Guild Wars 2

Tim.6450:

Atherakhia.4086:

It’s all just math. If the class sucks in a vacuum where math has shown the theoretical max for the class, it’s not going to magically get better in practice. You’ll assume each player is roughly the same so they drop that max by roughly the same amount leaving you at the same ranking you originally came up with in a vacuum.

That’s a very strange assumption. Some classes have easier rotations and some have harder rotations, easier rotations will less likely be deviated from due player error.
Also damage is in some rotations loaded on a select few skills and some are spread out over all skills. These damage loaded skills are most likely harder to land (100 blades come to mind) and will be negated (by moving or being forced to dodge) more then other skills.

Unless a fight has an excessive amount of movement and moves the fight into niche territory, things generally hold true. Especially in GW2 where the vast majority of fights are timed intervals and have very limited movement.

It’s all just math. If the class sucks in a vacuum where math has shown the theoretical max for the class, it’s not going to magically get better in practice. You’ll assume each player is roughly the same so they drop that max by roughly the same amount leaving you at the same ranking you originally came up with in a vacuum.

The only time this isn’t the case is in niche fights where specific classes are given an advantage. Without a trinity and all DPS classes doing nothing special outside of DPS, there isn’t much of this happening in GW2 unlike in WoW.

So for shiggles, what is the Necromancer’s PvE rotation?

Drop 2 wells, Lich Deathly Claws, then dagger for the remaining casting wells when they’re available and using Life Blast only when moving at range?

I’ll just chime in and say I agree with the OP. The scythe looks silly and entirely out of character unlike the above mentioned pyramid head sword.

Take Sephiroth’s sword for example. When drawn at around the 6-7ft mark it looks fine. When drawn at the 10ft mark it’s comically awful.

The PvE in this game is so laughably bad I honestly can’t believe people are trying to get into a kitten measuring contest over it. Has DnT ever released their ‘theoretical max DPS’ spreadsheet to the public so players can plainly see the class rankings once you factor out all the commonalities like the assumption everyone has a frost bow, 25 might, 100% fury uptime, etc?

I did one for Rangers eons ago so I’m quite confident if I could do it, someone else has too.

spoj.9672:

If they nerf icebow 4 by increasing its radius to be like meteor shower then reaper could compete for damage on small hitbox bosses. But the same can also be said for thief and LH ele. And pretty much every class. Although with new numbers reaper does look potentially like one of the higher end dps classes.

It is my understanding that even ignoring the elemental weapons, staff eles are still significantly above where other classes stand. Thief is the only one above them?

Perhaps Brazil or Nike will chime in on the official forums.

How does a class with perma regen, several heals, and near perma protection lack sustain? I’m sorry, but the majority of comments from the devs in the linked thread looked more like trolling than actual, meaningful responses to the topic.

With an enrage timer, the only thing that’s going to matter is single target DPS. DnT has done an enormous amount of testing to show where the classes rank in this area. So unless there are sizable changes coming that haven’t been announced, I’m not holding out much hope.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Sublimatio.6981:

in my experience if you play necro and are looking for speedruns, only around 10% pugs won’t kick you from party and 95% time these pugs are awfully bad at the game

as for friends, they will only invite you if they absolutely need to fill a spot and they have nobody else to inv

you can also create your own lfg but those 4 ppl that join might kick you and refresh the lfg, because obviously, nobody reads lfg descriptions

Ok, this is a wild exaggeration. It bears no resemblance to reality. Maybe all those groups kicked you because you’re relentlessly negative.

Half the time when I view the LFG panel for dungeons I see a group with ‘No Necro’ in the title. So while the numbers may not match your experience or my own, lets at least not lie to the OP and pretend the problems that lead to this ‘No Necro’ attitude aren’t legitimate.

The Necro legitimately has no valuable group utility.
The Necro legitimately has sub par DPS.
The Reaper legitimately was severely undertuned and no one knows if the stated changes will be enough.

Rumor has it the game will be made free in the near future. Leveling in this game takes less than a week. Give the class a shot as the only thing that matters in the long run is if you enjoy playing it.

I really don’t know what you guys think moving to a condi meta will accomplish. Do you realize the Necromancer is one of the weakest condi builds offensively in the game? It can’t stack bleeds or poisons well, it has almost no access to torment, and burn is very unreliable. Warriors, Eles, Rangers, and Engineers each blow Necro out of the water. So condi is a lost cause.

Another group of people are trying to imply a shift away from a berserker meta will somehow change things, but the only way that would be true is if every class other than Necro shifted away from berserker and left Necros as the sole class able to maximize their power. So this is also a lost cause.

The Necro is fundamentally flawed and players have been complaining about the simple fact that Necro going into the expansion as bad as it was would lead to either an incredibly weak Reaper class or a Reaper so horrendously overpowered that Necro would cease to exist becase you absolutely need Reaper to account for the class’s shortcomings.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

Atherakhia.4086:

why do you think the problem is volley?

At which point in my post did I say the problem with the warrior class is volley? I am simply pointing out that a crucial skill in the Ranger’s arsnal (can’t spell this word right without censor) was buffed, but volley was not buffed. Currently volley deals lower damage in the same period of time, RF also deals 10 vulnerability and triggers twice the number of projectile finishers.

Atherakhia.4086:

Longbow Rangers aren’t even meta

Maybe not in tournaments, but they are everywhere in ranked queue and in every 1v1 server/tournament (where taunt in combination with Rapid Fire gives it a massive upper hand vs other marauder builds, which is usually every build in a 1v1 tournament).

In your OP you mention nothing but Volley for Rifle…

Different classes are different. Rapid Fire was changed so using the skill was actually a DPS increase over auto attack at anything but max range. It was changed to function similarly to volley. It’s also worth noting that Longbow originally had the vulnerability on another skill. It was moved to Rapid Fire (which resulted in a DPS loss btw).

It was likely ANet’s laziness as to why it maintained the same number of projectiles. Everyone agrees the skill looks silly as is. Does crackshot still make Warrior projectiles 100% finishers? No idea…

But anyway, RF was buffed because it was awful. Volley wasn’t buffed because, even though Rifle Warrior may suck, Volley is fine.

style.6173:

Atherakhia.4086:

The reaper was at a distinct disadvantage from the very beginning… it’s based off the Necromancer.

It’s too early to complain about Daredevil though IMO. I’m honestly more concerned with pistol daredevils than staff ones

Necromancer is really strong. Complaining about necro at this point is 6 months in the past.

‘Really’ is going a bit far and it’s more like 1 month in the past, but who’s counting.

It honestly sounds neat on paper and I can’t wait for the PoI tomorrow. I am a bit concerned about how other weapons will interact with the traits and abilities though. Especially Pistol Thieves who already have very lopsided coefficients on their pistol attacks.

The reaper was at a distinct disadvantage from the very beginning… it’s based off the Necromancer.

It’s too early to complain about Daredevil though IMO. I’m honestly more concerned with pistol daredevils than staff ones

All channeled skills work the same way. Volley and Rapid Fire track the exact same.

Rapid Fire and Volley channel for the same time.

Rapid Fire has a higher base coefficient.

Longbow Rangers aren’t even meta so what is it exactly you think Warrior needs and why do you think the problem is volley?

The entire point OP is making is wrong. Nearly every point raised since the OP is wrong. What is it you want…

They have the exact same channel time. I’m not sure what you’re after here?

Are you asking for volley to deal 25% more damage or something?

I was a bit disappointed to be honest.

As for the elite in particular, it seems fine. I’d still like Necros to be a 60 second cooldown though.

Wurm
What if they changed spectral walk to a teleport skill that left a shadow behind and it allowed you to portal back to that shadow if you wanted to effectively turning the skill into shadowstep?

This would remove the need for Wurm to function as it currently does, gives us some mobility, and still retain the ‘feel’ of spectral walk.

You could then turn Wurm into a more fitting minion skill. A ‘necro turret’ for example that shot snot projectiles that left behind a line of poison.

Poison Cloud
It should consume/block projectiles.

Corruption skill & Master of Corruption
I agree that we shouldn’t be blinded. But as a whole, Corruption skills still aren’t strong enough to even warrant the initial condition let alone a second. This whole premise needs to be rethought.

Simply making it apply a condition to you and up to 5 targets around you, and then master of corruption causing this to be doubled would be enough for me. But they could take this anywhere.

That’s very similar to what was posted in the CDI

It honestly could be anything at this point. Maybe ANet will give us a little tease this Friday during the Warrior montage hint hint.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession

TheFantasticGman.9451:

See, that’s how I read it. The pet literally disappears and you gain it’s “aspects” which is what was discussed in the CDI.

Oh man, if you’re right… I’d actually be hyped for the Druid.

Just so we’re clear, I’m not saying this is happening. This is just me 100% wish listing

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Atherakhia is talking about the pet always being there, we just lose the pet controls when using aspects.

Sort of. If you hit F5 to take on the aspect, your pet would be removed and their controls would turn into the elementalists attunement bar.

Picture your pet taking on a ‘spirit’ form and then merging bodies with you kind of thing.

Or you could go all DBZ/Bleach and you put your hand on your pet and it disappears in a flash of light only for you to remain with long hair and a bright aura around you!

Currently the best 3 words I can use to describe it are …wtf…

But we’ll see how the new changes play out.

Holland.9351:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Holland.9351:

I don’t know how I feel about Aspects changing the class mechanic. I don’t see much good coming from it since about 1/3 of our traits are pet traits or depend on F2 or F4.

For example, just look at Fortifying Bond, what’s going to happen with that for Druid without a pet?

See Atherakhia’s post above. I think that is quite likely, you just lose access to pet controls when you press F5 and instead you get the aspect swapping mechanic.

That makes like 20 traits and 5 slot skills worthless. That’s why I don’t see it happening.

A lot of those traits could simply move their effect to the Druid when in aspect form. Some of the ones that don’t would be fixed by simply adding an iCD (preferably only when in aspect form). The few that are left could simply not fully affect the Druid.

For example, unyielding blast makes death shroud #1 pierce, but reaper shroud #1 doesn’t need the piercing so only gains the vuln.

And this is assuming they don’t redesign the whole thing

But it’s all idle speculation and wishlisting while we wait for official details to be released.

If it were me doing this, this is how I’d approach it…

The Druid retains use of their pet just like normal for the Ranger with one addition… F5.

You press F5 and your pet controls are removed and replaced with effectively the Elementalist’s attunement and the additional F5 to switch back to your pet.

Since we have no idea what aspects ANet will choose, I’m just going to stick with the Norn aspects and choose Bear, Bird, Cat, and Dog. It doesn’t matter what weapon you had equipped, each ‘attunement’ would have the same 5 skills.

Each attunement has 5 skills to choose from designed around the nature of each individual animal. Cats would be like fire with more DPS oriented skills. Bird would be like air with more speed and bursty skills. Bear would be like Earth with more tanky skills. And dog would be like Water with more utility minded skills.

On top of this the Druid would have a staff.

Rather than making these debuffs relevant in PvE, it’s far more likely they’ll simply allow the debuff to be active on a boss but they simply won’t effect them. This way your traits that do X when Y is Z’d still work but are still largely irrelevant when it comes to utility.

Any update you can give on the Necromancer changes? You mentioned you were reviewing Axe and Scepter?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

Look up the weapons (hammer, greatsword, etc) and click the first attack in the chain. People have added remarks to indicate the weapon’s ‘real’ attack time.

Reapers aren’t available on the wiki so others have built them for us. Gravedigger is actually 2 seconds, which is asinine I agree.

But everything you mentioned about Hammer has actually been suggested. Simply increase the DPS so it’s worth the time. Bhawb actually suggested removing the chill and making a cold field which would make GS#1 nearly identical to Hammer.

The only point trying to be made is that slow DPS weapons and attacks actually can work. The problem is that the Reaper isn’t rewarded for them.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Atherakhia.4086:

Changing #5 to a launch (see: Banish) instead of a stun would also add some survivability as it would still maintain the long duration incapacitate like a stun, but would get the target away from you. The gap could easily be compensated for by #2 above plus the long activation times on greatsword skills would probably give you enough time to walk up onto the opponent and hit them.

…you want a Reaper to be easier to escape?
Because that’s what changing ES to a launch would do.

We already have weakness and protection for self defense. So beyond that you kind of have 2 options… you either give the class tools for you to get away from the opponent or tools for the opponent to get away from you.

So yes, I’d be fine with a knockback. Especially since they’d still be chilled and we have access to pulls.

Changing #2 to function more like Whirlwind Attack would be my first step. This skill being an evade gives the class a second way to engage/disengage other than hitting stability first every time you enter shroud. It makes it more of a skill shot type skill and also resolves the current pathing problems people have with it.

Changing #5 to a launch (see: Banish) instead of a stun would also add some survivability as it would still maintain the long duration incapacitate like a stun, but would get the target away from you. The gap could easily be compensated for by #2 above plus the long activation times on greatsword skills would probably give you enough time to walk up onto the opponent and hit them.

Example: Reaper #5 launches foe back and you Reaper #2 to close the gap and continue to reaper auto. Alternatively, you Reaper #5 to launch foe back, drop shroud and activate grave digger which will take a second to deal damage and about a second for you to walk the distance to the launched foe.

Dakunaito.9602:

Arche.7326:

Its 2.75s according to wiki. Just wanting to point that out.

still, it’s faster. how much is the cycle of GS Warrior?

2.4…

But at the same time, Guardian Hammer is 3.7, which is also quite common in PvP.

That’s the problem though, dagger still blows it out of the water. The life force gen and immob is still leaps and bounds ahead of what a blast finisher and 10% more damage would provide at 600 range.

900 range, 10% on auto, 15% on #2, and a blast finisher or fury on #3 would at least give the weapon an identity.

I can’t see either of those making the weapon viable. Neither a blast finisher or a 10% DPS increase would make the weapon useful over dagger/X and the limited range on axe wouldn’t get it slotted over staff for the ranged fights. Certainly not due to utility.

So while a complete redesign may not be practical, it needs more than a slight nudge.

Slave Snares: Shadowy chains appear from the hilt of your greatsword with barbed fittings on the end. You whirl forward ensnaring anyone you damage pulling them along with you.

Effectively the Warrior’s Whirlwind Attack that will pull anyone it hits along for the ride. You can increase the whirl distance to 600 so range stays the same.

Scepter 1: First attack, 2 stacks of bleed. Second attack, 2 stacks of poison. Third attack, convert a boon to a condition (increase cast time to 3/4).

Scepter 2: This is fine. If we really want to improve it, perhaps attach bleed or torment to it as well.

Feast of Corruption: For each unique boon on the target, your opponent receives 1 stack of torment. You gain 5% life force for every stack of torment applied to your foe.

I’m with Jekkt. Make it 900 range, give it a damage increase across the board, and turn #3 into something more useful. An AE knockback for example would be quite pleasant. It would also fit with Spiteful Spirit.

You want to know the sad thing? Despite the issues you’re having, Engi magnet is still the most reliable pull in the game.

While it’s true the Necro is part of the meta, it’s important to understand why they’re part of the meta.

Is the class strong enough to earn its place by being able to adapt to multiple scenarios? Or is it part of the meta because of some small, unique niche that if it were removed, the class would be irrelevant.

Unfortunately in both WvW and PvP, it’s the second one.

Klaeljanus.7695:

The reason why GS has such bad LF gen is because of two traits:
Chilling force and Blighter’s boon.
Combine those with two shouts, Suffer and Weaklings, and you can easily gain your LF back before F1 comes off cooldown.

With Vital Persistance and not using GS/shouts on single target it’s entirely possible to stay in shroud long enough for the shouts to come off CD.

This theory doesn’t work because you’re not forced to use GS with Reaper. If you use dagger wouldn’t you be overpowered then?

Each weapon should have sufficient life force generation depending on the way that spec is supposed to be played. if you’re a melee weapon on a melee spec using a melee shroud, life force should flow from every orifice.

All pulls should use the same logic as the Engineer’s magnet simply because the Engineer’s magnet is like 99% effective whereas the other pulls fail 2 out of 3 times.

Ele can kill everything.

Signet Necro can only kill things with excessive condi burst.

Nerf Ele condi burst and you nerf Signet Necro while also making the game better. Nerf Signet Necro and you’re still left with horrible Ele meta.

Seems to me the logical step is to nerf the Ele.

Gravedigger’s overall cast time is 2 seconds. It has a 2.0 coefficient. This means it has a 1.0 damage a second. Or the equivalent of 100% of your power every second.

Dagger auto attack rotation has a total coefficient of 2.8 with a total duration of 2.1 seconds. This means it has a 1.3 damage a second. Or the equivalent of 130% of your power every second.

So you can plainly see there is no burst. A player would be better off auto attacking with dagger than spamming gravedigger. Especially when you consider dagger’s also giving you tons of life force and GS is giving you next to none.

Unfortunately my only exposure to the Reaper has been watching streams, and what you describe is exactly how Bhawbs describe it. That in a strong boon sharing group that Blighter’s Boon will probably heal for enough to keep you up.

But I also saw reapers shroud go from full to off from just 2 opponents in PvP streams AND I’m not crazy about only being viable at the front when your RS#3 is off cooldown for the engage.

Perhaps if ANet invites non-pre-orders I’ll get a shot and can check things out first hand.

It just needs to be scrapped entirely. It’s trying too hard to be a DPS shout when the class desperately needs more combat utility.

A field that blocks projectiles, a mobility skill, another condi transfer or boon cleanse, a clone to effectively double our DPS, etc etc.

I wasn’t part of beta as I won’t be pre-ordering this product until a week before release. I’m curious, for those who actually tried large scale WvW and organized group combat beyond what PvP provides, what you thought about survivability?

I play Tier1 and do GvG often and the saving grace for Necro currently is the fact that it’s ranged and your shroud will be 100% whenever you need to use it.

Reaper won’t have these luxuries and I’m very concerned it won’t function as a front line skirmisher and instead will need to invest heavily in death/blood to survive at which point you’re about as effective as a melee ranger in WvW zergs (useless).

That’s the problem though. If the greatsword is supposed to be a burst weapon, it has no burst.

The dagger auto chain has more DPS than the greatswords #1 spam. The dagger auto chain has more DPS than gravedigger spam. None of the other greatsword attacks do more damage than the greatsword auto attack.

This is a problem and while it’s beta and things like this can be worked out, they’re so far off from effective it’s leading many to question what the purpose of the greatsword truly is.

If it’s not a DPS weapon than it’s a utility weapon (something the class doesn’t need since staff is its utility weapon). It’s not a melee utility weapon because it lacks mobility and holding skills. It doesn’t even generate enough life force to use shroud effectively.

Right now the weapon is entirely irrelevant when compared to reaper shroud and dagger spam.

They could detach gravedigger from the global cooldown and make it a supplemental attack to the auto chain.

If instead of interrupting your auto attack you simply pressed it and it summoned a shadowy figure above you kind of like how Maul looks but a guy holding a sword. It then swiped down after a 1 second animation. Still easy to dodge and it wouldn’t interrupt your auto in any way.

You then rebalance it to just reduce its cooldown for X seconds for each target it hits.

Compare it to Glacial Heart.

Can you verify that the wiki coefficients for GS and Shroud skills are correct?

I’ll have to check this out tonight when I get off work.

Make sure you guys start a beta feedback thread or something. It would be nice to get some updated coefficients for each skill.