Guild Wars 2

I’m getting the same problem. After joining just one group to move maps the LFG tool broke. I still see the first set of groups I saw advertised and even after refreshing, relogging and even restarting the game I still see the same groups. This is all since the patch.

Lingering curse won’t work in shroud because shroud is counted as you wielding a hammer

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Hopefully they fix viper’s gear soon, I think it has good potential.

There are also a number of new rune sets that are VERY interesting for condition reapers. I am going to have to look more closely at them soon.

snip
Not sure what a full set of Viper’s gear gives you. If it could get 50% duration then you could take the new poison runes to max poison as well, or take the new berserker runes for more power/condition damage.

What’s broken about Viper’s? I’m thinking of doing similar with the berserker rune and a viper’s/sinister mix

Friends had this problems as well as my self, for some reason i couldn’t spec reaper…then worked out you have to use the third IE bottom trait line to spec reaper.

Bhawb.7408:

400 isn’t nearly as hard to get with the expansion though. At this point I’m not bothering, I’m trying to get the shoulders.

How do you get them? I’ve not seen them on any vendor

Despite spending points on the reaper elite skill I am not getting the benefit of the points. neither greatsword proficiency or reaper’s shroud work despite having bought them. i can’t equip greatswords and the shroud is still death shroud

Necro: Have bought reaper so am able to use Greatswords. However every greatsword including the reaper one says ‘weapon type unusable by your profession’.

Thanks for the replies. I had some suspicions it might not be great so asked before I did anything. Seems to be good at condi you have to have plenty of burns over everything else.

I guess I shall stick to a mixture of Valks and zerker then.

How is the condi side of the mace?

I only played the Rev during BWE3 (1 and 2 were spent with Reaper) and enjoyed playing it. I’ve got a set on Valk Ascended armour sat in the bank along with weapons (nicked from a warrior I don’t play) and I’m wondering if it’s worth changing the stats to sinister.

I quite like the idea of a hybrid that does direct damage along with torment and poison (plus a little burny type stuff) but I’m wondering if it’s viable. It will be different to the power necro/repear I’m used to playing.

This is the build I’m thinking of playing (OH i wish there were decent condi/ferocity items) as it should have decent condi stats and high crit. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNApXin3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrkFUlhtomiKNgCSwO92jH-TBTBABGcIAoW5xDnAAn1DExDAgZTcPrEUa1fwTTw0KxyZ/BAOCAAA-e

Any idea’s on whether it will be any good before I start making the stat swaps.. or any changes people would make?

chunx.9521:

I’ve actually done some math, and can share my results here I suppose.

First off, my calculations apply for solo situations only. Also disclaimer: they are definitely wrong right now but are nonetheless a good approximation to get an idea of the numbers. Here is a link to the album of my calcs: http://imgur.com/a/B17C7

Am I reading the charts wrong or do the calcs with Sinister and celestial not show sigil and rune effects? Also why does valkyrie not have Burning. Even with zero condition damage on armour it can tick for 1.5k+ which does add up.

Interesting stats on the armour runes. I’ve been thinking about using Flame legion over my current strength runes and this seems to justify that. My reasoning being that it’s 7% damage up time should be up pretty much all the time even if you are not applying burning your self, plus the extended burn duration adds 1-2 stacks to what you can maintain in shrouds. A win win in both cases.

Now that BWE weekend is over and the Devs are back to work bumping this thread.. because I think it’s pretty much the best feedback thread and seems to best represent what Necro players are feeding back.

Jerus.4350:

Narenek.9085:

In the case of the short fights then burst does = DPS because the fight is over pretty much before the burst conditions run out. However just watch the solo vids where people are in the fight damaging opponents for the whole fight. the damage gets nowhere close to what is seen in the boss kills. This alone proves that the short fights are not true representations of DPS but an exaggerated artifical DPS.

So yeah i Agree about Burst and Sustained DPS, but raids will have burst phases and won’t be all burst DPS. the current meta is all about Burst so therefore is not true DPS when refering to the longer fights we will have in raids. there burst DPS will be the better masure of a class

Beta EQ player here too, always fun to meet others.

But, there you go again calling it artificial, there’s nothing artificial about it, just that certain parameters have to be recognized. It’s true many people take it out of context, but doesn’t change the validity just says something about those people.

But, yes hopefully raids change the dynamics and the burst focus goes away. Then there will be more discussion based on 3-5 min fights rather than on 10-30s ones. The commonly seen represented DPS numbers will drop. Again though, there’s nothing untrue about what we currently see though, they’re just often misunderstood.

I think we mean generally the same thing just using slightly different definitions

I generally don’t count burst as True DPS (in this game at least) because it doesn’t truly represent the fight. While it’s true you can currently burst down the bosses in dungeons it’s only because players now severely out gear them (they are meant be done in yellow gear really). When people first ran dungeons that was when the DPS was ‘true’ or related to the content and it’s level (you could never do the almost 100% under burst conditions kills you do now). In WoW say you’d never count a players real DPS by going into old content which they over gear and measure it against the bosses there.. and that’s what the current meta does in effect.

As a result it hopelessly skews the usefulness of classes and presents as false view of true balance. Raids should present a clearer picture but unfortunately I think too many players will try to stick to this dumb inaccurate meta.

PS: Played on Tallon Zek .. god that was fun. Fighting guild wars just to control a zone so you could attempt to kill a boss. Did eventually move to Payhammer though when raids started getting to late for my euro time zone.

At that to the fact that it takes time to go through all the feedback, they have more classes than just the necro to look at and it takes time to think about how they will make any needed changes. This post is more premature than a virgin on his first date…

TheRandomGuy.7246:

There are no 3 minutes plus fights in this game even without an icebow. There could be 3 minutes plus fights in the raids but since we don’t know anything and there is no raid “meta” it is all kinda pointless.

If you seriously think the fights won’t be 3 min plus then sorry but I don’t know how to convince you otherwise. But look at the world bosses in this game at level 80 and how long those fights last, then look at what raids are in every other game and you will have your likely answer. Raids = challenging fights with multi phases and not over short periods. Seriously if the fights are sub 3 minutes then Anet will not have bought raiding to GW2 but just extended dungeons

In the case of the short fights then burst does = DPS because the fight is over pretty much before the burst conditions run out. However just watch the solo vids where people are in the fight damaging opponents for the whole fight. the damage gets nowhere close to what is seen in the boss kills. This alone proves that the short fights are not true representations of DPS but an exaggerated artifical DPS.

So yeah i Agree about Burst and Sustained DPS, but raids will have burst phases and won’t be all burst DPS. the current meta is all about Burst so therefore is not true DPS when refering to the longer fights we will have in raids. there burst DPS will be the better masure of a class

Snowball.3497:

You currently don’t take a warrior in your party for its DPS, you take it for amazing might, decent vuln application, EA and banners which translates into;

• +1070 power
• +8% crit chance
• +11.33% crit damage
• 5-7 vuln

for the entire group. All in all a group wide DPS boost of ~45%.

I don’t think nemesis disputes this. However I think a LOT of people are missing the point he is trying to make and that is that the current meta is only due to the speed of kills on a boss, and the relative OPness of icebow. In short fights where speed of the kill is all that matters the warrior is king buffer due to the speed at which it can get those buffs up. In a 10 second fight getting a full stack of might in a second or two for the whole group is key to getting those records. Most classes can get themselves very high on the might stacks solo, but it’s too slow for a 10 second fight. This skews the warrior in terms of a buff bot in current content.

However make those fights last a significant amount of time (3 minutes plus) and the warrior loses a bit of it’s usefulness. It’s no longer key to burst out that might ASAP as it doesn’t make that much difference over the longer term. So when most people can produce significant stacks of might themselves the amount of buffage the warrior brings drops a lot. Now he pretty much just brings EP and banners (though still significant I admit), but might is catered for by self buffing and blast fields, fury by the ele and vulnerability by loads of classes (necro especially).

In a long 3 minute fight it could also be that stacking 25 vuln in the first few seconds adds more damage overall than stacking 25 might, because once you are past that initial burst it’s more about sustain. In which case necro’s as well placed to really help with this. Take away the need for that insta might buff and warriors (while still obviously strong) are not as strong as the current speed kill meta makes them. At this point once buffing starts to become less important, and DPS starts to increase in importance. Nemesis also make the point that the current meta is built around burst damage not true DPS taken over a long period, and is artificially increased by icebow and Timewarp.

There are other points as well butpeople have missed them in clear attempts to bash him (and yes his demeanor doesn’t help here) and just look at the (admittedly contentious) numbers he put out. The general gist is the current meta is enforced because of X and Y and is a VERY specific and artificial case that will likely change in HoT. What people are reading is LOL Necro > Warr

Oh I understand that, but it’s still possibly for mobs to changed direction or start moving near the end of the cast so you can’t react in time.

Also realised I’m not so keen on Nightfall starting with a small area and slowly getting bigger. It starts just a little too small (seems like it’s radius 130 ) but seems ok by the final tick. I’d also prefer if it moved with you similar to Locust swarm.

Don’t know how the hell I managed it but I got a 35k crit on Grave digger as my highest so far. Got it on one of the champions in Silverwastes after void walker. Swiftly followed by a 32k. Around 12-18k is the ‘normal’ though.

GS 4 and 5 definitely feel better, though i think 4 could do with a little DPS increase.
GS3 feels much better, again maybe a slight increase in damage
Gravedigger can hit like a truck but the animation still feels a little too slow. Id prefer the damage to drop a little per hit but speed of the hit increase.
GS1, still feels too clunky and slow for the sake of being slow. I just think the final hit needs speeding up just a little.

Overall it’s an improvement, but fast moving mobs can still ‘interrupt’ it.

Agree with a lot of what Nemesis says in this vid.

The shorter a fight is the more the DPS of these short duration high damage abilities is exaggerated. SO Icebow is exaggerated because the fights don’t last long enough for the full cooldown to tick out and it’s true DPS is shown.. hence DPS versus burst. Burst is the damage over the active period of a skill, DPS is the damage in the active and downtime period. Currently the game favours the burst of a skill over the DPS and this helps promote the meta builds.

Really that’s just well known mechanics of fights, it’s always been known the length of a fight vs cooldowns affects the burst you can put out. Raid in any serious raid based game such as WoW and this sort of thing is basic knowledge.. you save your high damage long cooldown skill for burst phases… dungeon bosses in GW are pretty much all burst phase. Currently only world bosses are long duration fights that people take part in regularly. Work out the damage on a player in say Karka Queen and it will be lower than the DPS on a dungeon boss.

The Berserker meta was designed for one thing and one thing only.. to kill bosses in as short a time as possible. So it’s built around the point of engagement to the end of the fight. It’s built for timed kills where fractions of a second count. But many players think it’s built around completing a dungeon as quickly as possible, it does have that benefit but really it’s maybe a couple of minutes over a run. For quick dungeon runs the ability to skip packs is far more useful than the stats you have. Stats are for boss kill speed in the current dungeons. For the vast majority of players (i hate numbers pulled out of people’s butts like 95% of players etc because they are obvious vagaries) Whether they wear zerker or other DPS stats won’t really make a big difference… but they think it does.

Pre buffing will make your timed kill on a boss quicker, but not the time it takes to complete the dungeon. This is because time spent buffing > time gained on the boss kill. SO the point he make is if you are just trying to run a fast dungeon, just get on with killing a boss don’t pre buff.

I also agree that as far as damage produced goes a necro can match most other classes in straight out DPS… but they aren’t part of the meta because they don’t provide party buffs, icebow, timewarp and protections such as reflect.

So TL:DR his points are

1: Zerker meta is based around Direct damage for speed of patchwork style boss kills.
2: Fury and Might buffing are about getting fast buffs up due to shortness of the fights, hence why warrior and Ele are the buff kings.
3: Burst skills such as timewarp and icebow have their real benefits exaggerated by the current fights being so short.
4: Classes DPS are actually not that far apart, some could use a slight buff and some a nerf (Ele) but damage per second isn’t as huge a gulf in general as believed.
5: Players in the game base their play around the points above. The zerker meta does not encourage skill as there’s no need for it. The gap between a good player and a bad players means almost nothing in this game compared to say WoW. As such players don’t learn to play well. Due to this they have no concept of many of the basics of playing an MMo that are critical in other games EG don’t stand in the AoE, positioning, awareness of the surroundings, timing of when to use bursts and when to hold back, survival over OMGWTFDeeps.

Thinking about this and raiding, I think raiding is going to have a massive effect on these points.

1: Fights just won’t be Patchwork short boss kills. DPS is needed but it won’t all be direct damage, condition damage gets to play in longer fights too. DPS also isn’t the only thing to think about when it comes to stats as you will need to survive fights too, dead players = zero DPS. This should mean players will move away from the zerker meta, sure some people will still use it, but until a boss is easy farm mode and players outgear the content you will see much more variation.
2: As fights last longer the fast ramp up time that warriors have on means far less. On a 10 second fight getting to 25 might pre fight or within the first few seconds is critical to speed. But on say a 5 minute boss fight this really makes bugger all difference as most classes can get themselves to 25 might easily and sustain it there. Fury is different because most classes can’t sustain their own fury. That said as there are more players in groups so more fire fields the ability to permanently sustain a field is needed less. So we should see the dominance of warrior and ele in the group lessen as the need for instant quick might and fury is reduced… leading to more spaces opening up. This should also mean debuffs such as vulnerability get more purchase as there’s not no need for a fast might buffer so someone who could sustain a useful buff (Chill maybe) should become more valuable compared to the current get might up ASAP meta.
3: The dominance of Icebow and Timewarp will reduce as the goal is not outright speed and burst. They won’t go away as they are always a kitten good thing to have in this and any other game, but they shouldn’t be such a determining factor as before. It’s bad game design that these abilities are each tied to one class being able to cast them as that will reduce the variety of classes in a raid group. In most other games similar buffs that affect whole groups/raids usually are castable by more than one class.. thereby not making certain classes indispensable.
4: With the reliance on DPS and burst being the only things needed decreasing, the differences in classes DPS should start to matter less. A class that does lower DPS but isn’t in downed state so often will be preferable to a class with more DPS that goes down more often. It will also encourage bring the player not the class. Also once sufficient stats are in you would expect Anet to look at the data and balance the classes more… though admittedly their track record on this is spotty so far it’s been down to their being no real need to. We all out gear and out damage the content so stats are skewed. If Anet want HoT and raiding to work they will have to look at balance.
5; If GW2 raids are anything like other game in terms of difficulty and the need for player ability… oh boy are a hell of a lot of players are in for a REALLY big shock. GW2 has probably the lowest average player ability of any game I’ve ever played, purely because so many mechanics of the game that are staple to other MMO’s can be ignored. In raids where it’s not about pressing buttons and using cooldowns ASAP, but about playing the actual mechanics some players are really going to struggle. It matters not if you could kill boss X in Y seconds in a dungeon as an ele if you don’t play the fight mechanics. You may have a class that can do 18KDPS on a stand still dungeon burst, but if you can’t play the mechanics and put out reasonable DPS then that player whose class can only do 14K but can do it will get your raid spot. Once again bring the player not the class should hopefully come into play. As someone who used to lead raids in WoW for a pretty decent raid guild I regularly see players in groups in GW2 that I would never let raid in WoW. Raid leaders will take the better players over worse players with better theoretical stats. I’m willing to bet player screams of frustration at Anet will go through the roof because the content is too hard.. for them.

His video made me think more about the current game and how it’s not actually a true reflection of what the game could be. And then about how the game could be and it’s made me feel a lot more hopeful. It might take time for the current meta to change as it sinks in to players heads that it’s not valid anymore, but change it will.

Reading those comments just makes me think a few things

1: Devs really are ignorant of the current meta game problems in PvE
2: They don’t understand players mind sets when it comes to min/maxing in a game and how it will always happen even if they are not going for records due to following the easiest path. How WoW has become so casual based shows that it’s developers understand this
3: how the current buff system plays to forcing a certain meta and will continue to do so unless a forced change occurs
4: That Ele is seriously over engineered and provides nearly all the things you currently need in one package
5: designing content to jimmy around this will not fix the broken base game mechanics that enforce the current situation.

I’m trying to remain hopeful but it seems to me in a few months time raids will pan out to follow the same meta as dungeons currently. I more than half expect to see raids consisting of 2x the current warr, ele, ele, guard and rogue groups we currently

Bhawb.7408:

Tommyknocker.6089:

Just a bump and a request from Bhawb.

Seeing as the Devs followed your post on this issue, would you please make a comprehensive post in regard to other weapon sets if you have time?

I know there are many, many good suggestions on these forums already, but they are quite spread out over many posts (and years) distilling them down for easy dev perusal might be just the thing to get them noticed.

Thanks.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and spitballing ideas with other Necromancers while I get ready to write it out. It’ll probably take a few days to fully flesh out, but I’d be happy to do it.

That would be great, the one thing I’d want to get through is that we need our DPS specs increasing to similar levels of other classes. Reaper if it’s meant to be DPS balancing around where our DPS should be, not where it currently is. while dagger is our highest DOS weapon and the AA is the highest in the game I don’t think it’s really our DPS weapon… it just happens to have the highest DPS out of currently severely under tuned weapons.

I just really don’t want our DPS for Reaper and Greatsword being based around the weapons we currently complain are too low as they stand

Bhawb.7408:

Narenek.9085:

I really don’t get people asking for the GS to do slightly less damage than the Dagger .. because we complain that Dagger is behind other classes in DPS. We really should be shooting for the GS to be getting us more to the level of other classes not on a par with our already Lower than every one else DPS weapon. It’s not a Support weapon, defensive or condition based.. so that leaves DPS so lets get DPS with it closer to the other classes DPS. We also need more Life force generation on the weapon, but then that’s just common sense if Anet want us to use our ‘class’ mechanic.

While I understand the sentiment, Greatsword’s AA isn’t the place to bring us up DPS wise. The biggest way to do that is damage modifiers, which I’ve edited to mention, as well as things like Gravedigger having a much higher actual damage so that when spammed it exceeds dagger AA, and general increases on damage on GS 3/4, and other skills like that.

Also yeah, I’ve started mentioning general need for damage increases on some skills. Without coefficients its hard to name specifics, hopefully one of the PvE guys got those, I think spoj/Rising Dusk did, because I think it could be increased.

Yeah I could have written that a bit more clearly. I meant GS as a whole should be higher than Dagger so it’s how we get our damage on par with other classes. I’d be happy with the AA being in the same region as Guardian overall…. just don’t want it being the B’stard grand child of the Greatswords.

Great post summing up much of my thoughts for reaper.

On greatsword I think the AA needs an increase in the overall damage/DPS To match the other classes great swords. GS 3 could also do with a general Damage increase.

I really don’t get people asking for the GS to do slightly less damage than the Dagger .. because we complain that Dagger is behind other classes in DPS. We really should be shooting for the GS to be getting us more to the level of other classes not on a par with our already Lower than every one else DPS weapon. It’s not a Support weapon, defensive or condition based.. so that leaves DPS so lets get DPS with it closer to the other classes DPS. We also need more Life force generation on the weapon, but then that’s just common sense if Anet want us to use our ‘class’ mechanic.

RS I just love. Maybe the AA could do with a slight damage increase again just to bring our Base AA’s in line with other classes. RS 2 fully agree should work like warriors sword 2. Other attacks just work really nicely and I’m finding it hard to choose between Death perception and Dhuumfire. Getting stacks on 1k burning with Dhuum is great fun, and really makes me think about getting a couple of sinister items for my reaper.

I’d like to see Soul eater changed as the lifesteal seems really lacklustre even with multiple hits on the sword abilities. Either a damage boost or cool down reduction. Failing that have repear’s onslaught also affect the GS as currently even working it’s not a great use.

On Yaaw i’d definitely like to see the Might duration upped to match those of other classes. People won’t be happy if we wipe out longer lasting version of might, so this limits it’s use

Oh and fix utilities not being usable in shrouds… why oh why are we the only class that has a mechanic that brutally locks us out of 4 of our skills while being used?

Was messing around on the target gollums with the shouts and started watching how they gen life force. Normally i’d say that the LF gen is pretty obvious as Your Soul is mine generates 4% per target hit and all others either 0 or 1% per buff given (when using blighters boon). And this seems to be true for all expect 1 of the shouts.

With my stats 1% lifeforce is equivalent to 183HP, so 4% is 732 HP.

Your soul does exactly as the tooltip says and generates 732hp or 4% lifeforce per target hit.

Blighters boon only affects CTtB and You are all weakings as they give buffs so gain life force generation through it.

Chilled to the bone generates 2 stability per target hit so should generate 366hp or 2% per target, which it does. Not great but max 10% LF gen is generation none the less.

You are all weaklings generates 1 second of stability while casting plus 4 might per target hit, so can generate between 5-21 buffs or 5-21% life force. Which is potentially quite a bit of life force.

Suffer was the shout that seemed to break the rules as it has no life force gen in it’s tool tip and is not affected by blighters boon. Yet it generated 4% lifeforce per target hit so can spike up to 20% life force. I’m hoping this is more a missing tool tip than bug as Reaper shouts need all the help they can get.

In WvW that makes suffer and YaaW good generators in the melee, pretty much the same for PvE. sPvP though they lifegen wouldn’t be so high normally as you probably won’t hit 5 targets.

Might be interesting to people, or more likely it isn’t But they could be a reasonable way to compensate slightly for the Reapers slow life force regen…if only they’d drop the dumbarse cast times (other classes get stronger shouts with no cast time, and the only excuse we’ve been given for the cast is to differentiate them from other classes shouts).