Guild Wars 2

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

The whole state of WoD drives me nuts. I know there are so so many other things that need to be fixed with Necromancer but Well Of Darkness bugs me the most. The cooldown seriously needs to be halved.

I’m planning to write another one of these but for base Necromancer soon. But this was like, a fraction of the effort that would be.

Muchacho.2390:

About shievers of dread, why not combine it with chilling darkness and give curses a new adapt trait? If i recall correctly this was mentioned somewhere in the necro subforum and i did quite like the idea. But it then could be quite strong for a minor trait…

Well, I wouldn’t argue that current chilling darkness is particularly strong, as it only procs once on any of our blind applications, which you rarely have more than 2-3 of without taking Well of Garbage.

Dreaming serpent.5197:

I’d like this to become a stun breaker when foot in the grave is traited, allowing more stability based builds. Thoughts?

Its an interesting change for sure, if it was made I’d just have it apply to all shroud 3 skills. I’m not sure its needed though, Infusing Terror already makes you immune to any more incoming stuns for 8s, and entering DS w/ FitG would break stuns, so I’m not sure you’d need that extra reactive stunbreak when Infusing Terror can pre-empt the stun if you’re already in shroud.

I did test it, yes Reaper’s Shroud has the same damage reduction. Only change is it procs weapon swap, both on entry and exit (if you’re in long enough).

Traits
Shroud Knight – Generic “lets you use the specialization” trait, I just want to mention that the existance of this trait not giving any actual power on its own means the rest of the traits have to make up in their own way.

Augury of Death – I think this either needs to be 10% base with 5% per person hit (still 35% with 5 people hit, but only need to hit 2 to go even 20%), and/or needs a slight secondary effect. I think its a solid idea, increases the strength of shouts, but it has to compete with a very strong trait in Relentless Pursuit, and just about every CDR trait in the game gives more than just CDR.

Chilling Nova – I personally think on-crit traits are really unhealthy for the game, though I understand them. Either lower the CD to 10s, or tie it to Reaper’s Shroud, such as an on-entry and every X seconds while in Shroud type trait.

Relentless Pursuit – Great as is, makes it hard to slow down Reaper, love the trait, no need to touch it.

Shivers of Dread – I like this trait, but I want to point something out: Reaper itself, ignoring base Necromancer, has just one fear, with Terrify. In fact, many of my builds had not a single source of fear beyond Terrify and the off-chance of a corrupted stability. I feel like this might need something else, because unless you specific trait for it it does very little, and the chill itself is mainly used to synergize with chill traits and to keep the enemy close, it isn’t as much of a normally “functional” chill, because they are already hard-CCed. I think it might need a bit extra, an idea is chill on RS entry, or some other method of spreading chill out that benefits our builds more widely.

Soul Eater – With Greatsword being so mediocre right now its hard to say how good the life steal is on this. I would say that the CDR is very low however, you need to land Gravedigger twice to even make the CDR worth using, and even that requires a total of 7 people hit over 2 casts, which is just too much. I’d propose either making it a “boring” 20% CDR trait, giving a base CDR plus CDR per person hit by Gravedigger, or increase the CDR per person hit significantly.

Chilling Victory – Strong trait as is, I wouldn’t change a thing right now.

Decimate Defenses – Another really strong and fun trait, brings a lot of vuln synergy and allows you to technically be “tanky” but still have good damage. Maybe worth looking at this to be 1% damage per stack of vuln instead, same damage with no crit, more damage once you’d have maxed on crit, only really a DPS loss in builds that had ferocity and no crit. We’re kind of overloading on crit chance right now, so I think one of our sources should be a damage mod.

Cold Shoulder – I think this is underperforming a little, I thought the old version of it was fine, especially considering we effectively only get two minors.

Blighter’s Boon – Amazing trait, wouldn’t change a thing. It scales into teamfights effectively by allowing the boon use of allies to sustain you, yet in smaller fights it still has nice synergy, especially with Spite.

Deathly Chill – This is just so weak right now I don’t see it competing with the other traits here. Even condi builds could go Blighter’s Boon and gain the LF generation they really need, and if you have Dhuumfire Reaper’s Onslaught would also boost your Dhuumfire by 15%. This trait just doesn’t do enough, Under 50% HP we’re looking at basically 2 bleeds worth of damage, which is awful, just about every single condi trait in the game outperforms this one.

Reaper’s Onslaught – Seems like a great idea, currently bugged and doesn’t work at all.

Closing
Those are my thoughts on everything, having played quite a lot of Reaper Friday/Saturday on stream, and then spending most of Sunday writing this up and going in game to test not just Reaper but other professions to compare to. I’m sure this isn’t the end-all-be-all of feedback, but I really wanted to give the devs something that was direct, in depth, and covered everything the specialization gave. I’d also really like to thank Robert Gee and anyone else who worked on Reaper, it was easily the most fun I’ve had playing Necromancer in a long time, it reminded me of how fun the specialization rework was.

As always, feedback is welcome and encourage. Also I apologize for starting another thread, but I consider myself a bit of a special snowflake here.

Shouts
General: Shouts need to all act like NCSY, with a strong, desirable base effect that also scales in larger fights. Also, I really, really don’t think Rise! can work without new types of minions, and I think at least one of the shouts has to be a defensive measure at this point; Reaper still gets it really bad for not having any active defense, and shouts are a way for us to get a scaling active defense.

“Your soul is mine!” – I think this will be an uncommon opinion, but I think YSIM as a concept is fine, it just needs to be less bad in smaller fights without making it stronger in big fights. Also, why does it only have a 0.36 healing power scaling?

Suggested change is to give it 5% LF given baseline, with 3% per enemy hit, and a 1.0 healing power scaling, since only the base heal scales with healing power. Builds with high LF pools won’t have much healing power investment, but builds with high healing power won’t have high LF pools. This will give it the same LF if it hits 5 people, but with a better baseline heal.

“Nothing can save you!” – Amazing shout as is, don’t change a thing. This is the one shout that did not once leave my bar while playing power reaper.

“Rise!” – It can’t summon Jagged Horrors. The problem is Jagged Horrors are useless without Death Nova, and fill the exact same role as Bone Minions, but with a more passive “Putrid Explosion” (Death Nova), and while being objectively worse in every way except doing more upfront damage when you summon 5 of them, and synergy with Augery. I don’t think another minion could work either, none that we currently have.

My suggestion is give it a brand new type of minion that has some kind of passive benefit to the Necromancer, or change it completely. If you leave it as minions, maybe something that functions similar to spirits, or something that functions like Illusionary Defender, each one summoned would transfer X% of damage you take to itself. By transfering damage, the minions themselves would give you a scaling damage mitigation, but one that is balanced around the HP of the minions. It provides play/counterplay, as the summoner could try to keep them alive longer for more mitigation, but the enemy is also capable of killing them off directly.

“Suffer!” – Currently “Suffer” is directly worse than Plague Signet, and that is in the best situation. First thing I’d do is make it instant cast and a stun break, as it is primarily a defensive skill. This is the shout I’d like to see changed to a scaling defensive skill. Lower its damage to be the same as the other non-elite shouts, and give it an effect similar to Endure Pain, with 1.5s base that also gives 0.5s longer duration per person hit. Raise CD to 60s.

This makes “Suffer” a 2s damage immunity, 1 condition transfer, stun break, and light damage in a 1v1, but when you hit 5 targets that increases to 5 conditions transfered and 4s of damage immunity. This fits thematically, as horror villains aren’t pushovers that you can just turn around and focus.

“You are all weaklings!” – Good shout, I’d just like to see it give better base might, with less scaling. Similar change as with YSIM, 5 might baseline, with 3 might per person hit gives it the same 20 stack cap.

“Chilled to the bone!” – Great shout if it lands, however with a 2 second cast time good luck landing it. I’d like to see the cast time lowered to 1 seconds, like Supply Crate, and at least look at its CD. I’m not sure if 120s is warranted, but it is hard to know while it is still so difficult to use because of the 2s cast.

Greatsword
Dusk Strike/Fading Twilight/Chilling Scythe – This chain currently takes 3 seconds per cycle, with only a 1.5s base chill at the end. So even with heavy investment, far beyond what you can get anywhere but WvW/PvE with food, just auto-attacking (which you never want to do) can’t keep up perma chill even in ideal situations. I have a few suggestions to fix this problem, but I’ll get to that after I bring something else up first.

To make a comparison, Guardian Hammer and Reaper GS are both slow weapons. They also do nearly the same damage for a full chain when you only consider what they do on hit with the same power and no traiting. The difference however (besides profession differences) is that Guardian’s Hammer leaves a symbol, creating a combo field, providing protection, and also adding significant damage, while Reaper GS only gets 1.5s of chill. This means in a comparison between two weapons that are otherwise similar, 1.5s of chill and a faster AS is being “valued” the same as a 2 second light field symbol which adds around 50% damage over its duration and gives protection. I think this really highlights how much Reaper GS underperforms for its attack speed, and that it needs to be adjusted to be more appropriately rewarding for landing the third hit, like Guardian Hammer.

I’d like to propose two different solutions, these are separate, and depend on whether it is more important that GS AA remain slow and powerful, or be a bit faster but not as strong.

1. Reduce the chain to 2.7s and increase the chill to 2s. It would still be slower and less DPS than dagger, but with chill not LF. This makes it much better to actually land, and feel rewarding when you do. With a 2s base chill, it is possible to technically perma chill with AA once you have 35% chill duration. It is worth noting that while perma chill sounds strong, you’d never actually be auto attacking that often, nor would an enemy allow that to happen.
2. Leave the current skill in every way, only instead of a simple chill at the end, replace the chill with a 2s ice field that deals a bit of damage each pulse, and adjust the overall chill given, if possible to be 0.5s per pulse of the field (3 pulses overall), and 0.5s on hit, for a total of 2s. This requires both 50% chill duration and the enemy standing in the field to get 100% chill uptime, but leaving an ice field allows for more use of finishers, like Gravedigger.

The first option is simple, doesn’t change much just makes the chain better to use damage/chill wise. The second makes GS more like Hammer, which is a commonly used weapon with a really satisfying AA chain, but keeps it as a slow weapon while giving it a sufficient reward for landing the last hit. Final note, each hit should generate 2% LF or so, otherwise the weapon just doesn’t sustain well.

Gravedigger – A strong damage skill in theory, the windup is equivalent to Executioner’s Strike, but the reward for hitting the skill is severely lacking comparatively. Also, the reset brings it to 1s CD, a really awkward timing. Essentially, even if you get the reset you can’t just cast it again, yet casting just about anything else also takes too long, so it doesn’t flow well. Just a full reset would work much nicer, allowing for “spam” in the rare situation it would be usable, and at least in PvE allowing for high DPS under 50%. This might require a longer base CD which I’d rather have, as it is extremely unlikely you’ll want to use it every 5s anyway.

Also, while it lists similar damage to ES (RS5) in theory, one major problem is ES can be combined with Death Perception for nearly guaranteed crits against vulnerable targets, while Gravedigger can’t. This effectively gimps Gravedigger’s use as an execute quite heavily except in sets that invest heavily into crit chance, aka builds that will get sneezed on and die.

Death Spiral – Great skill, applies vuln which has a lot of synergy with Greatsword, Reaper’s Shroud, the Reaper traits and the profession as a whole. While a great skill if it hits, only issue is it could serve to be longer range/larger, maybe say a 300 range frontal cone, as it is now it is fairly difficult to actually use in combat. QoL issues aside, great skill.

Nightfall – Really nice skill, it has at least three obvious functions (dark field for combo, blind for defense, cripple for keeping people in), and has some nice synergy with say Chilling Darkness, though can only proc once. Only change I’d like to see here is a QoL change so that the aftercast is removed, just let me cast and go.

Grasping Darkness – Another cool skill, only problem is it shoots straight out from your character which is an awful targetting mechanism for this type of skill. Just have it work like other skills. Otherwise its fine.

MM Reaper is okay, but not particularly better or worse than other setups. All you do is sub in Reaper for Spite or Soul Reaping, since you need DM for minion traits and BM for healing minions, and you could possibly substitute Greatsword for dagger, and then have really strong damage, probably on the higher end for MM builds, at the cost of other things.

Its nice, don’t think it will change much though, basically just swap out a trait line and a weapon, and that’s it. Might open up the possibility for more chill-based MMs too, but I don’t suspect big changes.

Dagger does need to be buffed, but not its AA. The 2 skill needs to be 2.5s total cast, and the 3 skill needs some kind of buff, as it is directly weaker than most comparable immobilizes, on a profession that needs more counter-mobility than others.

Charblaze.6958:

@Bhawb: You should know better than anyone that playing a necro in a team fight means the focus fire is always on you. Currently using the shouts leaves you exposed to several seconds of focus fire without any defense. 600 range still means you have to run up to, and stay, exactly in the middle of everything if you want to guarantee five hits (no ambient or teammate los to defend ourselves). And I’m accounting for summons and other stuff, someone will always range or move in and out of the fight. You are pretty much setting up yourself for an enemy team burst or at least a guaranteed interrupt.

You can deal with focus fire reasonably well with Reaper, and that is less Reaper’s issue and base Necromancer. I was getting very large CD reductions when I was using the shout trait. CttB→NCSY→reaper shroud gives you 2s where the enemy team can’t focus you, and once they try to turn you’ve got 8s of immunity to CC. Also, the reduced CDs allow you to deal with focus fire better, since all the effects scale up. Ignore issues that aren’t related to this trait, you can’t balance every single trait to fix every issue, on its own this trait is fine.

You don’t actually get focused that often in general play. Sure this trait might not work in WTS, we also aren’t all playing WTS, nor is PvP the only game mode. In WvW this trait is basically guranteed full effectiveness every single use, same with many PvE fights.

Charblaze.6958:

And we would still be worse since all the other CD reduction traits that I can remember have a second effect.

Yes, the master tier CD traits have second effects, generally adept ones only get extra effects if they are for OH weapons.

Charblaze.6958:

Engi turrets everywhere!

1 Supply crate = full target limit

Again, I’ve used this trait on stream, people were remarking on how much I could reduce the CDs by. The problem with shout builds were other issues (mainly that Soldier runes don’t work so my condition removal was garbage), but this trait alone performs pretty well. I’m not stuck on the idea that it can’t do anything else, I think it might be fair for it to have a relatively small secondary defensive effect, but I wouldn’t give it anything big at least. I wouldn’t treat the potential extra 15% CDR as an extra effect though, and if that’s the reason why ANet didn’t give it something then absolutely we need more, the high CDR is mitigated by potentially low CDR.

Ending Shroud interrupts all current actions in general. I’d really prefer it to be changed, but yes it is “intended”.

Having a higher base wouldn’t be bad, I like that idea. I don’t think it needs anything more though, it is only an adept trait, all of the other specialization’s comparable traits only have one effect.

Sigmoid.7082:

You do know it does the same damage as mirror blade when weapons are taken into account?? All it needs it to be faster or home. It already does decent damage its getting it to land thats the problem.

This.

However, some important things to note between the two:
Mirror Blade 8s recharge:
Damage: 259 (0.700)?
3 Might (10s): +90 Power, +90 Condition Damage
3 Vulnerability (3s): 3% Incoming Damage, 3% Incoming Condition Damage
Number of Bounces: 3
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 1,200
Unblockable
Also summons clone

Reaper’s Touch 18s recharge:
Damage: 229 (0.750)?
Regeneration (5s): 650 health
4 Vulnerability (10s): 4% Incoming Damage, 4% Incoming Condition Damage
Life Force: 3%
Number of Bounces: 4
Range: 1,200

Changes I would make to Reaper’s Touch to bring it in line:
Projectile Finisher
Change Regeneration to something else, it used to be swiftness in beta, but honestly a lot of things would fit, maybe retaliation?
Unblockable

Other than that I think Reaper’s Touch is a solid skill, it is focus 5 that keeps the weapon from being used, but those changes would make focus 4 a lot more attractive.

Actually I fully disagree. The thing about the trait is you only need to hit 3 people for it to be better in slot than other CD traits, and here is the thing: many professions bring extra stuff for you to hit. Elementalists can have elementals, Necromancers have minions, Rangers always bring their pet, Engineers have turrets, Mesmers and clones, basically in any given Xv2 you are almost guaranteed to be able to hit three targets. However, that isn’t the point of this trait, this trait is meant to be used for teamfights where hitting 5 people is common, and there it shines.

Giving it a second effect is too much imo.

Yubria.5671:

Has anyone tried this, and if so, what was your build and what were the results?

I feel like I didn’t do so well with it when I tried it in a few matches, but that could be due to any number of reasons, including but not limited to: I’m not the best PvPer, I’m not the best at making builds, and I might have had some weird lag/control issues.

It was the primary thing I played so far in the beta. One of two things happens: either you get on someone with Reaper’s Shroud and they aren’t able to get away, or you get kited. The big thing is RS is your main damage, if you get and stay on someone, or god forbid multiple people, they will all die, and do so very quickly. It wasn’t uncommon for me to down someone and then kill 3 people when that person’s teammates tried to res. However, it is extremely easy to kite, and so works much better in teamfights than 1v1s, yet in teamfights you are squishy.

It isn’t bad, but it still has some of the issues base Necro does which hold it back defensively. Offensively it is extremely strong if you can get on an enemy.

Yes it does. I used it in a cheese build for a game or two, it was funny, but otherwise the skill is worthless compared to bone minions except for cheesing with Death Nova in a condi build.

The auto attack takes 3 seconds to fully chain, still far too long, but just a slight reduction would put it in a great place.

If RS 2 was simply targeted (like a normal leap, cuts the distance if targeted, if untargeted works just like now) it would fix the major part of the problem just fine. GS would have a strong pull, and RS would have a leap. Beyond that its fixes to other things.

I’d report it officially but wow, that’s kind of a big deal considering that single ability is probably half of our self-caused procs of BB.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Bhawb.7408:

2 of the shouts need to be changed heavily, I’d really like to see Rise removed and changed into something like “You Can’t Kill Me!” (insert better shout name here)

How about, “I Am Become Death!”?

Not bad. I tend to leave serious names to other people, I’m only good with puns.

I find it hilarious that abjured winning is what solidifies this as meta, when Nos was fighting the respawn timer almost as much as he was fighting the enemy (no offense to him, he makes do on a really tough profession).

The theme of reaper is decent. The thing is not everything should be slow. Look at Reaper’s Shroud as an example, 4/5 of the abilities have the horror theme of chasing you down, and there is RS 5 for the slow, huge hit that is extremely rewarding for pulling it off. But overall the theme is fine, its just I don’t think they did everything they should have, why doesn’t the horror monster have a defensive skill?

2 of the shouts need to be changed heavily, I’d really like to see Rise removed and changed into something like “You Can’t Kill Me!” (insert better shout name here) which gives say, 1s-2s of block baseline, which also scales with people hit, and breaks stun. Need active defense, and Reaper of all things should have it, monster movie villains are hard to kill.

A few things need QoL/usability improvements, GS1 needs to be faster, GS2 needs more damage, fix a few traits, touch up the shouts, we’re good to go.

Not even close.

Comus.7365:

so what’re you playing? pve/pvp?

PvP mainly, I could do PvE though if people want it.

I’ll be live in about 30 minutes, just getting some high nutrition Coca Cola and Lays into my system.

Knighthonor.4061:

When i get home i am going to try to make GS work out in SPvP….

Not possible, good luck though.

runeblade.7514:

A 40 second condi removal and a stunbreak can make the 120 second cooldown elite useless.

In a 5 man teamfight five condi removals and five stunbreaks could be used to remove half the effects of one skill. That is absolutely a trade I’ll take.

What? The reaper shouts are not terrible at all. NCSY offers up to nine seconds of unblockable, on top of turning boons into vuln, which means you get synergy with Decimate Defenses. YAAW is also a really solid skill, turns a fight from you being stunned to the enemy dealing significantly reduced damage while you deal much more.

All the shouts except Rise and Suffer are solid conceptually, just need balance hits.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Now that I think about it, were any parts of the Reaper not nerfed from the reveal livestream?

Most of reaper wasn’t touched, RS 2/4 were buffed, as was one of the shouts. It was a mixed bag overall.

nearlight.3064:

Yeah, I agree with soldiers/cele as best amulets for a spite/SR/reaper setup, but for SR, what traits do you guys run? Do you think its viable to drop soul marks for vuln stacking (and decimate defenses)?

If you are running staff I wouldn’t drop it, but staff is garbage so put it in the trash next to greatsword, make sweet love to that new axe/dagger set, and then yes drop Soul Marks for vuln stacking. Imo it was a huge improvement to my build, because you can 100% rely on RS for your big damage using Decimate, Death Perception, and enough vuln.

I have been using this a lot and I don’t have many issues with it not working. The biggest things I’d say are QoL improvements, making it a faster projectile and make sure it actually hits when it should hit and pulls when it should pull. Would also be nice to have it at say 25s base.

Once again I don’t think the issue is Reaper itself, but the rest of Necromancer. The build I’ve been using depends on RS for all its damage really, and it does a good job of dealing massive damage and having decent sustain. The problem is I still lack those active defenses everyone else has, and whereas other glassy professions can deal with a few big hits here and there with blocks or invulns, I have to face-tank it all.

Reaper fixed a lot of our synergy issues, Shroud and GS are designed well with finishers/fields to play with each other, and I even think a lot of the traits play really well with the rest of our trait system, but it didn’t fix other issues like our overall bad weapon sets and lack of active defenses.

It doesn’t though. It has range, everything else it brings isn’t special, regen is meh at best, and we can get that skill through traiting, the poison field can’t be used by anything but MM which brings its own, condition removal can be had via dagger, and the CC is reproduce-able with WH. It has nothing Necro can’t access in at least one other way, very readily, and it doesn’t bring those things together in a meaningfully strong way, except for condi builds. Outside of condi it offers one thing and one thing only: a weapon at more than 600 range to build LF and influence fights.

GS4 is decent as is, would like to see the pulse at 1s and for it to not have the insane aftercast, but otherwise its fine.

Staff is bad. I was using it a bit today, and after a while I went back to axe and, much to not my surprise, it was a massive improvement. That’s saying a lot, as axe is in desperate need of help as well. Staff just doesn’t provide much, whenever you swap to it you instantly lose any meaningful pressure, the utility it provides is really weak compared to our other weapons, and on top of that it is boring with very little interplay with our mechanics.

If it was 1s cast, a bit lower CD, it would absolutely be elite. When you pull this off you can destroy fights, but at 2s its really luck as to whether you can even finish the cast before your opponent randomly evades your teammates’ auto attacks.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

What??? I hope that’s sarcasm if not i just don’t…GS1/2 are so slow and underpowered my grandma can dodge them. RS 5 is absurdly dysfunctional if the target isn’t standing stationary or idling by, and don’t get me started on “Rise” or how slow “Chill to the bone” is!

Greatsword is the only big issue right now, and only due to numbers on damage, cast, and CD. 2 of the shouts need big work (rise!/suffer), the other 4 just need balancing in general. RS5 is absolutely amazing, not super reliable but I’ve killed a lot of people with it.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

What would you like to see “adjusted”? Since ANet has a vision they want to realize for Necromancer, I don’t think that anything can be changed. Anything meaningful at least.

We’ve already seen RS 2 get a projectile block, which is a big mechanical change.

GS1: 2s base chill on 3rd hit, around 2.75s full chain
GS2: full reset when hitting under 50%, significantly more damage
GS3: fine as is I think, hard to say when the rest of the kit is so bad
GS4: no aftercast crap, just a 1/4s cast that doesn’t stop movement
GS5: actually goes towards target
GS overall: more LF generation

RS1: 3rd hit needs to happen a bit faster
RS2: if you target someone it behaves like a targeted leap and will end early
RS5: some QoL improvements so you have to actually get out or range or use defense to avoid it, not just walk around and have it flop 2 units to the side and do nothing to you

Shouts in general: tune up numbers
Suffer: needs more, and needs something special that doesn’t have to scale, not sure what really but right now its a worse Plague Signet at best
Rise!: honestly don’t think a minion skill will ever fit, but if it must be a minion it should be a new minion (already proposed a minion type before that could work)

Traits:
Chilling Nova: lowered CD
Soul Eater: seems like it needs something, hard to say while GS is awful
Cold Shoulder: 20% duration increased and/or 20% reduced damage taken
Deathly Chill: should do more like twice its current damage

That’s what I’m thinking of so far. Reaper’s Shroud is mostly fine as is I think, besides usability improvements. GS needs significantly better LF/damage/better casts, shouts are mostly okay with numbers adjustments, additional effects on Suffer, and a reworked Rise. Overall I think Reaper is conceptually solid, the biggest problem it has is base Necro holds it back. Reaper could make great bunkers, yet Necro weapons currently can’t support that at all, same happens for a lot of stuff I try to make work.

Lopez.7369:

Reaper’s Shroud, however, seems great. I’m interested in seeing DPS numbers for it.

There is not a single thing in this game as satisfying as executing someone with a 9k crit Executioner’s Strike.

Edit: GS AA chain is 3 seconds, if it was sped up a little bit and say 2.5s base chill I think it would be solid.

Reaper overall is fine, in fact the biggest issues I had where related to my non-Reaper things I was forced to equip, I think people call it “Necromancer”.

Lopez.7369:

No need to be so aggressive! I could just be wrong, but it feels like 2.6 seconds to me.

If that’s true, they can reduce the cast time or aftercast. But the damage doesn’t seem that far out of line for me for a beta, especially since greatsword seems like it was always meant to be an execute weapon through Gravedigger.

Not being aggressive, just suggesting a wee bit less drugs

But yeah, I’m guessing Reaper is around 3.5s for the total cast time, based on me having about a 2.5s chill and there being about a 1s dropoff. The damage isn’t the problem, in fact if it was 2.6s for the full time the damage would be just fine, the problem is we need to make that chain a bit faster, and also the chill needs to cover a full chain.

Gravedigger is another matter, it needs a full reset and a lot more damage.

Lopez.7369:

I’m not sure what you guys mean. The greatsword autoattack takes about 0.4 seconds longer than dagger autoattack and does about the same damage. But it’s also a bigger cleave, and it applies chill.

You’re high if you think GS AA takes 2.6s to complete. Its 2.5s with just basic cast times, in reality much longer.

If you max out on condition damage it hits a whopping 300 DPS below 50%! Yeah its garbage.

To be honest I’ve killed so many people who are JUST out of range with it, but besides that its pretty bad.

4 would be great if it didn’t have a massive aftercast

And we’re back online.

As title says, when entering Reaper Shroud (and only reaper shroud, not death shroud), weapon swap sigils are proc’d.

Holy crap no wonder I was losing all those 1v1s, I assumed I was being stupid and the attack was just finishing after my unblockable wore off but its a bug. I’ll test to confirm.

Edit: No issues on normal targets, probably is just a really unreliable hit.

Knighthonor.4061:

I am trying my best to find a way to make GS good. just all around bad weapon for this game.

the concept could work in a MMO like WoW where attacks dont miss. but not in a fast paced game like GW2.

The thing is slow is fine. Executioner’s Strike for example is amazing, because if you land it you WILL destroy them most of the time. The problem with GS is too many things are slow, when only AA/2 should be, and neither of them are strong enough to be that slow.

Increase the damage on 2, make it fully reset instead of to 1s
Increase the AA chill to fully cover its next chain and slightly reduce how long it takes to do
Make 3 a bit bigger or something similar to increase its usability
Reduce the ridiculous time it takes for 4 to go through
Make 5 actually aim to target

It doesn’t need a lot, just QoL changes and damage increases.

About half of Reaper is solid or very easily adjustable as is. Reaper Shroud is great, almost all around, half the traits are solid, about 4/6 shouts are good. Its just Greatsword is really trash and so are some traits. Its all fixable though, very much so.