Guild Wars 2

Silverkey.2078:

Well that’s exactly my point. The Abjured do not take Nos in their team because he plays a strong class, but because he is a good player and they play well together. And Nos plays necro because he likes it and he’s good at it. So conclusion, in PvP you can have player>class.

The problem is this is only true while competition is too low for optimization to matter. This doesn’t mean Necro isn’t bad, or that you can do whatever you want as long as you do it well. He can do this while still allowing Abjured to be #1 NA because in PvP being #1 only requires that you be better than the #2 team. However in PvE, you can measurably compete against yourself, speed runs on their own require utmost optimization because even if you have no outside competition you can always beat your own record. That’s why PvP “allows” for underpowered professions to seemingly excel, whereas PvE chokes out everything except the best. Its a lot like saying Clerics gear is okay for PvE because you can still complete the content like anyone else.

If at any point GW2’s PvP got stronger competition though, we’d see the same thing in PvP that we see in PvE, though it already happens in general. Players would be forced to play optimal setups, instead of getting by due to lack of pressure.

Soul Comprehension is bad, sure MMs get a bit more use out of it (very little, only 2 minions in any common builds actually proc it), but it is just bad.

Vampiric just made the Vampiric Master baseline to reduce clogging. Yes it means MMs get more out of it, but they didn’t nerf Vampiric to do that. And Beyond the Veil doesn’t really add power to MMs, all it does is add additional situations where the Necromancer might want to use it in. But it isn’t like using minions suddenly makes the trait stronger, or that it is balanced around having minions.

Axe AA is mostly fine from a damage standpoint now. It deals 0.7 coefficients per second, which is solid for an attack that is “guaranteed” in a way that projectiles aren’t. Compare it to other ranged AAs and it has very comparable damage, but also inflicts vuln.

The thing holding Axe back at this point is the pitiful 2 skill, which deals too low of damage compared to other abilities like Rapid Fire (which deals 30% more damage AND stacks vuln). Other than that I think Axe is pretty decent right now, the AA is okay, just needs a less awful animation, the 3 skill is crazy overloaded on effects, and it lets you grab an offhand which is pretty nice.

jacim.5904:

Am I really the only one that thinks both this traits, Death Perception and Decimate Defenses, are a dumb combination.
While in shroud both this traits activated make lots of buffs like banners, spotter, fury etc go to complete waste.

This is true if you play PvE only, yes. This is why quite a few people (primarily PvErs but not only) have argued for one or more of our over-abundant might/crit chance/vuln being turned into flat damage modifiers and spread out among the trees better, rather than being stacked into mechanics that make it hard for our damage to get up there in PvE.

There’s really no need for a cap, the minions wouldn’t hit any unreasonable value in any game mode where it would matter. PvE the minions would still die in any difficult content, WvW they’ll die to zergs, PvP they’ll die in teamfights. Its fun to mess around with a lot of them, but it isn’t really good.

hackks.3687:

In the middle of a fight against a target with 50% health, and mind you that can be anything player pet or otherwise thanks to the cleave, you can generate a near full stack of Might in 2 full chains of the skill. And the AA chain is no slouch for damage, while also protecting your HP pool by being in Shroud. This is why everyone complains about the tanky Reaper setups in PvP. Because with little to no investment you can be thrashing people with a full stack of might, 50% crit chance, and sit inside a monster sized secondary pool of HP.

Oh, so now we’re including two traits? Also, each chain can only generate 3 stacks of might from Reaper’s Might, and 4 might from Siphoned Power, which only works below 50%. So sure, after 8 seconds of auto attacking you’ve built 21 stacks of might IF your enemy is below 50% the entire time, and you do nothing but auto attack, and you land every hit, and that requires two traits.

Also, why get kitteny when people bring up exactly what you are saying? To generate 20 stacks of might from this one trait you have to spend 17-28s doing nothing but auto attacking, in or out of combat. You want to keep mentioning the fact that it can generate 20 might on its own (which isn’t actually true since it has 15s duration so you need minimum 33% might duration investment) then you have to accept the only situation where that happens is when you do nothing but auto attack.

mikexg.7329:

Ever since day 1 I wanted to make a necro similar to that of Diablo 2. An army by my side destroying everything in our oath. I know minions are sub par and the AI sucks. But can anyone who has spent time in the BWEs tell me if they think there is a viable reaper minion build? Doesn’t need to be meta or the best, just not complete kitten.

Minion AI was improved.

Also, are you in PvE/WvW/PvP? Makes a huge difference in the build you should run.

manveruppd.7601:

Any chance Death’s Charge could be targeted, like Fiery Whirl or Whirlwind Attack?

This would only be good if it only happened without a target, while keeping the current targeted functionality.

hackks.3687:

Show us where this efficient might stacking is mirrored in other classes with only using a single or pair of traits and nothing else.

Literally 1 full chain and I had over 10 stacks of Might. One more Chain and I was over 20 and laying waste to everything.

Not one post here has shown that level of efficient Might stacking coming from one or two traits and nothing else any where else in the game. Just show me another class that can do it and I’ll fall right in line with the rest of you.

Let’s town down the ridiculous exaggeration, one chain gives you 3 might on Reaper, that’s it. It takes you 17 seconds to stack 20 might using Reaper’s Shroud and this trait, 17 seconds of doing absolutely nothing but auto attacking.

Silverkey.2078:

If you look at PvP, while still having a “meta”, you see that the top teams are players, not classes. Many of them have their favorite class and just stick to it, regardless of the meta. Nos for example is playing necro, and while people almost accuse him of being a burden to the team, the fact is that he is still a core member of the best team in NA, because he is a good player. (On that subject, if you look at the twitchcon, I absolutely hate how Grouch and Hugh Norfolk kept insulting him during the stronghold match).

Nos being able to play Necro on the top NA team means very little. A lot of top players would say the same thing, Nos holds his team back by playing an underpowered profession, but his team cohesion is probably more important at this point, and GW2 PvP doesn’t have strong enough competition to matter. Look at League pre-LCS and see all the garbage pro players that were allowed to be pros because the competition was comparatively low.

Dragon Ruler X.8512:

Reaper’s Onslaught is a Grandmaster trait and certainly useful, but it was noted that the +15% attack speed was still broken making it less impressive to use last I read the bug listings.

Also Soul Spiral does actually generate LF along with Healing if using Transfusion.

Soul Spiral: “Spiral and damage nearby foes, dealing high damage. This skill inherits traits from Life Transfer.”

Life Transfer: “Damage nearby foes and steal their life force.”

Sorry not Reaper’s Onslaught, Relentless Pursuit. 100% our strongest Adept trait.

And no, Soul Spiral doesn’t. Transfusion allows you to heal allies only while in Shroud using the 4 skill. Life Transfer gets the life force baseline, not as a trait. So all Soul Spiral inherits is the healing.

Zaroua.2714:

“I don’t see how anyone can honestly watch that video and say that Necro/Reaper DPS is fine…”

Necros can do 14-15k dps under optimal conditions. Maybe more with 100% quickness and alacrity. Our DPS is fine.

This isn’t fine. Period. Reaper brings nothing to groups right now except DPS, and the top DPS build deals 20% more than us. Now sure, IF we had a bunch of other meaningful support, the kind that we aren’t even close to approaching, that DPS would be fine, but we don’t, and it isn’t.

Dead.5829:

Was I the only one happy with YSIM when running Augury?

I loved it. You can literally hit 100% LF with YSIM/YAAW/GS3/GS5, just 4 abilities that take around 3s to cast. YSIM is, once you count in LF, a 9k+ heal while using Soldier (PvP) on a 13s CD in teamfights with Augury. Even without Augury it is a decent heal, though situational.

We figured out that it was possible to beat the easiest raid boss while having a Reaper, yes. But this isn’t any different to current content, Necromancer has always been passable as a 5th member without making your team incapable of completing content. This really isn’t anything learned, except maybe that, like many people suggested, raids (at least this first part) aren’t so finely tuned in difficulty that its impossible to complete except with ideal groups.

style.6173:

Reaper is in a really good place right now. In raids, people will finally actually want a necro on their team as well.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest this is true so far.

Silverkey.2078:

I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the world first did include a reaper. However, that does not mean it was needed, but at least it works

Worth noting that the world first really had less to do with the best group to do it and far more to do with the first people to organize well enough.

Some very interesting opinions, also an overall pretty “rosy”, superficial look at things. Nothing wrong with that, but it reads more like something ANet would use as a specialization preview than a real review of the specialization.

As a note, Reaper’s Onslaught is easily the strongest and most widely useful adept trait in PvP/WvW, and Soul Spiral generates no LF.

Aomine.5012:

Yeah, that damage on Necro GS2 is almost equivalent to 100B all gather in one hit.

Can easily do 10k damage on people who have some vulnerable stacks on it.

You can deal 19k damage in one hit (plus procs off that hit) with max damage setup in PvP. Crit gravedigger that procs air/fire/blood sigils which proc CoD. Bit of a crazy situation but completely doable.

The only thing they really share is cleaving AoE damage, so you use them if you need what they give.

Use Greatsword if:
Enemy is downed or under 50% and you want max DPS
Want to build Lifeforce
Want to burst stack vuln quickly before a hit
Enemy is using some kind of “over time burst” like Rampage or Lich (Nightfall)
Need to pull an enemy/group of enemies for a followup attack/AoE
Need any of the fields/finishers it brings

Use Reaper’s Shroud if:
You need anything related to Shroud, including the HP or any Shroud traits
To proc weapon swap without putting your currently equipped weapon away
Need stability, usually when you are getting chain CCed or someone has put you in a ring CC you need to escape
Want to gap close
Want AoE poison
Want single target stun/nuke
Need the fields/finishers of RS

TL;DR use the one that you need the utility from, they have almost no overlapping real utility beyond both having whirls and AoE damage.

BB works much better to heal on your own with spite, but I use it more to generate max LF near instantly instead, and allow whatever boons I get from teammates/Infusing Terror to heal me. Just a different focus, the spite version of the build is totally awesome in its own way though.

King Noob IV.3560:

the contrast between this subforum and the thief one is hilarious

I’d be kinda salty if I mained a few of the other professions for sure.

SA isn’t a bug in the skill functionality but the tooltip, it being removed was changed years ago but the tooltip wasn’t updated.

Jackalrat.5493:

Gravedigger unblockable would be good. Maybe have it give one stack stability while channeled or something that’s immediately lost upon the cast’s cancelation so it can’t be used for executes. The attack is just borderline impossible to land in PvP unless your opponents are downed or vegetables IRL.

It can take off half the HP bar of a bunker, it can’t be made more reliable to hit without taking a fairly hefty damage nerf.

It isn’t reliable, but that’s fine for an ability that hits 25% harder than backstab. You save it for downed players, getting out people’s defense, pre-casting while Grasping Darkness is in progress, etc. you don’t just spam it and expect it to hit.

GS is just fine in PvP, with it I can generate 100% LF in 4 ability casts and about 3s. 3-5 are all solid abilities, as is Gravedigger, its just the auto attack that is awful and I just don’t really use it much.

Quarktastic.1027:

You don’t need death perception at all with decimate defenses, unless you have base precision. And even then, I wouldn’t run full valkyrie/cavalier on a reaper anyway, because you still lose out on some crit chance when out of shroud.

25 vuln on a target with decimate defenses is apparently a 50% crit rate increase, which already puts me at 100% crit rate in full berserker gear.

Right and good luck using full berserker gear in PvP without dying instantly, which is what most people are referencing, PvP.

Actually takes 28 seconds of auto attacking, which is impossible without Vital Persistence (which still requires you to take less than 44% of your LF in damage over that time period), for Death Shroud, and around 17s for Reaper’s Shroud. Which just doesn’t happen, you need to use other abilities for utility, you lose LF, etc.

It also takes 28 seconds of constant auto attacking to stack up that much might with Death Shroud, which alone requires you to have Vital Persistence since you only have 25s of Death Shroud even if you take no damage at all.

hackks.3687:

If you think stacking 20+ might freely with only a single adept trait (Reaper’s Might) isn’t over tuned then I can’t help you

Defense is not a problem I’ve been having with Reaper

“Freely”, yeah all you have to do is be allowed to auto attack 20 times in a row during a limited form.

Ravezaar.4951:

this meens NOTHING in 1v1 tho, keep that in mind… works vs Clones from Mesmer otherwise the AA LF sustain is pointless in 1v1 fights.

In 1v1 you take almost no more damage due to range differences, so Reaper’s Shroud is still more sustainable due to AA based LF regeneration, instead of just a single skill to delay degeneration a bit.

Silv.9207:

Blighter’s really good but only if you’re in a team that spam boons. Out of that you’re not able to use it properly to be “unkillable”.

I almost always get most boons applied to self in PvP. YAAW alone can be 20% LF, CttB is 10%, Unholy Feast 5%, there are a ton of ways to give yourself boons. It doesn’t necessarily do everything on its own, but on a proper bunker setup it makes a big addition.

hackks.3687:

It’s definitely a lot of fun, but it’s still over tuned

Over tuned? Reaper isn’t at all overtuned, the only even questionable point is the amount of sustain some builds can get, but that is necessary if we’re going to never receive active defenses.

Basically whatever goes through shroud is whatever ANet has allowed to. Some things don’t that are life steal, like Blood Bond, and some things that aren’t life steal go through, like Blighter’s Boon. It is probably because they have to do it on a case by case basis, and in this case Spiteful Renewal didn’t make the cut, for whatever reason.

spoj.9672:

You may be against it now. But i suspect anet will cave in eventually when the masses start to follow this opinion. Also after several waves of elite specs are released the power creep will be pretty extensive anyway. So theres not really any point holding back when your community wants you to make things more fun by allowing them to mix things.

I think the much better option would be for ANet to release new weapons completely not tied to elite specs to the core professions that need large holes filled. Keep the elite specs their own separate things with separate weapons, but over feature packs introduce a little bit more to the base professions, much like they added new heals in order to fill in small holes. This would have a much smaller effect, because there isn’t an exponential ramping, once the holes are filled they are filled, and ANet doesn’t have to worry about their 6th Elite spec having 300x more combinations than the one before it.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Could it be that people have just been using VP for so long that they can’t imagine a build without it? Or did Reaper give people a reason to sit in Shroud, and now they want to sit in Shroud and feel that they should be able to without baking Shroud traits into a Shroud build?

A lot of Reaper builds focus on using Shroud as their primary damage due to the incredible Decimate Defenses/Death Perception synergy. You absolutely don’t need VP for every single build, but you do need it for builds that expect to stay in Shroud for longer periods of time, which is something a lot of Necromancer builds tend to want. So it ends up being something that is never bad to take, but very, very often bad to not take.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Also, someone said Reaper’s Shroud degenerates faster than Death Shroud. Is that true? If so, that just seems like a bug.

It isn’t that it literally degenerates faster. It is melee, which means you are going to take more incidental damage from abilities than an up to 1200 range shroud. It has the same damage reduction and 4% base degeneration. However, Reaper’s Shroud has vastly higher sustain potential, the auto attack chain can generate LF faster than it degenerates with VP (another reason VP is strong), so you can actually start with say 50% LF and push it up to 100%, though this would never happen in normal combat.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Looks cool. Why do you have Sigils of both Leeching and Hydromancy suggested, through? They’re both on-swap Sigils and thus can’t both activate on the same weapon set.

That hasn’t been the case for a very long time, you’re remembering the old interaction where sigils of the same type shared ICDs, but that was changed quite a while back.

spoj.9672:

Im hoping that when the next wave of elite specs comes around they will just make the weapons available on the core professions. And scrap the idea of exclusive weapons so we can actually mix new weapons together. You can have an elite spec tied to a weapon (for example having traits which improve it). But it shouldnt be the weapon is only usable with the elite spec. Obviously they will keep it as it is for now because it will help them sell the game.

Balance issues. Every new option they add that adds effective combinations to the game exponentially increases the number of combinations that all need to be relatively balanced. By keeping Elite specs entirely self-contained all they have to make sure is that each Elite spec adds the same on its own, and isn’t OP when combined with the current, limited base profession. But if you add in more weapons, each weapon not only has to be balanced with itself and the base profession, it has to be balanced against every other weapon they add, plus all the utility skills and traits added across elite specs. Its too much for them to reasonably track, same reason they won’t split skills unless they absolutely have to.

Quarktastic.1027:

[Decimate Defenses] needs more info. How long does the buff last? Is there a cap? What is the duration of each stack?

Currently there is no indicator whatsoever that this trait works, other than noticing more critical hits in combat, which is anecdotal at best.

This isn’t how that trait works. Whenever you hit an enemy with Vulnerability on them, your crit chance against that target is increased by 2% per stack. You do not get any buff on yourself for it, there are no stacks involved, it just checks for vuln and applies the crit.

Honestly this fact is the only thing that make the skills really desirable to use. If it was just a normal stun they’d be pretty mediocre.

mazut.4296:

You mean when people stack in the corner and use whirl attacks against the wall?
I don’t know if I understood you right, but this skill often is missing damage for me.

Basically yes, but that same effect can happen in a lot of situations even unintended. But ANet put in something so that Flesh Golem, Whirlwind/FGS, and all other similar skills can’t deal multiple hits of damage any time that they stay still. In the case of Death’s Charge this shouldn’t happen, but its possible that the same system is bugging it, since Death’s Charge can self-stop to make these situations.

Yeah, Chinese culture has a much heavier stigma against things that remind them of death, whereas in America murder shows are aired all day. Just no boobs though, sex bad.

I do wish they were distinct though. Minions need a really distinct silhouette in order to be easily distinguished from one another, at this point it would be pretty difficult to tell these guys from the other two rat minions at a glance.

Honestly haven’t faced one yet. I’ve dumped on a lot of Lich’s, but didn’t run into any Rampage warriors. On that note, I’ve barely faced any warriors period compared to the other professions.

Brokensunday.4098:

lower the degen and make vp stop the degen compleately

I disagree with this, it makes VP the same problem as before, but shifts where it is. You can’t have a trait that impacts how such a core mechanic of a profession works, it’d be like having a trait that allowed LF to work as Health instead of it being baseline. VP should be made baseline in some way, and then completely change the trait that takes its place to have no effect on degen.

Reaper shroud definitely doesn’t decay faster, its just that you are melee and take more incidental damage. I’ve had entire fights where I barely ever leave shroud, in fact its possible to gain LF while in Shroud simply from AAing.

Something like Vital Persistance’s life force degeneration is just too central to how the class plays to be in a trait. It would be like having a trait that allowed your LF to act as HP, that is such a core mechanic of how it works and feels that you can’t just put it on a trait. Make VP baseline in some way, and adjust the profession accordingly if you have to.

The build definitely shines in more coordinated group builds, where you can have allies in the fights to bring the damage and provide you with boons. Its also worth noting just as a fun side note that I pretty consistently get most conditions removed (self/allies), most boons applied to self, most boons removed, and most damage taken in the games I play.

And like Vydahr’s build does, you can swap Death Magic for Spite, which is probably more potent overall as Death Magic is a little bit on the weak side, but I just like the tankiness.

That’s strange, I wonder if it has to do with the systems they’ve put in place on other skills to keep them from multi-ticking against a wall (which this shouldn’t have).

Been playing a bit, like I said before things are much better, at this point I think most of the improvements that need to happen are PvE focused, because “slow but scary” in PvE doesn’t work nearly as well as it does in PvP. The other changes are mostly QoL changes and numbers. Also, as a side note a lot of issues I’m having aren’t with Reaper itself, but the core profession still needing work (though we’ve been moving in the right direction, we need patches to happen every few weeks).

Shroud
Shroud is looking good. I’m feeling tanky, it doesn’t degen too quickly due to the sustain from the 1 skill. I’d still note that we really need less passive defense and more active, because especially with shroud it is often one of two things happening:

1. There isn’t too much burst damage, I can sit in shroud for a while and I feel powerful without being overbearing
2. I get bursted to absolute hell, especially because of things like unblockable AoE pulls/barriers that have been added to a lot of professions, on top of things like Air overload that hits harder than Gravedigger over its time
   However, that’s a large issue more with the base profession and Death Magic than I’d blame on reaper itself, though it is related because I hear a lot of people mention Reaper is too tanky, which I myself wonder about, and then an ele kills me in 2 seconds and I remember why we have such a strange binary defense.

Overall for shroud’s skills, I think Executioner’s Scythe needs a damage boost in PvE, at the very least below 50% and 25%. In PvP I don’t think it would make any difference, since in PvP there is a strong tradeoff between using it just as a high-health stun+field to try to crush someone down quickly, or wait a bit longer and try to really drive home the kill. But in PvE it isn’t really worth casting over Gravedigger, which is strange for such a long CD skill.

Shouts
Shouts are doing really well now I think. Most of them are useful, though I think a few small improvements could be made.

“Suffer!” – as I’ve said the last BWE’s, this has no niche right now. It is a bad Plague Signet in almost every situation, since in the best situation it transfers the same number of conditions plus chill, but in most situations it is less condition transfer, with no stun break. I’d really like to see this also be able to transfer CCs, so it could transfer up to 5 conditions and CC effects, prioritizing CC effects, which also makes it a stun break. This gives it a niche nothing else can fill, but without a change it will forever be a bad Plague Signet.

“Rise!” – Should be a stun break IMO, it is a defensive skill anyway. However if Suffer! is changed this could be left alone, as 3 stun breaks could be too much.

The only other thing I’d look at is that since the minions are melee, they are too easy to kite as they have to stop to attack. Summon it in the Mists against that golem that runs, and you’ll notice even a random AI can avoid minions for a huge amount of the time. They either need to have a range increase, or their animation needs to be faster so they aren’t kited so easily, it should be a conscious effort to kite them, not a passive side effect of normal fighting.

“Chilled to the Bone!” I think it would be reasonable for this to have a lower CD, otherwise it’s looking great, just really unreliable for you to be able to both land it and follow up meaningfully.

Greatsword
Only issue I currently have with GS is a few QoL things.

Auto Attack I feel the auto attack just isn’t going to work. People have mentioned its issues in PvE, and it has the same issues in PvP. You just don’t have time to complete an auto attack chain, let alone put in all the setup work just to allow it to land even if you had the time. And lets say you land it, you get a measly chill and average attack damage (for the time). I think this just needs to be sped up, you already have a lot of the “slow” feeling from the 2 skill, the AA doesn’t need to be a lethargic smash.

Death Spiral – I think this could be sped up a bit, as it deals relatively low damage. It is more a setup/combo, not a standalone nuke.

Grasping Darkness – Should have an increased range, its just a bit too low right now IMO.

Traits
Chilling Nova – I just don’t find myself wanting to use this really. It requires too much to work (highish chill uptime without it but a desire for even more chill, decent crit chance), and basically just propagates chill. A better trigger would be really nice.

Soul Eater – Another trait I don’t see myself wanting to use. It reduces the CDs of GS which is nice, but effectively it is a small defense/damage buff in a tier with a huge and strong damage buff, and a strong damage/sustain trait. It doesn’t really compete with them, and it ends up clogging the line with a trait that does something really similar to Chilling Victory, but in a less desirable way.

I’d say give this trait some kind of defensive/utility secondary attachment instead of life steal, since if you want damage you’ll run the other two traits anyway. Maybe toughness while wielding Greatsword, or add some type of active defense, like evade on GS3 use, add extra utility to Nightfall, just something that makes me stronger with the greatsword but in a distinctly defensive way that I couldn’t just replace with Decimate or Chilling Victory.

That’s about it. Overall I think Reaper is more than playable as is, but I’d really like to see a few extra changes to bring it from really good to amazing in every way. I’d also bring up a final time that something that will improve us even more than these changes would be to have our base profession worked on at least once a month, even with small focused changes.

And finally, I’d like to once again thank Robert Gee and any other devs who’ve helped with Reaper for their work.

GS is really nice in PvP because of conquest, but I find myself never using the AA, it just takes far too long for not nearly enough benefit, I just use the other skills and go into shroud.

No real need for Knight, you already have up to 100% crit chance, and you lose a ton of HP/LF for it.