Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

It needs to be a directional ground target skill.

Yeah, I think this is the best option at this point.

Steel one boon is fine, but honestly I think the lifesteal is fine. It is definitely not a negligible amount, at 150 each you’re looking at 750+ per shout use, which means in ideal conditions you are looking at roughly 90 siphoned per second. Its a really big effect to add considering its tied to also up to 35% CDR.

I used to feel like Spite was too overloaded on might, but after using a bit I honestly think its fair, and other lines should just be boosted on their own merit without hitting spite.

Spite’s boosts are heavily loaded onto low health and shroud, which is really conditional setups, and also nicely themed. Having a lot of shroud buffs is nice, because it allows for the Spite/Soul Reaping pair for builds that heavily rely on Shroud as a DPS form, and use normal weapons as utility. Its a unique style, and I think it should be preserved, and I also think it is perfectly reasonable because while strong, it is specifically strong in its niche (against low health targets, or while in shroud).

Other traitlines should definitely be looked at on their own. I’d much rather they be brought up to Spite’s level, especially on a thematic level with Spite having a nicely cohesive setup and both strong and fun traits. And I don’t think this would imbalance anything considering our slightly substandard place at the moment.

If the scythe being too large breaks your immersion, then I hate to break it to you but scythes are absolutely horrible weapons so the entire thing should annoy you. Frankly, its supposed to be a bit ridiculous, and I like that the scythe is ridiculously large.

Also you can disable clipping camera issues.

I honestly wouldn’t suggest condi MM. The weapons and trait lines don’t have very good synergy overall, HOWEVER if you don’t care about “viable” builds then Death Nova makes for a really good condi cheese build using bone minions/jagged horrors.

Reaper MM is solid though, I’d generally say its an improvement over Spite MM, unless you are really attached to the boon removal or base shroud for some reason.

I use only on-swap sigils, and you’d have to go out of your way to make proccing slower. Its a good point that you lose some control over the swap procs, but you will absolutely proc them more often.

Too true. I’ve been enjoying axe a bit but hot kitten is the AA annoying to use.

Vangy.7403:

There are really no excuses that after 3 years they haven’t bother to fix this issue…

Because they don’t think its an issue that we don’t have UI. They also have no obligation to answer every single question aimed at them. I think something could be argued about fixing up the way their aggro works so that as long as YOU aren’t in combat, the minions won’t attack anything even if they are attacked, but we don’t need UI. Back in GW1 you were lucky if they even attacked what you wanted.

I definitely think it needs to be better, but it doesn’t need DPS. Basically every GS in the game has a utility AA that is just used for filler, and I think the rest of GS is really solid (get rid of 2’s aftercast), all GS really needs is a slightly better AA, especially along the line of speeding it up a bit, since I think the rest of it, particularly the 2 skill, get across the idea of “slow but huge effects” well enough to not have a glacially slow AA.

An extra 20 toughness and one more condition transferred every 10s isn’t something you’ll ever need.

Outgoing boons are almost completely nonexistent on normal builds. It’d make BB such a niche trait that it’d only be proc’d well on builds that don’t need or want it.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Is the listed damage\siphon ( tooltip ) of bone minions for the two minions or 1 of them ?
I have death nova ( helps with horrors and rise minions ) > linked my build link in the original post.
Is the gs cd reduction from soul eater worth sacrificing decimate defenses for zerker build ?

One, but Shadow Fiend attacks twice as fast so he procs siphon just as quickly. Death Nova is great, but its synergy with Bone Minions is pretty much pointless in PvE, since you don’t need the on-demand poison field/weakness. So Shadow Fiend out DPS’s bone minions, whose only niche (burst, poison field, weakness) is completely worthless for 90% of PvE content, which makes it the better choice.

And no, DD would be the biggest damage boost by far.

I avoid this problem by never running staff because I prefer to use weapons that involve even the slightest bit of brain use and give ,e at least a shred of enjoyment in using.

It isn’t the same, though I think it might be something worth looking at. The difference is every other profession is always “at risk”, whereas a Necromancer in full DS being kept there by allied heals has to be bursted for at least twice the damage that any other profession with equal HP.

Ex: A 30k HP Necromancer in DS, assuming the 50% reduced direct damage worked, would have to be bursted for effectively 66k HP (30k normal HP, 18k LF that takes half damage for effectively 36k HP to direct damage burst), instead of a 30k warrior getting burst for 30k.

Vangy.7403:

They don’t seem to care….

They said years ago only rangers would get controls.

I don’t think Reaper will really have a role for now, just because from what we’ve seen Raids are still going to require things Reaper doesn’t have.

What Reaper could do, if it ever became a thing:
High DPS builds that are still tanky, and don’t require team help, for a potential situation where you would like 1-2 people to not be close enough to be really “with” the main group. Example would be a boss fight where mobs constantly spawn from a gate; Reaper would really easily be able to deal with this. The unique thing about Reaper is being able to be pretty tanky with high might/vuln/100% crit, you can basically reach max DPS without any help (short of unique buffs), and still have room for defensive stats/traits/utilities, and deal with a lot of enemies with GS/RS/shouts.

Shadow Fiend is generally better, Bone Minions are really only useful in PvP due to bringing heavy burst to a non-burst build, plus the great Death Nova synergy, but in builds that don’t have Death Nova (like most Soul Reaping versions), Shadow Fiend is preferred.

Just don’t use his active. Ever. Period. Don’t do it.

GS is fine except for its trait, AA, and 2 aftercast. The 2 aftercast makes a great skill extremely clunky to use, the trait is bad, and then the AA is just super slow, especially since its on a weapon that only wants to use it as filler.

Yep, Soldier/Trooper runes (change names because consistency) clear condis at a ludicrous rate with shout builds. Also YSIM is a great heal, it is extremely fast, heals for a lot, procs a bunch of on-hit stuff, and can also life steal and give LF. It isn’t for 1v1 builds, but builds expecting to teamfight get a ton out of it.

If you are hitting 3-5 people with a cast of Gravedigger then you are demolishing the teamfight regardless of that trait’s influence, and you could be running any trait and still win that game.

Spiral is just fine as is. Yes it is “boring”, but it gives burst LF/vuln/hits, which allows you to setup for burst, fill up LF, or proc a variety of on hit/crit traits.

Also, Reaper was never meant to be 1v1. From the very beginning it was heavily focused on multiple target fights, and in fact has been improved in 1v1 fighting consistently since it was first revealed.

Chilling Darkness has been in the Curses line since before launch (back when it did confusion).

Rennoko.5731:

So how does that debuff work though if I reapply a chill or if someone else with the trait applies a chill? It couldn’t stack because something like RS4 into a chill field would do ludicrous damage. I suppose there could be a separate instance of this special debuff for each chill user that refreshers duration? But that is such a fringe case.

Stacks in duration, just like you’d expect of say old burning. 2 or more Deathly Chill could either have each one with their own instance of it, or treat it again like old burning and have them overwrite each other, but at least someone is doing damage.

Rennoko.5731:

My point was only they have show no interest in working out the kinks of condition based problems like this on an individual basis, so don’t expect a reasonable fix. Remember this only effects necromancers so qualifies as low priority.

Oh I know.

GS is pretty okay in PvP, the biggest thing hurting reaper right now was BB removal made it impossible to teamfight.

Basically, don’t use GS in 1v1s, and don’t use GS AA. The weapon has pretty specific utility to it, and so you should mostly use it for its utility until you are ready to Gravedigger someone, and the AA is really only useful for filler if you can’t afford to shroud/swap.

Yeah, a bigger hitbox would be reasonable, considering the attack appears huge.

SupahSpankeh.8452:

K.

#15charactersis13morethanineededtoexpresssupport

Spaces count as characters btw.

YSIM out heals CC, as long as you have condi removal, traited YSIM is literally the strongest heal we have before you count the LF.

Or they could have Deathly Chill apply a non-chill debuff that caused the damage for the same duration as the applied chill, but will be removed if chill is ever fully cleansed from the target affected.

I don’t think BB is ever worth running at this point, unless somehow has a secret boon spamming build I’ve missed out on. If YAAW didn’t have its BB synergy gutted I think it would be possible to run in a soldier shout build with YAAW and Spite, but right now I don’t think its enough. Onslaught is probably the way to go for power atm, though both are pretty bad for PvP bunkers.

Why would I copy nos when his MM build sucks

But yeah, Nos doesn’t just pull random builds out of thin air, most of what he runs are things other people come up with individually, because they are the most appropriate builds for what he’s doing. People just can’t separate coordinated and non coordinated play, and the different builds used.

I think people crap on GS for no real reason honestly. The only thing that is really problematic right now is the aftercast on 2, especially with it cancelling out the CD return, and how abysmally slow the AA is, to the point you’ll never really chain it. 3/4/5 are all plenty strong, and 2 is strong when it lands (which is the point, its an AoE that hits harder than backstab by a significant amount), its really just the awful AA that hurts it, and the fact that people expect a slow AoE focused weapon to be good 1v1.

Greatsword has an obvious niche: teamfighting. Don’t expect it to be strong outside of its uses and its just fine. And then obviously its trait is garbage but I can’t blame that on GS.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Everything you said is true, it’s just that, all the boon generation we have that would make use of this trait, is reliant on how many enemies we are fighting.

The ones that have large applications sure, but there are also a ton of target-agnostic applications, that occur regardless of damaging enemies. SWalk, SA/Last Gasp, SWall, Vampiric Rituals, Well of Power, Lich/Plague, Signets of Suffering, Reaper’s Might, Furious Demise, Infusing Terror, Locust Swarm, Foot in the Grave, and You are all weaklings all generate boons without needing to hit the enemy at all. Mark of Blood/Mark of Evasion also both generate boons without needing to actually cause harm to the enemy, so long as they proc it.

In fact, there are very few applications that require hitting. Only Unholy Feast, Chilled to the bone, Siphoned Power, Chilling Victory, and You are all weaklings (only half of its full generation) rely on you hitting enemies to generate boons, a significantly shorter list than target-agnostic generation.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Plus as far as not having us being reliant on the number of enemies present for defense, isn’t that what the reaper is about? I mean the entire top line is supposed to be about scaling your power with the number of enemies present. The incarnation of Blighter’s Boon they’ve given us now goes against the Reaper design philosophy and theme, as well as the necro design philosophy.

The difference is boon application always has a target agnostic baseline. No matter what your enemies do, no matter how many invulns they pop, or anything they do to stop you from applying conditions, they can’t stop you from applying boons. Yes there is still meaningful play to avoid the “big” shots, though even that was severely nerfed (YAAW used to be 20% LF per cast, now just 10), but they can’t just run you over with CC, because a lot of boon application still works.

Conditions supplying defense is a fine idea in some aspects, I’m definitely not against the idea overall, but I think it deserves to be fixed on Parasitic Contagion, not put onto Blighter’s Boon. Otherwise we’ll end up with BB being PC 2.0, and another set of GMs that are just far too similar.

Ragion.2831:

I avoided soldier reaper because no ferocity and no crit, the damage really is all that?

Decimate Defenses + Death Perception = 100% crit chance in shroud, which was already your high damage period.

Berengar.6951:

My thought is that BB is basically inverse Altruistic Healing, try it out with AH’s healing per boon and cut the LF per boon to 1/2%

The problem here is that AH is controlled directly and fully by the guardian, who certainly scales up as they move into larger fights, but always retains control. BB however, goes further and further out of the Necromancer’s control with more allies. If you nerf it so that it is balanced when a Herald is in the group, then the Necromancer’s self proccing of it will be essentially worthless (already too weak for a GM), and then we’re looking at a GM level trait where the player equipping it has no meaningful input involved. Its not just bad overall design, but also really unfun design to rely on teammates to make your build choices not-bad.

The best choice we could see with this is one of the following:
1) Greatly even out boon application among specializations and utilities, and also significantly buff its strength per proc.
2) Return it to before, implement 1s ICD on allied proccing (potentially unique per ally), or a system like the old Chilling Nova had, where allies can say only proc it 10 times every 10s.

The first option can be balanced by having a lot of boon applications that scale with enemies hit, similar to YAAW and Unholy Feast, the second would basically just be a more balanced version of the old trait.

WoD is bad, and I can’t honestly see a reason to use it except maybe some niche spots. CPC has far stronger shutdown potential, with a longer period of anti-melee, plus anti-projectile, and on a shorter CD, with weakness being the only drawback to not make it strictly better in every way.

nearlight.3064:

It’s not necessarily the end, we have to adapt to the new world of the game by exploring new options and synergies instead of mindlessly tacking reaper onto an old meta build.

Aka, once again Necromancers are shafted by a knee-jerk reaction and now have to make due with what we’ve got left.

“Hey guys, we noticed boon spam was really over the top, so we added an entire elite spec whose sole purpose for existing is spamming out boons that are even more OP than normal boons. Oh, and we nerfed Necromancers because they were receiving too many boons.”

spoj.9672:

Clearly our math is suffering.

A lot more than just math is suffering in this exchange.

Dead.5829:

The non-res healing has the same 600 range and number of pulses in either shroud form; in Reaper’s Shroud it heals farther away than Soul Spiral does damage. Transfusion itself doesn’t change.

Can’t confirm how it works right now, but it is meant to change, it was specifically stated by Robert Gee that Soul Spiral would get more procs but lower range.

Curses is crit and condi line, so it gets crit and crit condi related minors. Makes perfect sense.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Because looking fancy is all the poor Tempest has going for them.

You mean except for one shotting people by pairing a multi-tick unblockable pull with Air Overload?

pierwola.9602:

I will not listen to him, he just compared Death Shroud to Warrior weapon swap.

No I didn’t, I pointed out there are multiple other professions who manage to use swap sigils while having non-standard swapping mechanics.

Well I guess the good news is I can go back to playing MM without feeling like I’m missing out on any fun builds.

Pets don’t aggro on their own

The problem is Blighter is now unusable for the main build that SHOULD be wanting it, which is shroud-based bunker builds that use high LF generation to get enough sustain to teamfight on point, while using shroud for damage. BB is now completely garbage for any non-spite build, whereas a bunker would have preferred the DM beefiness, and also would really like Chilling Victory, which kills the needed Decimate Defenses to deal damage as a soldier build.

The only builds that really build LF using this are now spite power builds, which are not the ones that were most in need of the sustain.

Muchacho.2390:

Well i would argue that blighters boon is still a lot better then unholy sanctuary. And that trait is also a grandmaster…

Garbage > wet garbage. Congrats, BB is better than a trait that is completely worthless except for a very specific clerics build, great balance work.

Power main, ferocity/toughness second, instead of the awful toughness main set that is similar.

So basically what the Curses GM should be. The problem is the same, our entire defense is based on constantly offensively hitting people, and won’t be properly balanced 1v1 vs 5v5. Blighter’s Boon, even self application only, is fine in concept, so long as we have proper boon application that also scales, which we have a bit of. The key is that it doesn’t 100% depend on enemies, things like Infusing Terror give us completely non-enemy reliant defense.

Ara.4569:

Cherry on top: a stack lasts 10s on scrapper but only 8s on necro. So you have to have applied condi 10 times in the last 8 sec to keep all stacks: good luck achieving that when you have to survive and avoid tons of hard CCs.

Plus things like -condition duration in WvW making you not apply condis, Berserker stance/Diamond Skin making it impossible to keep up condis, other people using blocks/invulns/dodges/whatever, all on top of whatever you have to do to not die. So whereas AA stays up in 1v1, CF is extremely fast to fall off in non-large fights.

Not quite on the level of gf left me coz of ladderboard but pretty solid, 7/10.

Shoe.5821:

while on first glance adaptive armor looks better, the difference is that adaptive armor requires a minimum of 5 seconds of continuous hits to max out.

corruptor’s ferver OTOH can hit maximum stacks just from fight-entry skills before you ever take a hit

the 300-500 toughness difference is annoying, though shrug

Adaptive Armor immediately maxes out its anti-condition, takes only 3s of being hit to match CF, has a 67% higher toughness limit (which also synergizes with conversions better), and is impossible to fall off in a fight, whereas CF has to be actively maintained. The 3s ramp up is pretty much irrelevant, and is the only way in which its weaker.