Showing Posts For Gerrark.9870:
I have literally never been in a raid that didn’t have at least one reaper in it, at least me or someone else. Some of had several. These have been both purely PUG and guild raids.
Not only that, but the guild that cleared the raid first had a reaper in their party, and said exactly, if I recall correctly, “Reaper is awesome.”
Lastly, condi reaper isn’t bad, but reaper’s strength is clearly power damage, I highly suggest playing to that. Sure you can’t do anything to the red guardian but you absolutely annihilate everything else.
Hey all,
I’ve been working hard over the weekend to put together a relatively quick video guide that covers everything you need to know to be able to kill the Vale Guardian. Accompanying it is a more detailed written guide, including some tips on what to do when things don’t go according to plan.
Let me know what you think; would love to improve the quality for Gorseval!
Not bad, and pretty helpful guide. A few things I need to note:
It is incorrect to tell people they need ascended gear. Say it’s recommended if you must, but as someone who has beaten vale guardian on exotics with several other people wearing the same, saying ascended is necessary is just inaccurate.
I really liked the layout of the video, and thought it covered what needed to be covered in a good order, making things easy to absorb but making sure everything that needs to be known is covered as much as it should be.
Thanks for the hard work!
“DPS meters would promote toxic behavior.” I have to ask: do you truly, truly believe that the kind of people who would use DPS meters exclusively to make others miserable are the same kind of people that, before them, were paragons of fair play and fun? Do you actually think, deep down, that DPS meters, and those alone, are what will tip the scales and suddenly cause once thoughtful, patient players to become raging jerks? If so, I cannot stop you. But I have no idea how you could have such a view.
DPS meters are a tool that measure your effectiveness in a combat scenario, the end. They measure your performance, and as such, allow you, and possibly others, to gauge whether or not you can contribute enough to the group to meet your goal. Is it fun finding out you can’t perform up to snuff? Does it feel good learning you’re the weakest link, and you have to change how you play or be replaced with a player who can do better? Of course not. No one would like that, and only a liar would say they wouldn’t mind. But an equally valid question, I feel, is this: how fair is it if say, 7 or 8 or even 9 of the people in the raid are performing their hearts out, working hard towards success, doing everything they can to meet the goal, but they’re being held back by one or a few players who just don’t care? Who play with stats they know hardly contribute, using weapons or traits that only help THEM survive, rather than output the support or damage necessary to win? If we look at this problem purely mathematically, clearly the second scenario is much worse. Several people are sacrificing their hard work because a few people can’t be kitten d, or perhaps don’t even know they’re not performing well in the first place.
DPS meters would and will, if implemented, get people kicked. It will cause hurt feelings in guilds, and perhaps even make some friends get mad at each other. But is it because a DPS meter exists, or because the people using it now know that the people they were grouping with were simply riding off of their hard work all the time, and understandably, can’t be bothered to play with someone who doesn’t care to work anywhere near as hard as them?
Patient players who want to help others get better exist, and would continue to do so if a DPS meter would. Jerks who will take any excuse to hurt another player already exist, and would continue to do so if DPS meters existed. Literally the only thing that would change if DPS meters were in game would be that we’d have hard data on how we are performing as players. Which you absolutely cannot deny would help players complete raids, considering our best way to identify weak links now is “spend several encounters watching certain players like a hawk trying to discern weakness and then make a decision based on data that will always be anecdotal at best, and biased at worst.”
On a tangentially related note, I agree with Zudet—I believe the reason why Anet is so against dps meters is it will allow us to see quite clearly how unbalanced their game is. Since again, all we can really do at the moment is speculate, and the meters would allow us hard evidence to finally say things like “This class/build, even when being performed perfectly, is 10k dps behind everyone else. Anet wtf”
On a closing note: there’s literally hundreds of thousands of millions of people who play this game. There’s also a block function. If someone is using a dps meter to be a jerk, block them and start your own. If they’re using it to make a fair point about how you’re not contributing and you’re mad about that, sorry—You’re just being selfish.
I’m sorry but saying Ascended gear is now necessary, or even that it makes things easier, is completely false. The percentage increase in effectiveness between ascended and exotic is barely noticeable no matter what content you’re running, and raids are no exception. I’ve tank/healed on the same character perfectly through Vale Guardian several times without ascended and never even got downed. My DPS characters are exclusively in exotics as well, and definitely pull their fair share. If someone is telling you you need or should even care about ascended equipment, they are wrong.
Knowing the fight mechanics, and having an organized group that has a well thought out, cohesive strategy based on said mechanics is so much more important that I’d reckon you could do the fights in masterwork and be fine so long as you all knew what you’re doing. I don’t need to reckon for exotics though, I’ve seen firsthand that that works just fine.
Now that most people use spite/soul reaping and blood magic is considered inferior traitline i dont really understand why most people still run with warhorns in PvE.
Okay, #5 is slight dps boost but lets be honest- it tickles. Swiftness for skip purposes is a joke since you catch combat state when running through mobs. Also the cooldown is horrible. Life force gain is good when you are at 0% and surrounded by 5 or more vets. Trash just dies so im not even considering it.
Maybe #4 ? daze is short, cooldown is long, animation is long and hard to use when we want to interrupt a specific skill. Why would we ? Again, trash and vets are dying fast, champs have breakbars and 2s daze in most situations isnt good enough.Before HoT warhorn was great thanks to lower cooldown trait and all those life siphons from blood magic line. Now imo it loses its purpose. And most warhorn skins are crappy like hell :p
Some people like me who dont run gs (too clumsy and slow, easy to interrupt, avoid by blinding/evading, long cooldowns, low single target life force gain) stick to dagger and wonder what to use best for offhand. Right now focus has better damage utility (boon removal, chill, vulnerability) with better single target lf, and dagger is awesome for survi (condi transfer, blind, aoe weakness). And yet i still hear warhorn is superior. Can some1 explain to me why?
Because right now i think it is just a relic of the past.
When used with the blood magic trait line, warhorn still works just fine. The five’s damage may not be huge, but it definitely adds up (the longer the fight the better), and on top of the lifesteal constantly proccing from it you’re getting what is frankly respectable damage on top of a little bit of sustain, and this is a game (well, all MMOs are like this really) where every little bit helps. Swiftness is always great in any fight, it’s some of the best life force gain on any weapon we’ve got (the argument “it’s great when we need life force but pointless when we don’t” is just, lol), and the cd on the 4 may be huge but it eats break bars and is amazing in pvp.
Warhorn still great in pvp, seeing less use in pve because we’ve got more consistent and higher forms of damage in reaper shroud and gravedigger spam. In other words, different weapons for different situations.
I’m going to be completely honest with you. I hate the fact that corruptions apply self conditions, and so no matter what I will be coming from a biased place when I give my opinion here. Nevertheless, I’ll try to be as helpful as possible, since you’re so earnest.
I have to hand it to you for Blood Is Power—You’ve actually made the skill seem attractive, as opposed to everyone else who takes a swipe at it. I fear that it’d be way too strong though, no matter if the might was applied from bleeds already on the target before the skill lands its own or after. Even though even corruption skill as it is is essentially two skill slots (one for the corruption itself, and another to cleanse/transfer the condition), and two skills that could give 25 stacks of might instantly would be out of control strong, especially since having a ton of bleeds on the target is never hard, no matter the game mode. Maybe it wouldn’t be too strong a skill in a 1v1 context, but any time you’ve got one or two more people on your side contributing this one would get too good too fast.
I love the idea of Consume conditions granting life force per condition consumed, rather than straight health, for if nothing else, I’m dying for more skills on the necro to interact with life force in literally any way. Actually, I feel like this is your best idea, because it definitely seems like it’d help the skill without being too over the top. Hard to judge without actually using it though, of course.
You didn’t change much about CPC, and I can’t blame you. It’s one of our better corruption by far, except for that kitten able weakness, which I’ve noticed you removed. I think the changes you are making are a bit overwrought though. Switching out the weakness to something else would make this skill infinitely more attractive to non condi/transfer heavy necros as it is, which is who I think needs to be addressed most for the skill.
Breaking stun for Corrupt Boon is nice but unnecessary, and also hitting enemies behind the target (though I’m a bit confused what that actually means) is just too much. I don’t think this skill is that bad, surprisingly enough. It just needs to have its priorities changed. If this is going to be a utility slot skill with a decent cooldown I feel like it should definitely prioritize some of the stronger boons, as opposed to the ones it does now. To reiterate though, I don’t think a break stun is necessary. If you’re very set on it, perhaps make it break stun, but only on a certain condition? Idk.
Epidemic cannot effect ten targets, period. I love the idea, I assure you, but imagine WvW zergs… The crying would wash away necros in a tidal wave of nerfs, and it’d be justified. Even a half a second cast time feels too strong to me. I don’t actually think Epidemic is in a bad place, it’s just extremely niche. If a buff had to happen though, I feel like 3/4 of a second would be a happy medium.
Your plague changes are interesting. Again, I feel a bit on the too strong side, but interesting. I do disagree with them on principle though, I’m afraid. Necro’s elites are already all about defense. Flesh friend can’t do anything but, and Lich could be multifunction but everyone knows 1 spam is killer. Therefore, I like Plague being a very bunker-y defense button. Perhaps you could apply your same thought processes from the other skills to make it that much more bunkerish? Like have it also destroy projectiles, or put even more dps destroying conditions on foes, like slow and chill and the like, with a huge negative drawback being that you can’t gain ally boons or something ridiculous.
I like your change to Master of Corruption where each self applied condition grants life force. Condi necros need LF generation bad, and this’d help it a lot. I still stand by self inflicted condis being a part of corruptions being bad design, but this’d help the sting for sure. The weakness and blind thing though, that can’t happen. If it effected all blinds and weakness, that’d be hilariously OP—People would take the trait even without taking any corruptions just to negate two very painful condis. And if it applied to just ones the necro self-inflicted, it begs the question of why the skills apply them in the first place, since the trait would be so good you’d HAVE to take it.
They need to make the “sacrifice” part not a condition. Because they assume you will transfer it, so they balance the strength around this assumption. I’d rather have a unavoidable sacrifice (straight LF or HP loss) and then a powerful effect on top. This way, the balance is easier.
I am definitely behind this idea.
We had a place at Raids as the tank with the old BB, but now we have nothing
Are you certain? If I recall, raids aren’t out yet so even saying we had a place in raids with old BB is unsubstantiated.
great sustain without giving up much damage, just what a tank needs.
Actually it is really simple. Next time try to figure it out by yourself before posting.
For someone who’s being really antagonistic and sure of themselves on how raids will work it’s abundantly clear you didn’t try what tiny example we had lol.
They’re long range by nature, so there’s no way they’re not going to always be at least a soft counter. Frankly I feel that if you want to defeat a Dragonhunter base necro is the way to go. CPC is majorly helpful though.
Also I could be wrong, but isn’t the necro dagger aa if cancelled pretty fast?
Yes, but also pretty low damage if you’re doing that. The damage is fairly well backloaded on the third part of the chain.
Well yes of course, but wouldn’t that mean the dagger is actually very good for proccing the lifesteal, since they damage isn’t as important as attacking fast is?
Vampiric aura shouldn’t be buffed, because it is balanced around the fact it doesn’t have an ICD. If you want to raise the amount of life siphoned, you have to put an ICD on it, that’s for sure.
For example: engineer is able to hit 15 times per second. With no ICD and raised stats for vampiric aura, the amount of life siphoned would be ridiculous.
The vampiric trait, which is just benefiting the necromancer himself, could be improved, because necromancers aren’t able to hit so many times just by using AA.
I would prefer better scaling and an icd if it meant both slow attackers and fast attackers were on even terms. But that’s me. I’d like the trait to actually work well on slow attackers, like for reaper I suppose.
Also I could be wrong, but isn’t the necro dagger aa if cancelled pretty fast?
Oh and Spectral Walk for the swamp fractal is just easy mode.
I do level 49 and 50 fractals regularly, and I am always useful in some sort. We can debate a lot about the awesomeness of Corrosive Poison Cloud now (against the Golem in the Asuran’s Fractal, the ballistas in Ascalon, etc), the coolness of Transfusion when moving allies away from the hammer of the Archdiviner (in the Dr. Manhattan fractal) and more but belive me:
Spectral Grasp against Mai Trin is the real deal. Everytime I organize with the party to use it, afterwards everyone want a Necromancer for that fractal.
So glad I’m not the only one who thought of this. It just makes things sooooooo easy.
For PVE I’m going straight Valkyrie for the most (power) damage. Tons of vitality, huge lf pool (allowing you to stay in shroud longer and keep the benefit of Strength of Undeath easier), crudtons of damage. Out of shroud, with decimate defenses you’re always at 50% crit chance on a single target, in shroud it’s 100% (with death perception of course). Tanky as hell and tons of damage, it’s working really really well in verdant brink. Oh, and Runes of the Scholar because any amount of paying attention keeps your health above 90% at all times.
If you think stacking 20+ might freely with only a single adept trait (Reaper’s Might) isn’t over tuned then I can’t help you
Defense is not a problem I’ve been having with Reaper
“Freely”, yeah all you have to do is be allowed to auto attack 20 times in a row during a limited form.
You’re telling me you don’t often find yourself AAing enemies uninterrupted for 10 seconds straight in pvp?
I agree wholeheartedly that deathly chill should just apply a different damaging condition rather than trying to turn chill into one. It’s neat conceptually but if three BWEs have taught us anything it seems a nightmare to actually make work. Applying torment (Or burn? I mean really, why not?) or even bleed (though obviously it’d need to be more than just the one stack) would be great.
I’m loving reaper by the way. Lots of fun, lots of build options, it feels like it’ll have a fun and useful place in every game mode so long as you’re creative and can get a feel for it. And that’s AWESOME.
That GS5 though, yeesh. Still seems buggy in reference to terrain. In fact, a bug I notice in particular is that if the mob I’m targeting is between me and a wall, and that wall is within the 600 range of the skill, when the claw hits the wall it just disappears and my target is never yanked. Which of course really sucks, because that’s definitely a situation that does and will happen often enough to make this skill really bad (and easily counterable by other classes). I honestly just wish the skill would be changed if this is going to always be an issue. Something less fun and creative would still be better than something that doesn’t seem to work right half the time.
That would be out of control strong, no thanks.
Revenants will also have it. Mesmers too, though in a weird way. Plus I have a hard time believing more taunts won’t be added near HoT’s release, or at least over time, if it becomes really that necessary.
As many people in many threads before me have pointed out, ascended gear increases your effectiveness by basically 5% (maybe, it depends on your build, even). That’s nothing. Seriously, that’s nothing. That 5% is not going to make or break anyone’s ability to fill any role.
It definately depends on your build, for power builds, he difference is much greater than 5%.
The only difference between the two is that one is in full ascended, the other in full exotics. Maximum might and fury will be assumed despite not necessarily happening all the time, which dilutes the differences between the two.
Power type damage is a function of multiples, so, comparing one skill to itself is sufficient to compare every skill.
Mind slash does 728 damage base for the exotic user, and 824 for the ascended user. This is a gain of 96 damage, a 13% increase on the exotic user’s damage before factoring critical hits.
Additionally, crit chance for the ascended user is higher, 76.43% v s 70.14%.
and ferocity is also higher, 220.73% crit damage vs 216.6% crit damage.
728+(728*.7014*2.166) = 1834.00
824+(824*.7643*2.2073) = 2214.122214.12-1834= 380.
380/1834 = 20.726
With the only difference being ascended vs exotic gear, and assuming permanently maintained buffs that dilute the impact of ascended’s bonus stats somewhat, ascended gear is over a 20% increase on exotics.
If you take away the permanently maintained buffs, you end up with 568 vs 648 base damage and 50.14% crit chance vs 56.43% crit chance. Ferocity is unchanged.
568+(568*.5014*2.166) = 1184.87
648+(648*.5643*2.2073) = 1455.141455.14-1184.87 = 270.27
270.27/1184.87 = .227097128Without buffs, ascended gear ends up giving a 22.71% damage increase on exotics for power builds.
Based on the current DPS rankings, at item level 720 (The best approximation for current tier raiding)‘s realistic values, the only specs that would need more than 22.71% damage buff in order to match the highest are specs that aren’t meant to be played in single target encounters (2handed frost is being phased out entirely, arms warrior and combat rogue are dedicated AoE specs)
http://www.noxxic.com/wow/dps-rankings#720,real,1
The difference is even greater than the difference between “We nerfed demonology because we don’t want people playing it” and the survival hunters that were notorious for having their spec completely broken due to the fixing of a bug that they had been balanced around. The specs of which only 0.3% and 0.1% respectively have killed a single mythic boss.
This isn’t even considering the benefits of the extra armour that ascended gear provides, because trying to estimate how much more dps uptime it would gain you is heavily based on the player, but even if the armor were irrelevant, a 22.71% damage boost is very significant.
Would you mind showing me your math for how you came up with the base damage of mind slash for your attacks? Forgive my ignorance, but my calculations are not the same as yours at all. As near as I can tell 2756 power is only around 3.5% higher than 2664 power, so how that equals an increase in damage (not factoring in crits at all of course) around 13% I cannot tell. Even with the higher average that an ascended weapon has over an exotic one, the increase in direct, unmodified damage only seems to be around 8% at most. Which is higher than my calculations for sure, but it doesn’t seem to gel with yours.
I am definitely not interested in these discussions about whether or not a game changing over time is betrayal or other such nonsense, but I’ve been seeing some frankly alarmingly wrong arguments being made in these types of threads and I can’t sit by and watch people spout them anymore.
To everyone saying corner stacking or face tank stacking is a hallmark of trinity mmos: you’re embarrassing yourself. As a long time veteran of mmos like WoW, Rift, FF14, and more, that is practically never true. Stacking literally only happens when there’s an environmental/boss mechanic that requires it or a damaging aoe is so specific that everyone needs to stand in one spot, lest they die. Other than that, no one is stacking. Everyone is moving around to avoid attacks, or to get a better vantage point, or even just for the hell of it. Yes, some melee classes will be standing near each other on the boss but I mean come on, that’s the definition of the word melee. Saying that stacking is not only prevalent within but a hallmark of trinity mmos is complete bs. Hate the trinity all you want; that’s fine, that’s cool. I don’t blame you and you’re entitled to your opinion. But if you truly think that corner stacking is just as commonplace in other mmos and isn’t a problem pretty exclusive to GW2, you’re just lying, whether on purpose or accident.
The other thing I’ve seen is people saying you’ll need multiple sets of ascended gear, which will be prohibitively expensive. Please. Once again, anyone who has hardcore played any mmo besides this one will know that is so unlikely it’s laughable. Not impossible, mind you—Perhaps I will come to eat these words, and if so, I’ll be the first to admit it—but considering what game we’re playing, it’s downright implausible.
Here is why: in WoW, for instance, there are not only normal 10-person raids, there are hard mode versions of said raids. Aptly named too, because depending on the raid holy crap would it be hard. And yet even despite what a ridiculous gear grind WoW was, you could still do this content, easily even, in sub-optimal gear. Sure, there were limits. At a certain point if you lacked too much armor you couldn’t tank properly, the healer couldn’t keep you alive, you’d die, and the party would wipe. Still though, you needed to have pretty bad gear for something to be outright impossible as a result. What does this have to do with GW2? As many people in many threads before me have pointed out, ascended gear increases your effectiveness by basically 5% (maybe, it depends on your build, even). That’s nothing. Seriously, that’s nothing. That 5% is not going to make or break anyone’s ability to fill any role. If WoW (which has in the past proven itself to have infinitely more challenging PvE content than GW2) allows for such large discrepancies in what is the best gear and what is necessary gear, I have a really, really hard time believing GW2 is going to suddenly jump up in difficulty so much that 5% will be the difference between victory and failure. Besides, if it’s that scary to you just get the ascended trinkets and stuff. Goodness knows getting full ascended trinkets is easy as pie and accounts for around 40% of stat benefit on equipment anyway.
That is all. Once again, I’m not here to say that people who hate the trinity and games that include it are wrong, or vice-versa. Please stop using these arguments though. One of them is outright, factually incorrect, and the other is highly implausible.
I’ve also kind of wondered why MoC didn’t give resistance when you popped a corruption skill. Considering the fact that Anet seems dreadfully reluctant to give necros any actual cleanses (and I do not count Consume Condition since it just gives you new ones) resistance would be a good way to balance that out. Besides, it seems really thematic to boot. Necros, master of conditions, able to outright ignore them if they want to. I mean, seriously, mesmers got resistance before we did? Good for them, but come oooooon.
I’m pretty sure MoC is the only trait in the entire game that actually has a negative attached to it. Which, while an interesting idea, is pretty indicative of how bad necro traits can be. We got the only one that makes our skills worse.
The corruptions need to have the conditions removed from them. It’s an interesting idea for condi builds but it makes using any of these skills (a couple of which (and now one more) have good utility) as a non-condi necro incredibly unattractive. And that suuuuucks. I’d really like to be able to use CPC as a power reaper to help defend myself and my teammates from ranged spam without then also being dreadfully ineffective for the next 6 seconds unless I have to also pack a condi cleanse. It’s just unintuitive and unfun. These skills are not amazing enough to justify having to pack another skill (or a specific weapon even) to make using them worthwhile.
Yea the Druid was nothing I had hoped for, but its not bad. Rangers still not gonna be picked up for dungeon/fractals, but I think we’ll see it used more often in WvW and PvP and maybe Raids depending how its designed
I have never EVER not been booted from a dungeon or fractal for being a ranger. I think this urban myth should just die already
Same. I PUG all the time as a necro, and a friend of mine as a ranger, and never once has anyone booted or requested a change from either of us based on it. I’m not saying it never has or never will happen, but with the way everyone exaggerates you’d think rangers and necros would only be able to run dungeons if they were pitied by guildies.
Go ahead and complain about your profession being miles behind everyone else—That’s totally valid, and no one’s stopping you. But god I wish people would stop making up bogus stories about how everyone in a pvp match reported them because they joined as a ranger. Just doesn’t help.
I read kek and stopped reading.
Same. You can always tell when someone’s only here because they’re banned from /v/.
I missed the part in the original post and thread where a dev said literally every boss and enemy is going to have a defiance bar. Would one of y’all mind pointing that out to me?
Every boss has a defiance bar, it is the replacement of the defiance buff, which every champion or higher level enemy in the game currently has.
Additionally in HoT, most elites and some vets also have defiance bars, as per the BWE’s.
Well, not every boss had a defiance buff, so I could be wrong, but that definitely leads me to believe not every boss will have the bar either. All speculation on both of our parts considering we don’t know what raids will actually contain though, I guess.
Please point out one boss currently in the game that you can chain Ckittenil it is dead?
lol you chose to pick 1 champ that is … immune most of the time except when he decide to knock down himself. Wich is btw very close to what break bar will be
All they asked is that I provide a boss who can be chain cced and doesn’t have the Unshakable buff. You can try to diminish the value of my pick as much as you want but Bjarl fulfills both of those criteria, and my original point still stands—Not every enemy (or even boss) in this game gets defiant stacks.
I missed the part in the original post and thread where a dev said literally every boss and enemy is going to have a defiance bar. Would one of y’all mind pointing that out to me?
Every boss has a defiance bar, it is the replacement of the defiance buff, which every champion or higher level enemy in the game currently has.
Additionally in HoT, most elites and some vets also have defiance bars, as per the BWE’s.
Well, not every boss had a defiance buff, so I could be wrong, but that definitely leads me to believe not every boss will have the bar either. All speculation on both of our parts considering we don’t know what raids will actually contain though, I guess.
Please point out one boss currently in the game that you can chain Ckittenil it is dead?
I missed the part in the original post and thread where a dev said literally every boss and enemy is going to have a defiance bar. Would one of y’all mind pointing that out to me?
Every boss has a defiance bar, it is the replacement of the defiance buff, which every champion or higher level enemy in the game currently has.
Additionally in HoT, most elites and some vets also have defiance bars, as per the BWE’s.
Well, not every boss had a defiance buff, so I could be wrong, but that definitely leads me to believe not every boss will have the bar either. All speculation on both of our parts considering we don’t know what raids will actually contain though, I guess.
I missed the part in the original post and thread where a dev said literally every boss and enemy is going to have a defiance bar. Would one of y’all mind pointing that out to me?
“There is no active skill in a trinity, it is just someone thats good with spreadsheets designing the OP set up for a full party, running said build in a dungeon, standing still, clicking buttons in a sequence.”
the irony is palpable.
the only difference between GW2 and that description of the trinity is that in GW2 you don’t click buttons in a sequence, you just press 4.
MH is a wonderful game though, so I applaud you on having excellent taste ;P
Darn, and here I was rushing to say almost the exact same thing.
Axe is one of the worst weapons in the game on any profession. Single target, low damage, low range, low utility.
Get used to Dagger.
But I note that you said you focus on Death Shroud Damage. Note that both axe and dagger will nerf your death shroud damage, so get used to swapping to staff before you enter death shroud.
What?
That’s not true.
Why a onehanded weapon will nerf the DS?DS isn’t affected by your welding weapon, only by your Power and your Sigils.
If you have all weapons with Berserker stats and you use an Ascended staff and an Ascended dagger + Exotic warhorn, you will have more Power with staff why it’s full ascended and not ascended+exotic. Or you can change the sigils.
But nothing more.There’s nothing that change your DS skills that is different from your personal stats and weapon sigils.
Unfortunately this is not the case. The weapon itself’s damage does affect damage of skills used in DS. An exotic 80 staff has weapon damage of 985–1,111, while an exotic 80 dagger and warhorn have weapon damage equaling 924–981 and 814–900 respectively. Because of this, a necromancer will do about 10% more damage if they’re wielding a staff before going into DS than they would if they were wielding a dagger/warhorn, or frankly any combo of two one-handed weapons.
If that seems weird or just plain makes no sense to you, now you know how every other necromancer feels! It’s a really weird and pointless way for it to work and it shoehorns the staff (which is a mediocre weapon at best) into any build that wants to pump out maximum DS dps. And now it’s especially weird considering that RS will not work the same way (at least if I recall correctly), and will do the same damage regardless of what weapons you’re wielding, with only your actual stats affecting effectiveness.
So here’s hoping they’ll change that, sooner rather than later.
Honestly the shouts seem way more pvp and control minded than pve damage, and that’s probably the point, I’d wager. Because boy they ain’t as good in PvE but almost all of them have an interesting place in pvp or wvw. Still, I definitely agree with Chuck’s suggestion, I’d love to see the trait add an effect.
I think you mean Chilling force? And I would have to admit it granting the might to everyone while granting lf to the necro and heals to the rest of the party would be pretty great.
Overall I like reaper. The theme and skills are all solid.
I played a condition build but ran into some problems:
NO LF generation. I literally had 1 skill that generates LF and that was it. Pure condition reaper basically just can’t use RS in long fights.
Chill does not currently work on anything with a break bar. Instead it just lowers the break bar. This renders the GM chill trait completely useless in all boss fights
GM chill trait still needs more damage, especially over 50% health. It is a GRAND MASTER trait, yet it does less damage than even terror which is only a master trait.
RS melts like crazy. I don’t know if it is bugged or what, but my RS bar just plummeted in seconds every time I tried to use it.
Damage for condition necro is still low overall. Made a berserker and killed everything I touched in half the time. Bleeds need to be buffed, and scepter reworked (more of an overall issue, but it applies to reaper too)
Limiting chill to 5 stacks completely ruins all synergy from RS 5+4. Chilling bolts are a key part of that combo, yet only 3 out of the 30 or so chilling bolts actually do anything since you instantly hit the 5 chill cap with 1s chills. It is actually better NOT to combo under the current version since the chills from the field itself last longer.
Also having a second reaper anywhere near you means that chill is always at the 5 limit stack and you waste most of your chills. Please remove this cap, it is destroying reaper.
Liked the reaper overall, but chill needs serious help.
Agreed wholeheartedly with post, and confirmed the issue they mentioned about chill and break bar enemies. Everything I’m about to say is in reference to PvE exclusively btw.
Zerker Reaper seems pretty darn solid. I was killing golems and romping through Silverwaste doing comparably to my other professions in both damage AND survival, at the same time, which is so far unheard of on my necro. I haven’t played it enough yet to know exactly how well it stands, but zerker reaper is either heading in the right direction, or basically there.
Condi reaper is another story. Deathly Chill is still not worth taking. It’s damage is still kinda meh and on top of that it straight up does not work on break bar enemies. If you forgo that trait (And in its current state, why wouldn’t you?) to take Reaper’s Onslaught and get faster AAs in RS (to proc more dhuumfire), you’re barely better off. Dhuumfire really needs a duration buff or something because it’s still just about impossible to get and maintain any significant number of burning stacks. Which wouldn’t be a huge deal, but since burning is without question the strongest condi in the game for damage and a profession’s access to it makes or breaks their condi build (at least in pve), either burning needs to change (and most other condis with it) or necro needs to get better access to better burning. So here’s my ideas on how to help condi reaper.
First things first, to make a better condi reaper overall I’d say Deathly Chill needs to not be a gm trait and move to either major or minor. This will allow reapers to get both Deathly Chill and Reaper’s Onslaught, which will not only give them a new damaging condition to pop that they have better access to, but it will also give them better access to the aforementioned best damaging condi in the game.
Secondly, the break bar enemy problem is a big one, and makes Deathly Chill completely unattractive for any area with mobs that have this. Which seems like it’ll be a huge problem in HoT if the enemies in Verdant Brink are any indication. I have two different solutions for how this could be helped:
-The way chill interacts with break bar enemies needs to be reverted back to its previous form, and just be a condi that does its normal effect and with Deathly Chill, damages. It’s hard to say how well this solution would fair. On the one hand, it would definitely give the damage back and make condi reapers far less hesitant to take Deathly Chill when they’re against non-trash mobs. Not only that, but depending on how exactly the encounters work in HoT, just having chill on the boss may be stronger than putting up the break bar. Damage mitigation seems like it’ll be that much more important, and if so chill is really really good at that, allowing people to kite easier, and making scary attacks have far longer cds. On the other hand, chill works pretty darn well on the break bar, and reapers (and even normal necros) can do a pretty fair amount of it, so taking away our ability to contribute to that could be crippling in this new PvE environment. I guess its up to the devs, who know more about what’s coming, to make that judgment call.
-Have chill both up the break bar AND apply the normal condition effects to break bar enemies. This would solve virtually all problems. You’d get all the power of chills effects, and the damage it would now bring from Deathly Chill, on top of contributing to the break bar, which is great. The only issues I could see being wrong with this is that it could be a nightmare to code (which may or may not be true), or that it might be just too strong, both in PvE and in PvP against the few professions that will have access to break bars.
-Have Deathly Chill apply its damage not in ticks like a normal condition, but once with each application from the Deathly Chill reaper. This is a weird solution, especially since this is a condi damage trait, but I think it could work, and be really cool. First, it solves the break bar problem immediately, and makes it stronger against trash as well. Secondly, it gives reaper and necro something really cool and useful that other classes don’t have, and sets them apart: the ability to burst (albeit barely, but still) with condi damage. Lastly, this fix shouldn’t be that hard to balance, since even with the large amounts of chill necros get, to have a ton of chill applications to burst really hard with this we’d need to invest pretty darn heavily in chills (and therefore lose lot of other useful skills/traits). Plus, it could always be given an icd or have its damage tweaked.
-The last solution, and least likely of all I’m sure, is just making Deathly Chill a gm in another trait line. I know chill is supposed to be a big thing for reaper, but its a big thing for necro too, and I think any necro being able to hurt with a chill is a neat idea.
Any of those solutions (or combinations of them) would do a lot to fix Deathly Chill, and condi reaper on the whole as well, without making it out of control. One thing’s for sure though, even if you disagree with my solutions—Condi reaper is not great (at least in pve), and Deathly Chill is meh at best. Definitely not worth taking over the other two gms by a longshot.
Yeah except those burns use their condi damage instead of yours.
Pretty sure that’s not right? Whenever we multiply or send conditions to someone it uses our condi stat, that’s why epidemic is actually useful.
I mean, I can definitely understand where a lot of people are coming from; I complain about my necro in voice chat so often when I play him. “Why are corruption skills so all over the place or just outright worthless?” “Why are half my weapon choices bad?” “Why is there at least one skill on my GOOD weapons that just do not make sense being there?” It sucks to choose a profession that jells so well with you thematically and then see that the worst complaints most other classes have is that they liked being ridiculous and nerfing their godlike abilities makes things less fun for them. But so many people here act like necro isn’t just UP right now, but that you literally can’t find your way into group PvE content without being scorned or kicked or denied outright. And even when you’re not queuing with friends this is just plain not true. Either that or I am incredibly lucky, which seems unlikely.
Well you can either assume that all PvE content in HoT and so on will be exactly the same as what we have now, even though Anet and its devs have alluded to and outright said this will not be the case multiple times, or you can believe them even a little and look at all the recent evidence that builds other than high damage single hit mitigation zerkers WILL be needed (Ventari Revenant build, being able to change ascended gear stats, being able to change traits on the fly, taunts being added to the game, etc.) and think that hey, even if we’re not the best at every fight, necro will have a place. Since we have literally no information on raids whatsoever or how classes will be rebalanced in the next two months (and not just their elite specializations either), everything everyone in this thread has said is pure speculation, so it’s your choice.
Personally, I will try to stay cautiously optimistic. And remember that even in a worst case scenario that I can still just play with people who’re fun and like having fun instead of boring zerker speedrunners. Because even if necromancers aren’t so great right now, -I- have never had a problem running any dungeon or fractal at all with mine, or any of the three builds I use with him for that matter. I doubt that’d be so markedly different with raids.
I must admit that while the minion bugs don’t affect me too personally since I don’t care for the builds, that’d probably be a lot different if said bugs didn’t exist. So some confirmation that something will be done about them would be nice.
Not only that, but I’m really worried about how one of the newly changed reaper shouts seems to rely on the minions it generates attacking before you can get the true bonus from it. With minions acting how they do now that makes me afraid that shout will just be worthless, and that’s no fun.
Spinal Shivers wasn’t nerfed, it had a tooltip fix.
well is a nerf the skill was unblokable so was a nerf not a fix this also nerf the trait so yay us =[ lets hope they give us something next update =]
It was never unblockable. Spinal shivers was never unblockable. Everyone who thinks it was unblockable, please read the bugfix involving it very slowly and carefully.
If anything this is a buff for all newbie necros (and people who do not pay attention) who were being tricked into thinking the skill did something it did not.
The only thing I have to say is this: has it been 100% confirmed that the warhorn will be an offhand weapon? Sure it’s likely, but I haven’t seen anything saying outright that it is.
Lacking access to on-swap sigils is another shortcoming.
You are absolutely incorrect about this. Switching attunements procs weapon swap sigils.
While playing Revenant, I was constantly struck with how little control over my own moves I seemed to have. Which I actually don’t mind at all. Revenants’ deal seems to be that they’re very specialized, fitting a very specific kind of role – tanky/interrupty, support/healy, dps. But if they’re going to be able to only do that one role, they need to have far greater impact. If all the Revenant in our group can do is heal, then the dps should be able to not worry about defenses at all and only worry about fighting, which should allow them to do more dps in the end and make sure you’re not just worse off for having a pure support.
As for how to do this, I must admit I dunno the best way. Something I think that would help though is if the Ventari tablet had perhaps weaker heals and gave good active defense buffs like Aegis. This way if your party is dodging and moving all over the place at least you gave them something to keep them alive as they move out of your range or something.
If nothing else though, I think moving the tablet needs to be faster and less costly. Moving the tablet around constantly is integral to actually using the build well, and you better believe that whether you’re in pve, pvp, or wvw your teammates are gonna be moving around a lot.
I don’t know that I agree necessarily with any of the suggestions for new elites themselves, but I definitely agree that necros could use a different one. Especially since it seems like they’re trying to make condi necros more viable in PvE and none of the current elites are good for that at all. Plague is just a big dps loss.