Hope Springs eternal.
Downed state got fixed.
None of the elite specializations should be more than a tiny bit better than a non-elite specialization. Mostly, elite specializations are there to improve performance for a particular situation.
Reaper offers shouts and cleaves.
Please adjust the skirt, Arenanet!
Make it a pumpkin skirt or include a ruffled half-slip to hint at why it does not lay right on the hips and legs.
We have all seen this before as Necromancers: Start off nerfed to oblivion and creep up on viability. Buff something a little too much and nerf the snot out of something else that worked really well.
TY, Dulfy!
/just a few more characters
GS has a lot of AoE so of course it should be weaker against single targets. The problem I have is that range is too close to dagger. It should be a bit longer, perhaps 240 minimum.
Its called opportunity cost. The greatsword takes forever to preform its attacks. Because of this, the GS will lose a lot of damage whenever any of these situations arise:
#1: You’re forced to dodge or get out of the way of an enemy attack.
#2: You are interrupted before finishing the long windup
#3: The enemy is killed before you can launch the attack.
#4: The enemy gets knocked away before the attack can finish.
#5: The enemy downs you before you can down it.
#6: The GS is not fighting multiple tightly packed targets.The problem is exacerbated greatly by the following fact: Reaper Shroud’s auto attack has, unboosted, higher DPS than the greatsword. It his the same amount of targets, but does so faster. So really greatsword has no excuse.
I see your point and agree that GS has a massive opportunity cost but…
GS just cannot support PvP as it is with the long cast and after cast times. My intuition says some of the GS skills will receive time or range adjustments.
Fundamentally, an AoE weapon should have lower dps than a single target weapon like dagger (despite dagger now affecting 2 targets on Aa). I feel like Arenanet will keep dagger as max dps for 1-2 targets and scale GS per target.
It might be nice if dagger were refocused in single targets with added damage so GS cleaves and AoE had little to compete with but that is just wishing
I am becoming more convinced GS is meant to compliment, or substitute for, staff. GS could use a little more range but has a purpose.
Axe no longer has a place, even in axe-dreams, and will need rework.
About Death’s Charge, was anyone able to claim an aura with it? I had almost no time with Reaper to see how RS worked with fields.
GS has a lot of AoE so of course it should be weaker against single targets. The problem I have is that range is too close to dagger. It should be a bit longer, perhaps 240 minimum.
This is just my opinion but Necromancer could use another Fear, something like Fear Me!, to proc more interrupts and add to Terror damage. There is too little Fear access, considering Terror and the previous nerfs to Terrormancer that end up trimming condition damage dps. Rise! adds to condition damage but is rather weak. Almost everything about the Reaper line supports only power builds.
Deathly Chill needs to be more potent and it would be nice, imo, to scale damage off the condition damage statistic rather than have it do direct damage on chilled foes < 50% health.
I did not have much time with Reaper but really did not like Jagged Horror. It has no utility as it can be kited too easily. I understand the potential for the bleeds on JH but would rather have the CC from Aatxe.
My second choice would be Bone Fiend for the ranged attacks.
Both suggestions need a new version that decays over time, of course. The Jagged Horror coding was already done but the Horrors still suffer functional problems with low toughness against PvE bosses and low mobility against PvP opponents.
Edit :
A simpler fix room Rise! may be to just change the attack range and speed on Jh. Increase range to avoid some AoE and reduce kiting. Increase attack speed to increase bleed damage.
Jagged Horrors are only used on Rise, Mm trait (?), and Lich so a numbers adjustment is simple.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
Increase velocity and pull downed allies.
I figured this would happen: Design a strong CC elite spec, nerf it to the ground, and leave the elite spec without a purpose. Cannot wait to try it.
I had the same suggestion some time ago. Reaper and GS viability scales with range and expected the narrow cones and short range to be huge handicaps.
Reaper and GS are melee AoE so they should be weaker than single target skills. Making them super slow with big tells and small areas of effect on a profession with no mobility offers too much counter play.
Reaper Shroud sounds like it is good enough to release. I hope to test it before the beta weekend ends.
I expected GS to come out slow and weak because of the cleaves and hope shouts offer some real team utility.
In my honest opinion, I think that the great-sword damage should be buffed and dagger nerfed to be under it. Here’s why:
Currently dagger has too much going for it. Its our main source of LF, Damage, AND skirmish sustain. I think it would fit the playstyle of the dagger much better to be our life steal weapon. The high aa rate and lf generation would make it an excellent choice for that “attrition” style gameplay, especially if the 2nd skill’s cast time was reduced. And to echo those who have posted above me, a slow greatsword should have very heavy hitting attacks.
GS is designed as an AoE weapon so my take on it is to remove the 2-target cleave from dagger and buff it’s skills for 1-target use; maybe add a bleed to the AA. That way there is less functional overlap between GS and dagger.
GS is best for tagging, and mowing down, hapless trash mobs.
The real problem:
Dagger: melee power damage
Greatsword: melee power damage
Reaper Shroud: melee power damageSomething’s got to give. None of the weapons has much other than power damage to offer. Ranged or anti kiting will have to be done by staff, and if staff isn’t good enough, perhaps both dagger and greatsword have to go.
I agree. This has been discussed in other threads but GS seems to be an attempt at giving an alternative to dagger, axe, or staff for greater AoE at short range. Unfortunately, with greater AoE, 1v1 dps should be lower.
The trouble many on the forum have with the GS skills is that short range power AoE was not a priority for improving the profession’s gaps in game play. ‘Why these skills?’ is the first thing I thought of at the preview.
Necromancer does less condition damage than Engineer so power/critical builds tend to fill more roles, particularly in PvE and WvW.
Most of Necromancer’s conditions are soft CC that help sustain it when not in its Death Shroud “invulnerability” mode. That soft CC benefits from condition duration, not condition damage.
Nearly all of Necromancer’s condition damage comes from bleeds, not burning or fear, so keep that in mind when choosing runes for that stat. Burning damage is insignificant, IMO. Engineer has much greater access to burning.
Staff has low dps but also has the only controllable combo on land, only fear on a weapon, only regeneration on a weapon, is one of only two condition transfers on weapons, has more AoE than any other weapon, and is the only 1200 range weapon.
Staff is not very good when camped but its utility is strong given the weaknesses and gaps inherent in Necromancer’s other weapons.
I still want Brain Freeze trait somewhere accessible that makes chilling an enemy inflict confusion or torment :P
+1
For Vampire to work at all, Blood Magic and healing is required, from my PoV.
Thank you for that jolt of positivity, Inflames.
Mes should be excited about wells. Boom, minefield, better dodgeroll. My Mes will be part of GWEMN.
Still disappointed, here, too, over how minor Necromancer’s access to torment is. Built a Rabid torment armor and sinister torment scepter set and everything.
Functionally, GS could be good as a staff replacement, if you are in PvE and do not need 1200 range. It gathers trash mobs and debuffs them. Cleave on the weapon and in DS helps reduce numbers.
Once down to two targets, switch to dagger. Alternatively, you can switch to axe for a little range. GS will be a good choice only when you face 3 opponents close range as it stands, today.
I do not think it will be better than staff for farming world events or PvP due to its slow attack speed.
I do not think it will be better than any other weapon in 1v2 or 1v1, including PvE boss fights. It looks like a weapon for solo farming in PvE. It needs to have at least 180 range on all attacks to increase chances of tagging multiple targets. A 240 range in a wide cone on AA and everything else at 600 or 900 is my suggestion. Then, it does not overlap and lose to dagger for close range and does a better job as a replacement for staff in PvP and WvW.
It also basically admits that reaper is indeed an upgrade.
I mean honestly if Reaper was just our base profession we’d have nothing to complain about. It is literally the same thing as our core theme, but without a lot of the design failures that plague our profession.
This is one thing that irks me, too. Necromancer was supposed to be a light armor conjurer and debuffer but all of Arenanet’s effort has been in making it fill a heavy armor tanking role.
Great sword has cleave and a finisher we have been asking for but it is still another short range power weapon. It has cleave, AoE damage, chill, vuln, blind and poison as if it was designed to replace dagger and axe or do the same job with a weapon swap.
Necromancer does not have a a close range weapon able to maintain a bleed stack with and swap with scepter and it does not have a long range weapon capable of respectable singe-target dps to trade staff for.
Necromancer is most effective at close range, now. Great sword will bias that even further.
I am not overestimating the Reaper. It seems focused toward power, yet was designed to be easily countered by CC and kiting. Coincidentally, lots of weapons had their ranges boosted to 1200 or 1500.
Reaper looks like it is for multiple, close range enemies
Still, we have not heard anything since the introduction.
Mostly just bug fixes this month with minor tweaks to most things except for Rampager.
All they appear to have done is make things work as they intended so this does not appear to be a balance patch.
Clean up the bugs, first, then worry about balance after everything works like they wanted.
(edited by Anchoku.8142)
There was a lot of feedback on Reaper’s introduction. Let us wait to see what changes may have been made since then.
Elementalist has some great party support Necromancer mains have been asking for but that is not final, either.
Try taking Spite, Soul reaping, and either Death Magic or Blood Magic. Run minions, Spectral, Signets, or a combination. Lots of choices besides wells.
The frustrating thing about Lich is that I give up a lot of utility with the transform just to auto-attack at 1.5x-3x dps in PvE depending on the weapon I last used. Factor PvP and WvW opponent dodging into it and Lich becomes a handicap.
Marked for Death takes too long to cast leaving Lich more vulnerable than the dodgeable mark it leaves.
Chill Wind’s chill and knock-back are too weak.
Mark of Horror is a horrible comedy of errors players can just kite or wipe.
Grim specter could be good if the radius was a bit larger and Lich was not so pressed for time.
I have no idea why so many skills on Lich have long CDs. Might as well call them single-use. If they had ICDs less than 5 seconds, I might trade an AA for them.
Before the power creep and all the nerfs, Lich was really worthy of being an elite.
If you want a more forgiving armor set, Rabid is the choice. Consider trying Undead runes for the conversion of toughness into a little more condition damage. You can always crunch more expensive runes over them, later.
The highest dps will be Berserker, followed by Rampager and Sinister, which are pretty equal, in my mind.
I, for one, never expected Reaper to be competitive. I just hoped Necromancer would have enough utility to become a little less unwanted in PvE.
Necromancer is fine in SW. MM and power-wells both work. Dagger is a good power main w/o minions. Axe is fair with them but otherwise not. Staff condi transfer is nice on occasion with all the conditions. Scepter is good with minions, too, though it takes longer to kill, even after switching to condi gear. MM dagger you tank for them. MM scepter you kite while they tank and blow up.
Power Spectral terror is fun, too.
Snip
The problem is, the whole reason that the minions look the way they look is because Anet is catering to the Chinese playerbase.
I honestly do not think it was planned.
Still, it is an interesting supposition.
I like the idea, Lily. I would add that skills 2-4 either get reworked or changed to 0.25 second cast time.
The Sigil nerf, followed by the stability nerf, duration nerf, and profession buffs really crippled the elite. It is nothing but a slow, dodgeable, glass canon. It is not too much better than Moa.
Something like 2 years ago, I think I may have suggested a masochism feature for Necro where, if incoming dps exceeds some amount, toughness jumps up. That is kind of a break bar / overload feature.
This forum has been full of much better ideas. Limit breaks have been discussed here, before. Now Ele gets it.
Necromancer is supposed to be the training golem every profession learns to counter and stake.
Tempest and horn has soooo much group utility and without a dps penalty for the Ele. What was Reaper supposed to do, again?
I think great sword is designed for PvE and will work very well for mobs without Defiance. The pull will help in stacking situations. Unfortunately, there are a number of knock-backs like PBS people love to spam.
Ascended gear can be moved between other characters so keep that in mind. A Berserker’s or Celestial set will not go to waste but you may have need of a Soldier’s set in WvW or instanced play. Sinister may be useful, too, with some professions, or armor with healing stats now that healing seems to scale more.
I suddenly wondered if minions can jump over breaks in terrain like players but need to go to work, asap.
It is a huge rework you propose so, right or wrong, it seems improbable.
I agree the changes to the targeting system have been troublesome and do not seem to add to QoL.
Not everything can be fixed or changed right away. Consider how long it took to fix downed state, the Dhuumfire saga, or the great changes to Blood Magic.
Kotte, this forum is comprised of a diverse mix of voices, yours included. Please refrain, though, from criticism of those posting. You may critisize opinions but try to do so civilly and with supporting detail.
With that caution out of the way, please consider you may be both right and wrong about crying on this forum.
There are a lot of players who really care about the profession and complain out of frustrated love for the job. There are many utilities and traits which do not compare well to other professions or have very low value, which limits build variety. Pointing them out and asking for help improving them is a labor of love.
In open world PvE, it is enough to be effective. In other game modes, the professions must compete with each other. Relative effectiveness for each job functionin each profession, balance, is what many on this forum consider when posting.
Sorry for the long reply. I did it because I care about what you think.
Little thread Necromancy here
Becoming seriously disenchanted by Lich
Plague lost its chill
Elites seem less elite after the trait rework buffed all professions.
Lich feels like sack of hot air right now. Too many nerfs. I started using Hounds of Balthazar and other elites like Mistfire Wolf as I search for better options. Lich is more vulnerable, less capable, and less damaging than I want to cast on myself, anymore. It is starting to feel like Moa.
Why give up dagger damage for Lich?
Keep bumping this thread or others like it.
Change the “nature” of outfits and armor so they do not look unnatural.
Neither of you have a qualifying sig. :p