Guild Wars 2

Not sure why everyone suddenly can’t read, by making them hit faster we can more appropriately balance between the two shrouds and their proccing. SOME traits will only proc once per channel OTHERS would proc twice. There is no nerfing going on, only buffs.

Sagat.3285:

You can’t kill what never existed. Dhummfire is still terrible on base shroud if it’s not going to proc on both hits there is no point of making it a two hit skill in the first place.

Not a suggestion anyone is throwing out that I can see, but someone brought it up.

Yeah back during the SOAC tournament days I used Well of Corruption over Well of Power, but similar build. Problem is you lose Transfusion, which I’d argue is mandatory for MM, a 6.3k heal allows you to fully negate a large AoE burst that otherwise would have meant death for the minions. Also Well of Blood’s pulsing ratio was gutted, which makes the skill mediocre for minion healing now.

NeXeD.3042:

Maybe don’t take all the lines that all do similiar things, I e been having great success lately incorporating defensive traits. Found one really weird cleric build using a mix of wells and minions.

The problem is almost any reasonable combination of trait lines will have overlap, and any overlapping mechanics are instantly made worthless in the same build. When you only have 3 traits this immediately and severely hurts option choices, especially if everything isn’t perfectly balanced, since a lot of traits also rely on skill choice.

Brokensunday.4098:

problem is dhuum fire if it only procs on the second hit it kill condi life blast but agree on rest

No, it would be a flat neutral change. You’d proc dhuumfire once every 1.4s just like right now.

Agree with Robert Gee here, condition transfer on AA, even as a trait, would be crazy powerful.

However, if you turn Life Blast into a two-shot chain that casts the entire chain as quickly as now, with the same total damage (so half damage LBs once per 0.7s instead of full damage every 1.4s), and then have the traits that need to be adjusted only proc on the second hit, might work. This would lower the gap between Reaper Shroud and Death Shroud’s procing of traits like Dhuumfire, which are absolutely fine procing that often, but still allow you to adjust things like might stacking.

spoj.9672:

Ive never understood why we have 3 different choices for 25% movement speed. Its a waste of trait/utility slots. We could have something else but instead we have duplicates of the same thing. Makes no sense.

I think this is a larger issue than just 25% speed. We have 3 sources of 25% speed, we also have almost excessive levels of might, vulnerability, and crit chance stacking, to the point that we can theoretically have 130% crit chance in Death Shroud without fury or any investment in precision or precision based buffs, not in DS can still get up to 80%, meaning a Curses/Reaper Soldier Necro can hit 100% crit chance with just fury.

So we end up with a lot of traits that effectively duplicate effects, and instead of other professions who can stack up a lot of their beneficial effects and get crazy results, we hit ceilings with our “stacking” very quickly because they are based primarily on mechanics that are shared heavily.

CodeHavoc.7926:

My issue with minions is when they attack, they siphon health. Soooooo why does that not work in shroud? Even Blood fiend is useless because their siphons don’t work and that’s your heal. And it doesn’t work. Did I mention it doesn’t work?

Blood Fiend is complete and utter garbage and should never be used in any build ever. So that’s besides the point. Vampiric procced by minions absolutely works though, I just tested it in game.

Khristophoros.7194:

The biggest issue to me is the reduced shroud CD would be good if some of the shroud traits didn’t have internal cooldowns. A lot of the necro traits suck because of broken synergy due to ICDs.

Spiteful Spirit is the only trait that has an ICD related to entering or exiting shroud to get a bonus.

There is no true “hard” cap on minions, it is only limited by how many you can summon through the skills in the game.

nearlight.3064:

If you take SoV, in a spite build would signets of suffering work since it works with blood bond too?

You know, I actually hadn’t though of that before but that’s a great point. Yes it absolutely would work and I’ll have to try that out sometime. CtD isn’t a big loss, and if you’re already using axe Spiteful Spirit wasn’t a huge deal anyway. Great idea.

Sparda.9750:

thank you sir!! i really enjoy your explainations
for sigils i’m currently using leeching and energy on both weapons set, and, for runes i used pack, rock dog one ( ogre?) and now i m trying something with vitality and toughness

my task is to stay alive, and i feel to do it well.. the real problem is when minions die in the aoe of ele and guardian.. burt till the bones

Yeah, those sigils are absolutely good. Basically any on-swap, on-hit, on-kill stacking, and duration increasing sigils can work as long as they provide healing, damage, CC, or utility increases. Favorites are renewal, leeching, energy, but there are a lot you can choose to use. For Runes Pack is the best overall IMO, Grove is hilarious for cheesing in 1v1s, but generally most power/toughness/vitality/healing power runes can work. Its up to you, though I’d tend to focus on power since MM defenses are already through the roof.

And yeah, MM basically only loses when minions die, which is why Clerics > Soldier.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I checked both my HP and LF after swapping soldier with cleric gear , I lost 10K HP and 7K LF . I don’t think that the increasing in healing power which poorly affects Vampiric Presense and Transfusion outpaces 17K total HP !

Transfusion more than doubles with healing power, actually. Presence is good, but you can also use Life from Death which has a 1.5 healing power scaling. It affects a lot of things right now, and remember that all sources of siphoning got Bloodthirst made baseline. You’re looking at huge increases on whatever heal, Consume Conditions can heal easily over 10k with healing power, SoV is also massive, Life Siphon heals for a ton, everything gets increased a lot.

However, from the numbers you listed I’m guessing you’re talking about PvE, because in PvP you’d lose a lot less. In PvE you shouldn’t be using clerics or soldiers, you should be using berserker, and a non-“standard” MM build. You don’t need defenses since the minions tank aggro almost all the time, just load up on DPS, but pick up Death Magic over one of the less important lines. You could go like Spite/Death Magic/Soul Reaping, pick up a lot of damage mods for while in DS and still deal decent damage while having Flesh of the Master which is the only really important minion trait. But PvE MM is totally different from PvP, and I’m mostly talking about PvP here.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

As for Focus 4th skill can apply 12 stacks of Vulnerability to a single target which increase minions damage by 14% along with healing them. Ripping the boons of vets and champs is good as well. WH is useless in PVE when compared with focus.
Is spite 3,2,2 better than soul reaping 3,2,1 for MM ? Close to Death affects minions , right ?

WH and Focus should both be used in PvE, so that’s kind of irrelevant. WH is used for Locust Swarm, Focus for Reaper’s Touch, they both have 1 good and 1 basically worthless skill. Close to Death doesn’t affect minions, but in PvE you should go both Spite and Soul Reaping, just make a DPS build with those two lines, then go into DM for Flesh of the Master, Deadly Strength or Necromantic Corruption (not sure which is the better DPS increase, probably Strength), and Death Nova.

Dreaming serpent.5197:

I’ve taken to using Marauder runes with Axe instead of dagger. I also, of course, take the spite line going in for that spiteful spirit/axe training combo. Hits like a power necro, tanks like a minion master. Super fun, probably the only time I’d recommend trying axe.

Go both bud, Axe/Dagger Dagger/WH, for a Spite build you don’t need staff, you’re there to hit like a power Necro.

Sparda.9750:

the matter of soldier above cleric is what i was wondering about, still, i have to say that cleric works pretty good.. try to believe

Cleric > Soldier, basically since the introduction of Transfusion though it took people a while to believe me (and soldier was still strong for a while, as our healing power has been steadily increased over time through new traits and Blood Magic buffs). Our healing power scaling is just through the roof now though, with Bloodthirst being baseline, I’d have to go in game to check but its just insane how much you can heal for because you can have like 9 different scaling abilities, all being procced on fairly short CDs.

Gee is best

Knighthonor.4061:

No i mean if we have 5 of these minions up. How will the damage reduction function? Is it spread out over all 5, or will one at a time take the damage?

Short answer, we don’t know. My guess is each minion attack will give you a stack of Dark Bond (or w/e), and the next instance of damage you take will be shared 50/50 with whichever minion sourced the Dark Bond that was used up by that attack. So if all 5 minions attack in a row, you get 5 stacks of Dark Bond, and then the next 5 attacks you take will be shared 50/50 in order of application with one minion at a time until the stacks are used up.

Reaper shouldn’t be taken for two primary reasons:

1. You need Death Shroud over Reaper Shroud, which would be the case for needing ranged shroud or more condi-focused/safe setup
2. Your build doesn’t need to use any part of Reaper (shroud/GS/shouts/traits), and you can take 3 core traitlines happily

Right now the first will definitely be true in some situations. Zombify mentioned it to me during BWE that he actually really wanted to be able to use core DS with the new trait line, because the lack of range was really hurting condi builds, as well as the lack of an instant fear. Also situations like pure glass DPS Necro in WvW most likely won’t want Reaper. They want the damage mods from Spite, well trait from Blood Magic, and DS damage boost of Soul Reaping, plus ranged DS > melee RS most likely, as it keeps you away from the melee train.

The second is likely to happen a fair bit as well. Look at the above example, a build works really well with 3 of the current traits, and doesn’t gain much from Reaper. In an ideal world, especially once some of our current lines get balanced a bit more (looking at you Death Magic GMs), Reaper would only be mandatory if you needed the skills it gives, or needed traits for specific synergies. Otherwise it would be a valid choice as a 3rd trait line (most 3rd trait lines are generic increases, by the 3rd you tend to lose out on heavy synergies), but not needed.

As a side note, VP isn’t remotely required. I played a lot of BWE with a heavy shroud focused build and didn’t use VP at all, and had plenty of success. Unless they rework DS heavily, to have a much smaller cap, heavy degeneration is needed otherwise the amount of LF generation we see right now is simply oppressive 1v1, and in teamfights the degen matters little. Until they rework DS, if they rework it, VP is fine.

nearlight.3064:

Bhawb with reaper do you think you’d take Unholy Sanctuary or Death Nova? Death Nova seems powerful with Rise, but Unholy Sanctuary also seems really strong with blighter’s boon (if you end up running that).

I think Reaper can fit both versions of MM. Take Spite (Death Nova) and Soul Reaping (Unholy Sanctuary) and replace the line with Reaper, with probably no change other than considering Rise! depending on how that balances out and Greatsword (I think its likely GS can replace dagger, not sure yet).

Sparda.9750:

and the part about soldier amulet??

i wanna understand better this build because, honestly, is very funny and i feel a rock

So there are two things to consider for Soldier amulet vs Cleric amulet:

1. The difference in power
2. The tradeoff of healing power for vitality

To address the first, consider the build you are running. All of your utility and elite skills are minions, and thus don’t scale with power at all. Your traits are primarily defensive/utility/minion/support; in a Spite build only 2 of your traits meaningfully scale with power, and none of your Soul Reaping build traits do. So all you really have are weapon/death shroud skills, and without modifiers and so few extra scalings that extra power isn’t the biggest thing in the world. Also, your minions do have a lot of modifiers, unlike you, so keeping them alive is a significant boost to your build’s effectiveness while power isn’t, which brings us to the second concern.

Healing power outpaces vitality in a massive way. The standard MM build has Life Siphon (.9 scaling), SoV (0.1 passive per second, 0.24 active per stack) or Consume Conditions (1.0 active, 0.1 per condition removed), plus some combination of Transfusion, Life from Death, Regeneration, Vampirism, Vampiric Presence, Unholy Sanctuary, Spiteful Renewal, Blood Bond, Renewal Sigils, and then a few stragglers like Dark Field combos and various runes. In short, you can have an absolute ton of Healing Power scaling, most builds have at least 7 abilities that scale with Healing Power, some of them with massive scalings. Basically, as long as you don’t die immediately, healing power makes up for the loss of 9k HP very quickly in your HP pool; a single Consume Conditions can heal for that much. And most importantly, vitality only helps you live longer, healing power helps your entire build live longer. Minions living longer = more DPS, more CC, more siphoning, more conditions transferred, it makes all the good things about your build better. This has a compounding effect as well, more healing power keeps minions alive longer which lets them proc healing/condition removals more which makes you live longer which makes healing power scale better.

Overall, and this is something I’ve been showing for a long time and other great MMs like High Warlord Sikari (ronpierce) have agreed with on the recent patch, that extra healing power ends up providing too much to the build to pass up on. Clerics is what real MMs, who actually pay attention to and interact with their minions on a second by second basis, use, Soldiers is used by people who don’t understand the mastering side of minion masters.

Spazzoni.1703:

Bhawb.7408:

Spazzoni.1703:

Zenith.7301:

Spazzoni.1703:

Necro is 100% dps regardless of weapon. Axe has always been/still, viable.

yeah ok lol

Do tell…

Axe is viable if you’re the kind of person that uses Nomads gear.

Huh. How so?

It isn’t really viable as is. It is basically only used when other weapons are worthless. Similar to staff, only staff has a much stronger “niche” of being 1200 range.

Spazzoni.1703:

Zenith.7301:

Spazzoni.1703:

Necro is 100% dps regardless of weapon. Axe has always been/still, viable.

yeah ok lol

Do tell…

Axe is viable if you’re the kind of person that uses Nomads gear.

And 2 more pulses of the healing is around 1.4k extra AoE healing for cleric, not including any additional healing power.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Won’t This build be better for a PvE MM ? http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRIQNAW4djM0QTN2WDe1A7NOmGqZLfBVgcAKgAgeC3QKA-TByFwAEuoC0U+ZS9nBPpAg7PcR3DAlgaN/RKgtGWB-e
More HP = more LF ( LF = 80% health ) , staff is the only AOE weapon we have + it has great support ( Land marks then switch to D/F ) , focus is a must for applying vulnerability , regeneration and ripping boons. Sigil of water\frailty are amazing specially with the staff AOE attacks and the fast dagger ones.

I mean, PvE MM is garbage so you can do whatever you want honestly. The “most viable” MM PvE build is going to be Death Magic and minions + maximum DPS you can get after that.

Staff doesn’t have support, it has “utility”, and even that is marginal and replaceable (even more so on MM), boons aren’t an issue in PvE, neither is regen.

Just go the meta PvE build but swap whatever isn’t Spite/SR (I think its blood magic?) to death magic, pick up minion stuff, that’s it.

Sparda.9750:

hey there, thx to everyone
i v tried the cleric amulet,
yes, i have a lot of sustain, but i lose 8k of hp, is it really worth?? i mean, transfusion heals 1,5k more than the soldier’s one; the vampiric traits are more or less the same
with soldier i feel to be immortal or quite so

i m using dagger/focus in MH,because of boon rip and retailiation, just because WH is not my fav weapon

Soldier is only worth running if you are new to the build and don’t know how to survive bursts. After that the massive sustain increase with healing power outpaces the initial 8k HP, you’ll heal for more than that every fight, easily.

Focus OH is another noob trap, you’ll never hit Focus 5 on a decent player, and WH is amazing in a ton of ways.

You can easily keep up 25 stacks, RS 4 on RS 5’s ice field is 25 on its own from Bitter Chill. Plus you have rending shroud stacking it up, you can use hydromancy sigils which proc on entering DS for another set of stacks, Chilling Nova, both of your auto attacks (GS and RS) will stack up vuln, GS 3 stacks vuln, NCSY gives vuln, all the tons of ways to chill people. I used Spite/SR/Reaper a lot, even without a lot of the stuff you have I kept up vuln really easily.

Reaper’s attack speed is a full chain every 3 seconds, not 3.5, and we don’t need more LF gain in 1v1, its already a lot plus GS has extra abilities to gain LF than just its AA.

Metabattle’s build isn’t standard, it was Nos’ minion build, but while Nos is a great Necromancer he isn’t an MM, which is pretty obvious with his build.

This is the base of every good MM build, at least until Reaper hits. D/WH is mandatory because Immobilize is OP, and Dark Pact paired with Bone Fiend’s Rigor Mortis is an eleven second immobilize delivered in 3 batches, five hits total, which makes it near impossible to deal with if you layer it correctly. Flesh Wurm is a stun break, and a strong one, plus the shadowstep of Necrotic Traversal allows you to get out of bad situations, or even better rotate quickly between points along with Locust Swarm’s swiftness. Wail of Doom allows you to interrupt basically everything that can be interrupted, and if you need it Life Siphon is a massive heal in Clerics gear.

Clerics gear is used because you are a minion master, not a necromancer who takes minions but doesn’t really care about them. It more than doubles Transfusion’s healing, 32% boost to Life Siphon, and a small boost to siphoning, plus whatever it does for your heal. It will also apply to almost every trait you take in Blood Magic. Remember, with your minions up you have up to 100 extra toughness, 4-5 conditions removed every 10s, 4-5 conditions transferred every 10s to the enemy, and around 150 healing per second from procs, on top of around 2k DPS from the minions. If you go Soldier gear, you end up losing out on all those benefits a huge amount of the time, for the benefit of higher HP and power, neither of which are needed.

As for what you do with that build, you choose Spite or Soul Reaping. If you hit up Soul Reaping, your build should look like this and if you go for Spite it is this . You go Spite for damage and de-bunking, Soul Reaping for holding points and defense. Then choose whether you want to use staff (its garbage but some people still hold on to it) or Axe/Dagger, figure out a rune set, Pack runes are a solid option but others work, pick up sigils which are generally Leeching/Renewal (another reason why we want healing power, for renewal), and choose between Signet of Vampirism and Consume Conditions for a heal, both work for different things. Finally put in whatever last traits you had to choose and go for it.

When Reaper hits we’ll see a possible change. But most likely it’ll use the exact same base MM has been using for years, but with Reaper as that third line. I think it has a great chance to replace Spite and Soul Reaping in both of their niches because of how incredible Reaper Shroud is, and Greatsword might overthrow dagger, as a dark field is actually really strong for the finishers and the damage/chill can probably make up for the loss in immobilize. We’ll see though, its hard to say.

Nyth.3492:

The thing is (and this is one of the reasons I made this topic), is there realistically any good weapon skill that we can put it on other than auto attacks? By design there are abilities with long cooldowns, or abilities you don’t always want to use the moment they are up.

In general the answer is yes, there could be skills designed that could generate LF outside of the AA and be reliable sources of it. An example could be Mark of Blood, it has a crazy short CD (not quite 5s), is really reliable to hit, and wants to be used on CD by design, yet it doesn’t overload a skill. If staff had a comparable LF gain/second from MoB and no LF on AA, it really wouldn’t be a noticeable difference (though people would complain about the AA more, which goes to show why that AA is so lacking).

On the other hand, Ghastly Claws is a bad source of reliable LF, because it overloads a skill; while you do want to use it nearly on CD, it is your main source of burst on Axe, by loading it with all the LF generation that Axe has you end up saying to enemies “Just dodge this one skill and I both don’t deal damage AND don’t gain Death Shroud ever”. Gravedigger would be another example.

So yes, non AAs can be made to function as the source of LF generation, but they have to be low CD, high generation, reliable to land, and can’t be the main damage/utility focal point of that weapon.

striker.3704:

There’s also the matter of if the buff is between all of them, if the buff works on them individually, and if individually, does it stack?

Honestly, this relies pretty heavily on minion AI functioning properly. While jagged horrors have am history of functioning better than the other minions, if these guys afk, then it’s gonna hamper the effectiveness of them even more.

My guess is on minion successful hit you will gain a stack of “Dark Bond” that lasts for X seconds. Every time you take damage a stack is consumed and you take 50% reduced damage from that hit. They will probably have the standard 3s attack speed, and most minions have 10k or 13k base HP, roughly.

The new Rise! is actually really good for any build, don’t need to be an MM to benefit from 50% reduced damage from attacks.

Yeah, the really disappointing part is certain professions (like Necromancer, though others like Engi have issues too) have large gaps in what their weapons can do. An example is support, Necromancers have no weapon to really allow supporting to work, so we’ll rely on a specialization later to fill that entire slot for us, instead of having some support on the base profession and an elite to really specialize it.

Nyth.3492:

So I’m kind of wondering. Is LF generation on auto attack a major factor in the viability of a weapon?

On one hand, having LF generation on an auto attack means that the weapon will supply a steady and reliable inflow of LF. Something a lot of the currently “less valid” weapons like the scepter and axe seem to miss a bit. Having LF generation on axe #2 is pretty nice for some burst LF, but it has quite a big impact if for some reason that attack doesn’t finish (you dodge, opponent dodges, you have to heal right away, opponent CCs you, etc etc), since these abilities generally come with cooldowns.

You absolutely need reliable LF generation in every build. Just like Mesmer can easily build clones in just about every setup, Warrior can always get adrenaline easily, Necromancer needs reliable LF. This also shouldn’t be reliant upon traits or utilities, those should be extra; your weapons alone should provide enough LF to utilize Death Shroud reasonably often.

The disparity between LF generation doesn’t stop on its own though, and this is where it is important. If I am making a Necromancer build that uses Dagger/Warhorn (we’ll just use one weapon set each), and you are making one that uses Scepter/Dagger, we start off with a massive LF generation disparity. I generate massive LF through AAs and other weapon skills, you on the other hand generate very low LF from just the 3 skill that’s it. Now what happens? If you want to just match my base LF generation, you have to spec for it, taking a different set of traits and utilities than you normally would. This isn’t done to specialize your build, it is done simply to make up for a large weakness, and one that you don’t honestly gain anything for. Now with you taking sustain-specific traits and utilities, you are passing up on damage, or condition output, or something else. If you grab Spectral Grasp to gain LF, you can no longer run Corrupt Boon/Spectral Walk/Flesh Wurm, you have to give up either a huge damage spike or a really important defensive skill. I on the other hand can pick anything including whatever LF generation you did, so at the end of the day we can make nearly the same build except for weapons, do similar damage, have similar utility, but I have far more LF generation and DS usage, making your build noticeably weaker.

This extends to other weapons. Now, I don’t mean to argue that everything needs the exact same LF generation. Dagger/Warhorn/Greatsword should generate the most LF because they will take the most damage and need the extra defense. But that is all the extra LF they should gain, they should gain just enough more than the other weapons to make up for that increased risk, but no more than that.

The TL;DR is it isn’t needed on AA, but some kind of reliable LF generation, and can’t be tied to a single easy to miss skill, and has to be from the weapon itself. Traits and utilities should exist to empower and augment your build, not make up for base deficiencies caused by a weapon that is too weak. If this isn’t the case, your weaker weapon causes you to make choices to make up for that weakness, which in turn weakens the rest of your build.

Because gameplay/balance > visuals.

Tommyknocker.6089:

Just a bump and a request from Bhawb.

Seeing as the Devs followed your post on this issue, would you please make a comprehensive post in regard to other weapon sets if you have time?

I know there are many, many good suggestions on these forums already, but they are quite spread out over many posts (and years) distilling them down for easy dev perusal might be just the thing to get them noticed.

Thanks.

Yeah, I’ve been thinking about this and spitballing ideas with other Necromancers while I get ready to write it out. It’ll probably take a few days to fully flesh out, but I’d be happy to do it.

Charblaze.6958:

So no one is interested in party support via enemy debuffing as a viable option in PvE?

It would help even base necro a lot.

Bruh 2 hours is short, its Saturday. Also not really news honestly, we’ve known they were reworking PvE to more properly highlight the gameplay.

Dagger is 100% a DPS weapon, it has one of the highest AA DPS in the game. Gaining LF on hit doesn’t make it sustain, and the healing is less a “sustain” weapon and more a “I’m melee and taking a ton of damage I need some way to deal with this”.

Axe, and all the comparable weapons to it, are burst weapons. They have a fairly weak AA with some kind of effect, and a burst skill on 2 that the rest of the kit is supposed to set up. While they borked it, it wasn’t going to be DPS as much as burst.

If you don’t have a target its exactly the same as last beta

1. Yes, Death Shroud and Reaper’s Shroud both take 50% reduced direct damage, however there have been videos and evidence to show that this damage reduction might be bugged in certain situations.

2. Yes.

Knighthonor.4061:

What about RS damage reduction?

What about it? RS’s damage reduction is the same as DS (I tested it personally).

They aren’t making them base because of balance reasons, the more they add to the base professions the more combinations they have to consider, by tying it to elite specs they can add tons of elite specs but each one only needs to be internally balanced and balanced with a relatively small pool of base stuff, instead of needing to also be balanced with every single combination of previous content.

Also makes you buy the xpac.

It will work almost exactly the same as Terror, when chill is on a target you are fighting, that chill will deal damage, around 300-350 with condition damage investment (PvP), if they are below 50% that damage is doubled. Honestly probably strong now, remember that it doubles up with Terror if you have it, as any time you Fear you apply 2s of chill, so you will be doing around 1300ish DPS from each fear, 1600ish under 50%.

While it does require crit, we have so much free crit sources nowadays you can really easily make it work.

nearlight.3064:

I think it could have some serious potential, since MM necro has been actually quite good these days when played by someone whose not a newb, but MM necro was always kinda weak in teamfights since the minions could be cleaved down while the necro could be focusfired without worry of them using spectral armor or whatnot. Now with rise, they’ll get tons of minion uptime and passive defense in larger fights, which I hope turns out to be good.

It will depend on how much health the shambling horrors have compared to jagged horrors, as they’ll still lose health each second making it more of a teamfight oriented minion skill.

My guess is you’d go bone minions/rise!/flesh wurm, and be a clerics support build with quite a bit of support via Blood Magic and Death Nova, with still strong bunkering. Reaper’s Shroud allows you to still be a relevant damage threat. The big thing to me is if the eventual axe changes make axe worth running, or if staff gets buffs, without that a more supporty build can’t work too well, and MM doesn’t want to run double melee.

This is expected functionality for a gap-closing leap honestly. If we were on any other profession this is how we would have expected it to work from the start.

I love the changes, and I’m really glad to see that some of my feedback was listened to. I can’t imagine anyone isn’t a Geeliever after all this work you put in so quickly.

Sororita.3465:

Sadly if it was an aura it would get a huge % nerf. I think it’s perfect as it is.

This. It is just too strong for an aura with its current values, and I don’t want it to be nerfed just for a mediocre PvE trait that wouldn’t change anything for us.

Just because nos played cele doesn’t mean its a top build. He spent more time watching a respawn timer count down than he did playing the game.

There is a bit to note. While they went overboard, the old Reaper had a 4-4.5 chill on the 3rd hit of the AA, which was enough to have around 200% chill uptime with the AA alone if you have chill duration. Once you add in whatever combo of chilling darkness+blinds (pre-nerf version), chilling nova (pre nerf), various runes/sigils, the higher chill duration increase, spectral grasp, chilllblains, chill of death/spinal shivers, executioner’s strike, ice field+soul spiral, all of our fears, and any other source of chill I might have forgotten, I don’t think it would be particularly hard to keep up an oppressive amount of chill.

While our specialization is chill themed, you shouldn’t be able to keep up 100% chill on an enemy unless you are massively outplaying them, or have made a huge amount of sacrifices in your build to pick up a large combo of chill sources.

Nynuwe.5893:

Green numbers on the screen, or did you also check the combat chat?

The thing is the combat chat doesn’t tell the difference between whether a heal worked or not. I just tested Blood Bond for example, and while the log would say you were healed, it doesn’t recognize that the heal doesn’t go through shroud. All healing technically affects you while in DS, it is just that most of it doesn’t actually affect your HP.

flow.6043:

I always found it rather strange that 1 second of stability that exists for the sole purpose of covering the cast time of the well was turned into 1 stack after they changed stability to be stackable. Wouldn’t it make more sense if it were 25 stacks? Or at least 3 considering that’s what they did with the 2 sec on Power Break (Mantra of Concentration).

Yeah, I was just thinking about that as I typed out that post. It would make sense if it was a significant number, considering the original stability was essentially impossible to remove and CC someone within the cast time, unless you got a lucky corruption off.

Rym.1469:

Side note – I wouldn’t bury Blood Magic Necros. Some traits, like Life from Death, are being incredibly underestimated or considered only with MMancers, while other builds can make great use of these.

While I agree clerics support Necro really makes amazing use of the blood traits, the problem with our support builds is we still have no weapon based support. Every other profession who has strong support builds brings either weapon-based support and/or heavy weapon based CC. We have neither.

Blood Bond does not heal through shroud and Soul Eater only works with GS, not shroud.

The stability is there because a while ago ANet decided to make a number of skills stun breaks, but often they had cast times. They add stability because if you interrupt a stun break skill’s animation it goes on full CD, so the stability hopes to cover that.

Or make shroud work on its own and have the trait actually increase it’s strength past that?