Lots of staff hate, here.
First, staff dps is low because Necro is a melee job and dps is intended to fall off with distance… for Necromancer, not other professions.
Second, staff has been nerfed for conditions, somewhat buffed in power AoE, and had 4 traits combined into one. It’s design is archaic in game years but it has had attention.
Third, other options for ranged weapons both have problems. Scepter is a completely condition weapon having no synergy with any other and axe forces players to take lower dps because of its awesome and largely unnecessary vulnerability application.
Fourth, staff is the only 2H weapon for use in transforms like Lich.
Staff is the only 1200 weapon for a profession with a flakey Dark Path and Spectral Grasp as its only closers. Wells are 1200, too, but do not generate LF.
If you just want to camp point in PvP, don’t use staff. You don’t need it when everyone comes to you. There is other content where, for a profession that is always one of the last to arrive at a fight, the reach of staff helps get credit before the fight is over.
Staff needs a refresh, as do scepter and axe, but please don’t waste our time complaining about it in game modes where it is unnecessary. Complain, instead, about staff not being good enough for ranged combat.
I have been asking for a singe-target ranged staff replacement for a couple of years. Staff’s AoE holds it back as a power weapon and its AA power and blast hold it back as a condi weapon.
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I may have but thought it was just being interrupted by CC. Will try it again soon.
Staff can do things other weapons cannot.
Ranged piercing AA
Blast
Fear
Unblockable
Ranged LF gen
Not saying staff is great but it fills in a number of gaps in Necromancer’s tool set.
Necromancer was significantly improved over the last 18 months, as was all the other professions. Enjoy the game.
Wait to see what Robert Gee does with his own rework ideas.
This whole discussion is so very… historic.
Regardless of design themes, Spectral Grasp and Grasping Claws could be more reliable in varied terrain.
Excellent points, Bhawb.
For the MM builds you described, greatsword, Reaper, and shouts do not seem, to me, to add appreciable value, except that Rise could potentially spawn up to 5 putrid explosions.
Do you think the Reaper trait line will join Death Magic as must-have MM trait lines?
Blade of Grass
Hay, Stack on Me!
Grasping Dead, or FoC, should apply chill, too. Maybe changing Lingering Curses to add chill to one of them would help.
Alternatively, a Reaper trait could add chill on cripple, poison, or weakness
Personally, I think each profession’s elite specialization has inherent weaknesses to other specializations. PvE bosses in HoT will also have mechanics that encourage professions to cover for each other.
The one thing GW2 has not done well is encourage team coordination. Only tpvp does that, now. Dungeons have been disappointingly Pug-ish where players zerg however they like and, those who do not do it right, get flamed.
The new raid content will, hopefully, do more to encourage players to cooperate and support one another.
Some in GW2 will dispute my assertion but there is a definite difference in player cooperation between Gw2 and other games where a trinity is absolutely required.
Gender?
Male.
That’s not very progressive but understandable. ;-)
Agree with Bhawb.
My impression is that only Rise will be useful to a MM. Reaper is melee AoE. Minions mostly just target your (single) target. So, until they die, they do not do AoE and will keep switching to the mob of the second. They need leadership and focus. It is difficult for me to explain so I apologize if it sounds wierd or incomplete.
Will Ted Flowers
Reaper is not designed to give support as much as it is to take it.
Go for either as much fear duration as possible to send opponents off clifs, or go for the soft CC to tie them up and damage them.
It is a niche build that really begs for coordination with allies. I tried it just for fun defending gates. I dropped a pile of snow and terrorized them at the same time, then jumped back through the door, or got chain CC’d and burned down. Whatever.
Try terrifying descent on a terror build with runes of snow fall. Death magic, curses, soul reaping with condi duration food
Not the best wvw build but you can drop on targets without having them scatter too far.
Its length may be tied to attack range so the animation looks right.
There’s this one post started by Robert…
Based on your post and observations, it seems like they want to reinforce the idea of a SOFT trinity of Damage, control, support, which we have now but all if it is geared towards DPS to the max, as well as exploiting the AI.
Reaper scales in damage and sustainability with the number of targets but help from sustaining allies could make it much more capable while removing it’s weaknesses.
Tempest can load a group up on boons better than ever but running horn and shouts may trim it’s damage while vastly increasing group damage and sustainability.
Chronomancer makes Necromancer’s soft CC look weak and should be awesome, especially with all the boons Elementalist can give and with Necromancer unloading strong AoE damage.
Diverse group play is coming, I think. I wonder how medium and heavy professions will fit.
Ps: The AoE theme is intriguing and suggests high mob density, though the raid clip showed only a raid vs single boss like old-style traditional dragon events.
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Gems are the same price they have always been. I think the question to ask is why (other) players have so much gold to throw at gems, or why Arenanet seems to like real money over game gold.
I want my clothing tonics converted to skins.
That, and more normal looking stuff.
Considering the three Light armor professions’ elite trait specializations, I have started to think maybe they were designed to reward grouping.
Reaper has potential to become a monstrous killing machine with a lot of opponents and allies to provide buffs and additional LF from deaths.
Mesmer specialization can control a battle, as far as i can tell, with its powerful utilities.
Elementalist specialization is solid boon spamming.
All three are massively AoE focused and highly complimentary. There is probably a reason for that.
Terrain caused a lot of misses in PvE.
Reaper feels best in mixed friend and foe company.
Reaper was designed to be kited and is still as susceptible to hard CC as Necromancer. Close combat and conditions play to Reaper’s strength.
You can literally starve Reaper running great sword of Life Force by staying out of range forcing Reaper to use staff or axe, which effectively changes Reaper into a pear-shaped powermancer.
In PvE, LF generation bugged out on the AA after the first cycle for me. It would happen at various times, sometimes after the first cycle and others after the third. It is only one per cent on the first two hits, anyway, but they regularly proc’d no LF according to the LF bar.
There was a lot riding on the third hit on AA and, as slow as the cycle is, camping AA does not feel good. I would prefer having the third hit’s extras on the first or second.
There seemed to be no synergy between bleed and poison skills and greatsword’s chill-based condition damage. Scepter is just too different to use Reaper in a classic condition damage build.
Reaper life force (and, therefore, sustain) scales strongly with the number of targets. Shroud, shouts, and greatsword are all strongly AoE. Other main hand weapons seemed more solid against lone targets.
The range of greatsword skills could be increased a bit more to help land attacks. I had regular misses for over estimating the range. Compare this to the range of dagger 2, 3, and off hand weapons.
Greatsword was automatically unequipped when changing out Reaper. I would like the skills grayed out rather than removing the weapon.
This may have been my imagination but I thought I saw an about 2k difference in maximum LF between Reaper and Non-reaper builds with Reaper being lower.
Shouts seemed all right considering they scale with target numbers but it should be remembered that 1 v 5 is not an ideal situation to begin with unless you are farming trash mobs. 5 on 5 is much better. Reaper, shouts, and great sword are best in close quarters team fights.
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With the third hit of a slow chain giving half the auto-attack’s LF generation, (provided an odd bug is fixed where suddenly the first two hits stop generating LF), 1v1 with an opponent that dodges could leave the Reaper short on life force but then great sword is not that good an option for the situation, anyway. Waiting two long cycles for a couple of chances at 2% LF generation does not feel that rewarding. Most of my LF generation was from elsewhere like shouts, allies, or traits.
Great sword does not get “good” until the Reaper is surrounded by targets and death, then, it’s like it takes off as a killing machine and its sustain suddenly becomes decent.
Without lots of targets and maybe some team help in creating lots of death, Reaper can be very marginal, indeed. It scales up a lot more than dagger.
I would guess great sword and axe / focus will be a common build when around allies while great sword and dagger / something will be used in areas with low target density. If you are running Soul Reaping, too, staff might be an option for its unblockable marks and added LF generation but it felt like it did not have a lot of synergy despite Chillblains, Reaper’s Mark, and the 1200 range. Then, again, staff is a low damage, ranged, utility weapon.
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If chill were changed to a fully-stacking condition, then the impairment may be something like this:
1 chill reduces movement (except mobility skills) by 10% up to a 50% cap and skill ICD by 5% to a 50% cap, except on bosses where it takes a stack of 10 to equal a stack of 1.
Then, every profession gets its chill application skills reviewed.
I am thinking Rise! may replace the Shadow Fiend in my MM build. In a crowd, the extra Putrid Explosions will do more than the black balloon.
Bone Fiend will, of course, remain on the utility bar for its ranged damage and immobilize. Bone Minions are part of the Putrid Explosion mess so they stay, too. Flesh Wurm is for special situations with its strong attack, port, and inherent stability.
Scepter needs a complete rework of the 3 skill, reliable LF generation, and then just more condition damage overall. It also shouldn’t have an overloaded AA, the AA right now is mostly okay, its the 2/3 skills that are a big issue.
For Reaper’s condi, the fact that every fear turns into chill is enough chill application when paired with other sources of chill.
I agree and would also like to see a short-range bleed weapon introduced after great sword.
Scepter is designed for medium-long range kiting but it lacks power for direct damage. There is no dps reward for melee. Swapping to axe or dagger main hand for closer range play just lets all the bleeds fall off the stack making the condition damage armor distinctly sub-par.
For condition damage stat armor to really be worth wearing and for scepter to become useful in more game situations, the profession needs a weapon that can maybe do axe-level direct damage and still maintain a short bleed stack.
Great sword’s chill damage on Deathly Chill has no synergy at all with scepter. It is like scepter was completely left out of the future of Necromancer. On one side, we have bleeds and poison on old skills, while on the other, everything revolves around chill. Trying to put together a condition damage Reaper was like trying to bandage two professions to each other. There were no similar problems with typical power builds.
There seems to be a bug in GS AA LF generation. On first AA, it generates 1% for the first two hits and 2% on the third but LF generation but sometime later it gets buggered and does not generate the 1%. When, exactly, this happens I cannot say, just that the 1% stops working.
I went to Cursed Shores for a comparison to Verdant Brink and started playing with the LF generation on GS. The great sword generally is as strong as, or stronger than, dagger but does not have as much sustain from LF or life siphon. Deaths, utilities like shouts, and traiting help improve LF generation so 1 vs many seems to work more in GS’s favor, provided there is enough of a crowd and enough death. The scaling feels functionally different than dagger. Great sword actually feels like it works a lot better with allies and in a crowd of enemies than dagger. Perhaps it simply needs help from allies to generate LF to help it keep doing maximum damage and sustain where dagger is closer to a solo experience.
One other thing I thought I saw was a difference in full LF when Reaper was selected versus when Reaper was not with the Reaper specialization being maybe 2K less. Can anyone confirm?
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Great sword damage seems good enough right now but it needs more LF generation, particularly on Aa. The skills could also use a bit more range. Reaper’s low mobility means pulls and AoE range are crucial.
I agree with increasing range of GS skills. One step up on everything, IMO.
Staff auto, BTW, should be increased in range to 1500 with its trait to keep on par with other professions.
What I would not give to have my town clothes be outfits…
Prediction :
Trahearne gets corrupted, is going to pull a Scarlet, and will be one of the final bosses of the expansion until he is “saved” and marries Caith to raise deadly little flowers and a baby Glint.
So far in Verdant Brink, I prefer dagger/focus over greatsword.
Dagger is 8% LF gen on a shorter AA and is pretty steady. The siphon is also rock solid.
Focus is 3% LF per bounce for up to 4 bounces and can regenerate the LF pool quickly even against single opponents. Reaper’s touch is on an 18 sec ICD.
Greatsword is currently 0/0/2%, as near as i can tell, for AA. Gravedigger has 0% LF. Death Spiral supposedly has 2% on a 12 sec ICD. There is no LF on Nightfall and Grasping Darkness has 4% but on a 30 sec ICD.
I am going to look over the traiting to see if there is a way to boost this.
Greatsword is easier to dodge and evade. It should have more LF generation per hit because there is less certainty each hit will connect and the amount of time to complete an AA cycle is longer.
Just my opinion
I just watched my LF bar. Greatsword AA is actually 0% for the first two hits. Tool tip is wrong.
i have been running vital persistence and it seems to work right when no one is hitting me. perhaps the attacks in verdant brink are just that much more damaging.
taking a break and may reconfigure to standard necro to compare vital persistence performance.
one other problem for necromancers is the lack of reflects, projectile destruction, and evades. it seriously feels like running through a wvw filled with zerker long-bow rangers. tentacles shooting poison bombs also did not help
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Dagger is 0/2/6% and attacks much faster. Greatsword should be something like 2/6/8 %
I am running all shouts in Verdant Brink and they still feel weak.
The number of mobs has to reach 4-5 before they feel stronger, including the heal, but then death is certain. The scaling could use adjustment. Wells or Spectral skills feel so much better. Perhaps it is because I am more experienced with them but the only shout that felt worth using was Chilled to the Bone, and that was for the damage and stability rather than the nearly non-functional chill.
I’d tripple all the damage values. Wells hit so much harder and gave protection with siphons.
To me, life force generation running greatsword felt terribly slow. Part of the problem feels like LF is generated on the third AA rather than the first. Letting GS AA for several seconds just for a couple bits of LF felt wrong.
What are your thoughts?
i went through RS pretty quickly. there are two things i have noticed
1. archers in verdent brink burn through hp stupidly fast. they may be doing the same to shroud. archers could sit pretty and burn away my hp while melee mobs fought up close.
2. life force generation on greatsword is ugly slow for a short range weapon. i had to switch to dagger for both heals and life force generation constantly.
chill seems completely ineffectual. the damage added is fine but the actual condition hardly seems to make a difference.
Ele’s top end dps aside, the problem is really PvE.
Bosses need to…
Corrupt or strip boons.
Chase the highest dps players harder instead of lower dps bunkers who are less of a threat.
Dodge red circles and skills with long tells theyay be weak to.
Try to reset the fight or use special moves when they are losing.
Counter control effects, mobility skills, and stealth.
Lynnie, I would like to see how Reapers deal with ranged attacks like longbow Ranger or staff Ele who may opt to kite Reaper.
Also, look at performance against hard CC, evades, and high mobility.
Elementalist needs top end damage skills lowered. The problem with Ele is, once the pressure from opponents is off the profession, damage skyrockets. Force Ele’s to stay alive and the numbers fall back in line.
PvE is just designed to favor specific professions.
Another option is Melandru, though I use Hoelbrak.
Necromancer cannot tank well because real tanks require continuous healing while holding aggro. Guardian or Warrior, maybe Ranger, too, can tank.
Necromancer would miss too much healing from being in Death Shroud.
Mesmer’s clones could be wiped leaving it vulnerable so it may be too squishy and Elementalist may be overwhelmed. Of the three Light armor professions, Necromancer is the tankiest but will only be able to soak medium sustained or brief burst damage.
A true tank will need bunker armor, protection, evades, blocks, and sustained major heals.
Necromancer can help at the front line with high weakness up time, Transfusion, blinds, Vampiric skills, chill, and so on but will probably not be able to survive constant focus fire.
My comments on tanking only apply to group PvE. When playing solo or in PvP or WvW, aggro control becomes a moot point.