Guild Wars 2

Silv.9207:

No stability, no shroud meatshield, skills with casting, barriers with low hp and casting, only a single portal to move that seems to teleport TO the target and Not away from it, no block/inv/evade at all…
I don’t see how that elite can be good sPvP, it’s so easy to kill that right now I can say that any barely decent player will kill every single Scourge easy and fast if nothing change.
I hope to be wrong, but that elite lose ALL the Reaper defensive skills, the Shroud meatshield and don’t grant any new way to defend yourself. Not even the portal seems to work to defend yourself but only to catch the enemy as a gap closer.

Barriers can grant you up to 12k hp, but you have to Cast them and they degenerate or disappear in few seconds, making you totally unable to protect yourself from any kind of assoult (expecially from anyone that use CC skills). Basicly, you do Better with the current death or Reaper shrouds than with that new Barrier machanic…
That’s really Sad because that specializzation focus is on Support and not damage, making you inflict lesser damage and dying quickly.
We’re already the easiest and faster class to kill of this game, how can we play with a specializzation that make us even more killable?

About the swiftness, we already have the warhorn if we want swiftness and that buff never make our emeies unable to kill us because all the other classes have insanely stronger movement skills than us. Any mesmer, guardian, warrior, ranger…basicly everyone… can catch us really easy with teleport, leap and immobilize skills, that’s the reason for the necro is so easy to kill in sPvP: if you see one and you’re a decent player there’s not a single way a necromancer will flee from you (may be with the wurm but you can kill it easy and fast before start the fight).

The same I can say about the Cripple. We actually play with tons of Chill to keep our enemy near us to hit him with the GS or slow him to be able to flee… That strategy ever worked? NO, it don’t!
Every single class can catch and kill us easy because teleports and leaps aren’t affected by movement imparring skills (unless immobilize).

I really like that new Elite Specializzation, i like the theme, the skills, the graphic effects and the torch, but i don’t see a future for it in sPvP and as a sPvP player I’m really really sad.

Well the class seems to focus on removing enemy boons, removing conditions, granting yourself and allies boons and barries and doing condi damage. With the amount of condi cleanse it has… anyone will be very hard pressed to do any meaningful damage without using a power build. Without boons or vuln even power builds will have greatly reduced damage and barriers while a little weak can be cast fairly frequently to mitigate a lot of that and using something like parasitic contagion from curses you can heal a significant amount of damage back while barriers prevent and mitigate further damage.

As for mobility that’s pretty much par for the course for necros… nothing new here but the scourge functions better with it thanks to copious amounts of torment and cripple making it not only a pain in the ass to chase one around but drastically increasing the amount of damage they take.

No stability is really the only big issue I see, technically you could just take it from enemies but that’s not entirely reliable. If “sand shroud” works with foot in the grave we might be able to get by. It also depends on exactly how long it takes for barriers to fade if they can protect you through long CC chains it might be ok as well.

Crinn.7864:

Mageblade Tether looks so broken OP. Just think you tether someone, then use greatsword to zoom halfway across the map, and that poor soul is going to be yanked after you the entire way.

Not to mention mageblad tether is probably going to result in people getting stuck in walls literally every match.

Well stability probably works against it

I’m done stealing your luck… you can have it back… sorry. I got to ruby though

My last 4 games were all 2 pip wins against premades…

Actually now that I look I’m on a 10 game winning streak… woooooooooooooooo

Nova Stiker.8396:

If they remove diamond skin Reapers will take elementalists completely out of the meta.

I’m completely ok with Reaper’s being in the meta and ele’s not.

Apolo.5942:

Not my experience, i find DH paper thin as extremely easy to bring down.
Step1: turn on your invulnerability.
Step2: walk right into the traps and trigger them all.
Step3: bring the 10k hp sucker down in a heartbeat.

18k… we normally wear marauder amulet

This is why you run cele and dagger over scepter.

Bunker Mes is worse. It has no counter other than throwing your entire team at it.

Condi rev can be countered by a single condi rev… it’s pretty broke that it is its own counter but at least they can be dealt with by a single player.

5 premade are usual awful… just utterly awful. It’s usually a guild group having fun and losing badly.

I had 2 matches that I lost and didn’t lose anything(both against premades) then got the most awful premade imaginable on my team and lost and lost 2 pips.

Narkodx.1472:

I STILL like the power build better

Mallyx is better in 1v1 for sure no doubt but I feel like it is easily focused in team fights without the Glint Heal

Plus I just love the staff

It’s why pros play it with chronobunkers… can’t focus them when they have 10 seconds of distortion and alacrity gets those defensive cooldowns up much faster.

Most Viper rev’s are awful so unless you’re playing at a very high mmr it doesn’t really matter.

Well if you have a win rate of 30% with a decent amount of games played the problem is probably you.

What build do you normally run? and how are your fights normally going?

From what I’ve seen….

Bunker sustain is out of control and really shouldn’t be available at the same time. If you want to heal you should be squishy. If you want to bunker you shouldn’t have great sustain. Meanwhile we have tempests and chrono’s that can basically 1v2 with ease and hold 1v3 for significant lengths of time.

The sad part though is if you aren’t using a tanky build you have DH’s, like myself, that kill you in less than 5 seconds without issue. It’s ridiculous. Even WoW does a better job balancing and apparently we aren’t going to get any changes until after the season? the kitten?

SteepledHat.1345:

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Blink out when locked in their dragon maw (click LOD particle effect in option if you can’t see it, forgot you should activate or deactivate it).

O.O Deactivate apparently. So this is how I kept getting knocked down by something invisible. I thought it was longbow procs. >:(

Thank you.

LB heavy light and LB 5 can all smack you around :P

But as a DH I can tell you is biggest thing is only rely on blocks when you have stability and focus on using distortion and dodges to avoid damage. Or just bring a tempest with you and watch the DH is cry.

StickerHappy.8052:

Gav.1425:

Give it some time.

Yes it’s quite broken, but new stuff usually always is.

Go play PvP like you always have done and ignore pips until they fix this system.

#YesWeNeedSoloQ

It’s not leagues.

It’s matchmaking and MMR system, which are 3 years old.

Eh, it’s leagues.

They are causing a huge amount of frustration(look at all the people whining about pips). If they just had MMR and displayed a rating off that and gave a amber/emerald/saph etc etc achievement/title at the end of the season it would reduce a lot of whining.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

After watching Zoose from the NA side, I can definately see the potential for DH to make big plays. It may have a lot lacking but if it can stay alive it can still put good AOE damage.

He straight turned around Forest to take a map from abjured with his double kill.

Zoose #1 guard NA confirmed?

Provided he is ignored sure.

When they focus him he spends most of his time dead

Stand The Wall.6987:

arent vile thrashers the ones where you do exponentially more damage when they do their spin attack

Just need to hit them from behind

Saiyan.1704:

Peregrine Falcon.5496:

JustLetMe.4369:

BUT, I have an idea, if every guardian were put why they need the 25% movement speed increase at the bottom of there post, after they talked about statement or opinion, then we would eventually get what we want.

No.

If ArenaNet has proven anything it’s that they will do whatever they feel like doing regardless of what people on the forums post. Especially when it comes to ignoring Guardians.

I’m not trying to tell you what you can or cannot do. I’m just trying to let you know that even if you drown the forum in posts demanding improvements to Guardians it won’t alter ArenaNet’s actions in the slightest.

That’s overly dramatic and not a bit true. I can list 10 items we’ve asked that they implemented.

In terms of Speed, they added Swiftness on a trap and gave us Cripple in our trait lineups. They’re intentions were never about giving Guards speed like Necros or Engis or Warrior peels..

In terms of QoL, you’re probably right. I want to move faster across these huge WvW maps but they’re not going to give us more speed in PvP… people complain about DH as it is.

That swiftness on trap is only when it triggers which makes it useless for getting around between combat.

Guardians are more a successor to protection monks(and not healing prayers or DF)…. but no you aren’t going to go anywhere close to matching a druid or even a ventari rev.

Anti.9156:

Liewec.2896:

LOL 1,5k…broken?
burning says hello.

burning is not constantly on you. At least not in an amout that does1,5k dmg. Also Burn guards only have burning as dmg source. not all other conditions like reapers do

edit: it was not a specific build. classic rabid reaper as eu reapers run it (proto, moldrak, posi). We tested it on our server. No courruption sigils or stuff. Classic reaper with might + vunerbility

Burning is something Reapers have decent access to now though since the RS auto attack is fast enough to maintain 5+ stacks of burning as long as you keep attacking which basically outpaces their other condi damage.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Did the DH in that vid set those traps up behind the Engi, anticipating a dodge roll back into them? If so, that’s a good read. Sure, the damage might be too high, but isn’t that also all of that DH’s utilities?

Just seems like a burst cheese build. Those usually blow up in fads, then dissipate when people get bored. They probably do a bit too much damage at the moment, though.

Likely set them there because that’s where people to to run to get to the point so they’d run through that while he hits with LB and he can immediately replace traps at point once they are passed. It’s very much a burst cheese… reminiscent of frenzy+100b warriors.

The higher your rating goes the less you see that, usually Maw gets dropped and PoB also gets dropped in favor of more meditation which grant better sustain and utility at the cost of minor amounts of damage.

Zerker + Rise! makes things super easy

gavyne.6847:

Good buff. I even took this trait as a power reaper due to the under 50% damage ticks. But now that it’ll tick that way all the time, unless they buff Blighter’s Boon again, I’m sticking with Deathly Chill.

You should use reaper’s onslaught since it’ll add more damage than deathly chill(unless you hit like a wet noodle right now)

Ghotistyx.6942:

P/P is actually a decent set up against DH. Use traps and Trapper runes for stealth access and Sneak Attack, using Headshot and interrupt traits to deal damage against true shot, or Daredevil and Bound to gain stealth from Pistol 5.

Traditional thieving is going to be extremely uphill, and thieves were already fairly disadvantaged in Guardian matchups.

Not really LB3 and F3 utterly destroy P/P thieves… they can’t put any damage down.

unless you’re a warrior or ele

Apparently you haven’t seen a Scrapper or Chrono

Yasha.5963:

The trouble with the counters people give is that they assume the DH is just standing stupidly on all his traps waiting for you to get wrecked or inviting pets/clones to trigger them.

It depends a bit on what class I am up against, but in general when playing a trapper ranger I don’t stand on the traps all the time. The best set up is usually to put them down somewhere and then stand somewhere off the traps where minions can’t trigger them. You then goad the opponent over your traps and have them all off CD to apply a double burst.

DH also has other options like teleport to instant trap daze/burst, or goading out CDs and dodges with true shot or the auto proc knockback, etc. Their traps also give a lot of defensive boons/utility so it would be hard to use counters typically employed against ranger trappers (cc).

9 out of 10 DH’s ARE standing stupidly on their traps waiting for someone to come wreck themselves.

Lord should gain 20% damage resistance for every friendly npc and player in 1200 range.

Go hit some boxes and get LF… going against anyone without LF is pretty much a guaranteed loss against anyone of equal skill.

yLoon.5289:

But Warrior and Revenant do not have 26 secs cool down on demand+mobility heal for 4k HP =x

Revs do can block everything and heal every 20s(in addition to their normal heal).

Zantmar.5406:

base nec (power) is better at killing DH than reaper. hilariously ur capable of higher ranged dmg pressure than DH if u can build enough shroud. if u run wells thous things go through block, if u run minions they can body block some projectiles/trigger traps (and some of their death grant lifeforce)

i cant comment on condi since i have no experience in that area

A DH will destroy a necro at range. They do VASTLY more ranged damage in a head to head fight. Trueshot, F3 and Deflecting shot will completely ruin your day at range and that’s if they don’t decide to just pull you into their traps or teleport to you and drop more.

Your minions won’t body block well since their AA bounces anyways and both TS and DS pierce and #4 and #5 are AoE’s to begin with. While certainly your minions will give you LF that also means you have no utilities left, wells can work if you pin them down with CTTB or RS5. Dagger 3 won’t as they’ll just F2 out of it(although that isn’t a bad way to force them to blow one of their condi clear and heals early).

Condi can work well if you are using sustained pressure and not burst they have a few cleanses(2x F2 + heal) although they are medium cooldowns they are often saved for burn bursts from other classes so some light poison+bleed+torment that necros use can wittle them away decently.

You lose damage but gain survivability… it’s up to you if you want to make that trade but it seems grossly unnecessary.

gavyne.6847:

What Reaper builds do well against Dragonhunters? They have so many blocks, they hit like a truck, and they’re tanky at the same time. Anybody have had success against them? Or are they a soft/hard counter to Reapers?

Nothing can save you cuts through block…

Cam Ron.4170:

Don’t the bosses take long time ot burn down? That means a lot of time below 50% HP. With the Death trait line + Gravedigger I could see them being great for taking down bosses

GD isn’t actually that great DPS wise, it’s not bad but it’s not competitive with the 20k top end dps class are bringing.

Eh really it would be nice to have from moving from point A to B so probably throw it on a gimpy signet passive.

Dristig.9678:

So I ran a Soldier build last night with Blighter’s Boon and though I had some initial LF generation problems I was able to tank mid while downing all sorts of people. I think I was with a group of particularly low level people because I was at 215 points and the next closest person was 160 but it was pretty fun. Take a look at the build. Did I just get lucky?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kGRozGsyGwbTgeTsgLYxZxvYYkqL0GeWQXtAwCA-TJhHwACeCAMLDA4UAMa/BA

Your build is basically a big damage sponge, it’s not exactly threatening and very vulnerable to condi builds since you really only have the signet to protect yourself. Given the score chances are you were playing people well below what you should be.

Silverkey.2078:

I insist but nobody seems to notice it (or everyone think it’s stupid):
Blighter’s boon:
“You gain 100 HP or 0.5% LF every seconds for each unique boons currently on you. Maximum number of boons: 5”.

This way, there is a cap to how much we can get (500 HP or 2.5% every seconds in this example, but the values or the intervals can be adjusted). This also allows to not favor more “fast stacking of short duration boons” compared to “long duration boons”. Since we have few boons ourselves, we cannot easily cap this without allies help.

That’s an interesting idea and certainly one worth testing out I think.

The activation times are just that… they take into account until a skill “hits” rather than when it completes its full cast.

Luke.4562:

A lot of people lack taste and artistic coherence.

This is the best you can ever get out from an human Necromancer, in both pieces combination and colors.

Calm down Kanye

SirServed.5693:

Isarii.2804:

Sure – melee is always more rewarding in GW2. That’s irrelevant to the point about Longbow/Trap synergy though.

The question I would ask the team is: Did they design the traps with intentions to actually have synergy with the Longbow itself or to simply be a needed addition to the profession? If it’s the former, I’d say someone miscalculated. It’s an Elite spec granting you 5 abilities which require your enemy to actively pursue you or no dice. If it’s the latter, someone nailed it and deserves cheesecake. The Longbow works well with the existing heal, utility, and elite skills that aren’t traps, whereas the traps themselves work well with weapon choices that aren’t the Longbow.

That’s not true at all Spear of Justice along with Longbow knockback allows you to ping pong people through Test of faith or just pull people onto your traps to trigger them.

Did a number of pvp matches tonight trying to get see if I can make it work well and it did not work out well at all. Even with Spite and Chilling Victory this trait is utter garbage outside shroud and mediocre at best in shroud.

Either we need more boons or they need to drastically increase both the healing and LF generation on this. There are so many things that could be done with this talent but it was basically completely gutted and no longer worth taking over other options.

This is what I’m using now, wish I could change the blue on zodiac to a dark green but oh well

Dead.5829:

My point was referencing his favoring of the cele reaper build, so it supports yours :P

Hopefully the BB nerf is the beginning of a change to other systems such as more boon generation in other spec lines.

Hahahah… no. It was just a BB nerf, the end.

Brando.1374:

I can see why they would take Dhuumfire for a bit more damage (around 1.8k with 25 stacks of might maintianing 6 stacks + 25 stacks of Vuln)
but that is… just reaper 1 spam for the whole fight to maintain this. which isnt really great dps
Now if the build has some burning/condi duration then I can see a bigger benefit of running dhuumfire.

It’s more taken because you are in soul reaping already and the other talents offer nothing to a zerker unless you didn’t take decimate defenses.

Really comes down to Decimate Defenses vs Chilling Victory or ditching Soul reaping entirely which for a general purpose build is a bad idea not to mention it murders your ability to maintain 25 vuln stacks.

Another note… don’t blow your burst when the shambling horror’s from “Rise!” are out as 50% of the damage you do the reaper will get transfer to them making your burst very ineffective. You should still do damage as they last 25s just to go ham on until just after they die.

If we applied a decent amount of boons both in and out of shroud this might be good unfortunately we are pretty kitten outside of stacking ourselves to 25 might in shroud. I understand the change and it’s probably a good idea but it certainly makes the trait very unappealing especially at a grandmaster level.

DH and Well Reaper is disgusting, the DH traps groups of people inside does lots of damage and ensures near full duration on necro wells and with reaper spinning to win basically you either invuln or you die.

Have you tried playing with Dhuumfire instead of Death’s Perception? The 50% crit in shroud is nice but with that condition damage the burning will be pretty potent and works well in sustained DPS which is great against heavy condi clear groups. I’d also suggest fitting “Rise!” into your build… it’s 50% damage reduction for 25 seconds on a 40 second cooldown(can be 26 if you trait it and fighting other necros or mesmers). They also body block a lot and add damage. So P/P thieves for example? complete joke.

Getting the hero points isn’t that bad… it’s often getting the masteries to get the hero points but those are account wide… so once you’ve gone through it once you should be able to go through much quicker afterwards.