Guild Wars 2

Exos.3472:

I’m trying to find a use for skill #3 greatsword… 900 range maybe ? Or change it to a second CC since Anet doesn’t want to give us mobility.

I am still kind of bummed that we didn’t get the arti slide on the GS. But yeah, mobility is probably too much to ask for.

Anchoku.8142:

Instead of nerfing Necromancer, why not make PvE much harder?

PvE becoming much harder is a good thing. But not every type of PvE content needs to be super hard.
Especially Open World should stay more casual because people with limited time can easily participate and shouldn’t get frustrated by really challenging mechanics.

Challenges should stay in more controlled environments like dungeons, fractals, raids because there the player numbers are fixed and encounters can be better tuned towards those numbers. Also people who join that kind of content know what they are in for.

Remember MMO’s have a large casual crowd of people that just want to do stuff with other people. If all areas are super hard, you scare those people away and while I also love a challenge, empty servers make a bad game.

Open world Reaper feels nice, sure. But in most open world encounter there are lots of smaller minions (pocket raptor, chak, non elite/veterans within a group of elite/vet/champs) so LF is once again a non Issue.
Try different game modes. Especially the recent Blighters Boon nerf was a pretty hefty hit to sustain (though understandeable).

You probably checked for that already, but just in case: Have you tried deactivating “Effect LOD”?

This option has to be turned OFF so that every effect gets displayed.

Jackalrat.5493:

What that being said, what the greatsword needs MORE of to be competitive in PvP is reliable control. It has been suggested that it should receive a 1s chill on the 1st and second swings of the AA, and I think this would be an excellent step in the right direction. I would further add that the 3rd swing should have an increased radius of effect, as it’s so hard to land in PvP. Perhaps an AoE frost nova animation and a range of 200-220.

I like these ideas.

@OP: Like many others, I don’t agree with your shout evaluation at all. Suffer is trash. The rest is somewhere between good and ok. NCSY for example synergises really well with Decimate Defenses. Rise is kind of an “active defense” type ability. And the rest are solid abilities.

My biggest gripe with shouts was: Even with trooper runes + Curses or DM, condi removal felt kinda low/unreliable against heavy condibursts (esp engi). But that’s rng burn removal at it’s best.

@GD Haste: As I see it, making GS faster would be against the design of the weapon and granting quickness when hitting with GD would overload this ability even further. If it gets any haste or attack speed buffs then they should occur when GD is negated and not when it lands.
This way the weapon kit is not as reliant on GD as it currently is.
Alternatively, if you want to associate Soul Stealer with life leech, it could grant a short duration life steal buff, when an attack is negated.

@Soul Eater beeing useful.

If they continue to go the “load everything on grave digger route”, how about a (stacking) attack speed buff for negated GD’s?
Would essentially be an altered version of two rev traits. Bonus attack speed with swords on attacking (shiro line) and bonus damage on negated attacks(invocation line), but with attack speed when GD is dodged/blocked/whatever.
This might help to reduce the dependency on GD and make the weapon overall more threatening.

@Executioner Scythe animation bug: happens when you change from running to standing still or from standing still to running while casting the skill(castbar not through). It will then speed up the animation resulting in the attack looking like it hit/finished while the skill is still beeing cast. Hope that helps reproducing the bug.

The Chilled to the Bone bug from BWE1 was still in.
Skill goes on full cd if canceled or interrupted at around 75% of the cast (castbar 3/4 through).
Kinda kitten when you want to self interrupt the skill, b/c someone dodged, or the skill gets interrupted and goes on full cd.

Siren’s Call or Song of Temptress might be to her liking.

PvP is not a great way to level a character. For that you do pve or eotm.

Buuuut PvP is a great way to level up for folks that enjoy pvp, because they do what they like and get tomes in the process. Also since lvl doesn’t affect a thing in spvp you don’t really mind your character level and after some time you get enough tomes to pump it to 80.

I tried like 5-6 different builds and results were kinda meh.

You can use a “standard” cele build but with elite shout instead of plague (giving up curses for reaper) but that lacks condi clear, weakness and corrupts. It is still an ok build.

I had some success with this thing: build
Utilizing crit sigil for gravedigger coupled with ferocity from crusader that also profits death perception.

The healing power from amulett is useful for heal, staff regen, SoL (which helps with movement) and US.
Condi clear via Shroud, staff and shouts.

So…

Now Rat Reaper might become actually usefull? Nice.

Wasn’t the sirlin post about how “scrubs” want to play to look cool and use stylish moves in beat’em ups and how they would complain if someone comes along and plays more technical ?
So for example the scrub wants to kill you only with throws and some “normal” player comes along notices the throw fetish and simply uses fast punches to kick you out of throw animation.
And instead of trying something else the “scrub” will try his throw combo again and complains if you “counter his strategy” with the same move over and over and how it is “uncool, yadda, yadda…” .

I am pretty sure the sirlin thing was more about a healthy mindset of: “if something beats you, learn how to beat it or atleast how it beats you” instead of simply complaining and wanting your same old and proven moves to work on everything.

I am pretty sure it was more about “adapting and learning” and less about “exploits and balance patches”.

Death’s Charge deals around 100-250 dmg(cele-marauder) when whirling through somebody, which is negligible when compared with “old” fiery great sword.
What deals the ~1k damage is the “attack” at the end of the rush which also applies the blind.

So the part which profits from corner stacking is the part of the skill that already deals significantly reduced dmg (which can still add up if it would hit 1 gazillion times).

Changes are pretty cool. *hue hue

ronpierce.2760:

It does not need that. No one wants to flip their camera up every 5 seconds while in RS. They just need to give it a flip skill to land early and you get about the same effect but a million times better designed and intuitive.

I want it. It’s more fun.

Flip skill is the unintuitive suggestion. If you want to make it easier to land and “intuitive” then just make it leap to selected target.

Skill is good. Needs to have the “camera angling to reduce distance” property added though.

Hey,

found a bug with CttB where it goes on full cd if you get interrupted during the last ~25% of the cast.
Made a video to let you guys know/show how to reproduce it.

Also there is another video in the list about on swap sigils triggering when you enter/exit Reaper shroud.

cttb interrupt bug

Trying to make this short. PvP standpoint.
I couldn’t make gs or shouts work, maybe i tried the wrong things or w/e.
Gs overall doesn’t feel like it could accomplish its job as a melee weapon. Chill/cripple are too gated (by autoattack chain last hit or pbaoe) and there is no gap closer, leaving you only with a huge cd pull.

Shouts overall were pretty weak in effect/damage. They just aren’t impactful enough as utility skills. Atleast that is my feeling. Elite shout is good though. I like the cast time /effect tradeoff, but cd feels too punishing. Also there is a bug where if you self cancel elite shout at around 75% cast it goes on full cd and does nothing.

Reaper shroud on the other hand…. is amazing. Oh my god is this thing good. The mobility boost I get by one single skill is amazing. Skillset is overall really good and feels so fluid. Only thing i dislike is RS2 beeing not affected by targeting or camera angling to influence distance.

From what I saw it worked like Sigmoid explained.

I was also disappointed when I saw that the skill ends when you leave DS and not when its duration expires.

samulihei.1952:

Anyone wathced the Necro PvP from Gamescon? That thing sucked balls! Although must be noted that the dev playing didn’t know what he was supposed to be doing. Also from the stream:

Deathly Chill
Damage reduced
Below 50% 294 -> 145
Above 50% 197 -> 97

Probably because he had no condition damage gear on (was wearing marauder).
Also the build he picked had 0 synergy. It was like seeing someone trait full minions and using only corruptions, while wearing d/x with settler amulett. Just kidding, but it was bad nonetheless.

More interesting were reaper changes. Elite shout was the same as in wvw stress test.
“You are all weaklings” is now on 30 sec cd (stunbreaker change i guess). Suffer is on 30 sec and “Nothing …” on 35.

The get might and life force on hit trait got a 1 sec icd per target. Blighters boon seemed to stay the same.

Gravedigger cd was reduced/changed to 5sec/1sec(when hitting target below 50%). Nightfall has 25 sec cd and pulses blind/cripple, the pull has now 30sec cd.

Reapershroud got some changes too: the leap now blinds and the spin to win move now poisons on every hit. So 11 (short) poison stacks on the whole move. Skill 3 stayed the same and applied 1 stack stab with 3 sec duration for 8 seconds.

^ Necro gets AoE blind field on 20 sec cd. Atleast that was the latest iteration of gs4 at the time of the reaper showcase.
So no utilities used to get something that is on a lower recharge than the ele skill.
Weeeoooww

Also, atm it is “in” to cry about necros and everyone and their mother does it. For the most part it just happens to be that the people who complain now and cry the loudest have no kittening clue how some issues of this class get addressed with the upcoming elite specc or why it is that necro sucks/ is lacking.

Why?

We get decent stability access with reaper. Actually 40% uptime on 20s cd without traits is more than decent. So why would you want a breakbar? Especially since the downsides are not known:

If you break the bar of conquest NPC’s they get stunned for 5 sec. The whole point with break bars is: if you break them you get rewarded. So it could be a 5 sec stun on players too.
Why would you exchange one mechanic with a more punishing one? Especially since RS stabi gets reapplied every 3 sec, making it on par with breakbar regen.

Edit: Since wiki/tooltip of RS stabi is kinda strange on this part. I don’t know how infusing terror will turn out, but in the showcase it stacked up to 3 stacks of stability. Keep that in mind.

In short: Reaper is coming and some things will synergise better with it than with current necro. So they don’t want to overbuff stuff that they might have to nerf hard when the addon releases.

Also, in recent times, suggestions and whining went a bit out of hand. Some suggestions are just broken and some complaints are targeted at changes that have like 0 impact.

DarkSyze.8627:

-snip-

You took troll b8, m8.

Map definately got better with latest iteration.

Really cool skin that loses its appeal when you draw it.
The effects on the weapon kill it for me but I like the base skin very much.

Aggrostemma.1703:

Bhawb… If I exaggeriting it must be only slightly (maybe my memories tricked me but I had a friend who was following me since I the Guardian are struggling fighting against the Necro)… And at the time he arrived I was all dead.

But if the minions gave back all the burning (note: that’s 24 stacks at least) and they exploded by the utility command… This pretty much explains it.

I did not kill any minion. My focused target was the Necromancer.

I’d guess you used Judge’s Intervention and gave every minion 3 stacks of Burning and the MM had Necromantic Corruption and gave you 15+ stacks of burning back. Also small damage+ vampiric damage + a bone minion explosion add up.

Edit: Should’ve read whole thread. Muffins answer and Bhawb’s last paragraph explain it pretty good.

Plague or a flesh wurm port to a location that isn’t easily reachable are pretty much your only options. Cripple/chill kiting is not since rampage grants 33% reduced immob/cripple/chill duration and if they go defense line (what every war does for cleansing ire) they might pick up dogged march for additional -33% soft cc duration.

^ I agree with L Step on most parts.

Though cele feels somewhat useful if you run SoL, SoV and dagger main. Also no amount of toughness/vit makes current burst less scary, so I’d take more dmg from cele(crit, critdmg, condi) over useless def stats.

I had the same experience with plague with soldier amulett. Thanks to death breakdown I could see the 20k dmg from myself.

Also vamp runes are the bane of every necro. They not only cancel plague and DS but also kill minions(bye, bye emergency worm). One of the most detrimental runes for the class with access to “vampiric” traits.

All in all and despite signets of suffering beeing pretty fun: with the current feel I get from the class compared to the other toons I play I don’t think I’ll touch it until reaper is here.

Papish.5806:

Honestly unless you are going to run a bunker or tanky reaper setup i dont think you would even run blood since you will have plenty of sustain from blighter’s boon combo-ed with chilling force and all the might from being in spite(might on rs auto and when hitting targets below 50%). While out of rs you wont have extra healing you will have extra lf gen and if using you are all weaklings(the possibly only worthwile shout) since it is a 25sec stunbreak that gives weakness, itll also give you 4 stack of might(so 4% lf) per target hit.

so while in rs i think blighters will put out more healing than blood can to our hp, and while out of rs we will generate a lot more lf so when our cd comes up from exiting it last we can have more if not full lf(can even trait for lower rs cd if you are hitting 100% before cd is over).

edit: also with blighters boon any ally spewing out aoe boons will alsop give you lf/hp depending on whether you are in rs or not.

Since, in general, things tend to show their real potential only when combined and additionally life steal/healing on necro is balanced by values from outlier scenarios I’d take a guess and say we have to combine spite and blood magic with reaper/blighters boon to get to respectable numbers. Also all of the healing relies on hitting in melee range, so kiting and (soft-)CC will keep the HpS value down. We might get a good stability skill but that thing has a cooldown as well.

Plague gets 2 sec poison. Not sure if it’s every second though. Good thing the Master of Corruption can’t handle his own corruptions. Kinda moronic they don’t put resistance on the trait.

Yeah, considering Reaper it might get significantly harder to procc it. If reaper will still utilize staff it will be ok, since dodge MoB and 5 sec cd staff MoB are probably enough to get those 4 stacks. But if staff falls out of use somehow, reaper is going to have a problem with BM, or atleast Blood Bond.

Dadnir.5038:

Oh my bad… i’m so used to use bloodthirst that I took value with bloodthirst…
So it will be 38 for vampiric and 31 for vampiric presence and an overall 70 siphon with the 2 of them…

It cut down the number but, let’s say that it’s a buff for all non crit builds.

With around 2,1k power Vampiric currently does 38 dmg (without bloodthirst). So i am expecting the after patch values to be (with 2,1k+ power) 45 for Vampiric and 38 for Vampiric aura. The power scaling is small but it’s there. Do you happen to take those values from a condi build?

spoj.9672:

The charges have a 1 second icd so increasing the charges on the lesser signet wont improve it for solo. I think its fine kitten stacks. I do still think the icd should be removed from both versions and the passive of the heal should be overhauled.

Yes, I don’t think it needs improvement for solo. But since Anet introduced traits that activate certain skills with this update, why is Blood Bond such a crappy version of SoV and not more like it?

Half the cd with 1/5 the charges. Not adding the healing portion is totally ok but 5 charges is moronic. Blood magic is supposed to be a necro team support trait line and so I was expecting 25 charges with 35 sec cd (like the signet). The only reason why they probably didn’t do it is because it would make SoV even more undesirable. But that should be fixed by addressing the terrible healing skill not by implementing traits that differ vastly from the corresponding skill.

Papish.5806:

Putting normal amount/higher charges on it would make the trait too imbalanced for the adept slot it is in due to its potential in teamfights.

Adept traits are not what they used to be. You can’t pick two adepts anymore and looking at some new master traits from other classes that seems to be taken into consideration with balance.
10 charges would be a good middle ground with 20 sec cd and it would allow for more of a supportish aspect. Those 10 charges have to be procced first.
Also one could argue that getting enough hits in on some teamfight target to consume 25 charges of SoV would mean they’d be dead anyways?! (since it means you get attacked and hit by 5 players for 5 seconds without some negation tools – except blocks and endure pain)

^
Vampiric Aura numbers start with old vampiric values, so we are looking at

~45 heal/dmg through vampiric
~38 heal/dmg through vampiric aura + 4 allies with it.

While theoretical lifesteal maximum has been nerfed through the removal of vampiric precision, we are looking at way more steady values now that aren’t crit dependant.
Also we only need 1 additional trait (vamp aura) and not 2 (vamp prec, bloodthirst).

Remember bloodthirst has been made baseline. It is a buff for vampiric traits overall. It might not be huge but they also introduced healing in DS with it.

Zin.6170:

When you activate it you get 3 stacks of might and convert two boons on the target to conditions. You also put a mark on them that will do 1000 damage and heal for 1900 over its lifetime.

Since they made Bloodthirst baseline you are looking at around ~350 dmg and 500 healing from the active portion of the skill. So you are looking at ~1750 dmg and 2500 heal if you procc all 5 charges, which is easy enough in pve but unlikely in pvp. Still a nice thing to have.

What irks me about it is that it only has 5 charges. With this limitation it is pretty much a solo/1v1 thing because you don’t profit much from it in grp play (to some extent you are guaranteeing that the charges get consumed).

Overall number of charges is too low. Especially considering it has around half the cd of SoV and only 1/5 the charges and no initial heal. It profits strongly from Signet mastery, sure, but without the trait you get strongly diminished value out of Blood Bond.

Currently, damage and pressure through Death Perception is huge, so I don’t plan on dropping it at first chance. Might give it a try later, though. Also LF generation via Soul Marks is often overlooked but really strong.

I thought curses was great for the build because of barbed generates bleeds for lesser vamp signet procs ( more damage and healing to you ), you need 4. You grant yourself fury all the time, plague sending is free condi removal/boon corruption/might generation every 24s, PoC for more boon killing and getting in close and weakening shroud for high uptime on weakness which give you more defense with the 25% damage reduction on average. Literally 100% weakness uptime because of all the might you will corrupt.

Minor SoV can get triggered by rng Signet Mastery corrupts, staff2 and/or dodgeing into people for MoB. So there is no reason we have to pick up Barbed Precision.

Fury on DS is covered by DP.
PoC is really nice, no doubt, but when I invest in curses i might aswell grab Master of corruption and pick up CC once again.
Weakness is strong, but currently I don’t think it brings as much bang for buck as a SR grandmaster slot.

I don’t think curses is a bad choice, it offers more debuffing and condi control whereas SR strengthens direct damage capabilites. With sustain being buffed (hopefully), will we need the dmg mitigation curses offers, or is more damage more desirable? That is the choice. Also Death Magic might be another alternative.

@LSoV: I think, but that is simply a wild guess, that Lesser SoV will be a SoV activation without the initial heal. Probably won’t stack then, yeah. But atleast you got control about when to activate the heal and those two won’t interfere.

Thank god for that one positive thread. Even reddit was taken over by too many crybabies and bitter old people.

First of ICD’s on signet procc traits are with 99% certainity the same as the corresponding signet. That is the whole deal about traits triggering certain skills, that you can enhance them by picking traits that buff utilities/weapons. (Eg.: if there is a trait that activates a skill like signet mastery activating signet of the locust, or chill of death activating Spinal shivers, then those activations get affected by traits that correspond to the skill. So getting focus recharge turns chill of death into a once every 16 sec procc and buffs its damage by 5% against foes with no boons.)

BTT: I’d try something similar to the original suggestion first. Spite and blood magic would be the same setup except for BM grandmaster, where I’ll try out Unholy martyr for LF in skirmishes (a rune like ogre might also be helpful, granting additional lf generation when you are on your own).

Utility would be SoV, plague sig, SoL + either WoS/WoP/SpecArmor + whatever elite, weapons are D/x and staff. First tries with celestial gear afterwards zerker followed by more odd choices (My reasoning for cele stands: necro defense profits more than other classes from bonus tough/vit; new spite line with Signet Mastery grants pretty decent might; healing power is useful for Life Siphon, SoV and SoL).

For 3rd trait line I’d prefer SR for Death Perception. If the condi removal won’t be enough, my second choice would be Death Magic, essentially for Shrouded removal and the new %dmg negation GM trait.

Curses would only be a tertiary choice, because i don’t think it offers enough for builds that lean more towards power (except for the adept signet trait).

Minor SoV can get triggered by rng Signet Mastery corrupts, staff2 and/or dodgeing into people for MoB. So there is no reason we have to pick up Barbed Precision.

Edit: Also I totally agree with you that there is huge potential with signet mastery and those 2 additional Signet procc traits. Take SoL for example. With the mastery trait it is a skill that grants 3 stacks might, heals 1k+ per target and converts 2 boons per target on 5 targets in a 600 range radius. That is huuuuuge, especially considering it sits at 24 sec cd. This is less than a considerable amount of weapon skills(DS and d/wh).

Aseity.9152:

So, I don’t know what to rely on for condition removal anymore. Well of Power is all I could think of at the moment, a skill with 50 second recharge time…

Plague signet, Shrouded Removal, 20% cd staff skills, that spite trait that removes condis when striking someone low on health, that autocasting plague signet trait in curses. Dagger offhand and WoP are also an option.

Choose some. For power: signets are more valuable now.

Consume conditions was the goto skill for 3 years. Nothing else came even close to the condition removal utility it offers.

We might finally see some other skills beeing used and that would be nice.
Maybe vamp signet is finally an ok skill.

Is it enough? Not sure but time will tell.

Blood magic seems really interesting. Blood bond gets my vote for one of the most interesting traits.

Our goto condi remove has been gutted but that is about time. We got some decent new options (curses trait, Shrouded Removal), stronger staff skills, lower cd signets but i am still unsure how this will work out(for power).

nekretaal.6485:

Deaths Charge looks horrible. It has a one second cast time / windup, and the actual charge isn’t so hot either.

Like warrior staff banner charge, the skill is no better than running to your enemy with swiftness. You wolnt be able to gap close with this and you wolnt be able to increase your land-speed with this.

Nor do you get any evade while you are charging. You’re actually a sitting duck like the ranger sword auto attack root.

Also it’s a reaper shroud skill, so you can’t count on it always being available to you. Using reaper shroud to get movement forfeits your defense.

Then when it hits, you inflict not cripple or chill but poison, which does nothing to stop an enemy from kiting you (the whole reason you needed a gap close to begin with).

At least there’s a blast finisher (ofc blasting a water field wolnt heal you).

It is pretty comparable to heartseeker numberwise. HS is 450 leap in 3/4 sec. Charge is 600 in 1 sec. Comparing it to some other skills: Earthshaker and warrior sword leap are 600 range and have 3/4 sec cast time. Swoop(ranger) is 1100 and has 1.75 sec cast time. It is not too out of line and considering HS is a speed boost while traveling so will Death’s Charge. Also i think the aftercast looked pretty low – this is what would break the skill with current numbers.

@Sitting Duck: Necro is supposed to be one of the face tank classes, like warrior. Dodge is not necessary in it’s design. Sustain is, but is currently lacking. Blighters boon and vamp changes might fix that. We’ll see.

@Poison: Before the introduction of GS. The poison access of power necro was severly limited (only staff3). Since Reaper caters towards power build needs (not exclusively though) it should be seen as a valuable addition rather than a detriment. Poison is such a strong condition and while it doesn’t hinder enemy movement we are still talking about necro, who has pretty good access to cripple and chill, and additionally we are talking about reaper, who happens to be the chill specialisation.

Like someone else already said, it is a leap, not a blast finisher. The blast in the description specifies the area damage at the end of the skill. Similar to that of burning speed.

Skill overall looks pretty solid. I don’t like the necrocopter animation though.

nearlight.3064:

yes thats true. But still if you miss, the enemy invulns or dodges or misses some of the hits, just like with axe 2, you can literally be screwed out of that life force. Maybe I’m spoiled by the dagger autos, but I still don’t find the GS LF generation to be that reliable in comparison.

Are you talking pve? Because where else would you be able to build up considerable amounts of lf with dagger auto? Only reliable way for dagger lf gen is AA’ing downed people, usually after a fight is over.

Reliable LF gen is staff with traited soul marks or spec armor for burst lf gen. Everything else is not consistent enough. Dagger gets kited/dodged. Who, except mb warrior, would facetank dagger hits?

GS might be slow but atleast it is slow on offense, meaning out of death shroud, where you’ll be when you don’t take a beating.
Thing is, in contrast to DS and super slow LB, RS auto is pretty fast. This, coupled with utility in RS, might be enough to enable necro defense mode (shroud) to apply significant amounts of counterpressure, which is lackluster in current DS design.

So, don’t wanted to open another thread but how do you guys deal with the “no class skills in mist form”?

The runeset is really bad now since it cancels death shroud. For example you drop below 20% through condis and go DS. Next attack that hits you triggers Mist Form and kicks you out of DS.
Kind of a dealbreaker…

Undead maggots that leave healing orbs(med kit style) when killed.

Current procc shenanigans, especially Chill of Death with Deaths Embrace (downstate dmg trait) and fire and air, are absurd. Sure.

But wanting to effortlessly stomp an opponent is equally absurd. Necro down state gets on a threat level when traited. Other down states got inherant stomp avoidance(thief/mes) or better healing(guard/ranger) or some other gimmick that might or might not be up to par.
Is the combination of +50% dmg on Chill of Death too much? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that having a class with a threatening down state is a no no.

Also, to add some fire, calling people who try to make things happen even when in down state, a fundamental game mechanic, “tryhard” is a pretty scrubby thing to say, since no matter how much you dislike it, it is part of the game and adds to it, especially in team fights.

I am ok with shouts having cast times. It adds more play around it and makes them different and you can also make them stronger in effects to compensate for cast times.
That said current shouts are not quite there yet. “You are all weaklings” is good and the boon strip shout (“prepare to die” or whatever it is called) is decent but elite has either too long cast time or cd (imo) and heal and the other 2 utility shouts aren’t really good options.

Reaper seems to have 40% stab uptime if it works like it looks. DS 3 grants 3?! stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 8 seconds and i am pretty certain they said that you keep the effect when leaving. Also DS 2 makes mobility similar to shoutbow – which is not bad.
So all in all i think it is ok design wise and the kit (reaper shroud) can make shouts with cast time work, but some of the shouts could need a bit more oomph.

Chill of Death is a crutch power nec has to lean on to be even semi viable.

I like the trait but air and fire procc’s make this sometimes feel too random. Air and fire also make some other zerk builds dish out crazy random spikes.

Randulf.7614:

The offhand is a bug, that is confirmed.

Interesting to see its improved for Charr tho. The change for human is…..quite, quiet horrible. I’m killing things a lot slower (noticeably so) and I’m not understanding why if the skill hasn’t changed time

Well atleast i like the current animation a lot better (on charr). The old one was like using a duster, the new one looks more brutish.

Regarding slower killing speed. There is another thread and people in it are discussing another bug that came with the change.
It seems like the old animation took 0.95s with aftercast to finish and the new one takes 1.2s. So that would explain your longer killing time.

Looks sooooo much better now on charr.

Thank you. Nice little fix for stow casting that also improves visual appeal.

But it seems like offhand weapon doesn’t get displayed in the attack animation.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Bellamy.9860:

Solving it via blast finishers is really a patchwork solution.

If we get any kind of blasts why would anyone take a necro over another kind of class? Seriously people, thieves got blast finishers with no cooldown on shortbow, so what would change if necro had better access to blast finishers?

You get a guaranteed dungeon spot by having extraordinary dmg or having certain, unique types of utility.
W/e the case, simply adding blast finishers won’t solve problems, having unique support or strong dmg would though.

Vampiric aura is a step in the right direction. Nobody knows if it’s enough or not at the moment.

Did you know that thieves can provide group life stealing? If not now you know why…

By giving up a significant amount of dmg and utility(they have to take venom utility skills and 6 pts in shadow trait line). So it is not as easy as saying: “Yeah, they can do more.”.

Edit: Also, to expand on this, there is a post over on the gwguru board that does the math for 15/3 pt vampiric traiting for necros to deal the most dps in dungeons.
If these numbers somehow keep their balance (which is kind of likely since the 5 pt minor in curses gets changed to crit chance) this trait option will be the optimal dungeon build and will allow picking up vamp aura for free (changes to picking specialisation line instead of investing 1-6 pts in a line).
Meaning there is 0 downsides for necros traiting for vamp aura, whereas thieves have to give up on damage.

EDIT2: Also, saying thieves have better life steal doesn’t make necros better in any way, even if they got some blast finishers. So what is your point? Except blast finishers beeing not an option and vampiric beeing not an option either.

Solving it via blast finishers is really a patchwork solution.

If we get any kind of blasts why would anyone take a necro over another kind of class? Seriously people, thieves got blast finishers with no cooldown on shortbow, so what would change if necro had better access to blast finishers?

You get a guaranteed dungeon spot by having extraordinary dmg or having certain, unique types of utility.
W/e the case, simply adding blast finishers won’t solve problems, having unique support or strong dmg would though.

Vampiric aura is a step in the right direction. Nobody knows if it’s enough or not at the moment.

Go away wishmaster. You got more than enough threads to choose from where you can complain.