Guild Wars 2

I just won 500 – 150 and lost a pip.

I just won a match… and to my knowledge, no one dc’d from the game. I queued alone as necromancer, and I got plenty of rank points from the match as well as a pip… no wait, actually i LOST pips for winning 527-169.

And i get dishonor for 15 minutes.

lol.

Could i get an answer on this?

Blaine Tog.8304:

Foot in the Grave is already obscenely powerful, giving us an excellent stunbreak up to once every 7 seconds without having to spend a Utility skill on it. While I would like better access to Stability outside of Reaper, I don’t see buffing Foot in the Grave as a good way to do that.

It’s really not that much stability in today’s game.

Why would you need Reaper skill #3 then? Just increase the stability duration of it up to 7s – gives you 1 reliable stability throughout the duration of your shroud when you pop it.

Miaze.8631:

These people abuse the system to lower their MMR and get worse opponents.

don’t call people out on the forum. you’ll get infracted.

cakeonroof.7385:

I play all 9 classes in pvp….only way to get my money’s worth for buying expac. The pve portion is a boring mindless grind dump.

And I already know about the thieves and warriors underpowered fiasco.

My focus on this thread is the Condition Reaper.

Frankly, it’s not that great.

Aside from counter plays, there are 3 counter builds that render them useless. They are diamond skin tempest, daredevil and mallyx herald.

But Their hardest counter is the warrior, and it’s always been the warrior. Warriors lack playtime atm but even the core rampage warrior would own any flavor of necro, be it core or Reaper.

That’s 4 classes, almost half of the entire line-up HARD countering you.

That’s why I think necros are still not that great.

TBH, as reaper I can “duel” a daredevil infinitely, I can re-counter a mallyx with my boon hate and well-timed stuns. Tempest… I have found a counter for diamond skin. Jump off of a high point and gank them when they take fall damage >:) pressure them if you got some might from your short chill duration, and use your spin to keep them below 90% by reducing healing.

While those specs are very very very strong against us, if i play it right I can still win.

However, if your team lets you get focused in a team fight without peeling them off you, your team is horrible. Reaper is easily the BEST damage dealer on a team, dishes out CC and chill, and stability so he can stomp. KEEP HIM ALIVE PLS

edit; just want to add that these specs are very hard to win against, and yes sometimes a thief will kite me to oblivion and i’ll burn down my house, but I feel like I win a fair amount of those fights.

“seriously i was on a premade and we won both matches 500-100 just about and ive solo qued for 3 and 2 of them i faced premades and won 1 and should of won the other”

You won with premades against scrubs and solo queuers 500-100, and you have a 33% win chance outside of premades. Everything working as intended, and you are very good at this game.

OTHER TRAITS AND FIXES

A lot of these would help non-reapers be successful, a buff here and there, or just a mechanic change which would help the necromancer in general feel less broken.

DHUUMFIRE Change this ability to inflict 2 burning when using Life Blast, but only 1 burning using the Reaper auto attack. This will allow non-reapers to use Dhuumfire, at least with some success.

TERROR Remove the “if the target is inflicted by a condition” modifier, and keep the full damage amount. Fear lasts , at maximum, 2 seconds, and is easily countered by stability. A Terror nuke should be that; a nuke. It’s essentially useless in its current form. Fear has too long of a cooldown, and too short of a duration, to make its main modifying trait so underpowered.

PARASITIC CONTAGION Currently, the “Curses” tree is not very powerful in PVP. Parasitic Contagion would have to work through Shroud to make it even slightly worth it for pvp, or would need to be buffed to like 15-20% of condition damage.

I’m going to go down a list of things I believe are broken, or need some work. Have fun reading!

Death Shroud

Death Shroud currently acts very differently from other profession mechanics. Whereas other classes have mechanics that focus around “adding more” to the profession, Necromancer’s Death Shroud disables our utility skills, and is essentially a little more than a weapon swap with a new health pool.

Death Shroud, passively, degenerates quickly, and even quicker when struck. This is fine in PvE, as you don’t get struck as often as in PvP… but in PvP, this makes the trait “Vital Persistence” essentially necessary as you are constantly getting focused.

Death Shroud also benefits from the use of Vitality, providing a small bonus to Death Shroud when really, it shouldn’t – it makes it harder to balance an already strange mechanic.

FIXES

GENERAL Vitality no longer affects life force pool. Life force will be balanced around the “carrion” level of vitality. Life force degenerates 50% slower, passively. Utilities will be usable in Death Shroud, except for the necromancer’s heal.

HEALING

DEATH SHROUD HEAL? IF they implemented utilities in Death Shroud, obviously healing through shroud would be overpowered. I think they could add a death shroud “heal” on a fairly long cooldown which generates life force/grants resistance per condition on the necromancer, but ends shroud after the cast completes.

TRAITS

VITAL PERSISTENCE – Make the 50% slower degeneration a passive. Increase the cooldown reduction to 20%, up from 15%.

SPECTRAL MASTERY – Recharge changed to 33%, but no longer increase the duration of abilities. Keep the 5% life force gain. (33s on Armor, 40s on Walk, 30s on Wall)

FEAR OF DEATH – unchanged

Vapour.7348:

Posts like these are ridiculous because as a Reaper I can say exactly the SAME thing about Diamond Skin Auromancer Tempest – It’s literally like hitting a wall. Nothing I could do to drop its HP below 90% when running the Reaper build you are complaining about.

I could say the same thing again with Daredevils.

And yet again with Mallyx/shiro heralds.

That’s 3 counters, to me that says the build is fine.

Thieves in general have always been hard on necros, but I feel like it’s 50/50 when I’m fighting thieves now.

Auramancer/Diamond skin is literally impossible without help.

I can kill Mallyx if i land all my boon strips when I have a fair amount of conditions ready to kill him. And i mean, land EVERY boon strip. Corrupt Boon, Plague Signet, Locust…. then i have a fair chance at killing him. If I miss Corrupt boon, it’s not worth even attempting it.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Delete celestial. Force everyone to spec one way or another.

IMO, trim the stats and give them condi duration and boon duration. Lowers their damage, healing, and passive defense, but gives them better boons and conditions slightly by like 10-20%. would make it “more diverse” and lower its general power.

Collero.7963:

trytonianYeti.4389:

Too bad Justin O’Dell left Anet earlier this year to work for Amazon.

He seemed like the only ANet developer that knew what they were saying when it came to sPvP. I guess they haven’t replaced him yet and that’s why there is zero kittens given about matchmaking etc.

RIP

I got a giggle of his past quote of “if it takes a year it’ll be a personal failing of mine”

It certainly is…

“meta” means;

in the current state of the game, a “meta build” is a build that will perform well in comparison to other professions and build. A build that is a “meta build” will perform better in the Conquest scene than other builds that have been attempted, as has also evidence to back it up.

I, personally, love making my own builds and crafting it to my own taste. There is no “blanket” build that will cover all your bases. A “meta” build will have the “perfect” balance of DPS and Defense that will help you survive and actually affect the outcome of the match. If you find a build you like using, and you have moderate success with, use it. However, don’t be surprised when you’re getting stomped by pug soloq heroes running carrion frostfire as Reaper

Quaman.9167:

yeah, I main reaper and I think its a bit too much right now (then again, so are most of the elite specs). I think the chill trait should be changed back to what it was when the expansion first launched (half dmg when the enemy is above 50% health, normal when below 50%). Maybe even give Shroud 2 a longer CD. Hopefully they don’t go overboard with nerfs again like they did with dhuumfire, where they decided to nerf more then just one op trait or terrormancer where they messed up the curses line and made condi necro garbage for 3 months.

With that in mind, I think regular death shroud could use a buff since its worthless compared to reapers shroud in almost every type of build.

Honestly, shroud 2 is okay. when you get chilled, its agonizing and often you’ll die waiting for the cooldown. I think the strongest things on Reaper are:

Chill damage- keep its current state, but reduce its damage dealt by a considerable amount. If you revert it back to previous state, it becomes almost worthless (25% nerf in one swoop, if not more).

CC chain – worse than Terrormancer when it was popular. Fear from staff, shroud stability so you cant knock me down, #5 to stun you, spin, #3 to fear you, leave shroud, use scepter to blind….

That, and the combined use of sigils to apply bleed and chill, chill applied by fear, poison, weakness….

A “good” reaper can pick a target and down him within seconds with the amount of crowd control we have available, in combination with the massive amounts of conditions we can apply in a very short frame of time.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Don’t Reapers do better condition damage than Engineers against moving targets? Not just because of Torment, but also because they don’t rely on pulsing fields for any of their damage?

Chill doesn’t stack well, which is a loss of like 800 dps by itself.

It’s a bug that became a feature.

Shadow.1345:

I tried a build similar to this and Curses is just a weak traitline atm. The first minor depends on having precision and any of the amulets that give precision don’t have vitality. Running spite and using some signets with the boon conversion is better plus you proc vulnerability on chill which stacks another condition for scepter 3. In a 1v1 situation you need that extra HP because armor just doesn’t cut it.

Have to agree with this. I have been playing with Curses since the patch came out, and I found it really surprising that the “Conditions” line is actually WORSE for condition builds in PvP. You miss out on the signet boon stripping, chill at 50% and more boon stripping, if you skip the Spite line. If you skip the Soul Reaping line… well… you won’t be reaping a lot of souls, let’s put it that way.

Best build by far is the Frostfire build posted on metabattles. I stumbled upon it while playing around and kept it – then it became meta. I use carrion if i’m going against a lot of other necromancers, otherwise I use Wanderer for the condition duration

The only thing that really tickles me is the long-lasting chill that we have as reapers. A lot of times, attacks will try to run away from me while chilled, and end up downed a mile away from me because they couldn’t clear off the chill that was eating them away.

With how much conditions we can spam, a condi cleanse class can’t really do anything against us anymore. The only thing that stops me in my tracks is Resistance, and that’s only if my boon strip + CC chain doesn’t manage to kill the Revenant (yes, i said Revenant. He’s the only class with resistance that can beat a necro).

The frostfire build that is going around is ridiculously good, chill + 3 burns is a good amount of dps by itself (2-3k), not to mention the fact that you’ll have bleeds, poison, weakness…. and i’ll have like 10-25 stacks of might….

Reapers could probably deal a little less chill damage.

thunderfall.8095:

Did anyone else realize that if you are on Kryta Track, the Heavy Supply Bags will let you rack hoop the money?

If, by you mean, get about 3g every 2 hours. yes we noticed.

Dahkeus.8243:

Failed? Doesn’t seem like it. It hasn’t really been embraced by tournaments, but it seems to be pretty well accepted by a lot of the player base outside of players who simply balk at the presence of any NPC in PvP.

As literally 99% of players pick Legacy of the Foefire whenever it’s a choice.

if you cant rez or stomp someone in 10seconds then the gyro is probably dead anyway at that point

I got about 1,100,000 damage in conditions on my reaper. I have the screenshot.

Maw is really countered by an enemy bunker, and the heals/stability will get them right out of a pickle. Being “caught” by the DH should punish you – that trap has a flashy animation and is easy to dodge out of. The only change that should be made is to make the instant unblockable daze trap adjusted to no longer be instant.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

Nerf traps and we go back to burn builds. Sooooo much fun……..

im using burn and traps.

I do it sometimes to change characters when I die, when I see that a certain comp is going to wreck my build.

Talyn Sneider.1825:

Partially agree…for now I’m just doing hot joins so I can get dailies and then head back to pve. Awaiting patiently for more balance patches.

I wouldn’t say there was no work or effort…a lot of work was done, and mostly elite specs need marginal nerfs/buffs to begin with (as these might not be enough).

DH:

->DH traps need increased cast time (1 second).

Scrapper:

->Hammer 3 needs to be reduced to 1 impact, reduce evade to 1/2 second

Revenant:

-> Reduce evade on unrelenting assault to 1/2 second

Warriors:

-> Slow adrenaline degeneration out of combat
-> Increase stances duration by two seconds
-> Evade on GS rush 3/4 second-

Tempest Elementalists:

->Make Harmonious conduit baseline
->Harmonious Conduit replacement trait: pulse blindness on overload (1 second interval)

Thief:

->Shadow refuge: Add protection on activation and pulse blindness on shadow refuge (1 second pulse) increase healing to 3000.
->Pistol skill headshot: add knockdown duration 1 second

Chronomancer:

->Increase cast time of Tides of time to 3/4
->Gravity well reduce knockdown duration to 1/2 second

This should be a nice starting point

Starting point? A lot of these are nerfs and buffs far more powerful than the ones ANET would dish out. These would straight up ruin balance.

DH Traps need a longer cast time, but increasing it by 1/4 a second is a 50% increase.. it should stop there

Scrapper is decent but rare, it’s harder to play. I agree on the evasion nerf, evasion is too prevalent now

Rev was already nerfed. they should just reduce the damage on that ability (that makes them invuln) by 10-15% and call it good.

Warrior, reduce adrenaline reduction out of combat, but make some of the other abilities good. Increasing stance duration? everyone already runs stances…

we need more diversity, not more meta builds.

I use terror necromancer still. I get the weapon sigils on swap now, which makes it fairly stronger than it was before HoT.

Zanyu.2017:

SlayerSixx.5763:

Not a l2p issue. A bad computer issue.

I play on max settings and still can’t see it.

I’ll just randomly be bounced inside an invisible cage.

Confirming, I have same problem. Trap will trigger, will be visible, and then disappear. seems like i am no longer trapped but i get knocked back when i move… seems to persist longer than the animation.

nacario.9417:

Id rather play against a DH than a burn guard, dont get why some peeps r just to quick to judge based on their one class they play. I can drop fast on a rev if i dont time infused light vs that burn stack

How about a DH burn guard? I’m seeing a lot of success with that. 15% more crit for my spinny trap, and then burn stacking abilities.

Alekt.5803:

It’s just not fun to fight undying Druids that a 8 year old child could play.

I bet if you focus him he won’t quite be so unkillable.

Demented Yak.6105:

Chronomancers are easy.

Heralds are easy.

Scrappers are a little less easy but still pretty easy.

Dragon hunters are easy.

Reapers are easy.

And then you just don’t see any of the other elite specs at all. I haven’t seen even 1 daredevil or berserker.

Honestly, I have a lot more trouble with core classes. It could be that the people playing elite specs are still playing like morons though.

I saw a berserker once. He wasn’t very good. Daredevils hurt, though, no joke. I have a druid healer friend and he is probably the best support i’ve ever had.

There was a great power build I came up against, I’m personally condition because it works in a wide range of areas.

Modkip.7681:

It’s not OP to use a skill in its optimal situation.

At this point, the only thing killing my condi reaper are really good thieves, and even then its a close fight, and the meta slow/interrupt chrono spec that i saw in the beta, but havent seen after.

Hello!

After running some matches on Reaper, I have noticed a design flaw that makes them immensely powerful in 1v1 situations. When using shouts on vines (such as entangle), mesmer clones, and other pets (ranger) the reaper is given an advantage over those players by default.

With rangers, Entangle + Pet + Ranger can spawn 3 shambling horrors with “Rise!” giving me an advantage over the ranger – an additional spawned minion (Technically two, with the pet getting hit as well), and reduced cooldown for all my shouts for each person I hit.

With one person I can hit 3/5 of my targets needed to reduce the cooldown by 35%.

In addition, against mesmers ( this one is ok ), i can hit all 5 targets.

I think they would need to no longer hit roots just to be fair to rangers, otherwise they stand no chance.

Suffer cooldown reduced, shout trait changed (10% passive, 5% for each target hit), poison reduced on #4 RS skill from 16 to 12 (much needed nerf). Some other conditions application must have been reduced but I can’t find where, just seems lower than before.

It appeared literally when i was looking in the menu after relogging.

I cannot equip my elite spec? I was under the impression pvpers could equip it right away? It’s making me purchase it for the 60 hero points.

Thanks guys! I am genuinely excited about reaper in pvp. It’s super fun and I had a blast in the beta testing and giving feedback. Truly outstanding work. Help us pvpers out, give us more kitten more often please! We are left out (they took AWAY a map, capricorn, although i agree with it, it’s been pretty sparce… the pvp in gw1 was awesome, the system was great and you could find pvp matches easily, doing randoms and winning 10 matches in a row because you knew what you were doing was an amazing feeling. The crazy amounts of maps, different pvp game types (like kurzick v luxon pvp was one of the best pvp modes in my opinion). We will always be gracious of more options and it draws more people to the pvp scene.

Eh… the sigils have 10 second cooldowns based on type. so no you can’t burst all 3 in a row.

No, necromancers are not allowed to die.

Invites are being set out. Again, this is for US, NA players. Feel free to PM me if you aren’t comfortable posting!

Caine.8204:

Hello! This is a NA guild, but we are taking all players!

W I N R A T E [PRO]

I will start this off by saying you must have Skype and must be willing to share your Skype information with other guild members. We will be publicly posting your Skype information within the guild so that other members can add you. Feel free to block and/or report members you find venomous, and inform me, and they will be kicked.

I am going to be setting up a new guild coming with the launch of Heart of Thorns, with the intent of recruiting experienced players who consistently play SPvP. There will be a set of criteria for the guild – at the beginning, the criteria will be strict. We want you to be able to group with anyone in the guild, knowing that these players can play their class efficiently and skillfully.

The criteria:

1. Must have a total win rate of 60% or above. This can be found by linking your API through a website such as http://mygw2.wvwintel.com/.
2. Must have experience with several classes, with your lowest win rate being more than at least 55%.
3. Must have over 2,000 games played.

If you have at least two of these qualities, we want you!

The idea is that you will be able to find PVPers any time of day that you can rely on.

Please post below your main profession, your offspec profession, and a picture of your win rates if you are interested.

I main a necromancer, but play a mesmer often, and my win rates are included below.

Towren.1745:

I might be interested in this, a couple of questions first:

1. Are you NA or EU?
2. Will the Guild be 100% Rep?

I main Elementalist, but am also pretty confident with Necromancer and Mesmer.

N/A, and no.

I used this one: http://mygw2.wvwintel.com/.

Hello! This is a NA guild, but we are taking all players!

I will start this off by saying you must have Skype and must be willing to share your Skype information with other guild members. We will be publicly posting your Skype information within the guild so that other members can add you. Feel free to block and/or report members you find venomous, and inform me, and they will be kicked.

I am going to be setting up a new guild coming with the launch of Heart of Thorns, with the intent of recruiting experienced players who consistently play SPvP. There will be a set of criteria for the guild – at the beginning, the criteria will be strict. We want you to be able to group with anyone in the guild, knowing that these players can play their class efficiently and skillfully.

The criteria:

1. Must have a total win rate of 60% or above. This can be found by linking your API through a website such as http://mygw2.wvwintel.com/.
2. Must have experience with several classes, with your lowest win rate being more than at least 55%.
3. Must have over 2,000 games played.

If you have at least two of these qualities, we want you!

The idea is that you will be able to find PVPers any time of day that you can rely on.

Please post below your main profession, your offspec profession, and a picture of your win rates if you are interested.

I main a necromancer, but play a mesmer often, and my win rates are included below.

Add ATHISTLE to your friend’s list and whisper me.

sephiroth.4217:

Zoltreez.6435:

lol

i have 400% more top stats then games played XDDD

Caine.8204:

Zoltreez.6435:

lol

i have 400% more top stats then games played XDDD

They heavily increased the amount of top stats you can get, so this is the norm, whereas your win rate is 49% and mine is 64%.

abc.5790:

If I started the same time as you did, I’d have like 4000000% top stats to games played

Sorry guys but my Kitten is bigger!

Hey the guy thinks he’s good, would hate for him to think the wrong think

Cerbeius.7129:

So for PvE perspectives… Hydro and Force on GS seems the way to go?

Hydro and Fire would probably be better for power dps, if you want to maintain your chill.

zapv.8051:

Dark’s paths moment on reaper is every 5 seconds or so when it blinds chills and corrupts 2 boons while also dealing great damage.

The chill is a trait. Also, it’s really easy to dodge the final hit. Corruption is still a very good option, especially in spvp.

striker.3704:

On GS I’m partial to sigil of chilling and sigil of ice. The 30% chance to proc can set up the third hit of the auto attack. The 20% increased duration is also awesome for all the other chill sources you have.
Honestly sigil of hydromancy should only compete with the sigil of ice. Both are additional sources of chilling, the difference is dependant on how you use your chills. I’d honestly say hydromancy is the better defensive one, and ice is the better offensive. You should always use the sigil of chilling if you’re running a lot of chill applying skills.

Eh… maybe in PvE, but not really. Hydro adds an additional chill, predictable rather than random, deals damage when it procs, and if you’re running Condi, geomancy would be better than +20% chill duration, or if you’re running power, air or fire would increase your damage more.

striker.3704:

On GS I’m partial to sigil of chilling and sigil of ice. The 30% chance to proc can set up the third hit of the auto attack. The 20% increased duration is also awesome for all the other chill sources you have.
Honestly sigil of hydromancy should only compete with the sigil of ice. Both are additional sources of chilling, the difference is dependant on how you use your chills. I’d honestly say hydromancy is the better defensive one, and ice is the better offensive. You should always use the sigil of chilling if you’re running a lot of chill applying skills.

Eh… maybe in PvE, but not really. Hydro adds an additional chill, predictable rather than random, deals damage when it procs, and if you’re running Condi, geomancy would be better than +20% chill duration, or if you’re running power, air or fire would increase your damage more.