Guild Wars 2

How can it be a a QoL patch when they touched up unused skills that will still be unused after?
They could have at least reduced the baseline DS degeneration, nerfed Vital Persistence of a matching amount, so Spectral Mastery finally was a viable choice.

As usual what works got nerfed.

Khisanth.2948:

What is your WvW rank?

With 15k badges I’m sure his rank is high enough and they did remove the merchant for everyone less than 48 hours ago.

^this. At least allow us to trade every day a fixed amount of Badges of Honor for 1 or 2 potions of WvW reward track progress.

Dear Arena.net

Next time you make this kind of changes don’t bury them in patch notes 17,477 words long, mentioning it only once in a paragraph talking about a new feature of one game mode. It at least deserved it’s own bullet point and a mirror in the item section of the patch notes.

I always read the patch notes but given how massive the 19 April patch was, and the excitement for the changes in the game modes I’m more invested in, I skipped the WvW section reading only the bolded headlines.

Yes it’s mostly my fault, but it’s a fact it was communicated in a poor manner. Even reddit mostly skipped this, there is only one thread made one month after the patch with only 15 upvotes which probably never made to the front page.

Thanks for your attention.

Change Deathly Chill to work like the Weakening Shroud grandmaster:

Deathly Chill

12s cooldown*

Cast frost aura when you apply chill. Chill inflicts bleeding.

3 Bleeding (3s): 198 Damage

Frost Aura (2s): Chill foes that strike you (only once per second for each attacker); incoming damage is reduced by 10%.

*The cooldown only applies to the Frost Aura application.

• Chill fills again our need for a burst damage option while still being not too much damage or hard to cleanse.
• We gain back our lost chill duration when we get hit under Frost Aura. I think it’s fair because it comes with a price: getting hit and and relying on the foe to hit us.
• Every 12 seconds you can stack up to 9 stacks of bleeding in 2 seconds thanks to Frost Aura’s chill on hit. That’s why I kept the bleeding duration very short.
• Frost aura’s chill on hit translates in AoE bleeding. After Deathly Chill nerf we lack pressure in teamfights.
• Frost aura + Cold Shoulder = 20% damage reduction. It’s a perfect tool to relieve focus fire, give time to escape or LoS the enemy to heal. It may even allow us to drop Rise! for some other utility.

IMO this is the perfect solution. It promotes a more skilled use of our chill. Chills becomes a tool that can be used to counter a early burst, give us a chance to peel off and heal when under focus fire, or to quickly build up our pressure after the inevitable cleanse. With this trait you want to stagger your chill application and keep track of the timing to save the frost aura for when you need it. You can do some skilled counter play if you time it right and leaves room for counter play since enemeys can choose to not attack you while unde Frost aura.

• PvE can afford more bleed duration and chill sources, like chill on blind. Coupled with fear we may see a comeback of Terror and the inclusions of fear related skills in PvE condi DPS rotations. There is the potential to cut down the ramp-up time enough to make PvE condi necros relevant outside of raids.

Bhawb.7408:

This is the problem I’m seeing. A teamfight focused Reaper needed high sustain because we have, count them, still NONE of the negation tools that every other bunker in the game has. Yes Rise! is nice, but all it does is mitigate, and at a certain point mitigation just flat out never scales as well as a defensive tool as full on negation does. We’ve been saying this for years, and we’re still there.

Also, too much PvE zerg sustain? That’s an awful balance point, next we’ll be nerfed because we could survive infinite fall distances even though revive orbs were abused for that anyway… wait a minute.

^This

There are no words to express how bitter and burned I am from this uncalled change.

Ridiculous boon spam from professions that made defensive stats in raids utterly useless in BW3 despite the devs claims of “PvE Zerk meta is dead”? Nerf necromancers!

I’m rolling a Revenant as soon as I think a cool name for it. I’m not even angry just tired.

I’ve seen there was a new version of my graphic card’s driver. I’ve installed it and ran an optimization of GW2 with the AMD Gaming Evolved tool, now the cinematic with Brahm and Taimi starts and I’ve completed this story step.

I tried everything, even getting killed by a turret on the other side of the map and respawning at check point. No matter how long I stand next Taimi or the order in which I kill the chaks, she stays still and does nothing. I’m getting really frustrated here. :-(

After killing the Chack Blitzer the instance doesn’t progress further. The character are stuck and you can’t talk to them. I redid this step of the personal story 5 times and it always bugs here. Any suggestion on how to avoid this bug?

MatthewMedina.5419:

Theo – so sorry for the inconvenience – we were seeing this bug prior to launch and it was always caused by a cinematic failing to load (which is what’s supposed to happen next). Have you noticed other cinematics in the game taking a long time to load? One of the big changes to HoT is that our cinematics are now full resolution and less compressed – so while they’re a lot better looking, they’re also bigger to download. Have you tried closing the client and making sure you’re fully patched and then try this mission again?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3pvy71/nightfury_the_new_bat_shoulders_first_step_done/

Ok, so my only goal for the next two weeks are these kitten shoulders, and I have spent the last couple of hours toiling away at it.
The first step to get “Bat Wing” is thus:
4x Tattered Bat Wings
250 Mystic Coins
20 Bloodstone Bricks
120 Powerful Blood (might have been more, was just excited I got the 4th item)
Now….I have about 75% of items in the collection category…and have bought almost every new item from HoT, and all the items but the pets on the CC Vendor…and kittenall lights up when you put the Bat Wings into the forge…Community – Go!
Update: So “Bat Wing” combines with Glacial Lodestone….and 2 other somethings. Also, Endless Bottle of Batwing Brew can combine with Vision Crystal and 2 somethings, which is likely (but not guaranteed) to make it part of the components for this item.
Rather important note: Made a Second Bat Wing, just to test if you needed 2+, they do not light up together in the forge…so do not make more than one.

Edit: new informations.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Charblaze.6958:

Yep, but with a little of AoE healing “Rise!” could make Reapers pretty much immortal in PvE.

Blighter’s Boon and the fact that precision is scarcely needed to maximize DPS already make Reapers nearly immortal in PvE. “Rise!” will both be a DPS loss and add unnecessary bulk basically anywhere. I can’t even foresee it being useful in raids (unless you’re bad and want to facetank mechanics you should be avoiding); you didn’t need to mitigate even close to that much damage in the first encounter.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a really cool change, I just want to make sure our community doesn’t start bringing minions everywhere thinking they’re awesome only to draw flak because they’re still bad.

Thank you captain obvious? If you have defensive stats and traits Raise! has no meaning, but if you have Raise! you can go full offensive.

Minions have some interesting interactions with raid mechanics. They contribute to the body count of the contracting orange AoE and they body block the damaging blue orbs giving the invulnerability boon to the vale guardian. With all the AoE heal spam you had a dozen of shamblings at any time. Another interesting interaction is the stacking toughness with death magic so you may keep the aggro and lead a boss with zero stats investment. Finally, if one guy allows the other 9 to DPS without hindrances even senseless facetanking may have a place, but I don’t like or approve this idea. Raise! in the presence of AoE heals allows you to build an army of minions and have all the defense you ever need with the investment of only one utility slot.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never thought or said that MM are the future of PvE, I just wanted to point out some interesting interactions of a specific skill in a specific context.

If you are wondering where all the harshness comes from: you replied in a really condescending manner, building a strawman of unfounded assumptions and arbitrary placed “MM propaganda” words in my mouth.

Bhawb.7408:

Cool change, no one get too excited because minions are still largely subpar but at least they are usable.

Yep, but with a little of AoE healing “Rise!” could make Reapers pretty much immortal in PvE.

I agree with spoj and Bhawb. Buried under the fecal matter there are some gold nuggets, but rummaging feces is not a hobby of mine so I’ve lost any interest I had in nemesis’ claims long ago.

Brayzz.6524:

1) Thaumanova Reactor Fractal : Champion Subject 6 “Shield Form”. Instead of waiting, you just interrupt the boss and DPS him down.

2) Volcanic Fractal : Legendary Imbued Shaman “Shield Bubble”. Stun/Chill/Slow the boss. He is never going to reach a NPC even with bad DPS groups.

Thanks to the defiance bar those mobs can’t be interrupted and are immune to Stun/Chill/Slow.

I doubt NCSY will see any use in PvE, unless they add a Raid boss specifically requiring unblockable attacks.

@Cogbyrn: They are game developers and designers! It’s their job to design and balance with that in mind. And honestly they should start balancing around boons too, because they clearly aren’t. Or at least give us support options valuable enough to make up for the lost control.

Weakness has 25% less damage reduction than protection and has an RNG component that can Kitten you over. The only advantage over protection is that once you apply it, it’s up for everyone. But then comes herald’s support, bam! 90% party-wide protection up-time. All proclaims of killing the zerk meta are suddenly a joke and the only successful raids are full DPS with one tank guy only to lock the boss in place by keeping the aggro.

But yeah debuffs are the problem, and asking to have them working as intended albeit in a weakened manner is the utter madness. Necromancers have complete monopoly over debuffs, it’s not like other professions have access to them if they spec for it. Meanwhile a single boon utterly defeating one of the raid’s design goals is perfectly fine. Yes, it all makes perfect sense, Mad King Thorn approves.

Still there is no management, just mindless CC dumping when it’s available. Even if the defiance bar lasted 5 times longer it wouldn’t change this aspect. Player have no control in least over defiant bars as long they stay as scripted event. Seems like they erased control from PvE and left only damage and support. :-(

@Cogbyrn: For Kitten Sake! Even some of the common mobs are receiving defiance bars, everything above veteran is guaranteed to get one. Is it hard to understand that whenever there is a defiance bar a good chunk of our profession is made irrelevant?

“Complexity of PvP” means that currently PvP and WvW makes full use of the combat system and stats available, while PvE uses a reduced set. Right now it’s shaping up to use an even smaller subset than we currently use.

It’s inactive 99% of the fight and when it’s available it melts in seconds. It felt very forced and scripted, requiring no thoughts or management. Just mindless spam of CC when it’s available, the end.

While I enjoyed the fights, the defiance bars felt like the cinematic parts of a God of War boss fight were you press the timed on-screen buttons and the character script-pummels the boss with no other input from your part. Except there is no epic cinematic but only scripted boredom.

I felt like the defiance bar took away what little control we had left on bosses and outright erased any control form from high end PvE leaving only boons. Right now when I play thief with pistol off hand I have much more control over defiance.

I’m really concerned about professions and specializations with a lot of built in soft control, especially for Reaper. Currently things like chill are really helpful against some bosses like the mossman, archdiviner and imbued shaman. With the new break bars soft CC lose even the little use they had. And nope I’m not sold over defiance DoT. What’s the use of defiance damage over time if 99% of the time the defiance bar is immune? My Reaper’s chill didn’t felt useful at all while I was raiding.

TL;DR: They promised to take advantage of the complexity of GW2’s combat system like PvP, but it felt more like they completely erased control from PvE.

Lemondish.3268:

I don’t think this is a legitimate concern at this stage.

Yes, it is. They promised to bring the complexity of PvP combat instead we got dumb defiance bars completely erasing what little of control we had left in high end PvE.

Lemondish.3268:

Raids may be coming to GW2, but this constant fear mongering that a whole class will be left out because of a culture of min/max doesn’t need to come with it. For one, that level of ridiculous exclusion is not something that will benefit anybody but the world first guilds. It’s not the kit that will determine your group’s success, it’s how you use it.

Raids are supposed to be the hardest content only doable by organized groups. If anything it’s an indication that the min/max culture will be stronger than ever. If you have bad equip or builds in dungeon and fractals you just take longer, in a raid you outright fail. Kitten, the first boss had even an enrage timer (i.e. a DPS check) and if you fail it (not enough zerk/sinister) you wipe.

Lemondish.3268:

We know of very few fights in the raids. Those that we do know about include mechanics that we’ve never seen before in GW2’s PvE content. The value of any profession in this content cannot be accurately predicted at this time.

But we do know our debuffs and control do nothing thanks to defiance bar invalidating half of our profession.

nekretaal.6485:

Early high level Pvp tests, eg Nos vs Phantaram streams, suggest that the Reaper is poor at high level pvp and also a downgrade versus the necromancer.

What’s next? Testing a LB Ranger in melee?

Yes, scepter, axe, focus still need a lot work, but reaper was made for group fights not duels.

Captain Unusual.9163:

I don’t agree with this on Soul Eater. The GS is meant to be a heavy, slow weapon, with high risk and high reward, giving it haste would just require it to get nerfed into basically a 2 handed dagger.

Not really, it depends on how it’s done. I proposed 1 second of quickness for every gravedigger landed on an enemy above 50% HP. Since gravedigger has a 1s aftercast, 0.5s or quickness are always spent in halving gravedigger aftercast. The other 0.5s of quickness are spent in halving the time of first attack of the auto-attack chain (Dusk Strike is 1s between cast and aftercast). The quickness up-time is 15.6% and only when the enemy is above 50% HP. It pretty much only removes a bit of the clunkiness of the auto by jump starting it making GS a slightly better DPS than dagger even when the foe is above 50% HP.

We may be onto something. You had to body block blue damaging orbs (1.5-2k) because if they hit the boss he would gain boons. With 12 shambling horrors you may have enough bodies to block all the orbs. Raise! could be an hilarious and unexpected form of support.

But I wouldn’t place all my hopes in Raise! since it will be likely nerfed. A kitten greedy youtuber posted a video were he abused the Kylo map to summon minions out of combat, kept them alive with a druid friend, amassing an army of more than two dozen minions. I hope they make the sensible choice to not nerf Raise! but cap the number or minions only in PvP (and WvW if necessary). :-/

Cogbyrn.7283:

If Reaper brings about as much damage as another class, but that other class brings more “support”, is that difference in support going to make or break the kill? What is the difference in support? Will it actually matter at all?

Yes it does matter, it’s how the current meta works. PS warrior has lower personal dps but it’s support boosts the party dps much more than what you lose by having him. I can 100% guarantee you that if Herald isn’t nerfed it’ll be mandatory for every raid due to the support given by 90% protection up-time. The herald allowed the raid to disregard defensive stats and keep wearing zerk gear. That’s how strong and wanted support is in this game.

Cogbyrn.7283:

But does that really then conclude that the Reaper’s spot in a raid is in jeopardy? I’m just not sold, but then again, I’m not sure what the raid in which the Reaper’s spot is in jeopardy is trying to actually accomplish, which is why I was trying to figure out the goals of said high-end PvE raiding group.

The goal for the majority of the player base is clearing the content in the most reliable and timely fashion. Party support really helps achieving that.

@Drarnor Kunoram: Can you reliably position minions if the guardian isn’t over the circle?

Indeed I’ve summoned a lot of minions with Raise! thanks to the AoE healing keeping them alive but they helped only by keeping me alive (which is good). I wonder if further testing can find more uses for them in a boss fight.

@Cogbyrn: Please read the first post. This topic is raising and discussing the following concerns:

• Defiance bars are creating a massive functionality overlap between soft CC and hard CC.
• Reaper brings chill and damage.
• Chill has the same value as any other CC available to all professions.
• Reaper damage is good, but other professions are equally good while bringing more support.
• Base necro has little support and what it has isn’t in high demand.
• Our other debuffs have little or no value by design in PvE.
• Reaper’s spot in raids is in jeopardy because his signature functionality (chill) becomes a featureless commodity against defiant bars.

If you are wondering where Necro/Reaper is fitting in a party composition for it’s defiance DoT, well they aren’t. As the beta showed us the defiance bar is immune for 99% of the fight and when it’s available it melts in seconds. Really there is no strategy/management to defiance bars. In my opinion they are more boring than the current system and taking away even more power from the players. A shortcut to outright erase and forget control and disables from PvE except for 10s they arbitrary chose to script in fight where it’s just blind CC dumping fest. Big deal having a damage over time that doesn’t actually do damage over time because defiance bars have only a small time window accounting for 1% of the fight.

To learn said knowledge you need effort. I’m not dismissing PvE in the least. It’s hard to find people that really know what they are doing in PvE.

Defining what high end PvE actually is it’s an interesting topic but with a really broad scope better suited for the “Fractals, Dungeons & Raids” sub forum.

@Silverkey&Cogbyrn: Your arguments, while nice and agreeable in theory, they crash hard against reality. What’s the top 1% can do has little meaning for the majority of the player base because, duh, they are the top so by definition they account for a very small number of players.

The hard truth is that unless you are a godly player, profession > player due to imbalances. They had to add a new rule to ESL Europe Tournament (“Each team needs to consist of at least 3 different professions.”) to put a stop to 3-5 D/D Elementalists teams. Metabattle even made a mocking page http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Team_-_Overskill to underline how ridiculous and out of hand the situation was both in Europe and NA.

Anyway Reaper is perfectly fine in PvP, we are talking about PvE. In PvE “skilled” mostly translates into “encounter knowledgeable” because fight mechanics are 100% predictable.

If you have experience of fighting bosses with the new defiant bar using Reaper in a 5-10 players instanced setting, please share it here. If you don’t feel free to comment the feedback written by other players, but please STOP derailing the thread with unrelated arguments.

Dead.5829:

I don’t even see it being a PvE trait. It doesn’t add to your damage noticeably, and barely adds to your survivability (5 targets, spammed, is a warriors healing signet). […]

I’ll rephrase it better: since the other two traits are too good in PvP to pass up, remove the kittening life leach and put something of use in PvE like party support or damage. Preferably party support, because if they don’t change chill on defiance bar we need it for raids.

Dead.5829:

I’d love to see some sort of party support come from it that also just helps you do damage. An attack speed buff that stacks with successive GS skill landings, so the longer you’re in combat with the reaper, the harder it gets to dodge hits that have begun to land faster.

My previous BWE suggestion was 1-2s of quickness when you hit a opponent above 50% HP with gravedigger. Really helps the first half of a PvE fight.

Dead.5829:

Then half/third of this speed buff is given to allies. But this might be too strong alongside quickness (hi Shiro Rev). Or a stacking lifesteal buff caused by GS attacks, but works on all attacks (so you still get the benefit in Shroud). That or what was previewed when Reaper was first shown, X procs of something over Y seconds. This could be lifesteal, so long as it’s strong enough, which the current rendition is not. I think the similar lifesteal amount works better on Augury, because shouts are so much easier to reliably land than Gravedigger, especially on many enemies in a big fight, due to the range and significantly lower cast times.

Yes, it would be too strong. I still think the whole life steal on GS idea should be scrapped due to the slowness, unless it’s related to death spiral.

Dead.5829:

Was I the only one happy with YSIM when running Augury?

I was happy too. I advocated for some form of healing on augury, or scaling healing on YSIM, since BW1.

I’m still not happy with Soul Eater and Chilling Nova.

Life leach on GS still doesn’t convince me. At least before you could use death spiral to pile a lot of heal, restricting it to gravedigger made it worse. In my opinion Soul eater is a PvE trait, because the other 2 options are too good in PvP and WvW. As a PvE trait I’d like to see some form of party support from this trait. Same thing for Chilling Nova, it should be a damage boost against chilled foes plus AoE chill on crit.

Atherakhia.4086:

The only point I was trying to make was the debuff utility the Necro supposedly specializes in isn’t rare or meaningful enough to warrant a Necro getting a slot. Other classes provide enough without sacrificing utility or build and those classes would likely be taken in multiples in a raid simply because they provide a DPS premium whereas Necro is still low tier in DPS and missing tier in utility.

Elementalist can provide partywide 25 might but PS warrior is a thing because he does the same job faster with less effort. If chill did matter on defiant bosses, Reaper would be the profession of choice because it provides more chill with less effort than Ranger. With 3 traited wells you have partywide 30% protection up-time, but it doesn’t matter because the Herald can output more protection with less effort.

@Cogbyrn: you are missing the point, the fact is a good chunk of PvE content is immune to half of the effects of our skills and traits when it matters most.

They tell you can’t have weakness working because it’s horribly broken even thought it’s less effective than protection and has an RNG component. Then you have a whole squad of zerk/sinister with only one tanky guy “just for keeping boss aggro” clearing the raid because of squad wide 90% protection up-time by one profession. Yeah, debuffs are broken while boons are perfectly fine. So much for all the commotion about killing the metazerk. And they even claimed to make HoT PvE take advantage of GW2’s wonderful combat mechanics like PvP. (-_-")

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the world first did include a reaper. However, that does not mean it was needed, but at least it works

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3nipnp/world_first_vale_guardian_kill/

Group comp, 4 Condi Engi (1 tankier hybrid, which was me), 3 Revenants, 1 Druid, 1 Chronomancer, 1 Warrior. Everyone was in Berserker, except the Condi Engis of course. I don’t think the Berserker meta is quite over with yet.

Aomine.5012:

But the topic clearly stated “dungeons” too -3-

Read my post again, I already said I haven’t get to test on raid much yet, but this post is including dungeon too.

In other contents, Reaper will clearly be invaluable.

And if you bothered reading the first post you’d know it is all in relation to the break bar and it’s interaction with soft CC and debuffs. Stop derailing the discussion please. ;_;

Anchoku.8142:

Reaper works best when there are a lot of trash mobs for both the AoE and Lf generation. Single-boss encounters are a Necromancer’s worst situation because its AoE soft CC and debuffs are useless, LF generation is leaner without deaths, and the only useful team support is Transfusion.

The red orbs can be attacked, most of the time I was hitting the boss and 2 orbs. I even used Raise and with all the surplus healing there where more than a dozen of shambling horrors, but aside for personal tanking they didn’t help much.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

we don’t handle “moving safe spot” encounters too well.

Good lord, getting to the orange AoE was a pain with our poor mobility. I hope having the mushroom mastery and using the speed mushroom at the base of the pillars solves the issue.

Aomine.5012:

And why do you think you couldn’t be the role of stacking 25 vulnerable, and let someone else run even higher dps, while you yourself already doing very top-noche dps? Also I run unorganized pugs all the time, and rarely do they “fail miserably”, even in fotm 49 or 50. In fact sometimes those PUGS do better than some of my guild’s unprofessional runs lol…

Sorry, not everyone has a top team to stick around and work with, so I’m very happy for Reaper.

Also, which class are you comparing to? Ele, the top class again?
Donnu why Necro has to be so pessimistic.. Your dps is way higher than anything other than Ele and probably some type of thief though. (For thief not 100% sure)

Because they get those vouln stack for free. Kitten, I’m placing vouln staks for free too with death spiral, or axe auto, or a Well of Suffering, anyone can with a stupid sigil. Really, it’s easy to accidentally cap vulnerability in a 5 man party, capping it in a 10 members squad as side effect of optimal rotation and trait choice is a 100% guarantee.

Reaper alone can do nothing. If in a 5 man groups you can carry hard because you account for 20% of the group, in a 10 man group your contribution is only 1/10, you are two times less relevant, and so are 25 self might.

Fotm are burst DPS the boss before he can kill you. You can’t burst DPS raid bosses you need to actually organize the group, manage the squad, assign roles check you have enough of x, y and z. It far esier to coordinate 5 peoples than 10 or find 9 good, or willing to listen, players instead of 4.

I’m not comparing Reaper to any class in particular. I’m just taking note that it’s not bringing much to raids.

Again if you are so sure hop in a raid, self 25 stack to victory, and prove me wrong . I must be spouting nonsense because I had 3 raids disband without even getting the boss to split once, and progressed further with the fight only when I map chat “lfg serious raid attempt” and we spent 15-20m organizing the team. :-/

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That said, as a Necro, I agree that nothing we have to offer is even remotely wanted in this first raid part other than Transfusion to group downed people for easy rezzing. I place this blame squarely on the break bar mechanic absorbing cripple, chill, weakness, and immobilize. We’re debuffers, and the break bar makes debuffing worthless.

Glad to see I’m not alone. Even worse the break bar is unavailable for 99% of the fight, and when it is the bar melts in seconds. They didn’t even bother with heals or regen to give poison a meaning.

PlatinumMember.5274:

People beat the first easy boss w/o changing much. It doesn’t say anything about the final main boss.

When you enter there are 3 “bosses”, they are glorified trash mobs to learn the mechanics. They can be cleared by any pug with any kind of setup.
:-/
I’m talking of the real boss in the arena after you kill the 3 “trash bosses”.

@Cogbyrn: They aren’t specifically trying to build to not include a Necro. They are looking for AoE healing, protection, damage, boon stripping, etc. We just don’t have anything that makes us shine. What we have is either outclassed or ineffective when it matters most.

@Drarnor Kunoram: Maybe condi necro has a chance? I tried the zerk DPS GS/A+F with blood/spite/reaper. How far did you got? After we cleared the split phase the boss started stacking deadly boons and we wiped when he covered the arena with small AoE. Personally I found transfusion useless if you have 2 healers, they are required anyway to keep the zerk dps group alive. Yes you need a dedicated zerk group or you don’t have enough dps to kill the boss. The optimal setup setup seems 4-5 zerk, 2 healers and 3-4 condi.

@Tatikios: Don’t get me wrong, reaper it’s not bad, but we bring too little to justify our existence and what we do can be done better by other classes or is meanigless when ti matter most (our debuffs like chill).

I hope to be proven wrong because I really really want Reaper to succeed in PvE. ;_;

Aomine.5012:

Why do you think that?

Self might, permanent 25 stacks of vulnerable by himself, high cleave damage shroud, boss killing GS2 (once boss hp <50%, your dps becomes 2nd, spamming the damage equivalent to 100B with no CD )

How can people not want this kind of dps class?

Because those are good traits only on unorganized pugs and those kind of pugs are doomed to wipe and fail.

I’ve just been in a more organized pug. I had perma 25 stacks of might and vulnerability without the need to lift a finger. I was explicitly told to not bother with might and vouln, they were right. Even at split it wasn’t an issue, you just need to survive long enough for them to clear one of the split bosses to then receive help.

Boon striping was needed but my reaper was laughable because you had to boon strip roughly every 10s so you burn trough your boon strips and fail your team <= reason why we wiped after we cleared the first split of the boss.

Necro’s siphons and heals were mostly useless, druid, ele, even warrior’s banner gave all the necessary heal to keep the zerkers alive. Same for protection on our wells, ONE herald pumped enough protection for 90% up-time.

Necro’s revive traits seem useless too, you either have enough heal spam to keep everyone alive and quickly ress who falls or you wipe anyway, blood magic traits or not.

The only useful party tools were well of blood and well +10% increased revive speed trait.

This was my experience thus far. It’s time to stop theory crafting and test things for real. I don’t want to hear "muh solo 25 stack might&vouln and revive port " anymore unless you have proven you can clear the kittening boss with your setup. (I’m not talking about you in particular Aomine)

Just hopped in a raid. Chill seems utterly useless since 90% of the fight the defiance bar is inactive and can’t be damaged.

Now I’ll go back to confirm if this first impression is right. Please share your experience with Reaper in raids.

Sigmoid.7082:

Just did a test, can high 12~14k on test dummier with grave digger with zerk ammy.

I hit 10-12k with a single rotation, if I kept attacking building more might and vulnerability I would’ve hit for 12-14k. There is nothing wrong with greathsword’s DPS.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Reaper’s Shroud is indeed very good (and will be better once the Axe has 900 range) but I do think you’re giving Death Shroud short shrift. The damage is pretty good, the AoE Vulnerability stacking is good, 3 is amazing for clutch situations, 5 is really strong CC, and 4 can be traited to heal allies while teleporting multiple downed allies out of AoEs. 2 would be better if it weren’t so slow that you could just walk to your target by the time it reaches them, but the others are really strong. A lot of builds specialize in staying in Death Shroud as much as possible just because it has so much going for it.

I said DS is good damage my complaint is the lack of utility that allows you to enact tactics to gain the upper hand outside of plain damage and buying time. And nope, the traited vuln, heal and teleport don’t count: I’m talking of the base skill set and those traits are available to Reaper Shroud too. Tainted Shackles is the worst offender. If it was chill/immobilize or torment/fear I would understand, but torment/immobilize is kitten wrong. Only Doom has real utility. Even aquatic shroud is much better, skills 1-4 have a clear synergy even though it lacks the combo field-finishers of RS.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Clearly, you don’t use death shroud very often or you would know that life blast is impossible to sidestep.

Heck, you can’t even juke it with shadowsteps. Life Blast and Dark Path will both turn 90 degrees or more to hit their target. They’re more accurate than the best guided missiles in the world.

I’ve definitely seen my LB missing every now and then at 900+ range with fast moving targets. I trust your necro’s mechanics minutiae knowledge, so maybe it was lag or targeting loss. :-/

Silverkey.2078:

• Epidemic: if used at the right moment, can be devastating both in PvE and PvP

“The right moment” is such a rare occurrence that no one is using this skill. And even when the moment is right the kitten long cast time will likely make you miss it.

Why we can’t have:

Epidemic
Apply vulnerability on yourself and epidemic on a foe. Incoming conditions to the affected foe are spread to all nearby foes.

• Self Vulnerability (6s)
• Epidemic (6s)
• Number of Targets: 5
• Radius: 600
• Range: 1,200
• Unblockable

In my opinion it’s much better because:

• You don’t need a perfect or unlikely scenario to use it effectively.
• Rewards coordinated team play.
• Removes the potential for an unfair or game breaking condition insta-kills.
• The gradual condition build up leaves room to counter play.
• The skill is suddenly a must have for every condi necro, covering for the poor AoE condi application of mace.
• Any build that uses Dhuumfire can see the worth of slotting this utility even if it’s at the expense of survivability. Hurrah for meaningful build choices!

Blaine Tog.8304:

No, it’s a moment of strength because a) Death Shroud skills are pretty good overall, and b) you cannot be killed without burning through Death Shroud first, barring specific environmental or mob effects. Dealing damage to Life Force is beneficial in a small way for an opponent, but only because it hastens the moment when the Necro becomes killable again. Opponents would vastly prefer to attack a Necro’s Health.

The intended moment of weakness for Necros is immediately after they leave Death Shroud, when they don’t have Death Shroud available.

I disagree on point a. Death shroud’s skills are terrible, they do good damage (if you are not interrupted and your LB are not sidestepped), but they have little to none utility. Reaper shroud should have made clear to everyone how poorly designed is our DS skill set. DS is just buying time while dealing some damage hoping the fight turns in your favor, in RS you can chain you skills for greater effects thanks to combo field and finishers and you have enough utility to enact some strategy to gain the upper hand.

I was wondering if a half Valkyrie and half Cavalier Reaper would fare better than pure Valkyrie in raids. Or pure Cavalier combined with Death Magic for extra power from toughness.

Death Magic begs to be used when you have defensive gear, but it has 0 party support. Armored Shroud and Beyond the Veil should be applied to allies too. Granting bonus toughness while in shroud, and protection when you exit it, would be great support to party survivability.

Next weekend will be BW3 and the first raid boss encounter will be available.

Get your gear and teorycraft builds ready. It’s time to test if we’ll stand on the same ground as the other professions. If not, we have to provide quality and conclusive feedback to get the changes we need.

What gear stats combinations do you think will be useful?
What builds do you want to try?
What mechanics do you want to test?
Any ideas to better test Reaper&Necro and give useful feedback?

Scrapper needs to be in melee range to deal CC and damage with the hammer, Nightfall can counter that. “Chilled to the bone!” freeze and stability helps too. IMHO it will be more a contest of skill between the Reaper and the Scrapper. Next BWE we will see who is right.

I’m the only one thinking of the combo Scrapper + Reaper. Reaper with superspeed must be a terrifying sight. Lots of other synergies too.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

Thank you for posting here. It does ease my worries but we need more informations. ;P
I’m really looking forward to Reaper and raids. I don’t want my favorite elite spec to be shunned from high end PvE like current necromancer.

So we can expect boss adds? Or DoTs to keep defiance regeneration in check? Maybe both? New boss specific condition mechanics like burning on Shoggroth in Arah P1?

Please tell us more!

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, Necros do need a reason to be brought in raids, and since they can’t buff the party, their debuffs need to warrant their inclusion.

^this

Unless chill DoT stops defiance regeneration they aren’t adding enough to a group to warrant inclusion. I don’t think zerk dps in defensive gear matters in a game were support is king.