever it hits you, or sth.

As other said, it needs to be baseline. The problem with VP isn’t just Soul Reaping diversity. It’s pretty much killing all PVP diversity alone. There are many wonderful builds there are on the verge that just fall short due to this trait.

(Note: If baseline, spectral mastery would still need toned down.)

Replace Gluttony with vital persistence and replace soul comprehension with gluttony.

I can live with that.

Bhawb.7408:

Gluttony is just fine as it is. If anything needs to be done about Vital Persistance, which is certainly an argument, it would be making it baseline not making it a minor.

This, because if you use Soul Reaping, you always pick that one.

Vital persistence ought to be baseline. I miss being able to to run master of terror without a huge opportunity cost.

it fits just a problem with master of terror then my suggestion would workout for u easily because vital persistence would become minor and u have freedom of trait in the master area

and face it vital persistence will never be base line for necromancer, it could become baseline for soul-reaping but no way they gonna make it baseline for the profession just look at warrior’s fast hands, you can say 50 billion builds would become viable for warrior if it was base lined but still it remains as part of discipline

vital persistence and unyielding blast need to be baseline

Brokensunday.4098:

vital persistence and unyielding blast need to be baseline

Just the piercing and degeneration. The bones of the two could even be merged into a trait that reduces shroud cookdowns and makes shroud 1 cause vulnerability. Leaving either an adept or master slot. That would be nice.

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

striker.3704:

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

Base line will still make choose soul reaping. The idea is to give us more options.

mazut.4296:

striker.3704:

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

Base line will still make choose soul reaping. The idea is to give us more options.

How does making it baseline (meaning standard degeneration rate for any necromancer with or without traits) make it still mandatory? Base-lining is what we need. Making it a minor, as the OP suggests, yeah, would do very little good. If anything, making it a minor would almost make the situation worse.

ronpierce.2760:

mazut.4296:

striker.3704:

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

Base line will still make choose soul reaping. The idea is to give us more options.

How does making it baseline (meaning standard degeneration rate for any necromancer with or without traits) make it still mandatory? Base-lining is what we need. Making it a minor, as the OP suggests, yeah, would do very little good. If anything, making it a minor would almost make the situation worse.

But it still will be in Soul Reaping line! Or you suggest to be somewhere else

mazut.4296:

ronpierce.2760:

mazut.4296:

striker.3704:

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

Base line will still make choose soul reaping. The idea is to give us more options.

How does making it baseline (meaning standard degeneration rate for any necromancer with or without traits) make it still mandatory? Base-lining is what we need. Making it a minor, as the OP suggests, yeah, would do very little good. If anything, making it a minor would almost make the situation worse.

But it still will be in Soul Reaping line! Or you suggest to be somewhere else

Base-line means it becomes a part of the class. 4% degeneration per second would just go away and all necromancers would degenerate at 2% per second always. Think of it like Illusionary Persona for Mesmer. When it went baseline, all mesmer shatters also triggered on the mesmer without needing to take anything to make it happen, which greatly increased diversity for shatter-oriented builds.

That will never happen It should become more like minor trait, or base line for Soul reaping, no in general.

mazut.4296:

That will never happen It should become more like minor trait, or base line for Soul reaping, no in general.

It needs to become baseline to allow people to PvP without Soul Reaping. Literally all of our Life Force generation/maintaining is holed up into the line (including Gluttony, Soul Marks, Vital Persistence, and increased Life Force). Until VP becomes a base part of the class, leaving Soul Reaping just isn’t really much of an option.

It’s worse with Reaper because some skills can take as much as 8-12% LF (without being touched) just to use, which means quite often with any slight amount of focus, shroud ends up cutting off your own spells. The high degeneration rate both means defense and clunkiness of the class.

I’d rather than baseline VP and lose up to 10% of the max LF if that’s what it took to have a better playing class. (Of course, coupled with LF additions to weapons lacking it, such as scepter.)

Your goal, diversity and options, doesn’t happen by just making it a minor in the tree. It does basically nothing, because if VP just became a minor, everyone would still run Soul Reaping, just to have Vital Persistence, and run Spectral Mastery on top of it.

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

I’m not suggesting it just be base line and call it a day. It would likely require a few additional tweaks (such as Spectral Mastery needing to be toned down to adjust for them being used together), sure, it’s a bit of a task. However, it’s a very important one.

There are many very fun and interesting builds (Spite Curses Reaper, Spite Curses Death Magic) that could quite easily become a thing if this wasn’t such an over-loaded trait line, and most importantly, our core mechanic wasn’t so much weaker without it, especially defensively, as it’s no secret, Necromancer’s without SR are fairly easy targets.

It’s just necessary even if it does take a few additional considerations. Not to seem pushy, but this is their job as a balance team to handle situations like this and make adjustments to make classes more well rounded and interesting to play, so having to do work isn’t a reason to not do it.

All sound well, and then SR need to get something more interesting to compete with the rest. Would be great if they make DS not the base Shroud, but to make it special like RS and add some altering traits. To make it the better mid range shroud it is.
After all we got so many Positive changes lately, who knows…

- Baseline 2% LF degeneration.
- Foot in the Grave is now a master trait and is bundled with the 15% reduced CD.
- Vital persistance is now a grandmaster trait that removes the LF requirement to use Shroud: if there’s no LF, health degenerate by 2% every second.

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

exactly this

Zantmar.5406:

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

exactly this

Still isn’t a reason to not do it. The balance team’s job is to “balance”, but also make sure there is a proper design to classes. A single trait hard-stopping otherwise great diversity due to interaction with the core mechanic is not the best means of design. There are steps that could be taken to address this, and just because its “work”, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.

ronpierce.2760:

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

I’m not suggesting it just be base line and call it a day. It would likely require a few additional tweaks (such as Spectral Mastery needing to be toned down to adjust for them being used together), sure, it’s a bit of a task. However, it’s a very important one.

Spectral Mastery could just lose the 5% Life Force on spectral use and I’d call it good.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

ronpierce.2760:

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

I’m not suggesting it just be base line and call it a day. It would likely require a few additional tweaks (such as Spectral Mastery needing to be toned down to adjust for them being used together), sure, it’s a bit of a task. However, it’s a very important one.

Spectral Mastery could just lose the 5% Life Force on spectral use and I’d call it good.

Yeah, probably. And maybe 25% duration instead of 50% if really needed. This would probably get some resistance, but my argument is that most people don’t get to use this trait anyways due to VP being more useful in most cases, so having the trait at all would still be a step up, but yeah. The first place to look would be the initial LF.

Why nerf spectral mastery? The cost to benefitting from spectral mastery is using spectral skills themselves, which are little more than glorified stun breaks on long cooldowns relative to everybody else.

No, thanks. This pvp crap nerfing skills for everybody else has got to stop. I don’t want to be further restricted on skill and trait usage.

Zenith.7301:

Why nerf spectral mastery? The cost to benefitting from spectral mastery is using spectral skills themselves, which are little more than glorified stun breaks on long cooldowns relative to everybody else.

No, thanks. This pvp crap nerfing skills for everybody else has got to stop. I don’t want to be further restricted on skill and trait usage.

If Vital Persistence went base line (which is necessary) Spectral mastery would have to be changed to prevent it from being over the top with, essentially, the free VP. It’s “overtuned” atm due to the fact that it has to compete with VP, and is not in addition to.

I’m not sure what your big fear is PVE wise. You’d still get reduced cooldowns and other perks with the trait, but your shroud would be baseline more sturdy. You would benefit from this in just about every way. Are you actually considering the implications of this? This would be a huge perk for the whole class to have a less flimsy shroud, which is essentially the goal of Spectral mastery anyways, to benefit Life Force generation. (Wish some minor exception to Spectral Wall, I guess)

I guess the more important question is, why are you worried about spectral mastery in PVE anyways. Do you actually use Spectral mastery in PVE now? And if so, is it just for Lich perks?

ronpierce.2760:

Zenith.7301:

Why nerf spectral mastery? The cost to benefitting from spectral mastery is using spectral skills themselves, which are little more than glorified stun breaks on long cooldowns relative to everybody else.

No, thanks. This pvp crap nerfing skills for everybody else has got to stop. I don’t want to be further restricted on skill and trait usage.

If Vital Persistence went base line (which is necessary) Spectral mastery would have to be changed to prevent it from being over the top with, essentially, the free VP. It’s “overtuned” atm due to the fact that it has to compete with VP, and is not in addition to.

To expand on this, while it used to be possible to get all the benefits of current Vital Persistence and Spectral Mastery, at the time, that required every trait from Soul Reaping (so no Grandmaster) and a Master tier trait in Curses to pull off. If the degen reduction from Vital Persistance is made baseline, the total cost has been reduced to one Master trait for effectively the same benefit.

No, if the degen reduction was made baseline, Spectral Mastery would need a nerf from its current state because the cost of the total benefits has shrunk so drastically.

I’m worried because the trait is barely competitive with Vital Persistence in PvE as it is now, and losing the functionality means it isn’t even worth investing to.

Spectral skills just aren’t that great in PvE, and Spectral Mastery is one of the things that says “hey, the skill is less crap now, want to try it out with this LF bonus”?

I just don’t understand why with VP spectral mastery would be overtuned. It’s a tanking trait and to be honest I see no difference with it versus a warrior with incredibly long immunity stances thanks to traits as well.

Spectral skills are not that strong where having access to VP and SM would really do more than what other classes have.

In fact, necromancer stun breakers are among the worst of the bunch.

Personally I believe the base LF degen should be 3% and VP should decrease it to 1.5%

Zenith.7301:

I’m worried because the trait is barely competitive with Vital Persistence in PvE as it is now, and losing the functionality means it isn’t even worth investing to.

Spectral skills just aren’t that great in PvE, and Spectral Mastery is one of the things that says “hey, the skill is less crap now, want to try it out with this LF bonus”?

I just don’t understand why with VP spectral mastery would be overtuned. It’s a tanking trait and to be honest I see no difference with it versus a warrior with incredibly long immunity stances thanks to traits as well.

Spectral skills are not that strong where having access to VP and SM would really do more than what other classes have.

In fact, necromancer stun breakers are among the worst of the bunch.

+++++1

what you guys think

Soul Reaping
Adept
unyielding blast is now base line ( vulnerability add to other trait)
Soul marks
Speed of shadows (buff to 50% not sure)
Add decaying swarm at 50% hp you get surrounded by locus swarm
Master
Vital persistence is now base line
Fear of death
Spectral mastery
Add Reapers protection cool down reduced to 30s (from death magic)
Grand Master
Foot in the grave
Death Perception
Dhuumfire

Pregnantman.8259:

If we are giving ideas about replacement to VP, how about bringing back a buffed version of Reaper’s Precision – like %33 chance when you hit and %66 chance when you crit gain %2 life force. No ICD and hits do not stack with crits, as in when stars align you won’t get %4 life force when you crit. The trait not only became stronger when we are outnumbered, but also works like a Vampiric of life force, and it can have a great synergy with Death Perception.

As with a lot of things would still suck/be average on base necro but would be very strong on reapers.

My worry about that is we really don’t need even MORE life force generation/stay added to Soul Reaping. We just need a bit of what soul reaping spread around (aka baseline). Adding more to it would lead us down the same road we’re in right now. If any life force generation is to be added, it needs to be directly added to certain weapons that lack it to prevent causing even more incentive to using the one we already use (dagger, which would benefit the most from said trait).

I’d rather they just baseline the VP degeneration and piercing from Soul Reaping, and merge the Vun and Shroud cooldowns into one trait as a Master trait and add a new non-LF related adept trait of some sort.

Pregnantman.8259:

Sigmoid.7082:

As with a lot of things would still suck/be average on base necro but would be very strong on reapers.

There is still dagger auto, warhorn 5, axe (when it is revamped), wells, staff cleave and marks and Life Transfer that all either hit in a quick succession or hit multiple targets. Reaper has only Reaper auto and maybe greatsword cleave to add.

You do realise that RS #2 does multiple (7??) hits before its final blind burst, all aoe, and that RS#4 has the potential to do a maximum of 60 hits? Because the trait would work in shroud it would mean that it would be almost too tanky shroud wise combined with chilling force. The way you proposed the trait RS#4 at its best would generate between 40 and 80% lf from the one ability.

as ron said we dont really need more LF generation.

Pregnantman.8259:

Reaper shroud 2 as far as I know stops when you reach to a target and Reaper shroud 4 is pretty similar in number of hits – but I guess we dont need more LF regen.

It doesnt stop you keep doing the animation till you land and do the blast. Played it in beta and you can see from peoples recent videos. RS#4 is 3 more hits per target.

As usual Ron pizzle is on point. Gluttony, Soul comprehension, the degen part of vital persistance, and the lf part of soul marks all need to be baseline. Then they need to buff weapon life force generation on scepter/dagger and axe/focus. Then they need to cut the total amount of DS by 10-20%. This would help alleviate the bad LF generation necros have currently on everything except d/w staff with soul reaping.

As for spectrals, I always thought the trait should be GM (move dhummfire to curses maybe). Then along with it’s current effects, each spectral should have another effect. Either that or buff the baseline effects now. Walk needs to either last long enough for you to impact a fight then port out, or have a port to target on it (or make you immune to movement impairing condis). Armor needs to give LF per hit received, but less LF per hit than it does now (3% maybe) maybe stab. Spectral grasp needs to be more reliable, maybe aoe, maybe give a boon (retal, stab, prot). Wall needs a cd reduction, or to destroy projectiles.

As for new traits to replace the old ones, not too hard. Give us damage modifiers, and a few boons. For instance, they could replace soul comprehension with something that gave vigor, stab, or protection. A master tier trait in soul reaping could give a damage mod in DS. Nothing too out of this world or hard about it.

Replace Gm minor with a trait that increases damage based on LF but then have it work like deadly strength where the bonus is doubles when in shroud. Can be 7/14% or 10/20%.

Also feel like one of our trees, namely spite, should give us far more access to retaliation than we currently have. Feels like something we should be good at.

I would like to see more retaliation. We are THE punchbags in the game, so this make sense and will help both in 1v1 and in team fight.
Something like 2sec of retaliation when under 50% hp with ICD 5sec.
And give retaliation when suffer from critical damage(tho I would prefer to have the boon before I get critical hit).
Or Retaliation when under CC(including immobilize/chill/cripple).

zapv.8051:

As usual Ron pizzle is on point. Gluttony, Soul comprehension, the degen part of vital persistance, and the lf part of soul marks all need to be baseline. Then they need to buff weapon life force generation on scepter/dagger and axe/focus. Then they need to cut the total amount of DS by 10-20%. This would help alleviate the bad LF generation necros have currently on everything except d/w staff with soul reaping.

As for spectrals, I always thought the trait should be GM (move dhummfire to curses maybe). Then along with it’s current effects, each spectral should have another effect. Either that or buff the baseline effects now. Walk needs to either last long enough for you to impact a fight then port out, or have a port to target on it (or make you immune to movement impairing condis). Armor needs to give LF per hit received, but less LF per hit than it does now (3% maybe) maybe stab. Spectral grasp needs to be more reliable, maybe aoe, maybe give a boon (retal, stab, prot). Wall needs a cd reduction, or to destroy projectiles.

As for new traits to replace the old ones, not too hard. Give us damage modifiers, and a few boons. For instance, they could replace soul comprehension with something that gave vigor, stab, or protection. A master tier trait in soul reaping could give a damage mod in DS. Nothing too out of this world or hard about it.

Pretty much this. Life force generation needs to be less loaded into SR overall and have more interesting mechanics to fill the gaps. As for damage modifiers, that’s great. A hefty shroud multiplier is exactly what is needed to make Shroud builds a thing but also a choice, great call on that one.

The answers are mostly there, what it mostly comes down to is commitment and if they find the work as necessary, which I really hope they do.

Side note: (I’d start with 5% Spectral armor + pulsing 1 stability every 3 seconds for 3 seconds. (3 stability over the 6 seconds or 4 over 9 with spectral mastery.)

I’d say Unyielding blast and Path of Corruption should be the ones getting baseline’ed while Terror and Vital Persistence become minor traits

gluttony I find to be underwhelming

Gluttony is fine as-is. If I were to make any change, it would be to merge Soul Comprehension with it.

Vital Persistance getting baselined, I can entirely get behind. When every build is making one particular choice exactly the same, something needs to be looked at.