Well with viper youre going to want to be with scepter most of the time, anything else would be dps loss. I would go Sc/D and swap to Scepter/Warhorn. Warhorn is the bees knees. AoE daze, swiftness, cripples, pre-cast free life force.
I see a lot of peoplee running viper but I feel necros/reapers are gimping themselves without Merc Amulet. “A best defense is a good offense” is a notion I agree wiht, however, necro manacers just scale so kitten well with toughness/vitality combo with their two lifebars. I coudl definitely be wrong and it turns out Viper becomes meta but I tihnk Merc is the way to go
It’s an 8 week season with 4 weeks downtime for balance and season finale. No point starting the new season when the pro players haven’t finished yet and wouldn’t be able to compete anyway (Challenger cup etc).
Make new builds, try something different, see some sunlight. It’s downtime so there’s not burnout.
Haha touche sir. The sunlight part got me you right
Not really. The season came to an end, and then we got a balance patch. The break gives us 3 weeks (ish?) to iron out what works and what doesn’t for the upcoming season. It allows time for things to settle, as well as for any emergency tweaks (balance, bugs, etc) that might need to happen. If we were to simply hop from one to the next, people might start feeling a tad burnt out from it relatively quickly (some people feel pressured by such things).
7 weeks of season followed by 4 weeks of off-season sounds awful
I like how people in the thread are now just accepting the fact the game is imbalanced and think that rerolling meta will ever fix anything.
Im sorry to burst your bubble but if they dont atleast attempt to fix the game now, they will never do it.
And with that in mind, if they trully want this game to die out, this is the way to do it.
I like to see how people that claims that this IS an ele’s problem, not a reaper’s problem are constatly ignored in the thread. I will be one more of them:
The current state of elementalits is a inherent issue of the class. Eles need better skill timing to deal with conditions.
This thread claims to be a balance discussion, but it is not. The only hope is to nerf reapers because of people, not the actual situation.
PS to fellow necros: Don’t be fooled! The nerf is comming because of toxic people that populate this forum.
Kk I want to say that ele can learn how to deal with current crap BUT…if you’re telling me that it takes any kind of skill to press one button every 5-6s and apply 5-6 condi on a target…I don’t know what to say, I must be having a nightmare
We want talk about diamond skin, condi clear, ele, engi, warrior, svanir, Disneyland…whatever! But pls have some self-respect and stop saying that playing a condi build in GW2 requires any resemblance of brain activity
Beautiful art, maps, lore…yes ok we can all agree that GW2 is the best BUT..balance, general gameplay, these are not the GW1 devs and they have absolutely 0 clue about what they’re doing, so enjoy your game..and your illusion of skill
Implying GW1 wwas balanced? LOL
That game mightve had more stale metas than GW2, lets be honest and nopt nostalgic here
One of the things this patch did was to buff the Reaper GM trait, Deathly Chill, despite the fact that no one believed it needed to be changed:
Reaper—Deathly Chill: Removed the 50% health threshold on this skill so that it now does the same damage at all times. Adjusted the damage ratio. Decreased the base damage from 40 to 10. Increased the level multiplier by 25%. Increased the condition damage multiplier by 87%.
This trait has been overtuned since Nov. 4, allowing Reapers to do consistent and prolonged condi damage (typically ticking between 600-1000) with zero ramp-up time, positioning constraints, or health threshold constraints. It is the archetype of a poorly designed trait that is contributing to the current power “creep” (really more of a landslide).
ANet: Want to take a very easy step in the right direction with balance? Revert the Nov. 4 Deathly Chill buff.
Source: Viper reaper main who uses and abuses Deathly Chill
Viper? Sounds awful
With necro mancers two health bars, low base armor, the ~1k defensive stats from merc amulet are absolutely massive- they scale better on necro than anybody eelse, a must use amulet on this class IMO.
There are 3 reasons Reaper is really strong right now:
Corrupt boon buff (pretty broken)
Merc Amulet + Other class’ celestial being removed (probably biggest reason)
Diamond skin nerfed
The 1 boon strip on 3rd scepter AA is peanuts compared to these three changes
I just don t understand the corrupt boon buff to brokenness. with the trait its a 10 second cooldown and converts 3 boons to conditions, rofl thats insane. Now I can go corruption build, have way more utility, and still strip and convert boons like I was full signet build.
New corrupt boon is monstrous and should be on every necros skill bar. Signets are still good but I think that meta might be on its way out the door. Get ready for corruption necros with 10s CD coorupt boon and 20s consume conditions (maybe best heal in game)
who gives a hoot everybody i see in pvp plays elite spec so it looks like most people bought it. Its not like premade teams with expansion pack are climbing the ladder stomping 5 people on f2p accoutns
Normally I am against making kneejerk reactions, but as I see it right now necro is way to strong with the amount of Condi application, damage and survivability in its kit along side the amulet. You get the best of all worlds, tank, condi, and power damage, with almost no trade offs.
Currently revenants wearing vipers ammy run around like they are wearing soldiers. It’s disgusting.
Good riddance.
Also, everybody overreacting about the auto boon strip. Itll probably be 1 boon on third attack. Not sure if you realize it but most necros already run very heavy boon strip, and revenants are very viable. Corrupt boon buff is actually more impactful than the scepter auto one imo
You do realize that its only a part of boon hate necro gets, right? Without resistance rev is trash due to 0 condi removal and that now will easily be stripped, stab on dodge into fear going to be fun as well.
Signets strip boons but they also have long cd’s, we could cover resistance with f2. No more. Power builds already gets facerolled by anything with condi (and on top of that gets huge dps nerf), condi rev will be facerolled by reaper as we wont be able to keep up with resistance, even less so now that they recently added cd on it. Rev will be out of meta.
Soooo do you agree or disagree that they are disgustingly overpowered in their current state? Because I think that they are
Also, if I currently strip 200 boons a game, sith the scepter auto change Ill strip like 215. Its really not a big deal. Its the change everyone is talking about because on paper it ssounds great but in practice I tihnk its one of the smaller announced changes for the reaper
The corrupt boon change might be over the top though. 15s CD? broken
Currently revenants wearing vipers ammy run around like they are wearing soldiers. It’s disgusting.
Good riddance.
Also, everybody overreacting about the auto boon strip. Itll probably be 1 boon on third attack. Not sure if you realize it but most necros already run very heavy boon strip, and revenants are very viable. Corrupt boon buff is actually more impactful than the scepter auto one imo
You do realize that viper revs use resistance as a way to survive condi pressure? With the scepter change it’ll be easy to remove that and turn it into chill…
No I didnt realize that. All I know is that they do 1,000,000 damage and dont die. Reapers turn to be OP
I think Revenants will still be viable in PvP. I do think reaper is the next OP though.
Reaper is about to open up your cornhole and stick his scythe inside
reapers while are being tanky and doing a lot of dmg don’t have overloaded tools and they are slow
Just watch bro. They are pretty decent now- are getting buffed and their competition is getting nerfed. they will own
my point still stands
- necros lack stability/stun breaks
- necros are slow
- a lot of animations have huge tell
- necros don’t have miriad invul/blocks
- necros don’t have 1000 ways of CC besides fear
- their aoe is actually fairly limited
by no means, yes reaper has their “broken” stuff but engi is completely different level
Agree with the weaknesses you point out, except the stability/stun break one. Our utility stun breaks are actually quite good and viable, and we have 2 great sources of stability now (chill to the kittenS3). Sometimes I run 3 stun breaks when I run marauders ammy
Currently revenants wearing vipers ammy run around like they are wearing soldiers. It’s disgusting.
Good riddance.
Also, everybody overreacting about the auto boon strip. Itll probably be 1 boon on third attack. Not sure if you realize it but most necros already run very heavy boon strip, and revenants are very viable. Corrupt boon buff is actually more impactful than the scepter auto one imo
Reaper is about to open up your cornhole and stick his scythe inside
reapers while are being tanky and doing a lot of dmg don’t have overloaded tools and they are slow
Just watch bro. They are pretty decent now- are getting buffed and their competition is getting nerfed. they will own. They also benefit hugely from other classes getting cele taken away while getting a great new ammy for themselves (1050 power/condi, 560 tough/vit)
“let’s give necro insane access to boon corruption to deal with classes that spam boons, this totally won’t completely shrek builds with little access to boons and instead have key short duration boons like stability and quickness at all”
Get ready to literally never be able to pull off a stab stomp while a necro is present ever again
HAhahahahaha I love it!
Get ready to get absolutely steamrolled by your Reaper overlords.
As a S/F fresh air elementalist main, ofcourse im extatic about the reveal.
But it goes beyond that.
A few days ago i had a talk with some people about bunker amulet, celestial.
They did it.
They not only buffed fresh air. But they removed the biggest blockades to a genuine skillfull game.
I thank you, guys at the balance desk for your hard work. This is utter brilliance.
I really am stoked and will be counting the days till it hits.
Thank you arenanet. To be frank i didnt think id ever write this. But this is literally, to me, the best thing that has ever happened with a patch in any game ive played so far.
Keep up the good work!
Link to patch? everyone talking about it, no links, annoying as all kitten
LOL Reaper is going to be so broken combined with other clases getting nerfed. Get ready for people to cry about us, and for good reason. Reaper WILL be OP as kitten. Watch
First of all if you are one of those who constantly whine about balance and nothing else matters then this topic aint for you.
1st WTS was won by 2x cele burn engi.
2nd WTS was won by hammer guard.
3rd WTS was won by 2x DD ele.
Winners are winners and loosers shouldve have taken the risk and adapted their comps to latest meta etc. not trying to say here that they should have not won BUT how can these tourneys be most competetive if teams qualify with one thing and then because of anet their comp is not as strong anymore.
So now this trash meta we have for while, ive been defending no balance on my stream all the time because anet said long time ago that there will be no big balance changes until pro league is over which was more than fine with me cause i wanted to see one time tourney were people play what they been playing and there isnt some cheese that others teams havent discovered.
Whole PVP community had to live with this “balance” for months just so we get most competetive tourney.
Now pro players…. People didnt got invited, people got kicked, they lost time, they lost money, some of you might think this is joke but multiple players got fkd over really hard by this meta because their teams wanted to stay competetive.
Aaaaaand at the end of the day:
“Pro League S1 Finals will use the Winter 2016 balance update, not the current.”
Who knows how balance will be, who knows what classes will be viable, maybe if pro league would happen with next patch we would see completely different teams or in some cases same teams with different players.
So why spit in face of normal PVPers and pro league players? Well money ofc.
Having pro league finals with current meta is just bad marketing. The finals will be seen by people who dont play gw2 and of course anet dont want them to see every team playing 2x mes 2x rev comp.
Part of being good at guild wars is discovering effective builds, which you referred to as “cheese”.
You even admit so much:
“Winners are winners and loosers shouldve have taken the risk and adapted their comps to latest meta etc.”
And can you really blame them for wanting to sell copies and not broadcast a braindead meta? Also, how does it kitten normal PvPers not in the tournament?
All that being said I’d be annoyed too if it affected me, I mean, players have been practicing on this for a long time. Its not like having an updated patch during the tournament will net them extra copy sales, it wont
Ehm I don’t really understand the authors way of reasoning, you say more stats will always be superior , that’s why celestial amulet, which is the amulet that gives the highest amount of stats, should not be nerfed?
Doesn’t that mean you acknowledge that celestial is the strongest amulet?
Do you want the game to stay unbalanced regarding this?
Or do you want to buff other amulets even though nerfing one amulet would be easier than buffing a dozen others and people are complaining about power creep already?
And wouldn’t that just be a nerf to celestial since its relative power would be lowered?
I’d much rather have a scaling rebalance than a nerf to the celestial amulet. As I said in the video, there is absolutely 0 reasons to go 1,200 into anything in PvP.
carrion pretty beast on necro though
It is mainly because Soul Reaping gets a lot from vitality. Once again the strong scaling playing a major factor.
I use to think so, but toughness applies to deathshroud as well and arguably scales a bit better than vitality due to the necro’s low base armor and high health pool.
Main reason its good is because they have a kitten ton of condi damage and that trait which gives you 50% free crit in shroud making power good.
But I agree with the overall assessment that 3 stat combos in general are a bit kitten. Carrion reaper is the exception, not the rule. tl;dr nerf cele
So… the question is, should all amulets be 4 stats to keep up with the power creep?
No what I suggest is something I’ve felt for a long time, I acutally think they should allow us to allocate our own stats, within certain rules and parameters. The cookie cutter amulet idea never really appealed to me. I would prefer more customization in general.
If we’re sticking to the cookie cutter ones- We could start by buffing ferocity. That stat is utter kitten- Give us crit damage back.
Ehm I don’t really understand the authors way of reasoning, you say more stats will always be superior , that’s why celestial amulet, which is the amulet that gives the highest amount of stats, should not be nerfed?
Doesn’t that mean you acknowledge that celestial is the strongest amulet?
Do you want the game to stay unbalanced regarding this?
Or do you want to buff other amulets even though nerfing one amulet would be easier than buffing a dozen others and people are complaining about power creep already?
And wouldn’t that just be a nerf to celestial since its relative power would be lowered?
I’d much rather have a scaling rebalance than a nerf to the celestial amulet. As I said in the video, there is absolutely 0 reasons to go 1,200 into anything in PvP.
carrion pretty beast on necro though
Main reason its good is because Soul Reaping gets a lot from vitality. Once again the strong scaling playing a major factor.
I use to think so, but toughness applies to deathshroud as well and arguably scales a bit better than vitality due to the necro’s low base armor and high health pool. Right now however I think Vit is just stronger on all classes right now with the prevalence of Condi and hybrid builds
Its also good because they have a kitten ton of condi damage and that trait which gives you 50% free crit in shroud making power good.
But I agree with the overall assessment that 3 stat combos in general are a bit kitten. Carrion reaper is the exception, not the rule. tl;dr nerf cele
Ehm I don’t really understand the authors way of reasoning, you say more stats will always be superior , that’s why celestial amulet, which is the amulet that gives the highest amount of stats, should not be nerfed?
Doesn’t that mean you acknowledge that celestial is the strongest amulet?
Do you want the game to stay unbalanced regarding this?
Or do you want to buff other amulets even though nerfing one amulet would be easier than buffing a dozen others and people are complaining about power creep already?
And wouldn’t that just be a nerf to celestial since its relative power would be lowered?
I’d much rather have a scaling rebalance than a nerf to the celestial amulet. As I said in the video, there is absolutely 0 reasons to go 1,200 into anything in PvP.
Thief
we decided that throwing auto attack damage in the mix will solve this. Our vision is your role shouldn’t be able to contribute to anything other than finishing half dead enemies or +1 fights
Unfortunatelu this is how it should be…otherwise you have to nerf their mobility.
revs, druids, mesmers, eles say hi
Rev cannot use his mobility to escape away from the fight at will.
wat? since when?
Since always unless you trying to imply that phase traversal is ground targeted in which case /facepalm.
No one implied that, you just need to learn to play rofl.
Between timing dodges (which give STABILITY), sig of energy and Riposting Shadows, you should have absolutely no problem getting the hell away from a fight. If you’re lucky, there’s another fight the next node over and you can even Phase Traversal away. In WvW is where it gets problematic escaping, but off topic.
- old s/d thief switched to Rev for ranked
Revenants get stability for dodging? lmao and they thought the thief dodge traits were too strong then release this monstrosity
We like where necromancer has been this season and have decided to try (but probably fail) to make lifestealing a thing by upping the lifesteal to just about every trait that has it and make it so lifesteal bolts work in Reaper Shroud (my be a good thing with spin to win on top of wells? Who knows). In essence, this will most likely be the next INCREDIBLY OP class because Tempest will no longer be a hard counter class to keep it in check, conditions will be ubiquitous and this class will only get better at giving them.
Spinning on wells requires using RS #4 immediately on shroud in a well, moreover comboing a well means we are not comboing RS #5’s ice field which means that any necro trying to take advantage of leeching bolts will be significantly reducing their chill application in shroud.
Also the jury is out on tempest, as everything rests on the details of new diamond skin, which we don’t have yet. I highly doubt reaper is going to dominate the meta though, it has other counters.
As it stands, necromancer counters Scrapper Rev (to a good extent) Druid, bunker Mesmer, but not tempest or teef, nerfing Tempest immunity might be the thing that pushes this back into a meta like the dhumfire meta from a few years ago, I’m not against it though, as I do main necromancer .
Old necro countered old engi. Reaper does not counter scrapper.
Reaper does counter it, in 1v1s and teamfights. I would know, as I play reaper and talk to many scrappers.
It really doesn’t. I play reaper as well, and I can safely tell you it doesn’t counter scrapper.
What do you think Reapers have that hard counter Scrappers?
Yea while Reaper is not bad by any means vs scrappers, they don’t definitely counter scrappers like necro did engi. Engi used to be heavily condi focused which necro’s did great verses, but now most scrappers run marauders, which is harder to deal with as a necro than rabid/cele engis with our low armor compared to vitality. We countered them with high HP pool + condi cleanses which are less relevant vs meta scrapper
Also, fear is a lot less common in the current metagame since most reaper’s don’t use the source of fear they have in reaper shroud. They prefer to hold onto the stability and autoattack to get those mad burnz.
Pretty much this. i like it though because it forces you into a decision depending on whether you really need to burst/cc or not. I think fear base durations and/or terror damage could use a slight buff
