Guild Wars 2

Choppy.4183:

Right… because people need more reasons to sit on walls and use siege rather than coming out to fight. No thanks.

Right… because people need more reasons to sit on walls and use siege rather than coming out to fight. No thanks.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Wall of text.

*looks at above signature

You do realize, that everyone bandwagoning to create a superserver that can never lose probably cost the game more players than any skill balance or changes…right?

Right?

Why would i want to cleanse those condis tho? I could just staff4/plague signet/ “suffer!” /dagger 4 those condis back to opponents(especially chill)? I do agree that new sos has it advantages, but overall old trait had more uses in certain builds and the fact that soulreaping is now useless traitline.

Mindless spamming stuns because somebody thought it is fan to have them in 20 seconds CD and not having anything against constant stuns is kitten .

Do please make so after being stunned you can’t be stunned for 1 second.

Right now you get stunned and another long lasting stun like the Chronos Well comes and you can do nothing but to watch the warrior kill you however they please. This is kitten balance and has to stop. And simply because as soon as you stun break the other stun comes right there. You use your skills game tells you to bug off.

And it is not fun not skill when the stuns are instant ranged AoE.

Arrow carts don’t kill anyone but full glass with no heals anyway. Even now, zergs show up and just stand under them taking basically no damage. How is this “revelation” of yours any different?

Also, it’s not continuous video. Editing can do amazing things. This video has been edited in an attempt to make scourge look strong, all of the deaths/enemy pushes have been removed.

Your group has no stability. A good group will push right through and wipe you. The barrier is nice, but even attempting to abuse a single mechanic, turns the raid in to a one trick pony that can be countered easily by the current meta/good groups.

Because that constant, non-removable movespeed allows for the melee shroud skills to land much more consistently against foes which may not have been soft-CC’ed at all. The mobility portion of the skill was pretty huge in keeping pressure and not just being kited. It also give big consistency against other necromancers, which as I mentioned, could not corrupt the movespeed, either, which meant Relentless Pursuit could quickly remove any of the short-term cripples/chills otherwise applied to easily catch up.

Power reaper is much more shroud-heavy than core necro. There’s a lot to gain from being in shroud a lot, especially in group environments with Onslaught, and the LF loss if using CV over Decimate Defenses is cut pretty drastically to keep enabling shroud. GS and axe both grant huge LF gains when out of shroud allowing a quick refill to a tankier, stability-driven, quick-attacking and highly-mobile pain-train build with tons of cleave given its large melee AoE radius after engagement. Only a couple of the skills on these kits are particularly potent in comparison as well, meaning you don’t want to be out of shroud for very long if necessary, because quite honestly, there’s little reason to be. This also means the CDR on shroud is a pretty substantive buff to sustain, because unlike core necro, a damage-oriented power reaper lacks one of the two major sustain lines (DM/BM) to keep itself healthy out of shroud.

Further, DCharge is on a six second cooldown, meaning a reaper could previously DCharge disengage -> Heal -> DCharge engage back into a fight while denying projectile damage both on the way out and on the way back. As it is now, such a build will need to wait for several seconds after disengaging to regain shroud.

There are a number of other engage patterns which were effectively removed as well, such as Charge -> Grasp into enemy stunbreak -> CttB/GS1/2 to their second major stunbreak cooldown -> Charge back into their disengage/reset attempt -> (Fear -> Scythe into CC lock or Exit shroud a second time -> swap -> nuke via Axe 2 to also proc CtD at 20% extra damage which would auto-down most thieves running ToTC/Trickery).

Needless to say, the staff is too slow and the range intent of it does not synergize well with a reaper built to play aggressively. SoS prior to its change allow for much more aggressive plays while also giving the reaper just a bit of a boost in its shroud uptime/reduced out-of-shroud time enough to keep going to re-enter when it needed to leave.

Then you have all of the previous arguments made, such as how being forced into taking the signets trait locks you out from being able to swap into match-dependent utilities like NCSY without taking huge hits to mobility and damage from also losing Close to Death.

There were a TON of edge-cases and reasons to use this trait on such a reaper; so many to the point where I would argue it was the biggest contributor in turning unfavorable matchups into possible favorable ones (notably thief and mesmer), and why from the beginning I have been advocating for its use (with a lot of success from people who have tried it and stepped away from staff).

I understand that my thief knowledge contributes immensely in helping me beat them with relative ease on reaper, but the change to SoS has adversely affected the consistency and overall capacity to turn fights when built to play aggressively. Currently it struggles a lot more in these types of encounters as a direct consequence.

If it’s a problem for Scourge and not for base necro, they should just introduce both effects to Reaper. Otherwise they should have just increased Scourge’s cooldowns.

Lahmia.2193:

Kaladel.1670:

Murdock.6547:

I’m personally excited for synergies between corruptions and F2.

I tried this during the stress test. It was pretty nice. Not really OP, but having another way* to turn those condi into something beneficial was nice.

*Beside condi transfer.

Condi transfer can be a double edged knife though. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to transfer condi, only for it to miss and I end up dying because of it. More actual removal is a nice addition.

Or your target is dead and there is no one around.

Kaladel.1670:

Murdock.6547:

I’m personally excited for synergies between corruptions and F2.

I tried this during the stress test. It was pretty nice. Not really OP, but having another way* to turn those condi into something beneficial was nice.

*Beside condi transfer.

Condi transfer can be a double edged knife though. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to transfer condi, only for it to miss and I end up dying because of it. More actual removal is a nice addition.

The old shroud trait was used because of cooldown, not the speed(and in wvw build where you are supposed to get resistance and swiftness from other party members. At current form the trait just wont give you anything. Cd reduction was way more valuable than traited mark just because you swim in lf anyways and staff itself just does op dmg with chill trait. Atm for wvw soulreaping is dead line, none of gm’s is that great, and none of other masters has good options to take.

Personally:What good is shroud if you get cced to death and bursted instantly? and once shroud is down we are sitting ducks.

Also:I’m not so convinced that we will not be focused 24/7 with scourge since the shield can be bursted down faster and it degrades too fast.

Either burst needs to be nerfed so its not so strong as to 1 shot everyone through barrier, or necromancers defenses need to be looked at to be more viable for pvp.

Zefiris.8297:

Unpopular factoid:
Despite shroud’s current state, we are still really good in PVP. This means that PVP buffs, ESPECIALLY in terms of stability, would likely make us close to OP, if not OP.

Necros do not have trouble in PVP. We’re a focus target, precisely because our defense is not one of the absolute damage prevention defenses, but there will ALWAYS a focus target, it being us is not an inherent problem.

Any post that argues that we need PVP buffs will likely be discarded by the devs, because Necros simply do not need such buffs. The only area in the game where necros really need help is PVE.

Although necromancers do well in low end PvP this isn’t the case in high end. Because necromancers are, 9 times out of 10, the ones being focused down is actually not a good sign. And I’ll explain why.

The nature of the universe says that all objects and all living organisms will opt to choose the path of least resistance most of the time. How does this relate to the necromancer you might ask? Well this rule applies in game. In a 5v5 situation your best option is to try and tip the scales in your favor. Usually by changing the match from a 5v5 fight into a 5v4 fight. Now how can you do that? Well, the obvious answer is to strike the opponent who’s Defenses have poor scaling. Because all other classes have a wide breadth of scaling defenses and means to break focus on them them because less viable targets. In a situation where every single foes has the potential for good or decent scaling defenses picking the wrong target can mean a up hill battle. But using the information you gather from your opponent can increase your odds of picking the right target. And your odds of finding that target increases as the fights continue. However, this is where necromancer comes in. Because necromancers have extremely poor scaling defenses this takes away a strategic equation that you or the opposing team will have to fight against. Because of this you skip the information gathering part of the fight and can quickly dispatch the necromancer before it can become a threat. Thus the fight becomes a 5v4. The 4 remaining players are at a further disadvantage here too. Not only did they lose an ally, but they’ve also lost a pair of eyes which can help with information gathering. Meaning that the 5 can more quickly discern the other weaknesses of the opposing party, while the opposite is true for the 4 group. Thus the 5 group gets a clear numerical advantage over the opposing team.

So you want to counter play that and abuse that common strategy? Well, you are fighting an up hill battle. Now what do I mean by that? Well, if you plan on countering the opposing team by using a strategy that moves necromancer’s to the center of defense you sacrifice allied abilities so that the necromancer can do its job. Which means you are putting more effort into keeping the necromancer alive than you would say a warrior or mesmer. A group like this not only has to be aware of themselves they need to be very aware of their necromancer who’s fairly defenseless which divides their attention. The whole “babysitting” issue you see come up a lot. This is a path that requires far more work then its honestly worth since other professions can do what the necromancer does just as well. And with something like Spellbreaker which takes the most prominent area necromancer’s excel at, boon removal, out of their hands and into something that has a far better chance of surviving on its own.

Zefiris.8297:

From that perspective, is shroud really that good?
In PVP, yes, but in PVE; no, because the extra survivability doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter in the open world. So what, then, is the issue with the shroud in PVE?

Well, damage. It limits all your utility options, while not granting useful damage (no, ice fields are not a good damage option, not in realistic situations).

It would likely go a long way to add a grand master trait to soul reaping that allows utility skill usage in shroud (add it to Death Perception, maybe), and add another elsewhere in soul reaping that removes the incoming damage reduction and converts it to an outgoing damage bonus.

In pve it has problems here as well. Like you said, and what I said in my original post, it locks you out of utility. I didn’t elaborate much into this since I’ve made dozens of posts relating to this topic and felt it wasn’t necessary for me to harp on it in too much detail. Mainly because its sort of a “We get it Lily.. Okay.. we get it!”

Utility Skills need to be baseline for shroud. No traits. If we do that we end up with the same issue that Signets are having right now. You shouldn’t have to take a grandmaster to be on par with other existing professions.

Thank you for the precise description + examination of the shroud issues. Necromancer is the only class which didnt’t get any close attention since release (in comparison to ranger e.g. which got full rework at some point) and releasing new specs will only make it more transparent, how non-responsive and non-synergetic are the core necromancer traits. So in order to enjoy and use the potetial of new necro content arenet really needs to look in base class functionality. In your post it becomes visible that a 2nd healthbar was a life saving tool during the first year of the game. With the growing utility options and burst of several classes, it became a demage-to death-sponge(bob) and certainly needs a rework for our beloved necromancer.
Thank you Lily, i see you as a constructive voice of the necromancer community.

For a long, long, time, Necromancer was considered by Arenanet to be an easier profession to play because of Death Shroud, the higher health pool, and the minion army. To provide “balance”, Necromancer was suitably handicapped but Necro did apply conditions, which were harder to remove in the early days.

Now that all professions have mechanics to handle conditions and can spam boons, Arenanet probably looked at Necromancer and figured its condition management skills needed an update to handle the new meta and adequately punish boon-heavy builds.

Death Shroud really could use some updates as its performance has been fixed as power, boon, and condi creep has pulled some of its teeth.

flow.6043:

I have argued my position just like everyone else here.

Not really, you just repeatedly stated “everyone not using a staff is bad because I said so”
You never actually tried to justify that ridiculous opinion.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Now they just need to do something with Unyielding Blast.

They did, it’s called Scourge. If you thought scourge already had meme worthy damage with it’ burn stacking, wait till you see those burn ticks with 25 stacks of vuln.

Staff is just op with chill trait, thats why it is in the build, even without soulreaping(the unblockable marks is just waste of trait anyways) you build lf with heal skill(and prock reaper runes) shout gives unblockable(+removes boons) and procks runes. Chillbains alone does like 6k dmg/ target when not cleansed. You transfer condis with putrid Mark and apply mild aoe pressure with 2. Like nerf to vp and sos made soulreaping dead line anyways.

Kinda dont agree with metabattles choise of stats, you do want like 1,8k Power, around 1,2k condi dmg, then maybe 20-30% crit and some ferocity while having 2,8k armor. Healing Power is waste tho.

I am always amazed at how seriously bad some of the Metabattle builds are.

I read all but just by playing you know it is not it’s in fact the worst defense in the game

• Stability: Its own section since it is extremely important. Stuns can ruin your day. but stability can stop a stun in its tracks so you can keep fighting. Stability is great, however it doesn’t compare to active defenses. It can be better than Stunbreaks but not all the time, especially against foes who rip or convert boons.

• Stealth: Stealth can be more powerful than an invulnerability or much weaker, depending on the situation. Stealth avoids damage in a different way, by letting you get out of an unfavorable situation. It can be helpful to mislead your opponent which gives it some offensive capabilities as well. Although i’d say that stealth’s primary function is defensive since a foe often can’t hit what they can’t see.

• Shadowstep/Movement skils: Avoiding attacks that come at you is great. Skills that move you out of an AOE or onto another platform entirely as a means to escape is a good means of defense. Much like stealth this can be phenomenal. However it combos extremely well with stealth to give greater effect.

• Damage reduction buffs: This catagory is talking about defenses that improve your defense in combat that require activation most the time. This could include things like Protection, resistance, frost aura, barrier. These defenses are all extremely helpful when you know dodging isn’t an option, but don’t have the defensive capabilities of some of the stronger defenses I mention above. They’ll reduce your incoming damage and can even negate large chunks. Their issue is that they have most of the same issues as passive defenses and are best in combination with other defenses as a complimentary addition rather than a stand along means of defense. Resistance being the closest one of these buffs that could stand along, but even that has some of the same issues as passive defenses and its duration is often fairly low and still suffers the same issues as stability.

• Debuffs: Debuffing your foes is a means of defense. However it is the least reliable means of defense because it relies on your foe being often times unable to properly defend against your debuffs. Often times we don’t include this in defenses because of how unreliable they can be. Sure you can negate an attack with blind, or reduce incoming damage with weakness. But these are often better served to control your opponent’s actions rather than as a means of keeping yourself alive.

So where does Shroud land in all of this? Shroud is most similar to a damage reduction buff. It has that damage reduction along with the extra health like barrier. And its like a combination of the two. However it has the draw backs similar to invulnerability by locking you out of your bar and none of the benefits of the higher active defenses. It also locks you out of most healing which means that most recovery that other professions can afford to have its a no go while using shroud. Because of this shroud’s defenses are not comparable to the best defenses in the game but doesn’t have the support from lower end defenses either to supplement its many weaknesses, of which it shares with most defenses on this list.

Shroud has further problems with its build up being extremely slow. If it had other defenses like blocks or invulnerability to supplement it with while building shroud up it could be quite formidable. But because of its slow nature, it just can’t stand on its own.

So lets answer my own questions. The answer is no. Although I explained most of them above I’ll put a note at the bottom. The necromancers lack of damage and group utility is really what hurts its usability the most. Because it does almost nothing different compared to other professions and doesn’t even do what it does similar even remotely as well its roles are extremely narrow with them being completely undesired in many situations.

To assume that giving the necromancer more party support or more damage would make them too desirable compared to other professions is laughably wrong. Warriors with their banners, Mesmers with their alacrity, projectile reflects, quickness, ranger with a whole slue of unique buffs, guardians with similar support but more of it.

Even with the removal of shroud on the scourge, the fact that the core class is so lacking in party support could sink the possibilities of a support scourge working. People are still questioning weather or not it could be viable and asking what could it bring to the table that someone else couldn’t do much better? And I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know that its clear that the issues that scourge will face are not because of the elite spec itself, but because of the core class its attached to.

In conclusion. Shroud is not as good as arena net thinks it is.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of shroud as a defence. The problem lies in that it’s based on static numbers. This means it will always either be too strong or too weak.
In a specific scenario it will always be too strong or too weak while blocks/evades/invulns will always negate all damage that gets thrown at them which makes them, which makes them work well in all scenarios without being too strong or too weak(with a few exceptions that is scenario dependant).

Because this game varies so greatly with incoming damage between wvw,pvp, pve and even between different areas of those gametypes you can’t make static numbers work when we also have defences that ignore numbers completely unless you specifically balance the game around static number defences which Anet clearly hasn’t.

Shroud works really well in areas like fractals because you can reduce the amount of damage you take very easily by proper positioning and by dodging the main attacks that hurts. Because if you know what you are doing in fractals you can easily make sure you have get more lifeforce than you use even on lifeforce starved condi builds just because the incoming damage in that case is low. And for most pve you also have the benefit that you can reliably get lifeforce back through killing things. In most of pve Shroud is very strong because the most dangerous attacks have huge tells and are either infrequent enough to use are dodges for or easily avoidable while the rest of the incoming damage is low relative to lifeforce generation.

Now in pvp we can’t rely on people dying to keep our lifeforce up in fights so that aspect is worth mentioning in most scenarios. In pvp it’s were most evidence of the problem of static numbers are shown. In season 1 and 2 were it was a bunker meta the overall incoming damage was very low. This made shroud really good because lower incoming numbers made shroud strong to maintain due the lifeforce generation/incoming damage ratio was in our favour. The difference in efficiency between lifeforce and blocks/evades/invulns were much more even at that point were lifeforce would be better in 1v1 scenarios and blocks/evades/invulns would be better against multiple foes.

In the current meta were it’s a lot of burst and high packages of damage the ratio of lifeforce generation/incoming damage is heavily skewed against us. I know that we should never be able to gain more lifeforce than the damage we take as that could potentially make us invincible but the ratio should not be allowed to be this skewed without giving us something to make up for it which we haven’t got. This just makes blocks/evades/invulns way stronger than lifeforce as a defence because the incoming damage is as high as it is.

Anet is not really wrong in calling is really tanky because in pve were most incoming damage is pretty low we are kinda invincible. But that is only in that specific scenario. In the current pvp meta shroud makes us almost freekills because it can’t deal with the frequent and high packages of incoming damage. If they want to make the current implementation of shroud to be equal to blocks/evades/invulns they have to rebalance the whole game around it. And in that case it would just be better if they changed how shroud works and make it properly scalable.

All of this is why I have very little faith in barrier as a defensive tool because it has the same problem of balance as shroud has. I might have missed or got something wrong but it’s late and I’m tired.

To be exact, entering in shroud remove movement impairing condition and grant swiftness with SoS. That is to say that the condition removal and swiftness application is once every 10 seconds granted that you flashed shroud. If a necromancer happen to corrupt your swiftness just after you enter shroud, you’ll just be plague by the cripple effect right away and that’s probably what Deceiver point out.

There is also a cap on movement speed which happen to be 25% allowing characters with passive 25% to run as fast as characters under swiftness if they are not in combat or under the effect of movement impairing conditions. This is why mesmers and guardian drool over having passive 25% speed since they have none on their core profession.

As for dagger, it’s an interesting tool. Melee is not nearly as kittenome think, providing reliably tons of LF and doing as much damage as greatsword on foes above 50% health. Dagger #2 certainly feel unsatisfying whatever change they try on it, owever, dagger #3 can be an insanely good tool when it come to pin done someone in one place (it’s only bad point is the cast time which tend to kill the purpose of the skill).

Personnally, my ain issue with speed of shadow is that the cleanse effect seem to step onto the toes of relentless pursuit. It just feel like one trait effect had been created because the other trait was to weak for use and they are to lazy to change this trait now that scourge is coming.

Flow-

You just really don’t get it… SoS is and was a better trait than Soul Marks or any staff-using power reaper outside of hyper-organized sPvP groups. The shroud flickering and movespeed which cannot be corrupted, stripped, stolen or removed in any way, shape, or form were what made the trait actually worth taking.

The only buff it has now is when flickering shroud for non-shroud movespeed. But that’s pointless because if out-of-shroud movespeed was super important, you’d run warhorn or SotL instead; both of which were very potent in their own rights.

I also ran axe before it got buffed so there’s no need to lecture me. I actually ran SoS + A/D + GS before people started moving from Soul Marks and before any of the kits were buffed because they have amazing potential when played well. If you really want to go digging through my hundreds of posts since HoT, you’ll find me saying that and a large number of people (who since moved to A/D + GS + SoS disagreeing with what I had to say. I tried staff for the initial few weeks of reaper, and while silly when comboing SS into Chillblains’ poison field for 24 poison stacks, it wasn’t very good.).

I think OH dagger is just as good in a majority of settings. The higher cooldowns and ease-of-dodging marks (which have longer cast times, more obvious tells, etc.) isn’t worth the tradeoff. In a larger group fight or heavily-organized one where the necro is babysat? Sure, it’s a good kit. But are the gains really oh-so-strong? Not really.

GS is the better PvP weapon over dagger. It almost has been from the beginning. AA chain 1/2 and Nightfall/Grasp make the kit astonishingly strong. Gravedigger is absolute garbage, but a power reaper shouldn’t be camping outside of shroud any longer than necessary to a few essential GS hits.

CtD gets overridden by the Signets of Suffering trait necessary in conjunction with SotL for the movespeed bonus. I typo’d the trait out of it. This occupies a trait slot replacing CtD as well as a utility slot which could have previously been swapped into depending on matchup or environment (Cleanse/Stunbreak are obviously very much necessities in a power reaper build, a typical “best combo” being Suffer and SA).

You consistently seem to fail to recognize the merit of the old SoS movespeed bonus, which is why CtD can’t realistically be traited since an aggressive power reaper depends so much on the movespeed from the Signet trait: It cannot be removed. A power reaper/thief matchup used to be fairly winnable – if not easy depending on the thief’s kit – unless the thief was astonishingly good at abusing Daredevil (and often needed to also be running Acro for HtC due to GS’s capacity to CC-lock/instakill a thief with one well-placed and well-timed GDarkness+shroud combo). Swiftness can and will be stripped, stolen, and corrupted. By every profession. It only takes an interrupt and the right sigils and it’s gone. Or a thief stealing with BT or LS which now out-paces you by a huge margin without the swiftness (also, S/D thief was buffed and is run much more often now, so good luck maintaining it), or a mesmer with GS3 which is already at range and probably running chronomancer, or another necromancer turning it into cripple from any number of corrupts (such as scepter AA) and laughing as you get ganked and can’t even play catchup.

It is a shame, I’d love to duel you. I can’t actually recall a time which I’ve lost a fair fight to a power reaper running staff; they’re normally just free kills.

flow.6043:

DeceiverX.8361:

flow.6043:

…

Depends heavily on chosen builds. My aggressive power reaper gains nothing from Soul Marks since it doesn’t have any use for staff

You’re just confirming my point.

Your build is weaker than any build that uses a staff because they use a staff and you don’t.
The problem isn’t how the change affected your build but that you shoudn’t have run that build in the first place.

DeceiverX.8361:

The change in cooldowns is nearly a 50% increase in windows of opportunity for your opponents versus before.

I know you’re trying to say that 3 is almost 50% of 7.
But I call bs if you try to argue that in every fight you ever had you spent all time in Shroud except for the occasional 7 seconds (and not more) to generate life force.

DeceiverX.8361:

To get equal effect, you need to run Spite/SotL amd drop CtD therr as well, so just to have the same level of offensive pressure as before, you need to sacrifice a trait, a utility, have 50% increased windows of vulnerability, lose a ~1k burst from a modified spinal shivers, and have lower damage in general.

I don’t understand what you mean here. Maybe post some build calc links.

DeceiverX.8361:

Further your point only holds in sPvP. WvW soul mark reapers are absolutely demolished compared to SoS ones from the faster pace of combat.

Wrong.

Lmao, okay.

So Basically, we’re seeing underpowered builds already nerfed because reasons and that it doesn’t matter, and anyone who plays without a staff is bad.

I’m sorry but you’re beyond reasoning. At this point I’m just clearing the air so people unfamiliar don’t get confused by what is honestly just nonsense.

The staff is a garbage weapon for power reaper. It used to have a fair use-case because it was the best ranged option for power necro because Axe sucked. Axe got buffed and is one of the top weapons necro has. A/D brings everything staff has save the fear, except it also has everything on lower cooldowns that aren’t obvious to dodge through, retaining superior power coefficients and better boon corruption, with much better synergy for vuln stacking, and GS is the best melee option that necromancer has when in good hands.

Would love to see your super-powerful staff power build.

Right, it doesn’t exist.

Spinal shivers on three boons and a power build meant to actually kill things hits 4-5k easily on targets with three boons, which is nearly everyone these days. CtD being overriden by SotL for the necessary 25% mobility to keep power shroud builds relevant immediately bumps the burst of this proc alone by 1k damage on its hit and all subsequent hits by a substantial margin. On a target below half, this usually means 1-1.5k damage lost per AA hit in shroud. There really isn’t much math needed here. This is common knowledge to people who actually play an aggressive power reaper.

The CDR is massive when flickering shroud between negation and alternating weapons and utilities and use of DCharge. A power reaper should want to spend the least amount of time possible outside of shroud when engaged with his enemy unless performing necessary actions that require leaving shroud, such as transferring mass condition application, corrupting important boons, or stunbreaking a pre-burst-combo CC that’d otherwise just waste LF.

flow.6043:

Crinn.7864:

The primary cause of death for necromancers in PvP is getting spiked while shroud is on cooldown. old Speed of Shadows meant that necromancer had a lower vulnerability window.

I’m using this quote but my answer to it is supposed to address everyone who is bothered by the change to Speed of Shadows:

The primary cause of death for those who think they got nerfed by having 3 more seconds on their Shroud cooldown is the fact that they don’t use a staff in PvP and therefore don’t need Soul Marks (which imo is the only reason one should pick Soul Reaping for PvP at all).

Depends heavily on chosen builds. My aggressive power reaper gains nothing from Soul Marks since it doesn’t have any use for staff, and non-boon movespeed is huge for reapers which orient themselves towards shroud. The change in cooldowns is nearly a 50% increase in windows of opportunity for your opponents versus before.

To get equal effect, you need to run Spite/SotL amd drop CtD therr as well, so just to have the same level of offensive pressure as before, you need to sacrifice a trait, a utility, have 50% increased windows of vulnerability, lose a ~1k burst from a modified spinal shivers, and have lower damage in general. Previously-winnable matchups like power rev snd dh are now a huge struggle because there’s no wiggle room left in the build.

Further your point only holds in sPvP. WvW soul mark reapers are absolutely demolished compared to SoS ones from the faster pace of combat.

So Anet can we get the cooldown reduction back?

There are quite a lot of smaller guilds in WvW. In PvE guilds provide very little benefit as open world is either easily soloable or requires hundreds of players same time in same map.

The penalty is fine, if too lenient, as it is. My link server has gotten a lot of transfers and there is definitely no loss of moral and no complaining about the penalty. This is just another case of “gimme now”, but really in the grand scheme of the game, the extra wait is nothing.

Stop bandwagoning every 2 weeks would solve all your problems.

TheHeretic.3529:

My guild is split between a locked host server and a single link. While we were making our decision if we would call the host our permanent home, that’s when it locked (months back) and has had us separated and it’s out of our control. We’ve picked up even more members since then, on both the link and the host. We plan to move to the host if it ever unlocks again and consolidate our group. Gold/gems aren’t an issue.

You’re both right, it’s there to deter ‘bandwagoning,’ but it doesn’t stop it, and it hurts the players who want to stay with their own guild. If there were an exception to the penalty, such as transferring between the host/link or being given the option to move to the new link on the host, it would solve this, even if it still required the gems.

It hurts the entire mode of gameplay to cram people onto already full servers.

Coordinate with your guild and travel downward. Make a name for yourselves and push your server up. Stop thinking that T1 means the best tier. Have your ENTIRE guild join up on the linked server. Problem solved, especially if you say gems are not an issue.

It’s ridiculous that you expect Anet to open up a full server, and if you plan on finding a “home” as you say, then one week is nothing compared to months of gaming fun on a set server.

The definition of anti-bandwagonning is trying to find ways to deter players from jumping from server to server. One week is frankly too little. It should be a month.

And why is bandwagonning a bad thing? Because it stacks servers, creates runaway matches, and is no fun for the entire health of the game.

Spread out.