I’ve always wondered why the Stronghold map wasn’t in ranked PvP (I’m new to GW2)… It’s a fun map. People being lazy to change builds should not be a reason for it to get removed…
This is the build I currently use, and while not exactly meta, I’ve really been enjoying it. It forgoes tankiness for massive damage output through Might stacking and the 2540 Base Power, 97% Crit Chance, and 225% Crit Damage while in Reaper’s Shroud.
Basically you want to try to keep them at range with Axe/ Warhorn and gain Might stacks until they’re below 50% HP, then swap to Greatsword and use Grasping Darkness to pull them in and Chill them, Death Spiral for the 12% damage increase, then Gravedigger with full Might stacks for the execute. It’s not uncommon to crit for 12k+ when they’re below 50%, usually resulting in an instant down.
Reaper’s Shroud with the 97% Crit Chance and 225% damage and Might stacking through Chilling Victory allows you to be able to nuke groups of enemy players with your autoattacks alone. The build has decent life force gain through Spectral Armor and Lesser Spectral Armor alone, and through Chilling Victory you’ll be able to stay in Shroud longer during teamfights.
Overall, it’s a pretty selfish build, but you’ll be able to get a ton of kills and 1vX effectively if you play it right and don’t get hard CC’d, as the build offers 0 stability (which can be changed by swapping to Foot in the Grave at the cost of damage output while in Reaper’s Shroud).
If you switch Spectral Armor for “Rise!” and Deadly Strength for Necromantic Corruption you could have better survival, counting that yor Life Force pool isn’t as high as other builds, damage reduction could be the way to go.
I don’t know how good your might stack is but to me you can put another Sigil of Courage to replace your GS’s sigil of exploitation.
If you find those changes makes your buld LF starving you can always drop Consume Conditions for “Your Soul Is Mine!”, you’ll have enough condi clear with Shrouded Removal, Necromantic Corruption/“Rise!” and “Suffer!”
kitten this build is fun to play. I did take Vitali’s suggestions though and took “Rise!” and Necromantic Corruption. It helps a lot in a teamfight with lots of AoE condi. Speed of Shadows’ removal of soft cc condis help Shrouded Removal a lot. Now… if only Anet would make shroud 7 sec cd as baseline.
Dota2 will penalize you for consistently playing terribly.
How? The only penalty is to be degraded in rank, which is useless in a game with so low population that oftenly pairs silvers and plats in the same match.
Low priority matchmaking pool
The game doesn’t put you in low priority because of bad gameplay, it puts you in lp because of excessive reports. You can intentionally feed every game and not end up in low prio.
Yes, that’s what i mean though, there’s an avenue of options to deal with exceptionally bad players/troll players. How is that not better than what we have currently
Because telling new players they shouldn’t pvp because they’re noobs is always productive for a healthy pvp environment. sarcasm
They have unranked to be bad in.
You may want devs to fix matchmaking first though. To be honest I never believed that higher ranks and lower ranked players would ever get mixed but it does happen apparently. Fix matchmaking so that only same tiered players would play together, then you can worry about a report system so you can weed out the trolls or players who just don’t belong to that tier yet (probably got lucky in placements).
Add ways to deal with conditions isn’t going kill condition builds. Look at power builds, there is protection, weakness, blocks, evades, heals, hide behind a wall to block projectiles, damage immunity. Look where is it right now, it’s still perfectly fine.
Yes, it is team based. In ranked, you can queue as either do solo or duo. Have you seen anyone in ranked goes hey do guys need a healer or support? ima swap. No, they all wanted to be damage dealer. That’s why you have your own kittening heal. Ranked is not a place where you can queue as a 5 men and going in there with a plan. The most planning a team ever done is going mid, going home, or rush far….
Then that is the problem. The person you quoted has a point. sPvP is team-based. If it is true that the condi spam can be significantly countered by having a few dedicated supports in the composition then the weight of losing falls entirely on the players and not the builds. This isn’t even surprising. In all competitive games, almost everyone wants to be the damage superstar.
You can’t compare Dota 2 with this game. DotA 2 balances differently (and imo, better). DotA 2 heroes have very specific advantages and disadvantages that lead to a somewhat rock, paper, scissors game with 1v1s but offer very interesting combinations on team based play. In GW2, you try to fashion your build to have almost all the advantages in combat: damage, sustain, mobility, etc. It just so happens that condi right now has the most advantages and so… more condi builds.
Scourge does have aspects to it that are ridiculously OP.
Specifically, damage wise, I managed to get multiple shades to pulse on one target several times. Including the F5.
This is beyond broken. IF you do not understand why this is broken, that lack of understanding is why you performed poorly as a Scourge. Other classes cannot do this, and we know from the design videos this is not intended.
If you did not (ab)use this, then you obviously don’t get what this is all about, because you just used the skills in the indended way. Nobody wants to nerf that.
Ahhh. So what you’re saying is like I drop 3 shades on a player and drum my F keys and all three shades will hit that same target? Yeah. That wasn’t meant to happen. It perfectly says on the tooltip that a target can only get hit once per pulse regardless of how many shades are on the player. Now it makes sense why everybody is flipping their eggs like crazy over Scourge.
Speaking of dueling, I think when two zergs facing each other they should have the option to allow commanders duel. When a commander lost the duel, he/she’s team gets banished into the shadow realm.
Just wanted to put in my two cents. Playing warrior seems like playing on easy mode of pvp. They get an active endure pain that I think is fine. But then they get a passive endure pain that automatically activates when they get too hard. Then to top it off, they get another trait that passively negates a killing blow and heals them instead. Those passives gotta go. It’s easy mode and it’s lame AF.
i know right ?
when you seeing warrior just Stand in the face of a power reaper and just facetank it while the reaper unloads everything while also dps eing down its shroud then the Reaper necro…. something is Broken with that sustain…..
Give warrior something else to compensate but that sustain needs toning down….
Then maybe you shouldn’t be facetanking a warrior then, right? Warrior sustains itself by actually fighting. Imagine that. A class that has to risk something to gain something… which is probably it’s greatest weakness because you know… if those attacks don’t hit… if warriors are kited then those attacks don’t heal.
Ahh pvp forums. Everybody just wants everything nerfed. Then again, I’m not surprised. This bs probably exists in all competitive games… except DotA 2 probably.
Scourge sand shade attacks have 180 radius. I’ve seen it in action during the weekend too. People hating on the scourge are definitely standing near the shades lol. 180 radius is short. You shouldn’t be getting hit by all the shade attacks.
As a mesmer since launch, I found scourge’s ‘play with the F-Keys too’ not too difficult to do. I just found myself using the wrong ones at the wrong time, because while I can hit F-keys like a champion, I often had to stop and re-learn what each one did to refresh my memory. Because they’re nothing like shatters. xD
Good for you about hitting F-keys like a champ. I think I’ll need a dedicated gaming mouse with a decent number of thumb buttons to be able to play classes like mesmer, elementalist, and the new scourge xD
The more I read the Guild wars 2 profession forums the more I feel like I stepped into some copy of the League of Legends forums where everybody just wants to nerf everything right off the bat. Scourge plays on area denial. Maybe people are not used to this? Because reaper and core necro only had wells where you could move out easily whereas shades can cover more ground and stay longer to pulse damage? C’mon guys. Let the dust settle first and have people adapt and learn that engaging the Scourge with his shades in melee isn’t a good idea then go from there.
Shroud is a shield, not a sponge. You use it to block what you can’t avoid and to continue on the offensive while remaining defensive (by protecting your health bar).
Although this “shield” does cause us harm in some of the ways you’ve mentioned, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as many claim. It’s just a matter of understanding and proper usage. Life Force is a much easier resource to replenish than health after all.
The real issue with Shroud is scaling, which it doesn’t have. You can’t block an infinite amount of attacks like you can with Warrior’s Shield Stance, for example.
Yes that is a glaring issue but I disagree that Shroud is more of a weakness than it is a strength.
I would love more stability though in shroud and a few outside shroud. For a class meant to be somewhat of a juggernaut, necro could get ragdolled a lot.
So just to be clear, I can run Power Rev in T4 fractals without running into trouble (aside from not knowing the fractal mechanics)?
Easily. I’ve done it many times, and in fact it is a great way to ensure that a pug party will have its buffs. Never been kicked from a pug, either.
One exception: The only place you might encounter an issue is the Fractal Assault challenge mode, or CM100. In theory it is possible to beat it with any composition of competent builds. In practice… the fractal is cheese grater on forehead levels of hard, and you need to put quite a bit of optimization into a team to get a win. The common comp is support chrono + dedicated healer + PS warrior, with condi necro as soft 4th spot. There’s only one or two open slots, and with only 3 players running DPS builds you need to squeeze as much deeps as you can. Without anything particularly unique or useful to provide the team, the mediocre damage output of the power rev finds it in fierce competition with guards, eles, and thieves.
Condi rev and healing rev, however, are more than welcome in CM100.
Thanks for the great answer. I have the gear for condi rev except the armor but I enjoy playing power more so I asked. I’m excited to try it out now.
Just play one-two years of EVE-Online.
All your dirty PvP dreams would be fulfilled for the rest of your life.
This. Haha. I played EVE for a good while. Almost a year before I got tired of paying subscriptions. kitten . Almost everyone I meet is friendly as kitten. It’s like a culture shock. But then again, I do sometimes miss the cruel “kill or be killed” universe of EVE.
Why play a class if its bad for the content you want to play? There are 8 other classes to choose from. When it comes to wvw raid time I choose to play reaper because its so good. When I occasionally feel like playing spvp I choose reaper because its so good.
Fun and Theme of the class…. we are not playing a kitten moba here you know….
Reaper only good in spvp if its babysitted…
You talking about sPvP? Because it feels like a moba to me. Smite comes to mind. Anyway, not playing the other 8 classes is like wasting content.
Non-Soul Reaping Power Reaper was actually buffed.
Dagger/Warhon Spite/Curses/Reaper Proc Build is not slow at all and has a huge impact in WvW smallscale and sPvP. Just pick Paladin Amulet if you feel too squishy. It’s viable as Trooper Rune /Full-Shouts and Strengh Rune/pick whatever utility you want build.
(This does NOT mean necro is fine! It’s not, but there are still viable builds that are fun to play.)
other classes do the same or even more dmg with INSTANTS then a Power Reaper with his darn slow channeled MELEE abilities… that only works againts people that dont know how this game works….
Drop that danm GS and Staff if you want to do damage! ;-)
I’m starting to think the same. Stupid GS will never hit anyone with half a brain. Before I got HoT, I was using power dagger. It does good damage when you get close. People won’t just let you AA them of course, but at least the attacks hit. I will miss the Nightfall stomp though.
That’s what I thought… From my point of view it doesn’t seem that the power reaper lost any damage since HoT release, just that player found that it worked better as a condi spec on the long run.
So is the title asking for a nerf on condi so that players feel forced to play power? That’s sad. That mean there will be no improvement, only the nerf on the barely ok condi spec in PvE. For what? More power damage would mean nothing in PvP where ennemies have health pools that gravedigger can already eat pretty easily. In PvE even with damages at the same level than a power DPS, the reaper would still struggle to find a place because it has virtually no support that improve the raid as a whole.
What kind of people will stand there and let you hit them with a gravedigger ????
or any other ultra slow channeled Reaper ability ?
and if they are out of dodges and mobility abilities because the planets alligned for you to unleash your reaper might ? well… immune immune immune immune block block block block and now your dead…..
you don’t pvp much do you ?
and for PvE it needs dmg buffs everyone and their grandmother have better DPS….
its not the nonexistent group utility that players dont want a Power reaper…
it because Power reapers dps is horrible compared to like half the other classes out there….
Also most of your reaper abilities will never hit thx to the nonexistent mobility reaper have and the bloated mobility kit other classes have people just dance you arround and melt your shroud and when its gone step in and instantly melt you with a good burst….. meanwhile you barely hit them a few times lol…
Power boonstrip has been working fine for several seasons. Your main weapon should be axe and the greatsword should be utility. You don’t grave digger moving targets, you use it after gs5 to bait a dodge or you use it for downed cleave.
Making power reaper great is one thing but that still requires you to know how to use the right skills. You don’t see anyone complaining staff doesn’t dps hard enough.
it only works if your baby sited by other classes….. there are no right skills as a power reaper…. Shroud skills ? everyone avoids them GS skills ? good luck hitting with them… the only good thing is Axe 2 after that auto attack with it and GZ thats all you can do againts like half the classes….
also good luck baiting Dodges when some classes have like 24356 dodges and 143451 mobility and escapes and Invis spams outside of that….
also lets say your fighting a bad player and you used the ONLY skill that can pull them… BAM you baited the dodge GZ now how you gonna get them to melee range ? oh yeah shroud gapcloser… na he Teleported/Dodgespammed/Invised farer away from you the momment you used it…
Now you have left with 0 ways to gapclose….. and he will just tear you down from range while laughing at you
or jump in and out with insane burst that takes down majority of your HP everytime he does it…
I don’t even know what you are saying anymore. Are you suggesting the power reaper should just lock down all counterplay? If someone wanted to get out of range of your melee, why wouldn’t they teleport away? You have TWO weapon sets, you can use axe for ranged power damage. Just because you choose to camp GS doesn’t mean its the right thing to do.
Every other melee class has the same problem, if you waste your gap closer, you’re going to have problems against range. Why is this not obvious?
Every melee class has same problem? Not strictly the same. I can gap close well on rev with shiro, axe, and sword. With guardian I have sword blink, and the utility blink. Leap on GS is cool too. Warrior has GS spin and rush. Necro has only 1 gap closer. Shroud 2.
I tried testing Soul Spiral (our favorite spin2win skill) with the improved spite signet via traiting the new spite of suffering vs regular signet of spite. I removed all equipment except my ascended viper greatsword.
Improved Signet of Spite: tooltip says 1824 damage.
Regular Signet of Spite: tooltip says 1500 damage.
An added 324 damage which is somewhat 21.6% increase of the original. Close to Death gives 20% damage (if target is less than 50% HP). So the new spite of suffering trait does give a good boost slightly better than close to death but without the 50% HP prerequisite. That is just one skill in shroud though because I’m too lazy.
Ahh. I got duped into thinking that Transfusion also heal through shroud. kitten it. These conflicts makes it feel like kitten to play necro and I’m just a new guy. I wonder how you vets feel who just want their beloved class to not be bad.
Of course it has a ICD, if it didn’t it would cause you to apply burn at a 1:1 ratio with torment. In other words scepter 3 would be applying 7 stacks of torment, and 7 stacks of burn which would be so busted overpowered.
The burn on torment trait in it’s current form adds reasonable dps to the spec without being insane.
I thought it already does that since scepter 3 immediately hits for 7 stacks of torment on cast? Or does it work like no matter how many stacks of torment you apply, only 1 stack of burn applies?
Well I guess anet should only release the cutest and fluffiest mounts then. Who knows, there might be a number of players that have phobias on reptiles, birds of prey, or other mean looking creatures. It would alienate them too.
Deathly Chill change to: “Deal more damage to chilled foes”
I would also like to see some group damage support in the form of “Chill applied by reaper increases damage received by foes from all sources” so it would benefit allies as well and they won’t consider our chill fields a dps loss (maybe xD).
I guess shroud plus defensive or mobility skills just aren’t compatible with each other in the dev’s eyes huh? Still, the preview of Scourge really looked interesting.
I think that’s the point of having parasitic contagion work in shroud. We have a good condi combo during shroud. It’s not like you’re invincible in it too. 3 people whacking you and shroud goes down fast. Tune down deathly chill in WvW to the same level as in sPvP. Problem solved.
To be honest, I prefer the necro to be the best lifestealer in the game. While having blocks, invuls, etc is cool and all it would just make necro feel like the other classes who have them. Having powerful lifesteal to sustain would feel different imo (Blood Magic is complete kitten. Parasitic Contagion is on the right track but doesn’t work in shroud /facepalm).
I still hope to obtain a defensive skill, but the necromancer is the ONLY class of this game totally chained to his Theme and that will never change.
Just wait 3 days and see what they will give us.
They could make defensive skills which fits perfectly with the theme of necromancer if they really want to. For example, they could make an invul/mobility skill wherein the necro turns into a pool of blood and can’t be attacked say for 2-3 sec. While in this form, the necromancer has swiftness. I think the devs just don’t want to
I don’t think this is an issue in PvE. I mean the meta build is usually scepter and dagger in PvE plus GS. You can just unload all the corruption skills on whatever boss or enemy npc you are fighting and transfer all self-inflicted conditions with a simple Dagger 4 then continue with the rotation.
This becomes a concern when it comes to sPvP and WvW though since the most reliable skills we have for removing/transferring condis are Plague Signet, Staff 4, and the Plague Sending trait. Dagger 4 is not reliable imo because the projectile is easily seen and avoided. You could try to time it but the self-inflicted condis won’t wait for you and continue to tick away at your health. Consume Conditions is a cool skill except the cast time and cd (can be relieved with master of corruption but you get blinded) are awful. Suffer works as long as there are a lot of enemies because it only transfers 1 condi per target. Shrouded Removal belongs to Death Magic unfortunately. Grim Specter is cool. You lose a lot of condis except you become a big target unless you revert. Then it just becomes a condi removal skill on a 180 sec cd :/
But… you probably won’t be overwhelmed with self-inflicted condis in a sensible pvp build unless you use pure corruption skills on all your utilities (haven’t seen one before).
And then we would be back to -hey guys I started this, need to do something afk for 10 mins leave or finish without me.
There’s a fix for that lol. I think in sPvP I went afk for at least 5 mins because I needed bathroom break (should have done it before lining up but I was stubborn) when I got back I was autokicked. Maybe anet could do the same for instanced areas. It would waste your 5 minutes but hey at least it’s an assured 5 minutes instead of being stuck for like 30 if the party leader is just too much of an kitten and the other members just dont want to leave because objective is near.
Good for you, I’m proud of you, but you still haven’t answered MY question – do you, or do you NOT want more people playing WvW?
My goodness.
Answer: No, not if you aren’t going to be a team player. In fact I’d wager most WvWers feel this way. WvW is a team sport. It requires sacrifice and cooperation to work well.
Do I need the rewards, no, but I am NOT most people. MOST people new to WvW are going to look at this reward system and how long it takes to get anything as a new player and not even bother.
And that’s fine, that’s their choice.
And it’s your choice too.
So you rather sit on the pile of ashes what used to be the WvW alone, insteat of encourageing new players to play as a team for your server?
I don’t know what your server did, but my server was pretty open to newbies (well we had some idiots who were ranting all the time).
Some players are now part of our gamemode and our community which is a nice sideeffect. Unfortunatley they lost me, because after all those years i really have to say: this mode is dead to me, sometimes i log in and try to support a commander i like and sometimes i lead, but compared to 1 – 2 years ago iam pretty much finished with the game. ANet killed to much fun.
My thoughts are if you enter WvW with the “what’s in it for me” attitude, that will kill the game mode faster than anything else. The beauty of WvW is the cooperation, and being part of something bigger than self.
" Lots of horrible kitten in this world gets done for something larger than ourselves"
Ahem. Sorry. I just had to quote Sandor Clegane from GoT for fun xD
I read that the original death shroud reduced incoming damage by half. Does Reaper’s shroud do the same and does it also stack with protection? Because that would be awesome lol (and maybe that is what you are experiencing).
The idea of a “bloodmage” is interesting but sadly it would be difficult to introduce in a game like GW2. That’s because professions in gw2 are not fixed on only one aspect but balance around the fact that you have to build yourself with 3 different traitlines.
However, we could say that there is “hope” for a “bloodmage” via a elite specialization. What would be needed in this elite specialization would be :
- A fast attacking weapon and shroud auto attack to be able to capitalize on life leeching abilities.
- A set of utility skills that bleed yourself on use.
- Traits that make you stronger/heal you/support your allies/damage your enemies, when you bleed.
- extra An additionnal mechanism (maybe F2) that make you take twice the damage from bleed effects but greatly boost your direct damage for a short duration.
This shouldn’t be difficult to introduce however it seem to be past the bottom line of tha arena net’s staff. Because they keep thinking that any condition affecting the necromancer is one huge weapon for him while it’s also easy for a necromancer to die from conditions.
They could at least buff the lifesteal of Blood Magic traitline as a start. I think I’ve said this on another thread: Thieves get 10% or 15% (I don’t remember) of outgoing critical damage from Invigorating Precision which in terms of math, assuming they hit for 4k crit that’s 400 heal. So much more than what our lifesteal gives us and we’re supposed to be necromancers with mastery of blood, life force and all that jazz… they could at least bump the scaling (and diminish healing while in Shroud because as one guy pointed out, increasing lifesteal which bypasses shroud might make us immortal).
