Guild Wars 2

Is there a bug affecting the damage output for some people? I’ve been reading the comments and there seems to be something going on there.

Signet passives working under DS/RS would be a very welcome change.

Tim.6450:

eleshazar.6902:

I agree that Reapers are way to high in dps right now. The answer is constantly, “Well just stay away from them”. The problem is in conquest game mode you can’t just stay back. GS3 > GS 2 combo can wipe most people’s health bars, especially when you add in a shout that can give you 14-22 stacks of might. Oh and you can make it unblockable. And did I mention that RS 4 can put 11 stacks of poison on someone, all while having an extremely high damage coefficient? Plus the heartseeker skill just tops it off. Ultimately I can’t see how reaper can be allowed into the game as strong as it is right now, unless other professions get some serious buffs. This to me seems like the start of power creep…

That’s quite a lot of setup for one gravedigger reminds me of a recent stealth ice bow vid. Also how long do you need to stand in front of a reaper to eat that much poison, 3~4 seconds? also what heartseeker?

This has to be a troll. How can someone just stand in front of a Reaper, get beaten, and then cry that Reaper is too strong? I played as and against Reapers in conquest. Guess, what? I just easily kited them. Heck, I even ran into rocks a few times as I tried to kite them, and they still didn’t just end me right then and there. And those were 1v1 but also I did meet them in groups. Fella, hate to break this to you, but you are crying for the nerf button just so you don’t have to put up the effort to learn.

Norjena.5172:

Typical Nemesis video.

90% of what he says is wrong. Bad interpration of facts, mixed with his own, clear “meta sucks” opinion and he still misses alot of basics about it.

Just ignore it, best what u can do.

Remember his “15k awesome! 15k 15k 15k…..axe dps guide”.
he told u it was maxdps, even if we all know that dagger is doing much more dps.

Necromancers need a huge dps boost for pve.

I’m glad I don’t watch his videos then. I hate the current brainless meta as much as the next necromancer, but using even stupider fallacies with the hopes of lieing people into being more accepting of different builds and playstyles is just as wrong as the meta fanatics in their methods.

So Tl;DR for this thread:
“If you find Reaper to hard to deal with, just L2P. Stay away from melee range and kite it.”

It’s well sized on other races besides Charr. Maybe it’s just Charr that needs to be scaled down a little? I don’t feel it too large on my sylvari.

Electro.4173:

I’d be all for cleave on the melee minions, but if that happens then they need to go and do that to ALL pets then. Ranger pets, Elementalist summons, Spirit Weapons, ect. Having just the necro minions do it would be out of place.

The only other class I think should benefit from this suggestion is Ranger. But elementalists already have many other damage sources and so do guardians. Those last two don’t need it. Both necromancer and rangers are not in a good spot, so they do need to have their pets become more efficient.

Oh man, those buffs Reaper is going to have for the next BWE better not ever get nerfed if this is what they plan to do with Daredevil.

Shiki.7148:

Bhawb.7408:

Nynuwe.5893:

Directing the minions with dagger swings was something you could always do. It’s what I always did to direct them before reaching my enemy in PvE areas.

Nope! It was disabled for at least a few months way back, though yes it is an intended function.

Not to mention minions loved to ignore that even before it got removed/bugged.

I swear it worked for me last week or so while I was doing my first world complete, with my necromancer. I remember it specifically happening in Brisban. They would go ahead of me and kill stuff before I reached it. I suppose I never did notice when they disabled it months ago before un-disabling it again. But I’m glad to hear that not only was it brought back, but that now, it is more consistent.

Let’s wait to see how good we fare in the next BWE. Balancing all the new specializations is tricky.

Dawdler.8521:

Lets see videos with 5 MM necros doing dungeon paths, lol.

Vamos! I’m gonna present that notion to my guild. There’s a lot of cooky necros in there. :P Hmmm, but I wonder who can record it. My computer sucks for that.

Directing the minions with dagger swings was something you could always do. It’s what I always did to direct them before reaching my enemy in PvE areas.

Substatic.6958:

Minions would be pretty if the game had normal dungeons, rather than skipping and exploiting everything. Pets kinda suck with that.

Then don’t skip. Dungeon runs with my guild don’t skip stuff so rangers and MM necros are rarely a nuisance. Seriously, it’s still fun that way.

Bhawb for president? I actually agree. It is an extremely reasonable buff that will allow more build diversity without hurting anyone.

Dakunaito.9602:

zapv.8051:

The skill would be way better with a lower cast time, and the same dps. The only trait that is potentially overpowered is reaper’s might.

Reapers Might is not overpower and doesn’t need nerf or tweak. Ele has similar trait and it’s stronger cause it gives might from every fire skill you use and not from just autoattack like Reapers Might

My first 80 was an elementalist. I’ve seen it go through all of its stages, and I always try to take that trait whenever I can. It’s just so succulently good. I don’t see why necromancers who have less damage modifiers shouldn’t be able to keep Reaper’s Might.

Bhawb.7408:

Nynuwe.5893:

Green numbers on the screen, or did you also check the combat chat?

The thing is the combat chat doesn’t tell the difference between whether a heal worked or not. I just tested Blood Bond for example, and while the log would say you were healed, it doesn’t recognize that the heal doesn’t go through shroud. All healing technically affects you while in DS, it is just that most of it doesn’t actually affect your HP.

Bloody hell! If that’s not a serious overlook of the programming, I don’t know what is… Oh, hi Flesh Golem.

Muchacho.2390:

Nynuwe.5893:

nekretaal.6485:

NeXeD.3042:

You sure leeching bolts doesn’t heal through shroud? When I was playing reaper over the weekend I could have sworn it was healing

I looked for green numbers to pop up after using it and never saw any. I’m fairly sure it didn’t heal but I’ll correct if I turn out to be wrong.

Green numbers on the screen, or did you also check the combat chat?

Fun fact: There are alot of things that arent shown in the combat log, so checking you health bar is a better way to see if it heals or not.

I had a suspicion… Ugh. ~Petitions for more informative combat log~

If you Nerf
I will cry

Bhawb.7408:

Agree with Robert Gee here, condition transfer on AA, even as a trait, would be crazy powerful.

However, if you turn Life Blast into a two-shot chain that casts the entire chain as quickly as now, with the same total damage (so half damage LBs once per 0.7s instead of full damage every 1.4s), and then have the traits that need to be adjusted only proc on the second hit, might work. This would lower the gap between Reaper Shroud and Death Shroud’s procing of traits like Dhuumfire, which are absolutely fine procing that often, but still allow you to adjust things like might stacking.

Too bad I can’t give more than one +1 to this.

Dakunaito.9602:

this is too good to be true. i bet after this buff they will nerf. players aren’t used to Necro/Reaper doing high dmg, and when they see high number they will start complaining. i guarantee that. but i was hoping for something more on chill buffs. elite specialization of Revenant have a utility skill that pulses chill 2 times and has 3s chill duration and 15s cd. seriously? what we ask for Necro/Reaper they give it to Revenant?

that dmg nerf on Suffer made me cry. 700 dmg on pvp build. hahahaha

That is my fear as well, which is why I propose we hand out paper bags to all necro players next BWE. To help them deal with the sense of panic they will get from seeing actual big numbers. We will also have a line of Common Sense shrinks ready to slap our faces when we start mumbling self deprecating stuff.

-~Breathes in bag~“We are not supposed to be as good as thieves! What shall we do if we are no longer underdogs? We shouldn’t do big damage!”
- ~Slap~
-“Woah, what was I saying?”

Heh, if only it were that simple…

Let’s wait until next BWE.

With the new changes he will do to the GS skills, chill traits, and reaper shroud, he is keeping a few traits unchanged to see how it works then.

Zalavaaris.5329:

Does anyone complaining about the damage even play a necro? Have you all been brainwashed into thinking if you are anything but useless you are op? If we end up being the best damages in a team fight is that SO wrong that we are the best at something? Do you hate the idea of being wanted in speed clears for you decent damage numbers?

Totally agree! My gosh, I should set up a psychic hotline. I perfectly predicted this response. Too bad they don’t listen and want to fool themselves into thinking that a Necromancer doing just as good damage as thief is somehow inacceptable, unlike thief.

Seriously guys, being good…. IS GOOD. Stop complaining about something good. It’s sad that this is what happens when you keep a class below average on several (not all) aspects for too long: players begin to be scared of actually doing bigger numbers.

Heck, even doing more damage than thief can be good as long as it isn’t by much. The problem only surges when there is too much a significt gap and it cheapens team fights too much. None of those conditions are happening, so we are still okay.

Vydahr.4285:

Sigmoid.7082:

I can see people complaining about full tank reapers. Either cavalier or soldier power reapers. Very defensive but can skill hit you for 2.1k to 5.4k non crit GD on heavy armour targets (3000). Cav having the benefit of 210% crit damage. Can see the complaints now.

Int sigil GD+CoD proc on anyone below 50% hp will kill them without fail. Its essentially over 2 backstabs worth of damage or just 1.5 eviscerates worth of damage in a single hit.

This. Even a Soldier Necro is pretty strong, but Sodier Reaper? I feel bad for people who get in the way of GD spam…. lol

@Nynuwe: Necro players may be OP though. I mean, when you’re constantly fighting with one arm behind your back, or with weights strapped to you, or both, and their suddenly removed, well… It’ll be disorienting at first, but watch out when we get used to it ;p

Very good point. :P

Guys, the idea is so actually be on par with others. We don’t have that many damage modifiers so a good base damage is always welcome.

I knew this was going to happen: Necromancer players freaking out about actually being able to deal tons of damage for once. Yes, pat pat it’s okay to deal hilarious damage. No, there’s no shame in it. Ele and thief do it, and look at them they are so used to it they don’t blink at it. Shhh, it’s okay for us to do it too.

I love this too much.

I will want to remind everyone for the next beta where these changes go live, to remember that when we play necromancer we are already used to being around average. The changes may feel like a lot at first and powerful, but that would be because we are used to playing a class that has consistently been kept in not that much good of a place overall, consitently having to fight our own mechanics as much as we fight our foes. To no longer have to fight our mechanics will feel strange as a necromancer and inherently powerful. Please do not confuse this with being “OP”. We most likely won’t be overall (with the possible exception of one or two skills working beyond the intended) when we take as step back and do comparitive analysis of them with other classes. So as we go into the next beta, let’s keep in mind to compare our efficiency on the larger picture than narrowing it to just a before and after feel.

Rashagar.8349:

Endless Soul.5178:

Zalavaaris.5329:

Aren.9478:

NeXeD.3042:

No way in hell some of these changes stay.

I don’t know, I think a lot of what Robert said is very reasonable. The chill damage isn’t going to be amazing still. The greatsword will not do more dps to a single target than the dagger, the changes to shouts are necessary to make them viable. I think most, the greater majority, of those changes will stay.

AND IF ANYONE HERE GIVES FEEDBACK ABOUT THE REAPER BEING OP TO ANET NEXT BETA I WILL PERSONALLY CASTRATE THEM -.-

I’ll hold em down for ya

I’ll lock the door and stand lookout.

I’ll swallow the key

And I’ll send cupcakes to the devs so they won’t notice anything out of place.

I really seriously hope they focus on fixing Minion AI first before touching any minion skills.

Bhawb.7408:

There is a bit to note. While they went overboard, the old Reaper had a 4-4.5 chill on the 3rd hit of the AA, which was enough to have around 200% chill uptime with the AA alone if you have chill duration. Once you add in whatever combo of chilling darkness+blinds (pre-nerf version), chilling nova (pre nerf), various runes/sigils, the higher chill duration increase, spectral grasp, chilllblains, chill of death/spinal shivers, executioner’s strike, ice field+soul spiral, all of our fears, and any other source of chill I might have forgotten, I don’t think it would be particularly hard to keep up an oppressive amount of chill.

While our specialization is chill themed, you shouldn’t be able to keep up 100% chill on an enemy unless you are massively outplaying them, or have made a huge amount of sacrifices in your build to pick up a large combo of chill sources.

But then they went overboard as you said, and now it’s so inefficient that the sacrifices required to make it actual hurt is barely not worth it. At least that was so for me in my tests in the Beta weekend. I forewent most chill traits.

nekretaal.6485:

NeXeD.3042:

You sure leeching bolts doesn’t heal through shroud? When I was playing reaper over the weekend I could have sworn it was healing

I looked for green numbers to pop up after using it and never saw any. I’m fairly sure it didn’t heal but I’ll correct if I turn out to be wrong.

Green numbers on the screen, or did you also check the combat chat?

Exactly. That was the gist of it. But I would like to find the exact quote. I am scouring the threads and coming up short.

Hajiishere.4085:

I said it felt clunky to start with but got used to it because I am not used to rooting skills and I found revenant and dragonhunter clunky too, much like I have many class when I start playing them.

I haven’t played warrior but skill wise everyone is looking at at deaths charge as being like skill 5 (or FGS 4) where you leap to the target but the skill is more like skill 3 (or FGS 3) where you whirl in a direction so the solution is to add ground targeting but I don’t like that just because ground targeting has it’s place and it would annoying if this skill was to be focused on where the cursor is as apposed to the direction of the character because most of the time you are looking in the direction you want to move.

I personally have gotten used to ground targetting.

I would still prefer for smart target collision as it enables ALL intended uses of that skill. If you intend it to flee, then cancel any targetting. If you intend it for closing in on an enemy, then have it stop at the chosen target. It’s always best to go for middle ground so that more people can diversify the use of the skill.

Considering that this may be the only reliable gap closer Necromancer will have in a while, I would like to see it be a very well rounded skill that allows for different uses of it.

Can someone point me out what the devs said about the reason behind the chill nerf and the nerf to Reaper chill-related traits and skills? I thing it was quoted here in the forums around a week ago, but I lost it.

Tobias.8632:

Robert Gee.9246:

Regarding general silence, it’s mostly due to how busy everything is at the moment, but also due to how a company as large as ArenaNet works. I’ll see if I can explain a few things to put the situation into context.

Right now I’m waiting to get feedback from the upcoming beta weekend on Chronomancer and Reaper, but I haven’t worked on either of them specifically for several weeks. Many of the changes you’ve seen from Gamescom were locked down weeks ago in order to assure the stability of the floor demo and the upcoming beta weekend. With a game as big as Guild Wars 2 it takes a long time (and a lot of QA effort) to make sure big events like Gamescom go smoothly. My work over the last few weeks hasn’t been for Necromancer or Mesmer and is actually been for the Warrior elite specialization (which I probably can’t say anything else about). I’m also fixing bugs on live for ALL professions this week and next which has kept me pretty busy.

Now this isn’t to say that I’m not paying attention to what’s being said or what’s been said in the past. I take notes on threads I think are relevant for when I have time to work on them. I have notes on things to improve with both axe and scepter as well as a note about skills that we could add projectile blocking to (incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here). These are changes I’d like to get to and see happen, but right now iteration on Reaper and Chronomancer are probably going to take priority over that once the beta finishes.

I hope that clears up a few things. I’m not really as talkative as Roy or Karl, but I’ll see if I can show up now and then to answer the occasional polite question.

I just wish the team would stop being so afraid of overbuffing necro.

When other classes get buffs, they get HUGE broken buffs that usually have to be tuned back later and end up being still extremely powerful post-buff. Necro on the other hand is lucky to get minor QoL changes, and anything that ends up being 0.5% too good gets a 20% nerf fairly quickly.

Best example of this is the downstate necro damage which got taken from 50% down to 25%. I feel like necro having huge downed damage was a good way to balance out how terrible the downed 2 skill is. Necro has a massively telegraphed and therefore easily avoidable single target fear on a long cast time. Compare that to guardian having an instant AoE knockdown, or elementalist being able to go into mist form. Those are extremely strong downstate skills, yet no one complains because they’ve just gotten used to it and expect those classes to be strong. You brought necro downstate damage in line with other classes, but you didn’t do anything about the crowd control skill being unusably terrible to balance it out.

It seems like the people in charge of balancing necro are like the only people working on balance who actually have finesse and/or are worried about overdoing it. This is really professional, but maybe it’s time to stop being cautious and just throw out some buffs without worrying too much that they might be too good. Guardian burn damage is still too good. Everything about elementalist is still too good. The people in charge of those classes seem to be fine with them being the best at everything. Maybe it’s time to try the same tactics with necromancer balance and just let them have good things for a bit.

Can I frame this and hang it on a wall?

It’s okay to have fun with something and still be able to understand where it needs improvement. Necromancer is the class where the player is constantly forced to fight against it’s own mechanics almost as much, if not more, than the mechanics of their enemies. You admit that there are parts that feel clunky. That you can fight it and succeed doesn’t take away that it’s clunky. Clunky is never intended in design. Anything that tempts against efficiency is a flaw in design. The devs do not intentionally seek any combat mechanics to be clunky. Anything clunky needs to be fixed. Simple. Fixing something clunky doesn’t stop it from being fun. Making something more efficient without inherently changing its core concept should not make it less fun.

About not wanting death’s charge to have smart target collision, I find that poorly thought out. Smart target collision can be turned off in the Options menu (that’s what fiery greatsword elementalists did before FGS’s nerf, and that’s what rangers using MH Sword do to gain better dodging capacities in PvE). But for skills that don’t have smart target capabilities, there are no options to give them one. The middle ground IS giving it smart target collision, as you can just toggle it off. Of course, an even better option would involve devs to deepen our control capabilities of skills. To be able to individually toggle smart target on and off of such skills of similar nature.

Wintermute.5408:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y

Jackpot

ANet should make a spoon skin for Great Sword.

If they follow the most often said suggestions Reaper will be AWESOME (In the NOT broken way ofc!). Great animations AND effects? Necromancer may finally see the dawn of a new chapter in GW2 as not the unwanted three legged puppy of the game. Heck, if they followed that with AI minion bug fixes and improvements to base necromancer as Gee pointed he was thinking to do (specifically scepter and axe), we’ll start farting rainbows. Necromancers farting rainbows out of joy. Imagine that.

Well, with almost everyone saying the overall exact same observation about GS -IT NEEDS BETTER DAMAGE- I will dare say that the devs will be nice enough to boost the damage of GS, especially for GS1 and GS2. Followed by fixing the bugged pull and increasing its range, then increase the range for Death Spiral, then making RS2 smart target. Those have been the most often repeated suggestions.

Well, displeasure with shouts was also increadibly popular, but who knows how they will treat that kitten many people came with their own unique way of approaching it (personally I wish they replace Rise! with the No Escape! suggestion).

And other than that… your guess is as good as mine.

The fact that a defensive weapon still does more damage than one that was meant to be an offensive weapon is sad.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…snip 5. “Arise!” sucks. It’s useless for literally everyone: Jagged Horrors are lousy with multiple foes and a 40 second cooldown to summon just one is laughably awful. Even Minion masters don’t want to run this shout. Scrap it entirely and replace with something else. My suggestion is “No escape!” knocks foes down and gives the Reaper super speed (2 seconds +1 second per foe struck). Takes inspiration from the fact that the horror movie monster catches someone because they tripped. snip…

OH PLEASE Anet make this so! No escape would be the perfect replacement and would fit the theme so well. +1 just for this suggestion alone.

I second this suggestion fully.

Dignified Loser.7689:

Shouts: Imo, shouts don’t fit the Reaper (except for Your Soul is Mine! and Rise! but not necessarily for their effects), regardless, the main thing to make them more useful, except for the elite, is to have a more impactful base effect regardless of how many people you hit. The elite could use a shorter cast time and cool down.

Added to this, I feel that the trait shout should be baseline for traits. Both the shouts and their respective trait are so underwheleming.

I spent about 6 hours in an empty pvp room with two other friends, doing 1v1 duels, testing our reaper builds. GS was so clunky that I pretty much at the end, called the verdict, and ditched it in order to win duels with a friend who did so from the beginning. Then for lolz (really, I had lost hope on DS by them), I decided to try one build idea for GS: minions. It goes against the impression I get that designers would like us to use shouts. But nah, those shouts are bad. Sorry. :/

The build looked more crooked and forced together that your 3rd grade volcano science project that fell off the table and put back together with Elmer’s Glue. Frankestein’s monster’s stitches looked more smooth than this abomination I created. I used Blood and Death Magic lines. And I ditched all the shouts, and picked up Consume Conditions, Shadown Fiend(Blind) and Bone Fiend(immobilize), Well of Power, and Flesh Golem(knock down).

It frigging worked to my surprise. The minions I picked provided me with more life force gain, complimentary healing, and they had CC. I could finally keep my friendly opponent in place to unleash more than half of the GS attacks. It worked even more consistently against a Revenant with Shiro because that kept the match strictly between two melee people. For when they moved away, especially more when they were playing as another Reaper not using GS, I simply switched to scepter/warhorn to keep the pressure and close distance with warhorn’s #5 skill. However, the matches took long as Reapers even without GS still doesn’t dish out much damage. Reaper Shroud is okay, but as I’ve learned through various and numerous testing, it doesn’t really outshine a well balanced normal DS build. If that isn’t the intention, then the RS damage just needs a tad more more unf. Just a tinsy bit more.

Reaper build in general even feels clunky tbh because so much of the traits hint you that you should be using Greatsword, but Greatsword is currently an extremely subpar weapon. So you are scrapping and pretty much forcing yourself to take whatever seems decent from that line and hope it works well with other weapons. And it does, but there’s so little synergy to it. I can’t even use other traits from other lines that at first appeared to pair well with Reaper because those were nerfed or limited from the beginning by a ridiculous internal cooldown. Wow, 5 second internal cool downs?

And I just had to laugh, because the clunkiest build I could make was the one closest to help GS even be sorta viable in an sPvP environment, specifically 1v1. Granted, I am 100% certain that a rampaging warrior or a chronomancer(which I also spent a good amount of time testing) would still ROFL-stomp me flat -then again I think any other class can claim this too- but this was the closest to making it possible to land stuff with GS, and keep the enemy close enough so that I could keep doing my pitiful underwhelming attacks on them. Minions, Gee. Minions worked better than shouts in terms of synergy with GS. Because CC and higher life force gain. I was able to enter RS more often with them. Minions.

But it still falls short. Terribly so. I was going against another clunky Reaper and a class -Shiro Revenant- that is forced to melee as well. I didn’t even think of trying it against a Dragon Hunter. That would have spelt immediate doom. That that was the best I was able to do with GS Reaper does not mean GS Reaper is in a good place. It’s not. In any case, it only illustrates just how much more work is needed to make Reaper’s additions work together well and with the rest of Necromancer’s traits. The shouts don’t help at all. And GS only serves to cripple Reaper because Reaper traits fail to make up for GS’s shortcomings. In fact, those traits shouldn’t be trying to make up for GS’s shortcomings. That’s not what traits at all should do for a weapon. They should make a weapon more powerful, not fix it. The weapon itself should be already good as is.

The good news is that GS s the weapon I foresee to have the easiest of fixes. It just a matter of numbers for the design and concept itself isn’t wrong, just that the numbers as is don’t make it worth it. Also the pull needs a lot of touch ups. It doesn’t pull my opponents to my spot fully. It basically drops them half way through.

PS: I know I mentioned this before, but RS2 really needs improvement. The necrocopter needs smart targetting like other leaps do.

Cecilia.5179:

Chill: Gee, I’m going to be honest, balancing chill uptime to the effects of chill duration runes was a terrible idea. While theoretically possible, 100% chill uptime is not actually possible. The chill will be cleansed, and most will not run chill duration runes because that means no traveler’s, perplexity, or strength runes, which are ultimately more useful and fun than a long chill. The nerfs to chill make every skill that could apply chill unreasonably bad. For example, the icd on chilling darkness ruins its usefulness with aoe blinds such as well of darkness, plague 2, and in a way, deathly swarm. It cripples these skills to yield to a weak damage trait. On top of that, many of the chills Reaper has, such as chilling nova, have such a short duration that the trait ultimately has very little synergy with chilling force since the slow necromancer will only be getting at most three hits in (3% lf and 3 stacks of might for 5 seconds every 15 seconds). Reaper have to sacrifice so much to get a decent amount of chill that it is practically not worth it to invest into any chill at all, and ultimately, that means to stay away from Reaper.
Tl;dr: The best part about Reaper is spamming 1 in RS to “reap” benefits from traits that are bad with DS.
Final verdict: Warm Ice Cream

This. This so much. I continued testing Reaper in sPvP after posting my feedback, partly because I felt so bad for it that I insisted that maybe I missed something and that perhaps I was the problem (conclusion: nah, GS really does suck, but not to the point that it needs a complete do-over. It just needs tweaks to numbers). And the first thing I did was put on some Runes of the Traveller. Sorry, Gee, but there was literally no better runes to run with Reaper than those especially when using GS.

GS does several different conditions, all of which would benefit from overall condition duration. And we need boons and movement speed to make up for our slow casting times and mobility (ie. if our attacks are slow it is more dire to somehow posess more ways to cover distance in between to keep up with our enemies because we are spending so much time just casting the kitten attacks on enemies that won’t stop moving for you). And I experimented with both energy and rage sigils. I went Carrion.

There just was not going to be any way that I would go and say “Hey, chill duration looks more awesome than runes that address Reaper’s weaknesses.” That theoretical situation flies out of the window when you address what actual player behavior would be. Common sense will lead many people to make the more sensible choice. What’s the benefit of a theoretical 60% or even100% chill duration when you know you won’t even land half of those hits since people can dodge or even just run out of the way? None, really, especially with the nerf. Our limitation in mobility, and better traits for conditions and boons outside of the Reaper line make a chill-focused GS build with chill runes too weak to be considered.

I tried Reaper GS in sPvP. That weapon needs some serious work. The long casting times, the clunky inefficient leap, and the slow life force gain pretty much make this weapon nearly unviable in a PvP environment. It is too slow for a fast paced playing mode as sPvP is. GS desperately needs to have the numbers improved and it’s leap fixed.

Yup, the concept is okay. It’s the execution/performance that fell short. Most problems can be fixed by tweaking numbers involved.

I like the work done here with Reaper Shroud and Greatsword concept-wise. Where the improvements are definitely needed are in the execution of that concept.

GS: A weapon that is supposed to deal good multiple-target damage. However, the long casting times and slow life force gain hurt it so much. A good fix would be high burst damage that recompenses our patience for casting such long skills. As is, it is not achieved. The current damage output and life force gain does not make up for its drawbacks. I even used the Soul Reaping trait to mitigate the drawbacks of low force gain, and still, while using GS that life force gain was too slow.

Gravedigger: The animation looks amazing, but what it delivers is less so. It suffers from extremely poor execution of concept. It was made with pvp in mind, and yet it inherently hinders it’s own efficacy in pvp. The long casting along with an obvious and easily recognizeable animation makes it one of the easiest to avoid attacks in the game. A downed state person’s defenses can activate faster than Gravedigger. And if by some sheer luck Gravedigger manages to hit something, the damage isn’t that punishing at all. It needs either a shorter casting time, a larger field of effect, or more damage. But something has to give. As it is, it is a very pretty cool looking attack with increadibly underwhelming effects.

The auto attack of GS could be faster. If not, then as with everything else, an increase in damage output would make it worthwhile.

Increasing the range of all GS attacks is needed. With the current design concept, that shouldn’t be surprising. With low mobility and a very poor leap, our attacks with GS simply need far more range.

I attacked a group of 5 normal difficulty monsters in the Silverwastes, armed with GS and all shouts, and even then, I did not gain Life Force gain as quick as I normally do under those circumstances with my dagger/warhorn or even my staff, and a group of minions. Those 5 mobs even worried me at a point. They took me longer to dispatch. This is a melee necromancer that is slow casting, has a kitten leap, and has little to no way of escaping CC. The pay-off should be high damage and innate damage mitigation. I did not get that. (UPDATE: Tried PvP, this rings very true there as well)

To drive my point really accross about how much improvement Reaper GS needs, guardian hammer has similar slow auto attacks (just a tad bit faster), but it casts protect, chills, heals, golf swings, and leaps, and all while generating a good consistent damage output. And no one bats an eye at that. We are all pretty comfortable that guardian hammer can do so much. I really am stunted that this same sense of freedom to make a weapon awesome wasn’t taken for Reaper’s Greatsword. I’m not asking for those same exact benefits that guardian hammer has. But I do want a Reaper GS that can amaze me just as well as guardian hammer can. Because I know it can be done.

Now about the Reaper line itself, I can’t help but notice how terribly underwhelming any trait that purports to increase life force gain is, especially when using greatsword. Blighter’s Boon and Chilling Victory feel nerfed. 1% Life force gain from very specific targets is not enough. I feel that Chilling Victory would do well with at least 2% Life force gain and 2 stacks of Might. Soul Eater’s Life siphon per second is too low for a class that has little in the way of avoiding damage and is slow. 57 HP per second. It’s really not worth it. And then there’s the casting time recharge reduction for Greatsword. Only 3%. Only 3% for the slowest weapon of ALL.

Overall, the irony is that I feel some weapons do better with the Reaper line than Greatsword.

I had hoped the shouts would bring more team-support to the table. Since they are not, then at least drastically reduce the casting time and make them a bit more heavy hitting?

RS is mostly good, but that RS2 feels wonky. I keep surprising myself with it. ZOOM! No control. I also keep interrupting myself during RS.

When I look at Reaper I feel as if someone tied the designer’s hands after he wrote down the concepts. " Okay, you got the cool factor down, but you have to make sure the numbers are lame." It’s fun, Reaper is fun, but it suffers from extremely poor execution of numbers. Looks great, does bad. It’s like looking at a huge scary shadow and then realizing it was just a mouse. Not much like the relentless bringer of death they were going for.

Flesh Golem still frequently refuses to auto attack target, even after activating its skill. Overall all minions from time to time fail to properly react aggressively when necromancer is attacked first.

Where would the thread designated strictly for writting beta feedback on reapers be?

Sagat.3285:

Nynuwe.5893:

How about allowing us to start with 50% DS bar? It would definitely help us in PvP and PvE. Thoughts?

That’s lazy and copy & paste. The issue from my point of view is necro being weak with 0 LF not that we start with 0 but utility in shroud should have been considered since Death Shroud stopped being a downed state.

Oh, I wasn’t suggesting it as an mutually exclusive alternative. I’m all for wanting my utility skills available to me while in DS. My suggestion, I admit, is more a QoL type of thing. A streamline. Perhaps make LF lose faster to balance it out if they feel it’s too good (however, seeing how slow LF regen is with Reaper’s GS, I’d say starting with more than 0% would be fairly appreciated), but with base 50% full at start of combat and whenever we reach 0%, it would not add much, but merely allow us to have a bit stronger initiative.

Feel free to pick these thoughts apart further. I’d like to know what other ideas we can come up with that can help DS be more efficient. But I definitely support the request of allowing us to access our utility skills while we are in our second health bar mode.

Bhawb.7408:

We don’t need controls, their current AI system would be fine if it just didn’t bug.

I wouldn’t be saddened if we aren’t given controls. But I have noticed as a ranger that when my pet bugs a little, I can rely on my very minuscalr set of controls to avoid further hindrance. However, the times that my pet acts in an unexpected manner have been very very rare on my hunter. I can only count 2 or 3, and they were long ago.

But on necro, our minion AI bugs are plenty and frequent, and we seem to have no way to make up for it. I understand that bugs happen. In fact, sometimes fixing a bug just makes another one pop in it’s place. And if you are terribly unlucky, you fail fixing the bug and get another. Wee! Two for one! So I thought that perhaps a simple set of F bar controls that affect all your minions would help as backup for whenever their AI fails. Perhaps it’s not as good an idea as it sounds in my head, but at least I would be able to call them back to my side without having to wait for me to get out of combat to switch skills, or just patiently wait for them to die while the rest of the party burn kitten into the back of my head with their seething hatred of MM necros.

Another idea I have is that, okay, no controls, and just fixing bugs, but how would that deal with the problem of not being able to call them back to my side or cancel them somehow? Maybe make it possible to explode them (not counting our little bone minions as they can already do that)? I’ve seen it on engineers (I recently got one to 80, yay!). If they lost sight of their turret, they can explode them, and place their turret summoning skill immediately on CD. I’m not wanting to make them like engineers, but I think that is a very simple way of dealing with that peculiar nuisance.

In any case, I would still be very happy if they just fix the bugs at the very least, especially that of Flesh Golem. I love that ugly lumbering beast, but it really annoys me when it just stands there doing nada.