Guild Wars 2

Id love to get a full set of skills for each type.

As for what kinda well, i think something thats based around lifesiphon and damage. We got nearly every aspect of the necromancer covered into the main theme of the wells, except for lifesiphon.

Our traits are in a much better spot then before the patch really. We do have some issues in the trait lines like weak or useless traits, traits that dont fit into the line they are or missing trait choices for certain builds at certain trait tiers, and the fact that 3 of our DM traits are based around minions. But overall this is much better then it was.

I think all necromancer wells could use some love compared to the power of the chronomancers wells. At the very least a good cooldown reduce.

Some random ideas that came to my mind past the couple weeks, these ideas would improve some aspects of the necromancer, each change individually as well as a whole. Feel free to discuss / critisize etc.

Baseline Changes: Mostly changes that should be attached to the weapons without the need of traits. Also ideas to improve the useability of Shroud

Weapon skills: My main intention here was to give the weapons a clearer identity. Many skills are rather situational or boring, lacking both flavour and strenght.

Axe: This is the midrange powerweapon, based around vulnerability and boon corrupting.

Scepter: Is the condi weapon. It has recently gotten much better, but it still lacks some power and some identitiy.

Warhorn: Is in a great spot as a controll weapon.

Focus: Should be a burst and power based weapon, its current implementation has some unfitting boons on skill 4 and a huge DPS loss on skill 5.

Staff: Is in a wonky spot without any good identity whatsoever. Its most likely a filler support weapon used when no other weapon makes the most sense in a build. I dont have any reasonable ideas to improve this.

Other notes:

Trait ideas:

The problem with Shivers of dread is fear as a part of the necromancer. We have 3 traits that are connected to fear yet we have very little reliable access to it. We have in total more traits that are based around fear, or that inflict fear, then we have skills that apply fear. Other condis that get buffed by traits for other classes, like poison for ranger and thief only have one single skill to make these more potent. Yet fear has the biggest amount of counterplay to it, you can be outright immune to it trough stability, resistance, Berserker stance, it can be cleansed like any other condition, its duration is reduced by every regular -duration modifier, you can even stunbreak it. The amount of fear we could reliable use is gated between a huge wall of counters and trait investments, fear currently is NOT a big part of necromancers, yet it gets implemented as such in terms of traits. Fix the implementation of fear and the core necromancers access to fear and this trait will be wonderfull.

Silverbolt.2301:

Brujeria.7536:

Fist flurry does offer some insane amount of damage, it is supposed to be hard to land. Its supposed to be chained onto a CC’d target. Thief and especially Daredevil has some very potent access to CC, Panic Strike, Basilisk Venom, Staff stealth attack, shortbow stealth attack, Bandits defence, also things like quickness can easily get this to get a full channel. This gets much easier if you consider teammates can also CC, and as a thief you mostl likely will +1 fights to end them quick. The amount of power this offers in regular play is just too much already, buffing this even further will turn it into a no brainer. Skills that are hard to land should get a big benefit, the benfit in this case would be way too high for the difficult.

Yes there are some heal skills that have an even lower cast time. Most of them do have counterplay to them. Lithany of Wrath can be counterplayer by disengaging as soon as it gets popped. Same as Defiant stance. Necro heals have long cast times to be interrupted. Healing skills in general can be poisoned. Skills that cant be countered so easily like shelter tend to have longer cooldowns or a lesser amount of healing. The amount of defense a Daredevil has once people realise theres more stuff then stealth is already huge, the amount of counterplay is also low, blocks with no cast time, a very high number of dodges, mobility and cc, stealth from traits and a second weaponset. This further eliminates every counterplay.

While thief will never be as durable as a warrior by nature it lacks a lot of counterplay. Many mechanics of the thief cant be countered unless youre another thief. They slowly add ways to counter stealth which is a good thing, this also enables to buff the other defensive aspects of the thief on the long run, yet they repeat the past mistakes by putting more stuff onto the thief with close to no counterplay attached. Even if the cast time would be upped to 3 seconds, you can still shadowstep away easily before using it. Or leaping away. You can also reduce the cast time a bit, but also adjusting its effect. Keeping it at the current strenght while minimizing the amount of potential counterplay is just over the top.

No offense, but I’m going to make an assumption here and say you main a necro. Judging by your comments in this thread, I am also feeling a bit confident in saying that you probably don’t know a whole lot about the state of thief, because you don’t actually play one competitively.

Thief is by far the weakest class currently in the game, as far as PvP goes (I’m talking skilled players only). Their “role” of being a “+1” (which I don’t agree is a role at all, because literally anybody can do this), and a “decapper” is kind of sad. Take away SB5 from a thief, and they are literally nothing, which can be replaced by just about any other class. The entire thief class currently is carried by SB5.

I saw, quite literally, one DD thief using Fist Flurry (FF) throughout the entirety of BWE2 & 3 in sPvP. Why?…because the class is hurting for better utilities than what it’s forced to use to stay alive. Shadowstep for stunbreaks and condi clears, SR to rez and run, SoA for bonus dodges, and Bandit’s Defense for stunbreak. Do you know what happened to that thief that was using FF? He ate dirt. If he ever attempted to use FF, he either wasted it without being able to land all the hits (wasted utility), or if he used it with BV, he got kicked in the teeth from stunbreaks, like Bandit’s Defense. The only real use for FF would be to increase your DPS in PvE…and really, the damage it deals is nothing out of this world that would break PvE.

You’re discussing on paper, while I’m talking about REAL application. In reality, at any given time, a thief does not have access to EVERYTHING, and they need to survive desperately. It’s a class that melts so fast that it doesn’t have room to waste a utility slot.

I know enough about the current state of the game to make these suggestions. The thief currently has some issues with surviving, especially in teamfight scenarios. By buffing DPS skills to an absurd level these arent going to be solved.

No thief is not the weakest class in PvP at the moment. As long as his mobility is that high, his ganking potential is so high and as long as conquest is the only really competetive PvP gamemode thief is very strong. Not on a teamfight base, , not in a pure 1vs1 base, but at the state of the game which is based around rotations, map control and quickly decapping points.

Thief does indeed have some issues with surviving, i give you that. But also people are refusing to go for more tanky stats. Improving DPS based skills isnt fixing the thiefs current problems, and by the time they are adressing the real problems it will become incredible overpowered and people will cry for nerfs.

In the actual game thief needs his utility skills for survival, but this should not be 100% neccessary, it should be a choice bases on builds and the intented gamestyle. The trait lines and some weapon skills need help to create more possibilities, more staying power and defense should you need that. You wont fix these problems by overbuffing a burst DPS focused utility skill, no matter if you look at it in game or on paper.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Brujeria.7536:

Karl McLain.5604:

• Reduced channel time of Channeled Vigor from 2.25 to 0.75
• Fist Flurry: Reduced cast time by 20%. note: The final strike occurs just prior to 1 second.

Havoc Master has taken its place, as we felt that the line could use a more guaranteed damage increase. For trait mods, we’d like to experiment with Weakening Strikes slightly, adding a secondary to it within its role of debilitation. Options we’re looking at it:

• Inflict X (torment, bleeding, something) when you weaken a foe.
  or
• Receive less damage from weakened foes.

Once again, thanks for your continued constructive feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.

-Karl

Do you really consider to buff Fist Flurry even even further? This already is the strongest, single utility skill in the entire game. It can potentially oneshot people if you land it correctly, comes with an inbuilt stun and armor ignoring damage. This skill is remotely overpowered in its current form, this buff will turn it further into a powercreep skill.

Same goes for the heal skill. Heal skills should have counterplay, heal skills should be used wisely at the right time and should proviide an opporturnity to counterplay, reducing the cast time slightly is okay, but this just turn the only single thief healing skill that has counterplay to it into another skill without much counterplay.

Also the defensive with weakening strikes is more then fitting. The spec is currently in a very good spot, it just goes a somewhat different route then the thief people are currently used to. By putting these changes into the game the Daredevil will be extremly OP by the time people starting to get used to, and mastering the spec.

why not, let’s reply to this.

fist flurry: if you get hit 5 times in the face without moving, and then get hit by a 6th attack, you deserve it. fist flurry brings nothing to the table other than raw damage, and the main effect of the skill is hidden behind a long channel that was almost impossible to land on anyone with half a brain. the skill is being made faster so that there’s actually a chance you’ll connect all kittens.

heal: this might shock you, but most healing skills in the game have either 0.75s or 1s cast time. in fact, there are some skills that have even shorter cast times (litany of wrath on guardian is a 0.25s cast time!). then you have the “counterplay” argument. well, shelter is a healing skill that can only be countered if you land unblockable CC on the guardian, because they’ll be blocking the full duration of the cast time. withdraw is an instant-cast heal that has evasion built into it. meanwhile, channeled vigor is a channeled skill, meaning if it’s interrupted at any point in those 0.75s, it will go on full cooldown with only half its effects applied, whereas all other heals, when interrupted, just go on a 5 second cooldown.

and no, it’s not about “learning to play” a new type of thief, because daredevil is mighty similar to another thief spec that was popular around 2014, the S/D evasion thief. no stealth, huge emphasis on evading, and the meta builds didn’t hit as hard then as they do now, so giving thief some much needed defensive options is very important.

Fist flurry does offer some insane amount of damage, it is supposed to be hard to land. Its supposed to be chained onto a CC’d target. Thief and especially Daredevil has some very potent access to CC, Panic Strike, Basilisk Venom, Staff stealth attack, shortbow stealth attack, Bandits defence, also things like quickness can easily get this to get a full channel. This gets much easier if you consider teammates can also CC, and as a thief you mostl likely will +1 fights to end them quick. The amount of power this offers in regular play is just too much already, buffing this even further will turn it into a no brainer. Skills that are hard to land should get a big benefit, the benfit in this case would be way too high for the difficult.

Yes there are some heal skills that have an even lower cast time. Most of them do have counterplay to them. Lithany of Wrath can be counterplayer by disengaging as soon as it gets popped. Same as Defiant stance. Necro heals have long cast times to be interrupted. Healing skills in general can be poisoned. Skills that cant be countered so easily like shelter tend to have longer cooldowns or a lesser amount of healing. The amount of defense a Daredevil has once people realise theres more stuff then stealth is already huge, the amount of counterplay is also low, blocks with no cast time, a very high number of dodges, mobility and cc, stealth from traits and a second weaponset. This further eliminates every counterplay.

While thief will never be as durable as a warrior by nature it lacks a lot of counterplay. Many mechanics of the thief cant be countered unless youre another thief. They slowly add ways to counter stealth which is a good thing, this also enables to buff the other defensive aspects of the thief on the long run, yet they repeat the past mistakes by putting more stuff onto the thief with close to no counterplay attached. Even if the cast time would be upped to 3 seconds, you can still shadowstep away easily before using it. Or leaping away. You can also reduce the cast time a bit, but also adjusting its effect. Keeping it at the current strenght while minimizing the amount of potential counterplay is just over the top.

It needs a small cast time decrease and it would be fine. The tradeoff for landing it can be devastating, it should just be somewhat easier to land it in those rare cases where the enemy is very low.

It doenst really matter in terms of balance. The minions deal very very low damage, at a very low attack rate.

In WvW they get cleaved down in zerg fights easily. While roaming they can be kited. Also, you need a considerable time to build them up, you could of course do this on mobs, but hey, you need to invest heavily in healing power and some certain traits to do so. In small roaming builds this could potentially be somewhat viable, but then again mobility, stealth, aoe damage and quick movements, all counter minions.

In PvE it doenst really matter damage wise. bosses still deal potent AOE damage, they soak up buffs and heals for teammates not in a party.

in PvP you simply wont bring that much up. You need enemys to get a high amount of them. Nobody in PvP will stand there, letting you build up an army. Also you cant sustain them alone in PvP if you wanna play a true MM due to the target cap. You would need very good sustain from a druid, or revenant with ventari, this also means he is wasting resources onto your minions which could be more usefull in other places at that time. You get outrotated. The power your team is offering to make this a problem for your enemy is a bigger problem for your team.

If it somehow is damaging for the game in terms of ressources, LAGs or something like that they should limit it. If it doenst have any impact on that just keep it as it is right now, as a easteregg for the former Minionmasters of GW1

This are the most overpowered suggestions we have seen in this forum for a long long time. The only suggestions that are somewhat good are the GS skills. Somehow this seems like you copied some warrior traits and mechanics and slapped them onto the reaper. You cant compare lifeforce and adrenalin. You cant compare buffing shouts to damaging shouts. You cant give an adept shout trait a ton of different functions, putting it into line with the warrior shout trait. Thats not going to work.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Reduced channel time of Channeled Vigor from 2.25 to 0.75
• Fist Flurry: Reduced cast time by 20%. note: The final strike occurs just prior to 1 second.

Havoc Master has taken its place, as we felt that the line could use a more guaranteed damage increase. For trait mods, we’d like to experiment with Weakening Strikes slightly, adding a secondary to it within its role of debilitation. Options we’re looking at it:

• Inflict X (torment, bleeding, something) when you weaken a foe.
  or
• Receive less damage from weakened foes.

Once again, thanks for your continued constructive feedback. It’s greatly appreciated.

-Karl

Do you really consider to buff Fist Flurry even even further? This already is the strongest, single utility skill in the entire game. It can potentially oneshot people if you land it correctly, comes with an inbuilt stun and armor ignoring damage. This skill is remotely overpowered in its current form, this buff will turn it further into a powercreep skill.

Same goes for the heal skill. Heal skills should have counterplay, heal skills should be used wisely at the right time and should proviide an opporturnity to counterplay, reducing the cast time slightly is okay, but this just turn the only single thief healing skill that has counterplay to it into another skill without much counterplay.

Also the defensive with weakening strikes is more then fitting. The spec is currently in a very good spot, it just goes a somewhat different route then the thief people are currently used to. By putting these changes into the game the Daredevil will be extremly OP by the time people starting to get used to, and mastering the spec.

I think the raid where rather nice. The most tricky part where the pillars you need to stand in to reduce the damage, by normal means people evade these circles. Maybe these circles should have a different colour?

The mechanics where generally very clear explained trough the first 3 small bosses, visual wise its also fitting. Some buff icons where missing, but you need to hover over these to find out what they do anyway.

The difficulty seems really nice so far. The biggest challenge is to be aware of all the AOE fields, while moving and dpsing, paying close all around attention to the pillars to position yourself quick enough. During the split phase, if you wanna fight all 3 bosses at the same time with dedicated groups the aggro system seems weird. It ended up that the bosses where agroing onto players not even remotely near them.

The mechanics where used really well, you need some kinda support, CC, boonstrip and in general a lot of the mechanics in the game. I think however, this maybe too specific for each encounter considering that each raid is based on 3 such boss fights in succession.

My biggest concern is gear swapping while being in the raid. If you can swap those during the raid you could just swap both, the class youre playing with, and the gear youre wearing, this might lead to scenarios where you need class X with gear Y and Z for this raid to be the meta, limiting quite a few things. I think the classes and players should be set during the entire instance. This would also require you to get a comp and a tactic for the entire encounter, and not just one boss. If you are able to use special gear or traits for each boss fight individually, the encounters will be balanced around that, meaning it will be too hard for raidgroups that dont change gear or classes, or even traits during the encounter, because each boss is balanced around a certain amount of classes that deal with mechanic X and Y and Z.

Another thing that i don’t like is that some classes are far superior in their roles compared to any others. For example healing on druid, conditions on engineer, boons on revenants, ranged DPS on certain classes. Please have a good eye on this in the future, balance is most likely be done around pvp but this might cause problems.

Overall i would rate this part of the raid a full 10/10. Considering the future (not judging the other encounters before seeing them, but the base rules you set for raiding) i am a bit worried. People will always search for the easiest way to deal with these things, for the fastest way of beating things, if the easiest way will be 3 different gearsets in the inventory this could cause some very unpleasant problems in the distant future.

Well they dont deal a lot damage even if there are 15 around. They still die easy to cleave damage. The only problem i see is in the amount of damage trough deathnova, but really in pvp or WVW they will never stack up to such huge numbers, because of the damage, also they swallow heals and buffs for other party members.

The new killshot burst is brokenly OP. The trait line is okay as a whole, i feel like the base warrior traitlines are rather too potent to give up.

Sword AA and Sword 3 are WAY to powerfull for how easy they are used, especially Sword 3 seems like a direct upgrade to some other burst skills, most noteable, Mesmer sword 2. Thats just way over the top.

The AA is fine, it applys might AND vuln, and is not even bad at that. Also The attackspeed is quick for a two handed weapon.

The rest of the skills need a slight till medium damage nerf, they deal way too much damage ontop of their intended effects. A weapon should never have 4 skills with such high damage values, else they turn into a skillspamfest just for the DPS.

Yeah, he really knows what hes doing. He gave Necromancers a meaningfull niche of support, while letting me still feel like a necromancer. He starts to fix the biggest problems in a meaningfull way and i actually, for the first time, think he really does read a lot on here and considers the feedback he gets.

The longbow feels really nice and packs a punch, its a bit of a practice thing with what second weapon to pick and what to do, as the moment you swap of longbow your playstyle changes a lot. The traps are okay for the most part, they could use a bit more power, except for the Dragons maw, that one is very powerfull and scary.

The spec has gotten much better recently, im not a big fan of the ele playstyle, but tempest makes things a lot smoother and enjoyable for me, the overloads and warhorn skills feel impactful on their own for the most part, which is a much better experience for me compared to the base class. The spec feels less button mashing then base ele does, while each individuall skill makes up for it, especially the overloads.

From my first look here the hammer is way too strong, damage wise. There is no skill that doenst deal a huge amount of damage, while providing combo fields, finishers and other additional things. This makes all skills feel kinda the same, a weapon should never consist of only huge dps skills that also provide additional effects. It feels like a spam everything randomly to win because the pure dps is much more valuable then the projectile reflect or the cc could ever be.

The Gyros feel a bit lackluster for the most part, i feel like the toolbelt skills are much better then the gyros by themself.

The traits are good, although too powerfull, especially rapid regenration is WAY too high on numbers for what is needed to get the benefits. Adaptive Armor is also too strong, Necromancer has a very similar skill that basicly is just a downgrade of this skill.

The wells alltogether are to strong for what they do. They have way too much damage for the additional effects they provide. Either reduce the damage by a lot or reduce the effects they give. The untraited mesmer wells are way better then traited necromancer wells, that feels horribly unbalanced.

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

Okay, there are still some crashes. We are going to turn it back off at 11:25 pacific time (or so). We encourage you to get a raid team together and get in and have some fun.

We have gathered more data from this experiment but it’s getting late. I don’t know (honestly) if we will try again tomorrow or not.

Thank you for your patience.

So once there are 11 people in a raid squad it bugs out? And because most people just search for enough members in map chat they will most likely have over 10 at one point it breaks?

Do we have to do sub groups within the squad? The dragging people into different groups did not work for me.

Gathering:

The map feels a bit barren at times, i would like to see more gathering nodes around. Especially also different plants. The majority of nodes should stay the new mushrooms, but some of the normal nodes -where thematicly fitting – would be nice

Events:

The buff for the nighttime events feels good. The opening of the canopy is very nice as well. The daytime events are a bit too scripted , at least from the part of the map we can play in. Would love to have some random stuff with variations within the event chains. The story these event chains tell has gotten really good, i actually listened to the talking since noticed it, and even felt the new parts of the story within the event chain where part of the reward.

Bosses:

Some of them are just giantic HP sponges. The Wyvern for example, some hylek bosses during the daylight event chains, arent that dangerous, rather annoying due to the high HP. Would trade some hp for lethality on them.

Champion Bags:

I would love some Unique Champ Bags for the Diamdrid and the Mordrem Generals with a few unique skins.

Defiance:

Feels worse now. In most open world events when scaled up its almost impossible to break now, especially when theres a short time window.

Masteries:

I like the time you need to level them up, feels about right. I dont like the way you learn them a lot, this could be improved. I would love a certain “trainer” that offers some lore together with the training. It currently does not feel like i am mastering something directly, i kill things and learn completly unrelated things from killing stuff. The basic functionality is fine, its just the way it gets delivered to the player. Likewise, i also hope the elite specialisations will get a lore implementation as well.

Difficulty:

For open worlds its okay, could be harder. I would actually love it to be harder.

Environment:

The map feel really really nice. The enemys are in places i would expect them to be. Sound is also wonderful.

Dead.5829:

Zombie Fury.5804:

25 stacks of vuln and 20 stacks of might my grave digger is only hitting 8k crit WITH zerker so yeah idc what people on this forum say they did nerf it pretty hard

What are you hitting with it?

Try relogging, quitting the game completely, switching gear and specs, deleting that character, etc.

So this was my gravedigger damage with absolute full zerker gear, sigil of force and strenght runes. I was missing 180 power from signet of spite, 210 power from sigil of bloodlust and also banner +power, frostspirit and the warrior #150 power trait. I didnt pay attention if i got the revs +150 ferocity buff, though.

The thing is most people want to test this quickly, but its hard to find a mob that will live long enough for your RS#1 to stack up all that vuln and selfmight, so they run to the nearest champions, or the common huge hylek veteran mobs, these mobs do have rather high thougness by default and thats most likely why people go crazy about a Gravedigger nerf.

The gap in pets in terms of damage, health and skills feels to huge between the new ones and the old ones.

Really nice work since the last BWE. Reaper feels a lot smoother compared to the first BWE. I keep my feedback short and simple:

DS 1 feels perfect now
DS 2 feels perfect now
DS 3 the fear casttime still feels out of place. Instantcast please?
DS 4 perfect by itself
DS 5 feels a bit weak compared to Gravedigger. Even at under 25% health gravedigger deals more damage. Please adjust the health tresholds and the damage it does. Could maybe execute foes under 25% health instantly like the Daredevil elite does.

GS 1 feels okay
GS 2 is perfect
GS 3 feels lacking. Would need more DPS, has gotten much worse since the change of souleater.
GS 4 is perfect, i love this skill now.
GS 5, its not reliable at all. Seems buggy at times, doenst pull the full distance sometimes.

YSIM Perfect
YAAW The might application is bad in duration. Please make the duration of the might much longer, but decrease the stacks. Currently it will overwrite the longer duration might stacks from Spite / allies / firefields with the sheer amount of low duration might, makes this skill more of a burden.
Suffer Its still mostly useless or too weak. Could we add something like reveal to it, or give some boons per foe hit? It feels like a weaker version of plague signet.
NCSY Feels good, could we please make this instant cast?
Rise seems fine as well. Love the model.
CTTB Is getting there. I think the CD should be 60 seconds base, if you can make this without reducing its effects even further.

Shivers of Dread: We still lack synergy with this trait
Augury: Tooltip is buggy, still states 7% reduction per foe. The lifesteal values are a too low, especially the healing value. Would like this to give me at least 900 health if i hit 5 targets. Would also be pretty cool to get 1 s of retaliation per foe hit for the synergy with bligthers boon, but that would be too strong as an adept.
Chilling Nova: The damage and chill feel fine, the CD does kill it a bit.
Soul Eater: Recharge reduction is much better. The lifesteal attached to gravedigger is awkward, gravedigger is our strongest GS skill already. Would prefer the old version of lifesteal, for all skills while wielding a GS, + in reapershroud. Reduce values of lifesteal a bit ofc.
Chilling Victory: The ICD is okay, the Lifeforce generation with Blighter’s Boon was a bit too strong in best case scenarios. Please make this might much longer in duration though – same issue as YAAW.

General issues and concerns:

Reapershroud and combo fields - please make leeching bolts work. The majority of our fields are darkfields, it feels so bad when you pop a GS4 for defense, then go RS and DPS just to see my blind leap does blind and my Death Spiral is wasting its whirl finisher.

Vital persistance - Please make this – or part of this – baseline. With Reaper i feel like i need my Shroud much more then as baseline necro – even to a point where i could say Soul reaping is mandatory just because of this trait.

Shouts - please normalise some values: It feels awkward that some shouts have casttimes, some are unblockable, others are not, also the damage values are all different. Could we at the very least get them all (except for the ulti)normalised to the damage of Rise?

Wells - Due to the way the reaper skillset works i feel like wells are one of the best choices for utilities apart from shouts and some spectral skills. However, seeing the new mesmer wells makes me rather sad. Could we please rework / buff our wells a bit? Even fully traited they arent as damaging, or as supporting, or as fast recharging as the mesmer wells are baseline.

Fear - Please give us more access to it as reaper via traits. Our minor benefits from fear only, at this time it feels almost like a wasted slot.

ZDragon.3046:

Brujeria.7536:

Well i think the problem isnt axe 1 anymore, but more axe 2. Axe2 currently only does DPS and generate lifeforce. IT isnt interesting enough for a DPS weapon, lifeforce is only our class mechanic resource, so compared to other classes this skill does nothing “on its own” for a power / burst weapon.

Maybe the damage per condition should go here instead of on the scepter where it was previously removed even if its only 1% per condition? ._.

Yeah it either needs an even higher base damage, compared to lets say rapidfire. We have the unique way of hitting a target, but a 1500 @@range + bonus for arc attacks is much better. The weapon needs something flavourfull to improve the power burst aspect. Axe 3 for example, could always remove protection first, and corrupt the boon always into stacks of vulnerability. Axe 2 could provide might or extend the duration of vulnerability currently on the target by a small amount.

Well i think the problem isnt axe 1 anymore, but more axe 2. Axe2 currently only does DPS and generate lifeforce. IT isnt interesting enough for a DPS weapon, lifeforce is only our class mechanic resource, so compared to other classes this skill does nothing “on its own” for a power / burst weapon.

Well i recently started to like the self applied conditions, even the effects of MoC are very nice. You can get some nasty combos with for example Blood is Power, MoC and an transfer makes up for some nice condi stacking.

The skills however are nothing special. They lack potency, even for being utility skills. Not even taking account the self inflicted condis. I think the way to go here is to make the skills exciting and powerful, adding some unique effects to the skills while also increasing the self harm. I’d imagine something like this for corruption spells traited with MOC:

CPC: Deals frequent poison and weakness in an 360 AOE field, targets inside the field can not regain health in any way.

Epidemic: Spreads all the conditions on the target onto nearby enemies, the target spreads all conditions they receive for 5 seconds onto nearby targets.

Corrupt boon: Removes all boons from the targeted enemy. The enemy can not get any further boons for 5 seconds.

Blood is power: Bleed the target foe, give yourself might. The target foe cant clean conditions for 5 seconds.

Plague: gain new pulses with a cooldown: freeze/torment and fear. These pulses have 10 sec cd.

CC: Effect like now, but furthermore you are healed for x% of your outgoing condition damage as long as you have conditions.

The effects seem very potent and borderline OP, But they have a distinct theme. The self harm should be balanced around this potency. It could range from conditions to self tsun or daze or root, to % hp loss or even increasing CDs or sacrificing lifeforce. High risk high reward spells that are centered around heavily hindering your enemies with conditions and potent secondary effects.

The duid trait is much stronger then retaliation. If 1 of these 5 targets hit you, all tethered targets will get the damage. That means if a rapidfire hits you every tethered enemy gets 8x the listed damage with no internal cooldown + the 4 other guys will most likely hit you to, this skill will be devastating in teamfights and scenarios where there are much hits, much aoe fields. Wvw for example, when you get spiked you could potentially kill the 5 tethered guys as well.

Im still hoping for a trait that combines the necromancers retaliation with a healing aspect. Like 50% of retaliation heals you. I feel a strong synergy between weakness, protection and retaliation is the aspect the death magic line is missing due to the 3 traitslots reserved for minions.

Spiteful Spirit needs a buff for sure. It could get a second effect “Steal life / deal damage when you remove a boon, 350 damage per boon removed” This would give a flat damage boost for boonhate , creating a niche for power builds that use axe / focus, plus adding an option for condi builds to deal with things like diamond skin and providing some offensive sustain.

There are quite a few things on this topic.

1) Deathshroud is pure aggression. Lifeforce is built trough damage and things dying mostly. Deathshroud migates damage to help you maintain that aggression and to an extend replaces our need for blocks or invulnerability. That being said the aggression that i can cause in DS is to lackluster as base necromancer. The skills are too slow, predictable, they lack in potency considering the speed of other classes in terms of execution, and they are sometimes build limiting. To fix this issue, they either need to make the skills stronger by default, make them automaticly change somewhat based on the weapon youre using, or making us able to use our utlility, heal and elite skills to make us able to keep the aggression our build is supposed to do somewhat up.

2. Deathshroud decay is way off. It depletes too quickly without investing into vital persistance. We have so many traits and skill effects that are based around DS to make it good, or useable. Its getting to a point with all the burst, mobility and condi pressure around that i feel i cant play any serious build without using vital persistance, i have to invest in so many traits that make our DS better to make it usefull, and even then im in the clutch that my DS only benefits some of my builds. It has no good baseline synergy with conditions builds, it has 0 baseline synergy with heal, sustain, or supporting. We dont have any synergy with our utility skills, as we cant use them, the only skills that could have synergy are spectral skills due to the maintained effect, and minions in theory, but we do baseline nothing for them in deathshroud.

Druid on the other side gets very potent heals, and CC, overall very strong and reliable base effects baseline, with the traits they showed us making them VERY VERY strong, It feels like what the druid is getting with this form, even if you dont pick traits at all is more solid then our DS is in the majority of our builds. They still can use utility skills. They still have their pet as class mechanic, they can heal the pet very easily, considering the strenght of the new pets this is HUGE. They apply pressure with daze, and roots, as well as being able to fully support their allys, they can cause DPS trough the pets if they wish so, the baseheals seems potent so even when goind on a full berserker or condi build, they can use this form similar to deeathshroud, as forms of raw healing, sustaining, condi cleans and CC pressure.

The ressource generation for druid is vastly different, but once they get their bar full, they know what they can rely on, they dont feel as “in a hurry” as necromancers do, due to lifeforce depleting quickly natural, and lifeforce being removed by damage. Overall the druid form seems much safer for me, without as much trait investment as necromancers shroud, while still retaining the core build a druids want to have. They still can go full condi with traps, or spirits, or use survival skills, this form lets them even heal their spirits or pets, forther increasing their potential abilitys. ofc spirits are bad currently, but from a pure design standpoint, the druids form is much better.

Conncept.7638:

Erasmus.1624:

Conncept.7638:

So far as math is concerned . . .

Look, I can admire one’s dedication to analysis, but are we seriously obsessing over the effectiveness of a player mashing 1? Is that the pinnacle of the game? It really feels like it (especially with condition builds). Is this what people had in mind with a rework? Is this what people had in mind when “dynamic gameplay” was the buzzword several years ago? It’s really a shame that “more passive damage” and “longer range for your attacks that are already aimed for you and potentially don’t even have projectiles to mitigate” is the “rework” that devs shove out nowadays.

Well I can’t admire someone who quips a single sentence out of every post they respond to instead of reading the post in full, so you can feel free to shut the kitten up until you actually take anything from the conversation before attempting to add anything to it.

Now then. I went over all three of the scepter skills and I’m going to paraphrase for you since I’m a nice guy and all that nonsense.

These changes are an incredibly slight but overall nerf to the scepter, not the auto attack. The auto-attack was in fact buffed, not nerfed, but not as much as the second skill was nerfed, leading to an overall decrease of about 40 DPS if both skills are used at their maximum uptime. And this is excluding whatever changes they are about to make to the third skill. So overall, this change has done nothing but changed what was a scepter trait in to a Feast of Corruption Trait since that is really all it buffs beyond what we have now, while the gap between no FoC and FoC dependent builds has been significantly closed, decreasing the overall effectiveness of the trait.

Your over-simpilification of the changes attempting to vilify the use of an auto attack as simple thick headed gameplay has not only totally ignored the majority of my post but completely missed the mark concerning the end goal of these changes.

The purpose of these changes are to give the weapon a consistent increase to DPS to compete with the similarly consistent DPS of other condition weapons. A simple DPS increase can be done through any single skill, but my point if you had read to the end, was that with no other buffs pending, what insane amount of power is going to have to be invested in to that single skill? And would the amount of risk involved in investing power in to one source really provide any consistency at all? The answer is most likely no, it would not. I’m all for adding risky rewarding play, but not until there is a reasonable baseline established to where one decision or one action doesn’t completely define every play experience.

The end changes are a huge buff. You may look at the numbers all you want, nobody cares about 50% more duration, they get cleansed anyway. The current buff as to AA and skill 3 causes conditions to be applied more frequent on the AA and a burst of condi application on skill 3 are far more worth then the trait nerf. The base weapon will be in a far more reliable and consistent spot DPS wise, id rather take that and a weaker trait, then a bad base weapon, with a trait that looks strong, but in real battle scenarios is just bad.

Furthermore, yes it was a small nerf to skill 2, but if thats the case they can still buff it, for what its worth after the patch the weapon without trait, and the weapon with trait are better then before.

Thats complete BS. Minions are very weak when used alone, furthermore we have to invest 3 entire traits to make our minions remotely good, we need another traitline to make them somewhat durable. You cant invest all of that for just one or two minions on your bar.

Apart from that minion actives are just outright bad on their own. They combo well together but are not nearly as effective as other utlility skills in a vaccum.

We could also use a skill that removes all stealth, putting the stealth skills on full cooldown, or canceling all shout effects on full cooldown, or the same for all mantras, signets glyphs or traps in that regard.

Minions as concept, only works as a whole. With all traits, and most of the skills as minions. I wish it would be different, i would LOVE to only have one single potent Minion trait, and minions with a decent use apart from minion builds like Fleshworm is, to make us able to use single minions when the situations needs them, or when a build can benefit from them, with the option of still going full MM without being overpowered, but as it is you need to invest traits, utlility and elite skill, as well as gear to make this build work, all of this should never be countered by a single click.

mordran.4750:

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t understand why any profession should be able to press a single button and comple

This, they negate the whole build of a profession with this one click. I´ve never understood that, for me it doesn´t have something to do with balancing, it´s just common sense not to do such stupid things. But i guess this is again a case that Anet seems to be so distracted from their own game, that they see some things only through paper and not through gameplay.

Not even that, mesmer also has very easy access to stealth, so to add on this we cant counter stealth, and we also cant counter moa as a MM if the mesmer uses stealth, this makes a already bad mechanic without natural counterplay (stealth) even more overpowered against a single full necromancer build. Its harsh enoug that moa overrides 2 of our 3 elite skills. The same is true to Engineers moa to an extend as well, he also has access to stealth, although not remotely as easy, still his elixir is to hard to see at times, you cant make any difference between his other toolbelt elixir as well.

Thats just outright bad design.

Staff is a horrible boring weapon to begin with, thats way to overrated. AA is really really bad, while i dont like being AA to be too strong this one is so so lackluster, given the way staff currently workss this AA should do something more reliable, even more damaging and exciting. Rest of the skills are also rather niche, the #2 is nice, low cooldown, its really fun to use, #3 is rather bad too, given how many condition cleans are thrown out and how much conditions cam be spammed this seems way to lackluster. #4 is okay, condi transfer is always good in this meta. #5 is so overrated, its a simplee AOE CC, with no damage unlike other AOE CC skills, with a terrible uptime. Probably the weakest weapon skill a necromancer has currently considering the effect and the recharge.

Im very happy with these changes overall. CPC will be a very handy defensive skill now. Axe buffs are in the right direction, still it feels this weapon lacks identity. Scepter buffs seem nice on paper, lets see how this plays out.

Still a few notes:

Why does moa still destroy our minions? This makes no sense at all :/ Either Moa does remove all utility and Elite skill effects that have been pumped out before for ALL classes, or none of them. It feels really really bad to have random skill being the hardcounter to a single build to such an extent :/

I still dont like the scepter trait in general. Its a straight up power buff, improving what scepter does in a simple way. Shouldnt grandmasters have awesome effects on your build, doing something truly unique? Shouldnt weapon traits as well do something fun or different instead of a flat duration buff? See the new Druid Staff trait for example. Or the former riochette trait from thief, bomb kit heal for engie. That are the kinda things that i would at the very least expect from a grandmaster weapon trait.

Axe skillset seems rather boring for skill #1 and 2 still. A little bit vulnerability and lifeforce generation? I mean axe #2 is the same as staff #1, It basicly has no overall effect apart from our class mechanic, it would be something different if every hit generated lifeforce, but these skills provided much more to be considered resource managment, but simply using a bit lifeforce on a skill for flavour isnt really gona cut it. Please give Axe #1 a third hit with another effect, and make Axe #2 do something exciting.

Anyway, these are a very nice step into the right direction, fixing the most crucial skill problems we had.

Next up i hope we get these things looked at:
Wells: Well of Blood, Well of Darkness, Well CDs in general (Compared to overall CDs and effects of Mesmer wells),
Signet of Undeath
Spectral grasp reliability / useability
Corrupt boon base CD.
Focus offhand
Dagger offhand
Staff overall, especially AA
Lich / Plague “rework”, getting some more stuff then one potent spamable skill.
A lot of trait work
Base Lifeforce decay reduced, to remove the absolute need to take vital persistance when planning on using any Shroud centric build.

same here, overnight my fps droppen from around stable 25 fps in LA to about 7 FPS, even in empty maps without much players i get massive fps drops. I might be happy getting 25 FPS partially, whereas before i got stable 60 FPS.

So the Engineers specialisation also gets another functionality on top to its former skills. Would it be too much to ask for both shrouds available to reaper at this point?

Also Adaptive Armor is a straight up buffed version of Corrupting Fevor :/

We would also love some info on the planned scepter and axe changes if possible

Kodama.6453:

I disagree with the reveal thing. It may fit the theme of the skill, but “disabling all healing skills” would fit the theme as well, but still would make it op. The skill already has vuln., aoe boon rip and makes reaper attacks unblockable. That’s a lot for one single skill. Adding aoe reveal (there isn’t even a single skill in this game which does that, all revealing skills are single target) would be just too much.

Well its not really too much. Unblockable basicly does nothing on its own, it just negates the benefit of a rather rarely used mechanic, so it really only does something effective against some classes that use some skills whle you also use this shout. The classes that use block, generally dont have access to stealth (mesmer with 1 block skill aside) so the functions on the skill would seem like " a lot" gameplay wise they still dont overlap, it only makes the skill more usefull against comparable defensive mechanics.

The vulnerability is also just the result of the boon corruption, no boons = no vuln.

If i would have to describe this skills functionality as simple as i could i would say its for instant boon removal, as this part is much more reliable and skill defining then the unblockable aspect.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Try building some healing power instead of insisting Necros scale badly with it. Necros have some of the best scaling in the entire game with Healing Power and Life Siphon works out to heal for more health/second than Consume Conditions had pre-nerf.

Yes, that’s a weapon skill that acts as a second heal skill. It’s easy for me to heal up 9k with Life Siphon in between casts of Consume Conditions. That’s not “healing bubkis”

Seems I’ve touched a nerve. I never said anything about Necros and healing power, and certainly not in this thread. Looking at the wiki page, it does seem that it scales pretty well with healing power. That said, it still scales pretty terribly with Power. I’d be fine with the current level of healing for Power builds if it weren’t also such a heavy DPS drop.

It currently only is a DPS drop because dagger is the only closerange option we have for dps. The design of the dagger skillset its a tanky / defensive weapon, dagger dagger having a lot of defensive measures. Its just neccesary for dagger to have the best AA currently because there is a lack of an alternative.

Kodama.6453:

It should give the enemies it hits a debuff, which will cause all of their blocks won’t work. The concept seem to be to demoralize your enemies, not buffing yourself or your allies.

At least that is the concept I have in my head.

I agree with that.

I also would like this skill to apply revealed to nearby foes. Its just fits right onto the concept of this skill, as blocks and stealth are rather comparable in regards of how frequent these effects are used and both are aimed to “save” the user.

Silverkey.2078:

ronpierce.2760:

I still wish they’d do something else. Blood magic is for stealing life. Reaper needs more access to standard Necromancer things.
I still Suggest:
- Soul Eater rips 2 boons per target hit. Heals for 100 per boon ripped.
- Augury of Death – Shouts ‘consume’ 1 (Or 2, but unfortunately, might be too strong as an adept with 2) conditions, healing 100 per condition consumed (only on self) and make it a 15% base cooldown reduction + 3% per target hit. (Total of 30%)

Reasons: Reaper loses a lot of base necromancer synergies that cover these gaps in curses(or Death, condition removal)/spite/SR. Adding a bit of boon removal to SE keeps some extra boon removal in the class but less corruption, saving that for more specialized trees. And consuming conditions adds some non-hit based (transfer) condition removal which the class could use.

I agree: we are flooded with life steals… When you hit something, you have so many numbers that you can hardly see how much damage you really do. Boon corruption would be nice, but too strong without iCD…

We are not flooded with lifesteals, its just how they work. Revenant for example also has 2 lifesteals, both make a good impact, the minor lifesteal is almost as potent as our entire bloodmagic line in that regards and the grandmaster lifesteal can be really really really good, its situational but really potent. Id like to see something similar, not especially on reaper, but for the base class as well.

A couple comments on these changes:

Shroud: Seems nice with these changes, the reduction of the aftercast will make a huge difference. I still think the fear should be instant if its somehow possible to maintain balance, we still have 3 skills with rather long activations, making it rather impossible to use the fear reliably to counter some faster enemy skills while youre in the middle of an animation, the change helps a bit but does not fix this problem.

Greatsword: Will be okay. The changes help a bit with useability but my main concern with this weapon is that i dont feel dangerous at all unless an enemy has to fight me on a point. I cant generate good pressure against kiting enemys or ranged enemys at all compared to similar weapons in the game our chills and pulls dont give us an reliable benefit like a leap would.

Shouts: Are getting decent for the most part. Suffer is still bad for what it does. Conditional scaling condi clear that can be blocked on a long cooldown. Unless similar condi clears this feels really bad when you need a condi clear and no enemys are in range, or when fighting against a single target that is specced for conditions this skill is still more then useless. The skill is even then only “okay” when fighting multiple targets.

Traits:
Augury is way better that way. The lifesteal seems to be too weak with 100-150, but we will see. Souleater the CD reduction part seems much more usefull now. I dont know about the lifesteal here though, it can heal a lot when hitting 5 targets and when one is under 50%, but then again in most of these situations you already have the upper hand and you wouldnt need more sustain. I will also miss the synergy with the multiple hits from skill 3 and 4 this trait got before.

Random other notes:

Shivers of Dread feels so wasted, as reaper only has 1 native fear skill on its skillset. Staff and Spectral Wall could benefit as well, but why should i pick Spectral Wall as utility skill? Now if Spectral Wall would block projectiles i could at least defend myself against ranged attacks but…. Could we give this trait a little bit love? Maybe like “Your healskill also Chills nearby foes for 2 seconds” or “Gain protection when a chilled foe hits you 3s 15s icd” Its a master minor after all…

Please make darkfields and whirlfinishers work with shroud. So much wasted potential here that makes my brain bleed.

MethaneGas.8357:

As for sPvP… I think Weakening Shroud is king :P weakness is another form of defense.
Even if Parasitic Contagion worked in DS, I doubt it would be better than Weakening Shroud there. With all the insane condi clears going all over the place, you need all the condis you can get. At least that’s my opinion

Yeah i think of weakening shroud as a hybrid trait there, you get the nice defense of weakness with some bleed stacks for damage. The thing is i can always choose this trait as a solid middleground for both pure condi or celestial builds, i even can use it as a reaper.

However, if Parasitic Contagion would be a reliable defensive option for every condi user i could be tempted to play around with stuff like master of corruptions. CPC is actually nice with master of corruptions, i get similar effects with a traited CPC. The thing is if the trait would reliably heal me whenever i get a condition and when one of my condition gets removed i get an incredible synergy here, i get healed trough the condis my corruptions apply to my enemies, the condis they apply to myself, then i could transfer the condis of myself to get the heal when one of your condis get removed of a target, and then i get some healing again if i did transfer the condis to my enemy.

The possibilities would be insane and this trait would fix so much problems with condi necro at the moment compared to a generic damage → healing kinda trait.

They could even split it up like one part of the trait gives lifeforce instead of health to fix the lifeforce problems as condimancer without forcing you into SR.

The shout is pretty good actually. I would trade a bit of the lifeforce generation per target hit for some more healing, but thats just me. The base Lifeforce generation is just so nice for PVP.

Consume conditions is actually not so good. It has a very obvious call, a very long cast time. If you succeed to use it you get punished by a long cd, and further vulnerability stacks. Its too unreliable and feels punishing even if the cast completes in competetive scenarios.

Well of Blood is outright bad. The CD is horrible for its effect, the healing to allies isnt even remotely comparable to things like the Tempest new healing skill or other healing skill that aim for group heal and support. Id love to use it more often but it fails to deliver.

Blood fiend is weak. It needs a scaling on healingpower for its HOT, the pulses should come at every 2 seconds with adjusted numbers, and it should heal trough DS.

nekretaal.6485:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem is that it is only underperforming in PvP. It is god like in PvE for defense.

You can tank 5 champs with this trait + epidemic.

Not sure how to fix this. They really need to separate balance.

How often do you cluster 5 champions together in the same fight?

A: never?

Stop with the hypotheticals and introduce real world situations please.

Yeah thats basicly it. Even if it would work trough shroud, the moments the sustain will be good are those moments where you dont need it anymore. If i can get multiple high damage ticks of condis onto multiple or one targets to make this skill worth it im playing open world pve, when im playing pve i would pick a trait that gives me more damage.

Furthermore these trait is useless with at least half of the other condis in the game, if i where to make a new build that relys on debuffing my enemy this trait is useless, which is just simply sad because this trait alone could open up new ways to create builds around it.

This trait is currently heavily underperforming. Main problem with this trait is that its benefit isnt as reliable as similar traits due to condi cleansing, and its useless to for non damaging conditions. This is also mainly a defensive trait, as the other Grandmaster trait options in this line are either fully offensive or a balance between offence and defense.

So to fix the issue i suggest to change the trait completly:

Heal a small amount for each outgoing condition (30 health per condition stack).
If one of your conditions get removed you siphon 150 health from that foe (per stack of condition removed)

This could enable some nice builds and would cause a gameplay change worthy of a grandmaster trait.

Suggestions and Opinions on this?

Yeah, all the weapons except maybe dagger need a rework as they lack identity. It may work to some extent now because you basicly have 3 weapon sets with shroud that all do a something that works for your build when put together, but most likely that just applies to 1 or maybe 2 skills of that weapon set, making you a sitting duck after you use this skill.

Basicly make staff a long range power weapon. Give marks interesting effects. Just because they are all called marks doenst mean they all just do generic one time effects in an aoe.
Staff 1 : Conjure a spectral spirit to blast the area. It basicly shoots like the Engies Mortar AA, a long range projectile finisher quick cast time, but very high travel time. The skill applies AOE damage and vulnerability, as well as generating lifeforce. Hitting an enemy right with the center of the AOE causes more vulnerability stacks as well as more lifeforce.

Staff: 2 Create a mark at the targetet area, hitting all enemys and dealing moderate damage, the damage is increased by each stack of vulnerability on the target, this skill increases the duration of each stack of vulnerability on the target by X seconds. Standard mark as they behave now, fairly low cooldown.

Staff 3 creates a mark at the target location, dealing damage and a brief cripple, as well as marking the targets for X seconds. The skill can be activated again to trigger the mark, causing a moderate root. The mark can also be triggered by hitting it with Skill 1, causing it to not root the target but create a bouncing projectile originating from the marked target, councing to nearby enemys causing low damage and chill. Triggering a mark consumes it and generates lifeforce for each one.

Staff 4 creates a mark on the targeted location, 1 second cast time. The mark takes x seconds to manifest. Once it gets triggered it causes a fast pulsing AOE field, dealing heavy damage per pulse and applying a short lasting might stack for each foe hit per pulse.

Staff 5 is a special kind of channel skill, the effect of the mark increases based on how long you cast it, cast time can be instant for a smaller effect, or may be hold for up to 2.5 seconds for a massive effect. Effects could be lifesteal at instant cast, unblockable high damage and poison, + blast finisher at max stacks.

Scepter should stay the condi weapon, with improved effects.

Dagger should stay the CC / tanky meele weapon.

Axe should be reworked to be a modrange support weapon, condi transfer, boonhate, lifeforce generation at the 600 range.

The mobs are across the board to easy to kill, the health value is too low and they move too little or to low. The damage they do is good, but they are too gated behind the skills, i would like the mobs to have quicker cooldowns, faster movement and attacks at the cost of lower damage for each individual attack.

Boon and condition application for them is lacking too, but again we have only seen small bits.

Overall i felt the difficult was better in BWE1 compared to BW2. this might be because the mobs where kinda different at places or in numbers, but i did like it much more in the first BW.