Guild Wars 2

Sigmoid.7082:

You changed reapers might. This trait grants 3 might every 2~2.3s when using the full auto chain. Be removing it you have essentially removed ~250+ HP/s from shroud. Your change to siphoned power would either be OP with no ICD because of how many nulti hit attacks necromancer has, ( no use even contemplating this idea; see fried golden dumpling ) or it would have to function exactly like chilling victory, at which point it becomes weaker in 1v1s. No to mention the function overlap with CV anyways. A BB using reaper with these changes would be weaker at sustaining.

There is literally no need to add damaging conditions to axe or focus. Causing unnecessary overlap and loss of identity to scepter focus. There would be no clearly defined ranged power weapon. Same with your changes to dagger, unessesaary addition of conditions. Also makes adding a melee condi weapon harder to do for a future elite spec.

Yes it might need a 0.5s internal cooldown so you can at max get 2 might per second no matter how fast you are hitting. The main point of this change is to get rid of this below 50% requirement, as it either does nothing for weak enemies, leaves you with a kitten trait for half the fight in very long fights and in PvP/WvW other professions simply run away if their heal is on cooldown when they get to below 50%.

Even if Reaper’s Might change ended up being a nerf to BB regen, I see that as good thing because it might force a glass necro consider running tankier traits.

There is no identity stealing going on here, scepter would still have its identity as the
best ranged condi weapon. What adding condition to axe and focus (both through traits, so axe damage would be roughly same it is now for all power necros) does is it modifies this weapon combo to the boon corrupter playstyle. Currently this build is running marauder, and it is classifiable as a power build, which makes little sense when what you are primarily doing is stacking conditions through boon corruptions. Surely this hybrid build deserve weapons it can use to fully utilise both power and conditions it has access to?

Also dagger having bleed on auto is not unnecessary for the changes to Blood Magic, dagger is the weapon for this traitline so it should be able to make most out of it, not scepter.

And just to point out the fallacy you created when saying it would make it difficult for Anet to add another condi melee weapon; we got GS with Reaper, a power weapon despite the fact that we already had a power melee weapon in dagger. Didn’t seem to stop that from happening. Thief has dagger and sword as power melee weapons. They got a power melee staff, no problems there either. Warrior has hammer, GS, mace and axe, all power melee weapons (sword is hybrid, so it could count too). These are all power weapons, wielded in main-hand, yet they all serve different purpose and function. Same can be done with condition weapons, be they ranged or melee.

Then maybe a compromise with 15-20% chance on critical hit to burn with other Shroud skills while retaining burn on auto attacks? This way Dhuumfire gets that little bit of extra usability but even spammiest of multihitters like Soul Spiral on average inflict only 2-3 burns per enemy. Some might say Dhuumfire does not need a buff, but I think the biggest reason anyone would say this is because of Reaper’s Decimate Defences which makes Death Perception redundant on most builds, leaving Dhuumfire as the only true choice. Take away Reaper and suddenly every build that takes Soul Reaping is using Death Perception again because it does much more than Dhuumfire.

foste.3098:

I gotta commend you on your dedication yo write all of this down, i mean really how long did it take you?

There are some changes i find strange, hard to agree with even:
In the redesign is you almost completely removed boon application from any traits and by doing that made blighter’s boon much worst, especially while shroud is up the trait would prock much too seldom for the amount of health it gives per boon.

Also why turn spite and axe / focus in to a condi / hybrid line, doubly so since the next elite spec is rumored to be pure condi? This would also leave necro without a single handed offensive power weapon (pure power).

Lastly i really thing deathly chill should scale of your power stat since reaper is suppose to be a power/bruiser line especially since the next elite is supposedly condi focused. Making the 2 elite lines compete in functionality could be an issue.

The spreadsheet I started on Feb 23rd this year and originally it was just a collection of changes to skills that are seldom taken, but over time it evolved to change the whole profession and try fix it to be more balanced no matter what elite spec is added to it.

I don’t think I removed any major boons that reaper would use with Blighter’s Boon, and especially with the changes to Siphoned Power and Beyond the Veil a Blighter Reaper should be even tankier (yes I know Death is rarely taken, but here’s another reason to!).

For axe see my message above to Lahmia. There is another way it could be turned into hybrid weapon through the trait while leaving its power damage to where it is now instead of nerfing it.

On Deathly Chill I agree it could easily be made to scale from power instead of condition damage as Lahmia also suggested and I would have no qualms with this as Reaper is a power focused elite spec. the main reason I chose to put condition damage scaling on it is because Chill is a condition and right now when there’s no condition elite spec yet, Reaper sort of has to cater to condition play too, even if just a little.

To Dadnir: I would not mind having hexes in GW2 be power if it meant they are close to same functions they had in GW1. But under GW2’s skill system with division between power and conditions, conditions have same feel to them as hexes in that both have a lasting effect on the enemy, while pure power attacks deal their damage and that’s that. While making conditions more prominent does not directly correlate with hexing, it is the closest we can do within this system, without actually making hexes and hex removal a thing. And yeah, GW1 necro had so many more options for team support

To Lahmia: Oh boy, that’s a a lot of things to go through, with some very valid points. I’ll try explain myself on the criticisms! Assume I agree if I don’t comment on something.

Weapons
The logic behind the projectile change is that axe is very fiddly with its attacks sometimes and it really does not allow an enemy any time to react to it before the hit has already landed, unlike other ranged attacks where you have that tiny sliver of time you see a projectile coming and you can dodge it. The addition of Torment on Ghastly Claws came from the fact that if Spite is supposed to be hybrid/boon destroyer line, it would only make sense that the weapon associated with this line has atleast some damaging condition application on it. I would not be opposed to moving torment to be granted to axe skills by Spiteful Spirit trait. That way power necros get to keep their power axe, except with projectiles.

Greatsword auto would not actually be faster if 1/4s was cut from it as all other greatswords have 1/2s cast time across the board, except for ranger’s third hit which is 3/4s, which is what reaper’s third hit would also be. The way I changed Gravedigger was mainly inspired by Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3’s handling of heavy attacks, where you can choose when you launch it but obviously charging for too long leaves you vulnerable to being hit. But I suppose if it’s not feasible in GW2’s engine the current form with faster cast time would suffice for making it usable outside of PvE.

Spite
Reaper’s Might I changed to way it is mainly because of the extra might time coming from Siphoned Power as you can start stacking up might from pretty much start of the fight, It’d be nice to be able to get double might with Shroud 1 spam, but IMO bit broken. Also it probably wasn’t clear from the wording but I intended that Reaper’s Might gives you 3 might per feared enemy, so under right circumstances it can give you immediate 15 might to use. Maybe that is slightly overpowered tho.

Curses
I agree 50% base duration might be bit too much, and could easily lead to situation where every condi build has to carry Curses to be considered at maximum effectiveness. But it should definitely not be lower than 33%.

Soul Reaping
The main problem with moving Vital Persistence is the hole it would leave behind. It would certainly make life much easier if Vital Persistence took Last Gasp’s spot as a minor trait, but Last Gasp does not really fit that well as a major master trait when Spectral Mastery is right there next to it. I wouldn’t really want to put it in adept traits either. So it most likely would have to be changed to do something else than give Spectral Armor.

So what you mean is Dhuumfire would always cause burning on auto but every other skill in Shroud has the chance on crit? I would totally be on board with that.

Signets
The thinking behind Signet of Spite’s change was that if power build takes it, they will very likely never activate it. Condi build on the other hand will spam the ever living kitten out of it because power does nothing for them. Power needs love but I personally think it goes against the design of signets for it to be this bipolar in use.

Corruptions
Epidemic is too powerful in this current form though. I had another idea for Epi but I was not sure if it would still be too powerful (and it requires splitting). The idea basically was that Epi would no longer copy non-damaging conditions (to reduce clutter) and the amount copied is split (again I hate the idea of splitting skills as it causes unnecessary relearning between game modes) to something like 25 stacks in PvE and 10 stacks in PvP and WvW.

I thought the Blood is Power change was rather clever way of making BiP into an honorary Blood Magic skill again because Dark Pact was changed to also transfer bleeds and only bleeds, making it so that you have a great opener and 10 stacks of might to give your allies when playing vampiric necro.

Minions
The figure I had in mind for Shadow Fiend’s attacks was 4-5 seconds between attacks and it can still be killed just like other minions. To balance it further it probably should be bumped up to 30 sec cooldown again.

Wells
That idea with Well of Power is really good, wish I had thought of it that way. It makes more sense than trying to push extra boons on necro.

Yeah, there’s lots of necros who would want to see Mark of Horrors moved out of Lich Form as it really is Lich’s only claim to usability at this point and having that massive cooldown just for 5 jagged horrors is so wrong. Making it signet elite seemed the most logical choice.

I would actually concede that Well of Suffering does not necessarily need a change, but I personally liked the idea of making it stop normal condi cleansing too good to pass up, so to balance it a bit I chose lowering damage would be better than making its cooldown go above 40 sec. But yes, in context of PvE stopping condi cleansing makes no sense as there is no mobs that do that (yet), so it might be better to leave Suffering as is and change nothing.

One of the reasons I’d like to have necro focus more on condition damage is legacy of GW1 necro as most skills you would use were Hexes, and direct damage was more of the exception. It’s actually funny that many of these direct damage skills were vampiric and here I am suggesting making vampiric play off of bleeding. But then again, because of how life leeching activates from hits it means it can’t really be given proper scaling from your stats, so it makes sense to me that instead the scaling is done from bleeding which your enemy can choose to cleanse.

I do not think power builds would be nerfed by these changes though. If you play exclusively axe or dagger, then yeah your power DPS is lower. But to compensate for this reaper’s greatsword is given the much needed cast time reduction on its auto. Plus, Close to Death doesn’t have HP threshold requirement.

I assume you mean the removal of boon corruption on Putrid Curse. While it kind of makes sense, I wanted to shuffle boon corrupting mostly to focus where you can choose when to punish enemies for using boons or in case of VG, choose when to remove that damage reduction blue guardian periodically gets. Besides, Feast of Corruption was changed to corrupt a single boon when used so scepter’s boon corruption is more responsive than it used to be. I would rather make it so that every time you corrupt a boon it’s because of conscious effort and not as part of spamming auto-attack.

Funnily enough most of these changes were made with WvW in mind, but I guess because most people have forgotten how to condi cleanse properly it could be seen as high amounts of condis. Back in my active days condi necro would’ve not ever been able to do anything to anyone as everything got cleansed the moment you applied it.

But thanks for your interest

Soul Reaping and Staff
As many of you know, Soul Reaping has a problem with its Best in Slot trait, Vital Persistence. That’s why it stays right there, but without the cooldown reductions. Cooldown reductions are now a separate trait, created in spot once occupied by Fear of Death. This separation hopefully is enough to make people consider between being able to use Shroud and its skills more often, or to make Shroud last longer, or take Spectral Mastery to make sure Shroud is always topped off with Life Force. Grandmasters were touched up as well, Dhuumfire isn’t bound to skill 1 of the Shroud, but instead Burns are chance on crit on all Shroud skills, as it should have been right from start after Burn became intensity stacker. Foot in Grave now functions like Form skills in that it applies Stability every 3 seconds.

Staff has been in need of help since the launch, auto-attack and 4 marks is not interesting to play with. So the changes to staff focused on making it more fun to use and keeping the utility weapon role it has. By making the auto-attack apply pseudo-Cripple staff can now be used to catch enemies trying to run away, while it also has self-defense in Reaper’s Aegis, much like how Reaper’s Mark is 99% of the time used right under the necro rather than at its full range.

Reaper and Greatsword
Reaper does not have major problems in the way it functions, except for 3 things. First, the Greatsword auto-attack chain is far too slow for the damage it puts out so obvious fix was to reduce cast times and increase damage on third hit to avoid the problem of people cancelling the chain after first 2 hits for more DPS. Second, Gravedigger is too slow to ever hit another human player unless they are AFK or passed out. To fix this I removed Gravedigger’s cooldown completely and made it a channeled skill. You can release the channel at any time, dealing the damage of the last tier threshold you passed, but it will always channel for at least 1 second to reach the first tier. Each tier needs a second to reach and there is maximum of 3 tiers after which Gravedigger is automatically released. This channeling system gives the Reaper much needed control over their Gravedigger, without making it a DPS monster.

Third is the Deathly Chill, the current favourite necro trait to rag on. The Bleeds it inflicts are excessive for for any kind of vs. player combat, but in PvE it still isn’t enough to make necro wanted. Kneejerk reaction to this seems to be to split it, but I do not think this is the right choice. Splitting should only happen in very extreme cases of disparity between the game modes, to keep the game from devolving into 3 different games all with their own skills on all professions. The fix to Deathly Chill is actually rather simple when you consider that Reaper isn’t supposed to be heavy on condition damage or damage over time in general. If Deathly Chill inflicts a single packet of damage, scaling with your condition damage, whenever you apply Chill to an enemy who already has Chill, it becomes balanced again and offers a rather unique way to play a condi build with this over-freezing mechanic with burstier Chill damage.

Congrats to anyone who actually slogs through both the google doc and that wall of text.

P.S. Yes I would see Epidemic become a condi copy from the necro rather than spread condis from an enemy, simply because of the fact that necro condi output cannot be buffed any further without creating an issue from interaction between Epidemic and Parasitic Contagion, not to mention the issue WvW had because guardians and warriors apparently forgot how to run shout condiclear builds. Epidemic has too much potential for its own good.

Yes, this is another necro fix post. But unlike most other threads on the matter, the changes I would see implemented attempt to fix necromancer’s more fundamental issues with game balance, while also adding some new things (namely the missing utilities). While most of these changes move necromancer towards heavier condition dependency, rest assured current forms of power necro are still doable, and might even perform little better than they do currently.

All of the changes:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y7yXSD_9GqYaf_W2HHzEWjtk2Qa6_Vsy2VwCKf8uLQ0/edit?usp=sharing

To explain the changes briefly I’ll go over each traitline and their associated weapons to give an idea of how they’d work. Also do note that there are 3 damage traitlines now; Spite, Curses and Blood Magic, each with their own damaging condition. Tying conditions to traitlines gives each traitline some uniqueness and also it allows for more varied playstyles under the moniker of ‘’condition damage build’’.

Spite, Axe and Focus
The changes to Spite and its weapons, axe and focus, make it more involved with Vulnerability and boon corruption. You might also notice that there is Torment on Ghastly Claws and in couple of traits. Torment was chosen as Spite’s damaging condition as necromancer was supposed to be the premier applier of Torment. And it also makes thematically more sense than Confusion, wouldn’t want that dirty mesmer condition tainting us with its filth.

Axe and focus, especially traited, are a dual act, with axe forcing enemy to keep moving while focus destroys their boons and inflicts Torment. By making axe into a projectile weapon it becomes more user friendly and in some sense also balancing friendly as there’s no real counter other than being out of reach, beyond line of sight or stealthed to the invisible axe hits of doom. A projectile you can dodge and you instantly see where it is coming from.

Curses and Scepter
Curses has moved to be more Poison oriented, with scepter having all of its Bleed application removed in favor of applying almost exclusively Poison. Curses also includes a flat 50% base duration increase for all conditions, making it a very tempting secondary traitline for Spite and Blood Magic focused condi necros. For primary Curses users Curses offers the best condition DPS in longer engagements where the enemy does not cleanse itself and also due to amount of Poison it can put out, healing against a Curses necro is almost always at the debuffed rate. Curses is also the home of most of the Fear related traits, meaning you no longer need to take Soul Reaping for one measly trait to run a Fear oriented necromancer.

Death Magic
While Death Magic does not have it’s own weapon nor does it even have a condition to call its own, it has minions and ways to make necromancer able to take more of a beating in tough situation. In past Death Magic has had its share of problems because of how Unholy Sanctuary worked so instead of allowing it to heal necromancer it is now a support oriented trait, making you and your allies take less damage while you are in Shroud. The minion play is also more supported as Soul Comprehension now gives you Life Force from deaths of your minions, rather than increase the amount you gain from deaths of others. Yes this means you need to run minions of some kind to gain benefits from this trait, but Death Magic is the minion traitline, so it is very likely you would have one or two slotted in when you choose Death Magic.

Blood Magic, Dagger and Warhorn
Blood Magic, as the name implies, works now hand in hand with Bleeding. By making enemies Bleed more, your Life Stealing gets stronger, allowing for an offensive support type of character. While some would be saddened to see dagger lose damage, it is a itself has been made more healing support oriented, maybe even to extent that necromancer would make a competent healer.

To simplify Life Stealing and to avoid making it less likely a necro was able to stack Life Steal effects on top of each other to gain immortality, Life Stealing traits have been reduced in number, to Vampiric Presence, and new Creature of the Night grandmaster trait. Vampiric Presence is now a minor trait, allowing it to always be on when Blood Magic is chosen. Creature of the Night is more geared towards solo play by giving the necro Life Stealing on critical hits, for those who prefer to not aid their team with Transfusion or Unholy Martyr. Yes this means wells no longer have separate Life Steal tick, meaning they can now be buffed to be more useful without fear of creating an immortal vampiric wellomancer.

I know full well Parasitic Contagion exists, but that’s not what my suggestion was about. Life stealing, as it currently is implemented, cannot be buffed to make it decent in every game type without having to split it. By making it scale from amount of bleed stacks your enemy has you avoid making it too powerful in PvP and WvW as you rarely get to hit someone with more than 20 stacks (I will not acknowledge Deathly Chill bleeds, it needs to be changed to inflict damage when you apply a new chill on an already chilled enemy) while in PvE you would gain full benefits of it against pretty much any boss.

If life stealing stays as is and it scales from power we will never see it buffed to any meaningful decree as it has potential to break the game if there’s no counterplay to it.

Whole life stealing should be changed to work off of bleeding instead of whatever pittance of a scaling we currently have from power. For example, life stealing could be set to deal 4% more damage for each bleed stack on the enemy you are attacking, capping at 25 stacks for total of 100% damage (and heal) increase. This would require some changes to MH dagger so you stack bleeds with it, but dagger is already in a weird place when it is the top power dps weapon and it is linked to the support traitline so it is due for some clarity of purpose.

For further support play make the healing portion of life stealing gain benefits from healing power on top of the bleed scaling so a necro can run somewhat competent
offensive healing support.

This in my opinion is the very least necromancer needs. If it were up to me I’d drag
the entire profession towards conditions with axe becoming a medium range torment cleaver, scepter mainly inflicting poison and as mentioned, dagger inflicting bleeds. With changes to all traitlines to support the heavier condition focus, of course.

I have a question for the Q&A: The second blog post said that the Hero Points are strictly only from what is currently Skill Challenges, but what about characters leveled through WvW or Tomes of Knowledge for use in WvW? Won’t this automatically mean that players who’ve chosen to dedicate themselves to WvW cannot earn enough Hero Points to make diverse builds or experiment with builds at will?

Obviously you can tell them to go and complete the Skill Challenges, but if we are talking about even 4 alts (assuming main character has full map completion), grinding all those Skill Challenges can hardly be labeled as fun if you’d rather be out in WvW killing enemies. Couldn’t there be an alternative way to earning the Hero Points through purchasing Hero Point granting items with Badges of Honor and gold?