Guild Wars 2

Anchoku.8142:

GS has a lot of AoE so of course it should be weaker against single targets.

Why? Dagger has the best LF generation we can get. While the GS offers chill and one additional target. The chill will not be as good as the LF generation, they can give them equal DPS and it would be fair.

Bhawb.7408:

Life Rend/Life Slash/Life Reap – Overall great, not sure I’d change anything at this point. It deals a lot of damage when you get on a target, and the issue of sticking to a target is more related to the 2 skill.

It does not deal a lot of damage, as a matter of fact it deals less DPS on a single target than the great sword chain. As long as it is untraited of that is, condi Dhuumfire have a perma uptime of at least 2600 burn and the potiential might/vuln generation can be quite strong. Damage needs to be incresed with 30% in order to get close to dagger DPS.

Bhawb.7408:

Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe -snip-

Chill suggestions are nice, but even with your suggestions, I would never take it over dagger as, dagger deals 25% more dps (almost 40% with current numbers) and generates more LF. Also, if I remember correctly, the Guardian Hammer actualy has a 3.7 total cast, while the Reaper GS has 3 seconds.

Bhawb.7408:

Gravedigger -snip-

I feel like I can get behind this quite well, but damage needds a buff (like 50% more), because once again Dagger 1 spam deals more damage per second.

The problem with the entire Greatsword and Reapers shroud is that Dagger 1 spam beats it in damage and that the chill is so low that it’s redundant so it probably could be removed and none would notice it.

Lightsbane.9012:

-snip-

the concept of the greatsword is burst, not specifically the auto attack chain. I suppose the concept of the auto attack is to inflict chill, which i think i can definitely do without to be honest.

The concept of an auto attack is sustained damage, be it low or high and sometimes additional effects. A greatsword traditionaly has s slow attack time, but hard hits. This goes true for Reaper as well, as it follows the move monstar archetype, which is stated during the Reaper PoI. Slow and hard hits have a tendency to be top tier DPS in games because you need payoff for the slow hits. The rest of the greatsword does not scream burst. As a matter of fact it screams very high sustained damage and close quarters only. Vulnerability application, resetting PBAoE nuke (which deals lower damage than the auto attack chain as of now), a pull, and PBAoE that blinds and cripples. There is nothing that says burst in there.

Traits

Minor Traits

• Shroud Knight: Grants access to the specialisation.

Good stuff, right there.

• Shivers of Dread: Inflict 2.25 second of chill when you fear. Change the chill to 3.0 seconds

The chill numbers are low across the board, 0.75 second extra might not seem like much, but if you invest into chill it becomes better.

• Cold Shoulder: Increases chill duration by 10% and reduces damage taken from chilled foes by 10%. Buff the chill duration to 20% and increase the damage reduction to 15%.

The 20% chill starts to matter when you stack up with increased chill food and gear and I find it logical that the strongest individual chill buff should be found on the specialisation that supposedly is masters of it.

Adept Traits

• Augury of Death: Reduces recharge of shouts by 7% per foe struck. Add “increases effect duration on shouts by 12% per foe struck” or it adds Fear for 1 second to each shout, ICD 8.

Right now this is competing with Relentless Pursuit which is incredibly strong, no matter how you look at it the 7% recharge along with lackluster shouts cannot compete with it. That is why I suggest increased effect on them, suddenly those effects start to last a long time, and maybe they are worth it then with the recharge reduction. The added fear idea is nice mainly because it gives you fear to proc

• Chilling Nova: Critical hits against chilled foes sends out an explosion that chills neaby foes. 2.25 chill duration 0.4 coeff. 15 sec ICD. Buff the chill to 3 seconds and reduce the ICD to 8 seconds.

This trait is once again competing with Relentless Pursuit which is super strong compared to the worthless trait that was chillnig nova. This ought to fix some of the problems.

• Relentless Pursuit: Reduces the duration of Chills, Immobilize and Cripple by 33%, the effect is double while in shroud.

It is good, short and sweet plus feels like the balanced brother of the Shade trait.

Master Traits

• Soul Eater: Adds life leech to greatsword skills and a 3% recharge when you hit something with gravedigger, up to 15%. Life leech is 52 damage and 49 healing (it has scaling but it is so low that is can be neglected). Increase the life leech to 110/100 and the cool down reduction to 5% per foe hit.

• Chilling Victory: Grants 5 seconds of might when striking a chilled foe and 1% life force. Increase might duration to 10 seconds.

The reasoning behind the doubling in the effect is that I found the effect very weak when I tested it and it fits nicely with the other might on hit effects.

• Decimate Defenses: 2% crit chance per stack of vulnerability on your foe.

Short and Sweet. Again. This is just perfect, no changes.

Grandmaster Traits

• Blighters Boon: Gain 1% life force when you gain a boon outside of RS, gain 133 (neglectable scaling is here again, around 0.1) life in RS. Increase the healing to 175.

I felt like the healing component was so minimal that I never really noticed it, even while standing beside a guardian.

• Deathly Chill: Chill deals damage with a coefficient of 0.08 if the target is below 50% hp it has a coefficient of 0.12. It scales with condi damage. Increase the condi scaling from 0.08 to 0.12 and 0.12 to 0.18.

This should make the skill better for condition builds and it makes it equal to roughly 1.5 burning stacks in damage in full condi gear.

• Reaper’s Onslaught: Gives 15% increased attack speed in RS and resets the cooldown on RS#2 if you kill anything. Remove the reset on RS#2 and reduce RS#5 by 100% when you kill something with it or reduce all RS cooldowns by 5 seconds when you kill something. (Bugged at the moment, felt like it should be noted).

The first effect is nice, and it has good synergy with Dhuumfire and similar traits, the second part belongs in the redundancy corner, it already has a 5 second cooldown. I don’t like it, I never found a use for it in PvP and I want to use the Executioner’s Scythe. Go on a dunking spree in PvP á la Axe and enjoy.

That was all the feedback that I had, it might be a bit overtuned, but I feel like it it better for it to be a bit overpowered and then nerf it carefully into line rather than the other way around. The feedback I’m the least sure about is the shouts part, as it is quite different from a DPS calculation, you have to vallue a utility versus another, which is something I’m arguably not so good at, so take that with an extra grain of salt. On another note, make the shouts sound file start playing during the cast so that it ends when the skill is cast, rather than at the end. It would make it feel more smooth.

Shouts

• Heal: Your soul is mine! heals for 3,954(+0.27*healing power) and deals damage with a coeff of 0.33 but it is at a 20 sec cooldown and it grants 4% LF per foe struck. A life drain per foe hit of 300 damage and 300 healing(0.1 scaling) and a base LF generation of 6% should be added. It has a 0.75 cast.

The skill is quite powerfull already mainly due to the low CD, but it competes with CC, which is also very strong. Personaly making the suggested changes would make me consider which one to use more carefully, rather than defaulting to CC. The life drain serves to add some damage to the low base damage and it also adds healing that scales with enemies.

• Rise! deals damage with the coeff of 0.33 and summons Jagged Horrors for each foe struck. Make it Summon Flesh golems instead of jagged horrors and give it a coeff of 1. It has a 1 second cast time and a 40 second cooldown, remove the cast time.

This might be one of the worst skills that Anet has put into GW2. The damage is low, cast time and CD is long and it summons Jagged Horrors. Untill they fix minion AI it is Flesh Golem or bust.
On a serious note it is harde to judge the power of a skill that is all about a mechanic that does not work properly. I’ll leave this skill to be judged when they fix the AI.

• Nothing can save you! has a coefficient of 0.33, buff the coeff to 0.5 and strips up to two boons from each foe struck. For each boon removed this way they get 5 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds. It also grants unblockable attacks for 4 seconds with a 1 second increase for each foe struck this way. The shout is unblockable. It has a 35 second cooldown and a 0.5 cast time. Reduce cast time to 0.25.

This shout seems very PvP centric and could probably do with the cast time reduction. The small damage buff is there to bring them in line with the ele shouts damage wise.

• Suffer! chills foes for 2.25 seconds, deals damage with a 0.66 coeff and transfers one condition per foe struck with a one second cast time and a 30 second cooldown. Reduce the cast time to 0.25 and increase the chill to 4 seconds.

The elementalist Flash-Freeze applies more chill, deals more damage gives you frost armor and has a lower cast time. But it doesn’t transfer conditions and has a 5 second longer cooldown.

• You are all weaklings! is a shout that has a .75 cast time 0.33 coeff and 30 second cooldown. On activation it grants a single stack of stability for one second and it stunbreaks. It gives 4 stacks of might with an additional 4 might per foe struck which lasts for 5 seconds. It also gives weakness for 6 seconds to each foe struck. Increase might to 8 seconds and lower the cast time to 0.5.

The skill is very strong in optimal scenario, but it that will not happen often, in addition to that it is competing with signet of spite, Well of suffering and corruption, which is a pretty standard setup.

• Elite Skill: Chilled to the bone! It has a huge 2 second windup and a 120 second cooldown, after that comes stacks two stacks of 10 seconds stability per foe struck, a two second stun, 8.75 a second chill and damage with the coefficient of 1.32. It needs a cast time of 1 second, preferably with a cooldown of 90 sec and a coefficient of 1.5 slapped on top of it.

The damage probably could get buffed and it would be nice if it had a lower cooldown, but what this skill really needs, is a cast time of one second.

Reapers Shroud

• RS#1, The Auto Attack, it has coefficients of 0.6/0.6/1.2 and a total attack time of 2.5 which means 0.96 coeff/s. Make the coeffs 0.8/0.8/1.6 and give them LF generation of 1%/1%/2%. It generates 1% LF per target hit on the final strike to a maximum of 5 targets. In addition to this it can be traited to give 1 might per strike, and apply vulnerability and burning on hit.

The reasoning behind the large amount of LF generation is simply that we take a whole lot of beating there, we need it if we want to stay there for any period of time. The damage increase brings it in line with the Dagger#1 plus the many traits that affect RS#1 makes it a strong skill.

• RS#2, Death’s Charge is a 600 units leap that blinds for 3 seconds on impact in a small AoE and deals damage with a coeff of 1. Similarly to GS#5 it is based upon the direction you are facing and it always travels 600 units. Make the skill like Warrior Sword#2 or Guard GS#3 in its targeting and traveling behaviour. 5 seconds cooldown and 1.4 second total travel time and aftercast.

Fix the targeting and the skill is really good.

• RS#3, Infusing Terror is an instant cast 3 second stability pulsing every second for 8 seconds to you. You can with a ~0.5 cast remove the stability for a one second fear in an AoE around you. Remove the cast time to fear, and make it a stun break. 17 sec cooldown.

While the stun break might be a bit over the top, the instant fear would not. In normal DS we have instant cast fear and there are plenty of time where I wished that I had that while I played reaper.

• RS#4, Soul Spiral it has a 2.9 second channel despite the tooltip saying 2 and deals damage with 11 hits in an AoE with a total coefficient of 2.8. Currently the coeff/s of 0.96. If the the spin had the tooltip duration it would have a coeff of 1.4/s which is what it should be. Each hit also applies 4 second of poison. It has a 34 second cooldown.

It is stronger than gravedigger due to the poison and multitude of hits making it fine to have a lower coeff. The skill seems to hit 12 times sometimes giving it extra damage and poison. No problem with that but it should probably be fixed. The actual channel time is 2.9 seconds and not 2, fix that and the skill is really solid, even without buffs. If the tooltip is corrected to 3 seconds it should have its total coeff buffed to 4.2.

• RS#5, Executioner’s Scythe has different coefficients on three thresholds, which are; target is above 50% hp, below 50% and below 25%. The coefficients is 1.53/2/2.55. Change the coeffs to 1.5/2.25/3. It also has a 1.5 second stun and chill with a Field of Ice on the ground for 5 seconds. 25.5 second cooldown (according to my tooltip, make it 40 for reasons later and lessen my eye cancer).

This scaling makes for one of the strongest nukes in the game against low HP targets and the stun makes it quite desirable. The coeff increase is there not because it was hitting for low amounts, but rather to bring it in line with the rest of the changes I’ve suggested, One would die with the old coefficients below 50% in most cases as well.

When I got my hands on the beta I did what I like to do, I looked at the numbers and I did the math. I used a stop watch for the cast times (meaning that there might be inacuracies there) and I calculated the coefficients for damage. The damage was indeed as horrible as people were saying and I will try to suggest possible changes for skills in both damage numbers and other things. Keep in mind that the Coefficients were calculated in Verdant Brink with the gear available from beta and not in a PvP lobby.

If you want to read a version where I can spell, it is available here, on Google docs.

Greatsword

• GS#1, The auto attack, it has coefficients of 0.85/0.95/1.1 per strike and a total cast time of 3 seconds, which means that the coefficient/second is 1.03. It also applies a 1.75 second chill on the final strike. The coefficients should be increased to 1.2/1.3/1.6 making the coefficient per second 1.37. The chill should be increased to 3 seconds and a small 3% LF gained per enemy hit on the final strike.

The reasoning behind the huge coefficient increase is that it should be able to compete with the dagger, which has a 1.33 coeff/s and it generates large amounts of LF on auto attack. With the chill and damage increase as well as the LF gain the greatsword becomes better on paper. However I noticed that you had to interrupt your own attack chain with the greatsword quite often to dodge knockdowns and such, and it means a DPS loss, if someone blocks it or blinds you, the same thing happens. These small downtimes has a large impact on the slow heavy hitting DPS of the greatsword making it a high risk, high reward weapon.

• GS#2, Gravedigger. It has a two second cast and a coefficient of 2. It lowers cooldown by 80% if it hits a downed target or anyone below 50% hp. Buff the coefficient to 3.0 and bring back the 100% reset. 5 seconds cooldown.

This means that it will essentialy be a in PBAoE lvl 3 Eviscreate every two seconds if a target fullfills the requirement. You could say that it is way to strong but doing runnig the calculations shows a coeff/s of 1.5 which is a full 0.27 coeff/s weaker than a lich auto attack, and the long cast warrants something extra if you hit it.

• GS#3, Death Spiral gives 2% LF regen per hit and it applies 12 vulnerability over 6 hits that lasts 10 seconds, with a maximum of 3 targets. Cast time is 1.4 and total coeff is 0.9 giving it a coeff/s of 0.64. 10 second cooldown. However the targeting seems to be very wonky.

The damage of this skill is not the damage, but rather the vulnerability application and the LF gain. I feel like if they fix the targeting issue, it will be in a really good spot.

• GS#4, Nightfall puts down a small area on the ground that cripples and blinds for two seconds with one pulse per second over 4 seconds for a total coeff of 0.7. Make it follow the Reaper around like Locust Swarm or increase the area alot. 25 second cooldown.

The skill is very nice in it’s effects but it does nothing when your foe decides to walk out of it, which happens too often for me to even want to use it anymore. If it follows you around that problem is solved and with a larger area the problem won’t be as severe. It feels a bit like a smaller version of the old untraited wells that were dropped where you stood.

• GS#5, Grasping Darkness sends out shadow trails in a cone in the direction the Reaper is facing . The targeting should be changed to either an AoE that you throw the claws to (similar targeting to Warrior GS#5, Rush.) or simply be based on what you have targeted. When the trails reaches the maximum distance large claws pulls everything along those trails in front of the reaper and applies 4 seconds of 3 stack poison to them as well as dealing damage with a coeff of 1.0. It also grants 4% LF for each foe struck with a maximum of 5 targets. It has a 1 second total cast time. 30 second cooldown.

If they fix the targeting the skill will be good, nuff said.

Utilities

These are the shouts, first of I want to say that the damage across the board here should be improved by a fair bit and cast times should be reduced. The sound files should also be played during the casts and be interrupted if the cast is interrupted for extra flavour.

Also sorry for triple post, can’t write more than 5000 signs in one post.

Reapers Shroud

These abilities suffer from similar problems as the greatsword and I’ll have similar suggestions for their solutions.

This is my feedback along with some suggestions on how to fix issues with the Greatsword and the Reapers Shroud. I will say that I am a fan of overtuning things and then later tuning them into line, especialy during betas, meaning that you can probably think of some of the numbers as a bit higher than what they need to be.

I measured cast times with a stop watch (they might not be entierly accurate) and I calculated the coefficients myself (I should have used Spojs from the start, would have saved me some time).

Greatsword

These are the greatsword abilites and what I belive to be their problems and solutions. I firmly belive that they should remain slow, that is all in the design, but if they are to remain slow they need to hit hard and have effects enough to warrant it. Which is the general theme of the suggestions here.

Sigmoid.7082:

Robert Gee.9246:

Sigmoid.7082:

I gathered they would nerf chill duration on some things because the way it stands with runes, sigil, and food along with the cold shoulder trait you can hit 100% chill duration or 60% in PvP.

This was indeed a big reason for the reduction in chill. It was pretty easy to make a build with the previous version that kept an enemy chilled 90-100% of the time (even in PvP without food). The current iteration is shooting for something in the area of 50-70% in order to provide windows for counterplay.

I have a huge problem with this, while it is true that the chill duration could reach some amazing numbers with the old numbers, running runes and sigils to make the chill worth it comes at an opportunity cost. I belive that the cost was pretty fair, even though it might have been hard to fight against. I’ve tried running a chill build in PvP in the beta and it was not good at all, not only because of that Greatsword is close to unusable (dear god it is bad, hits like a wet noodle and chills as effectivly as a snowflake), but also because even with dots on chill it just wasn’t enough to make the investment into chill worth it. Now I don’t claim to be a master at PvP, but I had far more success going for the traditional builds and just disregarding the chill. With the current design, reapers strongest conditions are Vulnerability and Poison and Burning if you picked Dhuumfire and yet it was advertised as the master of chilling, 100% uptime on chill is not completly unreasonable when you invest heavily into it.

I’m sorry to break it to you, but after some number crunching you will realise that the damage is not that good. It’s like terrible. As far as survivability goes it sure feels better.

Do you think it would be worth investing in Chill enhancing runes and sigils such as Rune of Ice and Rune of Chilling?

Malchior.1928:

WvW:
The Juggernaut
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQDvAXoBvw~

PvE:
New Dungeon Meta
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB6AS0Bpg~
(I think soul reaping wont be necessary here)

PvP:
Cele Dhuumchill Reaper
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQCpAWsBqg~

A bit curious ot see which gear you want for the builds, my first instinct would be to slap Cavalier/Valkyrie on most of them or maybe even Dire.

Zoso.8279:

-Snip-
Same group that complains about landing Focus 5 and the str of Axe…….. If I was a dev I wouldn’t/couldn’t trust your feedback.

I’ve worked with devs and if a situation like this arises, you do the number crunching and then compare the feedback with the results of it. And let me tell you, that in the case of the necro, the number crunching (and a quick google search about human reflexes)shows that the axe sucks and focus 5 is easy to evade for a person with normal reflexes. With that said I find your last statement downright ignorant. But whatever, trolls will troll.

Short answer; Yes.

Roe.3679:

Necro is not bottom tier in pvp. We’re in a better spot than rangers, engis, guards and warriors, so that’s top half right there. Countering eles also helps.

I think you exaggerate a bit. I can’t remember the last time I saw a Necro in tournament play. It’s like what, Noscoc and thats about it. In normal PvP or WvW we are viable, but so is just about everything, when played properly.

So, my concern with reaper is that the utilities are weak, and that the damage is both slow and low. These coeffs were calculated by spoj, and compared to other greatsworkd skills (and to what all the drawbacks of the necro should give us), they aren’t really that impressive.

Even if we get into melee, we are still going to be hitting for less than a guard with GS on auto attack. “But you have chill on AA.” Not enough of a bonus. gibe highest damage on GS AA or gtfo. Buff everything with around 10% and it should be fine in theory, but I belive it might need more than that, as the class is slow moving, especialy the abilities with a 1 sec windup. But then again, just because a 1 sec windup in DotA or BLC means imminent guaranteed doom doesnt mean it should be so here. But I certainly think that it should hurt to stay in the way of such a thing. On another note, the windups on many abilities are way too long for what they give. Detonating Infusing Terror should be instant, Reapers Schythe should be 3/4, not 1+1/4, gravedigger down to 1, Deaths Charge down to 3/4. Feel free to take it with a grain of salt though, as we haven’t tested it yet.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KQyRs8U6YM

More like this.

Loaded up with a 120 second cooldown and massive 2 second cast time comes a 2 second stun and 8 seconds of chill, stability and roughly 1k damage. First I want to point out that a 120 seconds cooldown alone in most PvP oriented games warrants near “best ability in game” status let alone what happens if you add a 2 second cast time. Is this ability anything like it? No. What if we slap a 1500 range shadowstep on it? Maybe, but it would be thematicaly fitting, as there is no escaping the Reaper. How many times has it been seen, the protagonist is running from the monster, he turns around sees nothing, turns back, and there it stands. If nothing else it would make up for the 2 sec cast time if it could be used to initiate. Also it would also be hiliarious to target someone and hide then wait for them to come close to get the perfect, “Surprise motherkittener” moment. I think that’s the best argument…

I do not wholly agree with that the DS is a burst oriented mechanic. While your statement is technicaly true, it also acts as a second health bar. There is nothing bursty with that. It is also, contrary to your statement DS is quite strong in longer fights, using one and a half DS is quite possible and that alone is great for attrition. I also firmly belive that the Necro shouldn’t burst at all. Instead it should be reworked so that the attrition element actualy works, make wells into something similar to inverse banners, long lasting debuffs with large area and high cooldown with low damage slapped on on top, but they are immobile (have fun capturing that point against a necro, nice in boss fights). Give them a condi trait that allows for debuffs to be refreshed (ex. whenever you inflict a condition 15% chance to reset all conditions to their original duration).
Their whole design screams attrition, conditions, 2nd health bar, high base health, mediocre damage, boon management and no mobility. But Anet keeps kittening up (mostly because of the “play the game your way thing”), as this playstyle can easily get out of hand with a few overtuned changes.

Duke of Thorin.7425:

Outclassed: Other classes can do what the Revenant does in an easier and more effective way.

That sounds exactly like Necromancer.

Mia Crazymike.1780:

I’m pretty sure Necromancers aren’t that bad anymore. We can all agree the profession is in a much better state.

Rangers are the new losers, inferior, outdated profession.

It is in a slightly better state, but none of our core issues has been adressed and we are still getting nerfs. We are still utter kitten in most aspects and has been so since release. Rangers are also kicked on but I feel like they over all are in a better state than Necros (not that neither is in a good state).

roachsrealm.9284:

1) You have multiple ways to remove conditions, both through skills and traits. not all of them flat remove them but also convert them, and some of them even transfer them to enemies. even without the sigil of generosity you have more condi management than any other class.

2) Yes necromancer skills are slow, but the reason we don’t have as many stun-breaks or access to stability is because necromancers are about pressure. A majority of our skills will continue to damage even if we are flat on our butts. Being stunned hits our DPS much less than it does other classes.

3) This is true for any form/elite/class build. Destroys illusions too. It doesn’t destroy pets, and it shouldn’t destroy minions.

4) Necromancer conditions have never been about speed. Warriors can out bleed us, mesmers can out torment us, everyone can out burn us, and engies can apply as wide of a variety faster than us. The strength necromancer has is duration. Our conditions will outlast everyones. Necro condi is about pressure, not spike.

5) This is true.

6) Because without the limit, Reaper would have been severely overpowered, I’m guessing. Again, see: endless pressure only this time you can add: endless snare, which would lead to: endless whining from everyone else playing against a Reaper.

7) a slow heavy hitter who continues to do damage while stunned and has twice the starting health before the extra health pool does not need as much access to stability. It feels like you are trying to make necromancer a thief. It’s not.

1. If we want to convert or send condis over and manage boons you need to build for it. And you have to kill your opponent via their own conditions, which isn’t possible in PvE or in PvP when you are not facing a condi build. I can remember the last time I lost against a Necro that built that way as a Guard or Warrior.

2. As long as our DPS isn’t against a condi class and we are running a condi managing build our damage comes from spamming 1 and occasionaly well bombing someone. Being stunned hurts our already low DPS alot.

3. I agree.

4. To preassure anyone without returning condis from us to them is really hard. I’ve tried and scepter does a really poor job at applying pressure. Even with lingering curse it feels weak. Increased stacks and duration in some combination might solve the problem. Without an actual threat there is no pressure. A threat which I dont feel that we are right now.

5. I agree.

6. The Reaper has alot of chill indeed. But they are all on HUGE telegraphs and if you do not dodge them you are gonna be in a rough spot. This takes away a large bit of the scary factor of the Reaper along with the fact that the numbers on the Reaper will most likely be nerfed even further. And the Reaper is very much kiteable, even if it were to oneshot with AAs, you can still kill it by kiting it. It has to be strong and hard to escape from. In the direction this is going, it will be neither.

7. A slow, heavy hitter (we are not that heavy hitting) you absolutley need access to stability or other protective boons, otherwise we are doing no damage at all as we are getting interrupted all the time. And we are ONLY doing damage over time with a few builds, none of them includes power necros, which are the ones who hit hardest and probably fits into the slow, heavy hitter the most. He is not trying to make the Necromancer a Thief, he is trying to make Necromancer what it should have been from the start.

EzJester.7653:

Has there been any acknowledgement that the community is unhappy with the state of the class, or is it pretty quiet?

It has been done since day one of GW2 pretty much. But nothing happened. Announcing an expansion and then proceeding to nerf us again was enough to get me to complain on the forums.

Carighan.6758:

You’re overexaggerating though. Necros aren’t actually that bad off. The drawbacks often are small. Seriously, they are. Despite all issues, balance in GW2 is more or less “there”, and this goes for all classes.

Mind you, maybe I’m just too old, I started in M59. In EQ1, there was a spell which allowed Necromancers to ressurect someone (mind you, you lost XP upon death, and quite a lot of it, so you lost some hours of grinding XP). Oh to get the material for it, they had to have someone willingly take said XP-costing death. Fun stuff, that. Oh and another spell allowed Enchanters to re-fill their manabar. Once every two and a half hours.

In the big picture, our MMOs are so well-balanced today that the whole discussion often feels arcane.
Which is why I agree so much with Teevill. I’ll definitely take concepts over balance, as in, power-balance in, say, sPvP. I’d rather have interesting-designed classes with a certain remaining imbalance, but cool concepts and genuinely restricting drawbacks which build a class inter-reliance as no one is an island.

I played Runescape back when you dropped everything you had equiped and in your inventory on death, with no way other than running back to get it and hoping that none else had found it and ran of with it or that it despawned. I maxed out my character, which took MONTHS of in game time. I’ve had my fair share of unfair combat, since i played DotA way back, when there were characters capable of 1v5 every time, without fail. But nowadays we are spoiled with often fine tuned patches every few months. I’ve seen some imbalance and annoying mechanics in my days, I’ve also seen what good balance brings.

The Necro has some fantastic consepts, but they are very poorly executed. The boon/condition manipulation would matter more if the condis were powerfull, they became quite strong with the last patch, and thus necros became better, what the condi necros lack now is being able to output those conditions themselves, rather than waiting to run into another condi build to inflict them upon them and then throwing them back. The power necro is as boring as it gets, the dagger 1 all day, all night, occasionaly flashing shroud for bonuses. Axe and staff feels completly neglected, never mind some of the traits anet have given us. Still, they revamped blood magic, which while not top tier, is quite nice.

Mobility and defense is still trash tier, we have a gap closer and a minion we can teleport to and the thing that is used for JP shenanigans, that’s pretty much it for mobility. No reliable access to protection and regeneration. And to compensate this we do comparativley poor damage and get 120% extra HP, which is not as powerfull as it sounds.

Balance is poor compared to what it easily could be with the dedication of some numbercrunching devs.

I know I’m ranting a bit, and I exaggerate, but these problems have been there since launch and I’m getting quite tired of ANet handing out unjustified nerfs to us while watching the powercreep progress for the rest (maybe not the rangers). The payoff for our drawbacks are not nearly enough to be competitive and as I said, either they reduce the drawbacks or they have to compensate for them, you can’t just have drawbacks and gaining no advantage.

I’m playing it, I’m not the best, but I try. Mainly because I’m stubborn as a mule and because I love the “Dark mage archetype” in games. Then there’s the fact that Anet is doing a sloppy work in balancing their game, which if anything, makes me want to switch game, not profession.

Tranquillity.8697:

I think it’s very strong and easy to play.

Even PvP wise we aren’t very strong, and as long as we are fighting on equal footing there is hardly any time where I can say that “I would have won” with the necromancer. There is always the “if they would have done this they would have won, but they kittened up”. In other words I have to outplay my opponent. Whenever I’m up against someone who is better or as good(or bad if you want) as me I tend to lose.

Teevell.1684:

I’m against outright filling in our gaps; every class should have and needs weaknesses/drawbacks.

With the amount of drawbacks Necros has, we should have highest DPS in the game by a huge margain. Either we get that, or they have to fill in our gaps.

I agree to most of these changes, even if some might be a bit overtuned they are good as ideas for what we generaly want and need.

I was doing some something somilar privatly, but I was theorycrafting with making wells similar to warriors banners, large AoE but nerfed damage and slightly nerfed effects. It would mean that in boss fights or capture points in PvP the wells are more powerful and hard to evade, but bursting people with them are no longer possible. It could solve some of the mobility problems of the necro if it would force enemies who would want to fight the necro stand in the wells, making them quite powerfull. But that is just some theorycrafting that many might not agree with.

Could be a bit strong and the core problems with the Necromancer still remains. We are still Squishy McSquishy and our support and mobility is bottom tier. Still, as of now I’ll take any buffs they decide to offer.

nacario.9417:

As a ranger i disagree necro being “lowest in team support”.

Healing Spring and the Spirits utilites beats the Necro in team support, it isn’t fantastic, but it sure better than the what the Necro brings to the table.

And on to the discussion at hand, from a theoretical balance perspective that is indeed one possible way to balance it. For everything you trade away you should get some benefit from it, that much is clear. Weather or not it should be THE strongest is up to debate.

Read it all, 10/10.

ANet really should rework the Necromancer. The Reaper specialization presents a whole new world of problems which the team obviously are incapable at dealing with.

drgast.1469:

So much crying about a 5 second ICD…wowza…..it needed it. No ICD on that trait was insane.

It was situationaly good with no ICD.

Try Necro, we still cant solo Lupi.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m sure they felt there was a reasonable justification to do this change, contrary to popular belief Anet doesn’t go out of their way to screw us over, they just really suck at balancing us. Its an issue of ineptitude, not malice.

Somehow I have a hard time beliving that, they have been inept with the necromancer for as long as I’ve been playing the game. Somehow they seem to kitten things up way to often. I’ve worked with balancing smaller things in smaller games and I must say that most of the time it is about doing some number crunching and reducing the holes in the design to weak spots, to enable counterplay. And in the case of the Necromancer, none of these things seems to have been done.

Slapinator.4196:

It seems that whatever arenanet does to necromancers they start crying about nerf first it was the healing and then arenanet reduces vuln now its chill once they fix it, it will be dhummfire…stop demanding your class is unbeatable in pvp what else do you want

Whenever Anet gives us uncalled nerfs we will complain, we are bottom tier in every aspect of the game, except for condi and boon manipulation, which are very weak unless you are up against a condi build. And even then it is only strong because every other condi class has strong condis. There is an obvious problem right here which you somehow fail to see.

Anet, sometimes I wonder why you even bother with the Necromancers. Why don’t you just remove us already? We are MUSHROOMS for kittens sake! MUSHROOMS! And much like our breatheren the mushrooms we are squishy, immobile and we kill slowly. What did we do to deserve this? You nerfed a niche trait, fixed some bugs and taunted us removing half the drawback on CC. Meanwhile the elementalists are applying burning that ticks for 10k, the thieves have stealth more broken than Riki in low level pub games and Warriors use rampage and kills everyone. Salt is real. Get your kitten togeather Anet.

Once again, it is Anet is doing the balance tango, but this time it is one step forward and two backwards.

So, if I understood it correctly, if I hit someone with 2600 armor with an exotic GS, with no buffs and 2300 power and not counting crit, I will hit for 761 x2 and 895. A guardian who does the same thing will hit for 759 x2 and 1111, with faster attack time.

You all probably have guessed I’m not all read up on GW2 mechanics, which I really should be before I dive headfirst into balance discussions (my sincere apologies). Well, regardless of my obvious lack of knowledge of how damage is calculated I thank you for the nice calculations.

Can we get a post where we post the predicted coefficients and base damage numbers are posted so that we may get all Reaper feedback collected in one place? Mainly asking spoj and Bhawb as you are a bit more expirienced with these things than I. Or have I missed such a post?

Knaifhogg.5964:

Did you guys ignore the part of the stream where they said the numbers are not final?

I did not miss that part, but they did say that the chill numbers were a bit high, and it sounded like they thought that it was too strong. The glaring weaknesses of the necro persists even if Reaper has broken melee dps, as we lack defenses, just as spoj said. If you were to ask me, most numbers on the reaper, including the chill, excluding CDs and Cast times, should be increased. It needs to hit like a train, not just slightly harder than the rest of the melee classes and we are far from that with those numbers.

I agree that it is a problem, a different problem entierly, but a problem nonetheless. But I doubt Anet will ever give us that, considering that they seem to think us broken or something. Should we just start the riot now or wait for HoT?

Even the your early calculation would have made it hard to fight in WvW against dominant melee classes. If they do not buff them a fair bit, by that I mean that they give them coefficients that are disgustingly good I will complain on the forums untill they ban me or they fix it.

On another note i think that unless they give us access to fantastic movement and defensive boons/buffs galore doing slightly less damage than a “full Mug/CnD/Backstab combo from a D/D thief” in reapers shroud is not unreasonable, as in most cases we will be kited untill death and never reach our target. We will be the Ganondorf of GW2, which would be hilarious.

spoj, you are not making my thoughts on Reaper improve with that. XD

The damage coefficients makes me kind of sad. When you have the movement of Pyramid Head, you have to have the damage of Pyramid Head. And if your calculations are correct this wont be the case. If they aren’t among the best in melee DPS it will be just as unplayed as necros were now, not to mention how hard it will be to kill people in WvW even if you get into melee. But we will see how it turns out. But the damage really should be higher than in Lich form.

From a balance perspective the Reaper pretty much has to do more damage in melee than any other class, but that is going to make people in low tier pvp and wvw complain, so it wont happen. GS looks like it will be slightly better than dagger as of now, but they have stated that numbers may change. Which means that they will be nerfed, even though they probably should be buffed. But that is just how Anet handles necros.

But while I care I’ve come to accept that Anet has great ideas but horrible execution. So I’ll be over here enjoying the game with my friends.

Very good idea. +1

I know that feel, but the Necro really is a class that is both one and two seps behind mainstream classes such as Warrior and Guardian (but kitten that, am I right). Regardless of that I’m happy to see another Necromancer who still enjoys the class.