Did a temple run in Orr with Reaper and was startled by lower than normal champ credit; I.E., fewer coffers. I switched to a standard Necromancer power build and still had difficulty getting coffers. Reaper had only the first two minors and four majors. Armor was exotic zerker-scholar in both cases.
My guess is either other professions were doing more damage, or there was a bug / secret nerf in rewards. An Ele friend was having similar trouble but was not running Tempest.
Right now, my best guess for why to take Chilling Nova and maybe Runes of the Reaper is if you are using a condition damage build and trait Deathly Chill. Then, more chills give more damage so perma-chill on everything within reach makes sense.
I understand and wish you the best of joy and happiness. Your thoughts were always appreciated.
Minions have it rough trying to catch up all the time in VB. Sometimes it gets weird.
Honestly, put minions on gliders and you have to do the same with clones, turrets, banners, bears, elementals, spirits, etc.
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Reaper should have a stovepipe hat with a ribbon around it for a second color. The top hat skin in the BLTC is close.
The thing about horror movies is the monsters often look like perfectly reasonable people until they attack!
I plan on using Reaper’s Reading Glasses on a partly Dry Bones set or use a Cabalist set with its stock hood.
I would trade that chill for +30% base chill and weakness duration.
Minions not dieing can be inconvenient sometimes but they are pretty strong in Verdant Brink. As long as I keep updating the correct target for the minions, they work well enough. It is targeting that goofs things up the most for me.
Need to grind events for a while but Valkyrie or a mix is my goal. Reaper is nerfed hard without full specialization.
Will try mixing some healing in with vitalityto see how it works vs all vitality. Power is top priority with ferocity and vitality being more flexible.
Aside from greatsword, I will probably still run 2 giver’s weapons with malice, bursting, force, lightning, or energy, depending on the build and situation.
I just logged in, yesterday, and chose a greatsword with expertise. 113 expertise was about 7.5% condition duration, iirc. Trading offensive stat’s for condition duration is not good for Necro-Reap. Our condition duration is a huge part of our sustain. On the other hand, other professions will have less direct damage or defensive stat’s with duration stat’s – a bit less “free” dps.
Really unhappy about pizza nerf.
Reward for killing Mordrem in a <3 event to counter Harpy pheromones.
Dagger has faster attack speed, higher AA dps, and better sustain, IMO, and will be a legitimate reaper weapon.
I prefer to use Transfusion to heal minions over MoB. With axe now 900, staff is not even that helpful for setting targets at range.
CPC seems fine where it is, to me. Why must all AoE be a well? I rather like having AoE without being forced to one trait line.
NCSY works well against multiple trash mobs. I think it was designed for PvE 1vX and had boon strip and Unblockable added to support PvP.
Generally an improvement even with fewer Death Novas. I may prefer cast and CD reduction but reduced damage taken from untargeted AoE works.
Spamming gravedigger on anything but a NPC vet or lower is like killing yourself. It generates no life force and has easy counterplay. A couple of them in a row is all I’d think of risking unless I knew I was totally safe to dps. I do not want to get into the habit of jamming number 2 whenever I can. My priority with greatsword after coming out of DS is rebuilding LF and reapplying conditions.
What if I want my minions to die?
The PvE change to reduce AoE wiping of minions is generally good, though an alternative I selfishly prefer is to have cast time and respawn cool down cut.
Scepter could use more life force. A condition damage build only really has scepter to support it.
Greatsword can support condition damage with deathly chill but chill has nothing to do with bleeding or poison. Reaper and scepter do not have synergy.
Scepter works a little with corruption skills but not nearly as well as other professions and their condition damage builds having trait lines supporting weapons and utilities for a toward a common condition.
There are no off hand or alternative main hand weapons that bleed. Only staff and upgrades bleed so there is nothing to switch to.
Kulvar, why would you think Necromancer needs a nerf? It is still a slow, low mobility, profession with only Transfusion and the durability to be a res-bot for group support. Dps is very good when it is stacked with boons but not the best.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Anchoku.8142
You still do not have to wear ascended armor or craft a legendary to participate in new end-game content. No one is “forcing” players to do something they do not want. All of the new collectibles are unnecessary and fully optional.
Please change 3 things.
1. Stat scaling – healing, toughness, and condition damage base should be lowered and scaling factor increased to increase build variety.
2. Healing and res’ing, anything that increases ally HP, boon application, and condition removal should count toward participation, though how much is debatable.
3. Update aggro tables to more accurately reflect threat levels to NPC opponents. Healing 5 allies for 4k each > 15k crit > some low damage, low heal, high toughness build. Aggro should be much more strongly linked to aggregated health recovery and damage. Aggro, now, is too weighed toward toughness, making players avoid it in PvE.
I would like to see Lingering Curse do something for other weapons or skills like reducing weapon swap CD, casting a mini Epidemic on crit with ICD for all weapons, adding two bleeds to Mark of Blood, or reducing cool down to all Fears by 20%.
Celestial is not that good for PvE. Death Shroud likes vitality and healing. Death Magic likes toughness so the more you have with DM, the better it works.
The problem with Celestial-Divinity is that a lot of stat’s do not scale well. The difference between having zero and a thousand is not that great because base values for most stats are already pretty good. Celestial lies between pretty good at base and very good at maxed out. However, when you factor in specializations like Soul Reaping, Death Magic, or others you get more benefit by maxing stat’s they synergize with than going with a generalist approach to stats.
Oooh, and when you /peep you can also like or dislike their build and equipment; perhaps even post helpful comments to their profile and screen shots of an awesome moment.
Ravens and crows are also avian geniuses. Maybe we should start a debate on how Norns, Charr, Humans, Sylvari, and REAL GENIUSES regard ravens.
I’ll start.
Norn – A sacred bird who watches over us during binges
Charr – Too small to eat unless we are very hungry
Human – An omen of death
Sylvari – Fascinating and highly intelligent… And they fly!
Asura – Sylvari make much more entertaining subjects
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Does the staff spout poetry? If so, would it be Norn poetry or poetry from whichever species holds it?
Druid will be an almost pure healing role and operate from the back line.
Between Druid and the front line will be Dragon Hunter setting traps and giving defense buffs while Revy and Chronomancer support the front line in their own ways.
Front line is Reaper playing a rock to be tripped over while Daredevil, Berserker, Scrapper, and Tempest zoom all over.
Vampiric Aurora is too weak to support intense combat. Ranger and other professions will do vastly more powerful heals and offer stronger damage modifiers.
I am guessing Necromancer will only be useful for AoE damage and the Transfusion gimick. Maxed out on boons and other damage modifiers Necro should be excellent for holding a point against waves of veterans and champs.
Rangers certainly will not be unwanted. I just wish Necro had group support so desirable. Transfusion and spamming 2 on greatsword is all i can think of atm. Chill will be ignored in PvE and the first raid does not need piles of AoE soft CC or cleave.
Dungeons let experienced players with highly tuned builds make gold faster than the developers like. It is probably that simple and Arenanet does not want to fix the problems becaiuse of cost and priority.
Traditional tanks have special skills to hold aggro at the cost of dps and other party support skills. A real tank needs outside dps to make kills quickly and outside healing to survive but allows squishy, high dps jobs to survive bu holding aggro away from them.
The level of cooperation required is far higher than anything Gw2 requires because if a role goes down, it can lengthen a fight deamatically or cause a party wipe. This is why a “trinity” is bad – it either works beautfully or fails catastrophically so teams become very picky over who to group with and statics are the norm.
Be careful of assumptions. Neither Reaper, nor Druid are very resistant to hard CC. Both are designed with defensive and offensive gaps to be filled by other professions.
Specializations imply HoT will require more than two jobs cooperating for more than casual PUG encounters.
Personally, I think path-selling, skipping, and the speed-zerk vs casual-whatever “class separation” are the main problems.
Dungeons are old content. They favor some classes and punish others creating balance issues. The same is true for new players vs old. Arenanet never rebalanced dungeons. Aetherpath is the most modern and is wildly unpopular because of its difficulty and lack of speed hitting both new and speed players.
I would like to change stats in Shroud with a weapon swap. Can I have it, please, a swap between Berserker and Cleric?
Ps
Plague Sending is mandatory and potent for corruption skills so the trade for killing yourself is not as great as it seems.PS: I also think the self-inflicted conditions are not a great idea because the devs seem to count them in the list of “benefits” for the balance, precisely because of condition transfer. I would rather the skills consume life force or health, something not transferable.
No argument here but, apparently, corruption skills were designed to require Plague Sending – an obscure and unusual profession mechanic if there ever was one.
OP, Reaper may not seem like it but I found the specialization highly dependent on external support. Dps and sustain ramped up quickly with new support specializations like Druid, Tempest, Chronomancer, and Dragonhunter. With boons and healing Necro does not have, Reaper became a shredder. However, when support scattered, XD
- druids cannot leave astral form and keep the energy they had left: they start from 0
- druids cannot use this “energy pool” as a secondary life, though of course the amount of healing makes up for it… a lot
- druids can in principle use any weapon to build astral force, but in practice only one works. Oh wait, necro too
- druids cannot give much damage while in astral form
- druids can use their utilities while in astral form (grrrr)
- druids can receive healing while in astral form (grrrr)
so quite different. But druids and necro could benefit from each other’s mechanics
- no incoming healing in death shroud is hard (and maybe unfair) for necros
- not having the possibility to use astral form for 1 or 2 skills only and pop out of it after + having most astra skills with very similar function (i.e. healing) means astral form is spammy as kitten. I had high hopes but it ended up being super boring to play.
Totally agree
Reaper Necro is AoE dps
Druid Ranger is AoE heal
A match made in heaven… unless the Necro is in Shroud so, a match made somewhere else.
Personally, I would like BiP to give AoE fury and vigor in addition to might.
Epidemic should strip boons as well as duplicate conditions.
Corrupt Boon and Plague should do huge damage to break bars and burn three stacks of Defiance.
These are things that do not add nitrous oxide to the might/vuln turbo. They improve current utilities sideways.
Ps
Plague Sending is mandatory and potent for corruption skills so the trade for killing yourself is not as great as it seems.
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Silverkey, there are plenty of damage bonus gimicks in the game. The trick is in not allowing them to cross-stack.
Consumables, upgrades, class mechanics, etc. are all accounted for in boss models. Utilities and skills that do not stack between players are easier on PvE balance. In other words, the skill should be a 1-stack like chill is or like burning was. Even then, if it adds to the Necro’s dps, something is usually traded unless Necro is deemed under powered.
Reaper is still Necromancer – characterized by low ranged damage, no mobility skills or stealth for avoiding engagement, lots and lots soft CC that is of little use against PvE bosses, mediocre healing skills, poor boon support, and terrible condition damage.
Uniquely useful and potent group support skills include Transfusion with its pull on downed players and ability to stand in one place and AoE multiple targets.
Necromancer/Reaper is a short range tower defense profession.
The dev’s set the vulnerability and might stack limits to 25 to prevent bosses from being burned down too fast by stacking bonuses to dps. A sure way to beat the limit of 50% increased dps will be difficult to justify.
Necromancer has a better chance at gaining utility that does not directly circumvent dps limits set by developers.
Well, the standard option often discussed here is make Terror a minor trait and/or add more damage.
I appreciate the uses of Fear in positioning opponents and with Torment but question it’s potency. Fears on Necromancer are short. Any longer than a second and the opponent would stun-break, which means Torment damage from running in Fear is not significant.
Necromancer is terrible at control effects.
Fear causes players to face away from the caster and run. What benefit does that have 3 years on?
When the game was released, Warriors could spam Fear Me to force bosses into corners for at least 3 seconds of free dps; more with duration bonuses. That was about all Necromancer was good for, too, because it was far too weak and squishy for a place in the PvE meta.
Necromancer and the rest of the professions have changed a lot over the last 3 years but Fear has not. It was supposed to be a gap opener but Warrior has plenty of mobility options, Necromancer has had Fear and Terror trimmed back, Necromancer has also become more of a close range fighter, and every profession has much greater resistance to conditions and control effects so the niche job of forcing players into a fall is not as effective as it was.
At first, I thought maybe just changing Terror to make players and mobs turn away and cringe would be enough but now I think Fear should do that.
Bhawb left on another thread about chill being a counter to Fear to prevent a target from leaving the short range greatsword and dagger struck me as inefficient skill design. Why have chill, cripple, and bind be required to prevent Necromancer from losing dps when Fear or Terror is used?
Just make those Feared cringe and I can live without a soft CC scattering mobs or causing opponents to flee.
Thoughts?
As far as i can tell, Taunt in GW2 is like a reverse Fear. It does not factor into the aggro table. I would love to be proven wrong though.
In GW2, aggro is predominantly toughness based, which is ludicrous because toughness actually reduces a player’s threat level while not mitigating enough incoming damage to justify the stat. That is the reason for the zerker meta.
Go berserker in PvE for more damage and more sustain. Either the aggro formula is off and punishes bunkers, or the damage reduction scaling for toughness is off, also punishing bunkers.
Arenanet should re-examine how their AI determines threat level because, right now, there is poor incentive in PvE to wear anything but damaging stat’s.
Tanking in GW2 does not mean the same thing as in other games. In this game, it means building for more sustain. That is all. In other games, it means using special skills to hold aggro to prevent the mob from targeting others. In GW2, anyone can tank with the right skills, traits, and equipment. In other games, a profession is designed to capture and hold aggro to increase party dps. Not one profession in GW2 can do that and it is not at all necessary in PvE. Here, all professions can survive running berserker gear. In another game, all professions wearing berserker gear would die without a dedicated tank to hold aggro and external heals to support the tank.
Definitely need more and better underwater content. They could have added a coral reef Quaggon adventure after Southsun for L80 events with more swimming in 3 axes but there is just the original content and one fractal.
With our strongest weapons having practically no range, long Fear durations can drop our dps more than Terror is worth; especially if the target has a movement bonus. Terror should make people /cower, not escape.
Also, long durations will get more stun breaks while Fear is also subject to condition clears, long or short. Fear does not do what was the original intent, anymore.
Necromancer, with or without the Reaper trait line, does a fair amount of AoE damage and healing. Life Transfer “collects” trash mobs for the group to burn them down easier. Transfusion is a good AoE heal and will, hopefully, help shuttle downed players for res’ing. Necromancer is also a source of fields, strong corruption utilities, and soft CC/non-damaging conditions.
None of these abilities are very compelling in PvE because it is too easy and the only teamwork skills needed are mobility, stealth, boon sharing, res’ing, and following memorized puzzle-fights.