10/10
The first idea isn’t too bad, the second is an awful change from what we have, and 3 is massively OP.
Specializations are not hooked up in Beta, its just the press beta we had a while ago with some added PvE content, nothing really worth the time imo.
All of the shouts except Rise! are really strong and useful if they balance them better. But the core effects are okay, just need some changes.
You don’t even need Reaper to get that vuln, you get it almost entirely from spite alone.
That isn’t 66% additional reduction in DS, its 33% additional for a total of 66%. There is no way they’d give 99% reduction.
Most likely yes but we don’t have any confirmation yet afaik.
People are really underestimating how much can be done with 4 seconds when you have multiple abilities that deal backstab level of damage in an AoE.
The problem with Wail isn’t that it is bad for PvE condi builds, but with the current trait setup it basically forces you to take it or waste the slot on one of the other two awful traits for PvE.
I think everything has been sent to them so far, but it never hurts to bring up something specific just in case it went unnoticed. I personally certainly never thought of this because I never really considered the exact trait choices PvE condi builds might want, especially if WH wasn’t taken, and this is a clear issue. Chances are RP will be changed in some way, I really don’t feel like more LF is the answer, and its in one of the worst locations since condi weapons are the worst at on-hit/crit procing. So hopefully that will help out builds, or potentially we’ll see shifting of other parts of the tree.
Honestly you’re just noticing one of the number of issues with their new specialization system. They simply haven’t done a great job with a lot of trait placements, and there are a few situations where the three choices can end up all being worthless to you.
It is entirely likely you aren’t playing perfectly, but the reality is that Condi Necro is pretty underwhelming in general.
Generally speaking I am pretty excited for Reaper, I think they really hit it out of the park design wise in almost every way. I’m still waiting for the final balance notes, but I’m hopeful that with all the feedback they’ve gotten that our specializations and new stuff should be amazing. First time I’ve been fairly excited about Necromancer in a while, especially due to the minion trait changes.
At this point the only thing that slows the hype train is any time I look at our old weapon skills, and a few utilities. It is just really sad to compare them to other professions, and find them in a direct comparison to be weaker in every way.
Doesn’t sound like there’s enough in the video to support that hope
Unfortunately accurate. In the Mists just kind of random testing minion AI tends to work perfectly because it is pretty flat with very little to cause pathing issues.
The best evidence would be a pvp match, with lots of topography, with an MM re-engaging with minions summoned. That’s when the pathfinding issues creep up and minions stop attacking. Summoning jagged horrors in combat as “Rise!” naturally does, means that they will never likely experience AI issues until combat is finished and if they survive until the next battle.
This is exactly the case. It is actually part of why I hope whatever minion they have is ranged and decays, since those two components separately tend to prevent the issues, and together would make the minions almost guaranteed to not bug out. But at the end of the day they either need to introduce a workaround like a way to “hard” reset minions (active abilities tend to do this, if the minion is still alive), or just flat out fix them.
The big thing making me not want to drop dagger is the mixing of immobilize with other hard CCs for really difficult to deal with CC chains. I do hope they buff dagger 3 a bit though, its CD just doesn’t match its effect right now, comparable immobilizes on the same CD either do way more (Pin Down), or abilities with just immobilize would have more like 20s CD.
So with all the new dmg reduction and the possibility of pseudo condition immunity… can you potentially have both?
Yep. The damage reduction is entirely within Death Magic, Reaper, and skill use, it doesn’t even take up a third tree, and the condition immunity is from Reaper, runes, and food in PvE/WvW. They are completely compatible, and you have room left over. Say DM/SR/R with the relevant traits, make sure you have good sources of poison/chill, bring spectrals for the protection uptime, and you are set up to be a strong bruiser build.
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The stream where they announced it all.
Yeah, that’s what it was thanks.
You won’t necessarily be going LC just because you have burning. Terror, hybrid, there could be a number of builds that won’t have it but want burning duration.
Except chill isn’t at all even across every profession or build even if you disregard thief, never has been and likely never will be.
I use axe all the time but it is an awful weapon
Thieves are absolutely affected by chill. Try to HSS with chill, or try to backstab someone while chilled. It might not feel like they are effected evenly, but they are still very much affected.
Thought it was closer to 78%.
You know I remember it being 78% now that you mention it, because I think it came up on the podcast; it would just be another 10% damage reduction from some source to bring it to 78.
75% comes from:
Cold Shoulder
Protection
Innate DS Reduction
Putrid Defense
They made the attack time longer, gave the axe an animation that doesn’t match the hit effect at all, the animation was rushed out in an unfinished state and still hasn’t been fixed to show the focus after almost a week. IDK, not showing a lot of love there.
Making a bad change due to incompetence or ignorance (and I really can’t attribute this to anything other than one or both of those) is not the same as a purposeful change out of spite. The idea that ANet would actually hate something they spent and still spend hundreds of hours working on is just stupid. They were trying to fix an unintended interaction, had the right idea on how to fix it, but screwed up. This is proof of a lot of things for ANet, like bad QA, poorly thought out changes, and lack of transparency for what should have gone by the community first, but not proof that they hate us.
For Roaming you’ll probably aim more for soldier or valkyrie, since you can get strong crit chance on Reaper in other ways. If anything you’ll just mix in a little crit chance from other sources, but I think it is more important to be alive to deal damage, and Reaper will be more of a bruiser spec than a glass cannon.
There isn’t really anything about this that makes sense or is good. Axe and dagger both have fine skills as is, the sets absolutely make sense, and their theme is fine. Dagger is a semi-melee weapon designed for high LF/healing with consistent damage and the 3 skill is there to provide lockdown as a form of anti-mobility. Axe is a mid-range weapon that wants to use the 3 skill in order to weaken enemies, and AAs in order to set up the 2 burst.
Those core concepts are fine, and can work. The only problems are ANet’s lack of balancing the core kits on a power level, and making sure the traits actually feed into and support the key playstyle of those builds.
Dagger 2 with a 2.5s cast time instead of 3.5 and 3 having a 20s CD fixes dagger and brings it in line with other professions. And I feel its trait might need adjusting.
Axe with a blast finisher on 3 and some kind of better AA (1s total AA time), maybe a 900 range 1/2 would be much better. And its trait needs to be non-conditional damage increase, with significantly more CDR per AA.
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Stability from RS 3 is applied every second, won’t be realistically interruptable except with corruptions.
The animation change was to eliminate the aftercast and spread out the animation so the overall time was the same. I do wonder why it couldn’t have been done by just modifying the old cast though, spreading out the hits and then changing when the damage hit.
Stats will be hard to figure out until we can actually play the spec, but Ele runes will definitely be in the running for people who aren’t going LC.
Dumb question, but does Speed of Shadows and Locus Trinket stack speed?
Nothing stacks, it is whatever your highest speed modifier is.
Its always MM. I haven’t been having many issues (besides AI) recently, but I don’t really play ranked or play the game “seriously” so its hardly a good measurement.
I don’t thnk some of you understand what Anet has done with the reaper. As it stands now, with any amulet and rune you can have up to 68% damage reduction (excluding weakness) and keep it that way for quite a long time, almost permanent.
75% if you have all reductions and are in DS w/ protection, so yeah pretty heavy possible reduction.
This is how minions currently work, though that isn’t the full list of how things work. Assuming no bugs their current aggro list goes as follows from top to bottom (there is a priority)
1. What the MM is targeting
2. What the MM is/has damaged
3. Something that has damaged the MM
4. Something that has damaged the minion (will only aggro that one minion)
That’s what I currently remember, didn’t have time to go through and test it more, but they always try to target what you are targeting, even if you aren’t hitting it and are hitting something else.
Its being nerfed when the new specialization changes hit live, we’ve known that since they showed off the preview.
It wasn’t meant to be a nerf to normal Axe use, it was meant to curb the ability to do really weird stuff by animation canceling, which doubled Axe’s effectiveness. I’m not saying it should have been done this way, but it wasn’t meant as a nerf, so let’s stop pretending like this validates the ridiculous notion that ANet hates Necros.
We don’t need all that fancy crap, literally just fixing the AI to work as intended is fine. We don’t need commands, that is what Rangers do, we just need them to not have pathing issues.
Just lag on your end, unfortunately, nothing changed since the patch.
No, as I play MM I now have Necromantic Corruption removing up to 6 conditions per 10 seconds now plus the instant my minions do get a hit on them it could, making any of the condis pretty awful against me, which was the issue I had with P/D before. So I will very easily be able to deal with thief builds, as only 1-2 hits from me forces them to use a lot of defenses, and I have a lot of untargeted AoE potentially.
It depends on build, it is extremely easy to nearly one-shot thieves as MM while literally shrugging off the damage. With Reaper it will be even easier since if they accidentally get hit by just a single skill it is near instant death. The only build that is really annoying is perma stealth P/D, and even that won’t be as bad with the new condition removal.
I’m still perplexed by the proposed nerfs to Axe Training – wondering what their justification is for these changes – perhaps they are increasing the range and thought it warranted a nerf to Axe Training to compensate.
It wasn’t meant to be a nerf is the justification. Now, obviously it is a nerf, but the idea was probably that paired with the new Spiteful Spirit trait you’d be able to use your abilities/DS and then by using AAs you can more quickly have those CDs back up. It incentivizes the use of axe AA in order to more quickly get the skills that you actually want to cast. Obviously it does this quite badly, while also having a really bad conditional damage modifier, but in concept it wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
I don’t think teleports should be affected no. They use magic to instantly move you to the final location, whereas chill/cripple affect your physical movement.
I’d suggest you wait until its released to start making your build. It will most likely be zerker, so as long as you have the current Necro zerker build the only real change would be a zerker GS and sigils most likely.
I think it’s safe to say that as-soon-as a person touches the reaper line, the staff will become mandatory… and possibly soul reaping traits as well.
I doubt it. Staff really only helps you catch up to someone with ranged chills, the weapon itself has absolutely garbage ranged pressure though, so its not like you can stand toe-to-toe with anyone by using staff itself, you only hope those two chills are enough to allow you to get in range. I’ll most likely be using dagger or axe instead, so I won’t end up with a worthless weapon once I’m relatively close.
We don’t need to throw uninspired and frankly mediocre support onto every ability. The point of Reaper is not to be a source of support, it just isn’t meant to do that. We need support yes, it doesn’t mean we need to throw it at every single skill that has some semblance of ability to be forced into support.
WoD is blown out of the water by its own CD.
Cast times are okay, but anything more than 1 second is too much.
I think 3/4-1s is fair for all of our shouts. That is more than enough time to notice and do something.
Not the only reason, there are a few ways you can end up not dying, so they put them there just in case. We used to be able to do it just with DS, there are probably videos out there of people fighting the wurms at the bottom in decent sized groups.
That’s because the only shout in the game that is remotely comparable to our level of offense is Fear me!, which isn’t really that comparable. While they are all shouts, ours have very strong direct effect on the enemy, making them instant cast would be blatantly OP.
Now I’d certainly agree that certain shouts need to have their cast times adjusted, but instant cast will never happen.
I think your entire skill-bar should be available to you when in DS (so heal, 3 utilities, elite). It just presents a much better system for playing the Necromancer, you don’t feel like Death Shroud is this entity that separates you from the rest of your build or gameplay, it enhances it and feels cohesive.
Now, obviously there might be issues with balance. That is fine, if it happens then adjust as appropriate including nerfing DS’s LF pool if needed. I don’t see a compelling reason against having the skills though. Your heals could still be interrupted, your abilities all retain the same counterplay they did before, your elite transforms will just bring you out of DS, and any balance concerns can be addressed as they appear.