I still use the old Death Shroud Well Bomber for WvW. I build full damage and I found I was more effective from range in DS than the new melee Reaper form. It was tough to survive and in Reaper you need tanky gear or at least semi-tanky gear.
For that reason I suggest condi. Easier to get respectable damage while building tanky stats. I would go a mostly dire with whatever Viper trinkets you can get your hands on.
I’m going to revisit the power Reaper with Valkyrie I think, but I don’t recommend going Berserker for Reaper for WvW
@cam thanks for the sigil advice! I’m generally pretty lazy and uncertain with sigils because they’re not as integral to the build as runes are but I will note that. The tooltip might be bugged but I generally use both rise and chilled to the bone. I wish I could fit in suffer and the heal shout too but I need to cleanse condis and suffer ironically isn’t very good at that compared to untraited plague signet I’m afraid.
even with 2 shouts I think the other traits will do more for you than the shout trait, but I could be wrong, all three are viable with 2 shouts. I definitely recommend the CC reduction trait when against other Reapers. That trait -33% chill and -66% in shroud is huge vs them
And yea rise is borderline OP and a must bring with marauder’s amulet.
Soul Reaping is so insanely good for PvP. You can run without VP IF you run dagger + the spectral mastery and spectral utilities for LF regen. Perhaps a shout build could work too
If youre running a meta hybrid/condition build with scepter and signets though I think you need VP
I’ve had some good success with a marauders + spectral mastery + spectral utilities
For the first build- I would switch out blood for sigil of strength on dagger, with Blighters boon it will heal for more. With maruader I like to go sigil of strength + air on dagger and air + fire/energy on staff. I think blood is a waste with blgihter boon, and air adds very significant damage.
Also you’re better off with the other two traits rather than the augury of death if your elite is your only shout.
The hipster twist build looks fun. Thanks for posting goign to try it out
So elites are more powerful than classic builds for the most part. I reeally dont think it would be imbalanced for the Death Shroud to have access to the reaper trait line. I really want that 15% attack speed buff in DS for WvW
I just run power reaper >.> you don’t really have to change much though, they all have their uses, and are all helpful in their own ways…unless some other classes traits
I run power readper as well a lot of he time. I’m really happy about the reaper right now- can go condi and power and still feel really strong. I’ve had a lot of success with Soldiers, Marauders, Celestial (though think carrion is better for this playstyle), and Carrion- all strong and fun.
And to address rest of the thread- I was stuck in the past, came back after long break and didnt realize bruning stacks now. I’m goign to switch to dhuumfire for the most part and If vs a team with 0-1 guards/ele im temped to switch from signets to spectral build for massive LF regen and focus moreon burns
And just an overall thought on PvP- Boons are a huge aspect and necro will always be meta because they have the best boon strip. Boon strip is essential in spvp and signets of suffering is one of the best traits in the game. Miss my spectral builds though
So I see a lot of people running the carrion build on meta battle with dhuumfire and the chill damage
With 900 power from carrion, wouldn’t death perception be superior? Dhumfire gives you 1k damage over 3 seconds. It’s over time and can be cleansed. Without doing math i’d imagine 50% crit in shroud is superior, epscially with all of the self might necro gets.
Any thoughts? I’ve tried both and death perception seems stronger, especially since sometimes you have to go out of your way to R1 to apply the burning when you’d rather 4>5 asap
While that would be ideal- queue times would be incredibly long and premades would just die out. The population of sPvPers is too low for this unfortunately.
How do you know? Maybe people would flock to the game to play solo queue again with all the new features and queue times would be short.
For solo-q they would be short. For teams they would be much, much longer.
They promote GW2 as a more casual, guild-friendly game and wouldn’t want to shaft premades.
SoloQ and premades use to be separate, then they integrated them because nobody did premade
So you’re saying that you think that they integrated the queues to force solo players to play against premades?
They did it because there weren’t enough people playing premade
Funny how people still think this is an accident, or the balance team’s best attempt at balance
Ever notice how all of the OP stuff is HoT exclusive, and there are many people playing free that might get tempted ,perhaps by an OP class, to shell $50 because they are tired of getting their butt kicked?
This “balance” is deliberate.
So you are basically calling Colin J a liar. It is certainly one of two things, either that or the balance team has failed. Based on GW2 history, I tend to believe it is a failure on the balance team.
No, I’m not calling anybody anything. I’m pointing out a reasonable business decision. I did not mean to imply that there was anything immoral about what they’re doing.
Are you calling it a coincidence that 100% of people in the tournaments for money are using elite specializations? They stated that elite specs were not intended to be strong than core specs. If it was most of the elite specs, then sure- but its all of them and it’s not even close. Way too overt to be an innocent balance failure
If you never played this for the first time and started f2p, you would say “wow this is pay to win”. And hey the game play is fun and its $50 for the whole game, way better than most p2w models so why not? I bet they banked.
I have faith they’ll restore order after the holidays, fear not.
Funny how people still think this is an accident, or the balance team’s best attempt at balance
Ever notice how all of the OP stuff is HoT exclusive, and there are many people playing free that might get tempted ,perhaps by an OP class, to shell $50 because they are tired of getting their butt kicked?
This “balance” is deliberate.
So you are basically calling Colin J a liar. It is certainly one of two things, either that or the balance team has failed. Based on GW2 history, I tend to believe it is a failure on the balance team.
No, I’m not calling anybody anything. I’m pointing out a reasonable business decision.
Are you calling it a coincidence that 100% of people in the tournaments for money are using elite specializations? They stated that elite specs were not intended to be strong than core specs. If it was most of the elite specs, then sure- but its all of them and it’s not even close. Way too overt to be an innocent balance failure
If you never played this for the first time and started f2p, you would say “wow this is pay to win”. And hey the game play is fun and its $50 for the whole game, way better than most p2w models so why not? I bet they banked.
I have faith they’ll restore order after the holidays, fear not.
Funny how people still think this is an accident, or the balance team’s best attempt at balance
Ever notice how all of the OP stuff is HoT exclusive, and there are many people playing free that might get tempted ,perhaps by an OP class, to shell $50 because they are tired of getting their butt kicked?
While that would be ideal- queue times would be incredibly long and premades would just die out. The population of sPvPers is too low for this unfortunately.
How do you know? Maybe people would flock to the game to play solo queue again with all the new features and queue times would be short.
For solo-q they would be short. For teams they would be much, much longer.
They promote GW2 as a more casual, guild-friendly game and wouldn’t want to shaft premades.
SoloQ and premades use to be separate, then they integrated them because nobody did premade
Honestly surprised at how much DH hate there is considering revenants exist and are way more unfair.
At least from a Necromancer’s perspective. (edit: Not complaining though Reaper feels really strong)
Because rev doesn’t have the option to nuke an entire team. Again, not saying that it isn’t unavoidable (it is definitely avoidable), but at lower levels of play where no one knows what going on, this could really rustle their jimmies.
Yea I also realized after I posted it that maybe it’s because I’m playing reaper with boon strip so guards are way easier for me than most other classes. Reaper itself is pretty OP so I shouldn’t be talking about Rev’s haha
I’m totally ok if there was an options for a) Fast matchmaking b) Precise matcmaking.
And honestly i’m ok waiting for 5 or more minutes in queue – still better than punching your monitor in frustration.
I think that would be a great compromise. In most cases I don’t mind waiting an extra couple minutes.
While that would be ideal- queue times would be incredibly long and premades would just die out. The population of sPvPers is too low for this unfortunately.
What everybody is overlooking- Matchmaking is either going to be: (a) pretty inaccurate or (b) be more accurate but have an exceedingly long wait to play. This is due to the very low sPvP population. There is no way around this. The simple fact is there are not enough people playing where they can match up 10 evenly skilled players every 2 minutes- not enough people queueing up.
Side note:
Honestly surprised at how much DH hate there is considering revenants exist and are way more unfair.
At least from a Necromancer’s perspective. (edit: Not complaining though Reaper feels really strong)
I know OP is trolling but we really should stop the crying. Its not like anybody took, or will take, the leaderboard seriously.
That engineer with down syndrome that would say “woo hoo bye frands!” was top 20 at one point…. Let’s take this whole PvP ranking thing with a grain of salt
Okay, let’s be honest… MMORPG’s can’t be balanced as we know it due to too much diversity to the very concept of having 9 very different professions, this ain’t an FPS game that you just have to nerf one weapon’s damage to make it balanced or something like that.
There will be just less or more balance every now and then.
You speak as if there are two options: Balance or no balance when in reality there are varying degrees of balance.
It’s not about why solo Q isn’t needed, it’s more along the lines of why not?
In League of Legends you can be Diamond in SoloQ yet be stuck at Gold rank in TeamQ, the dynamics and challenge of the game changes completely.
The reason why not is the same reason LoL lumps in solo Q + duo Q (and starting season 6- even 5 man queues into ranked)
queue times.
GW2 does NOT have a pvp population to support 2 different ranked queues while maintaining consistent sub 5 minute queue times.
I never play on a team and only play solo, but I understood why Anet removed solo Q 2 years ago and understand why it remains non-existent.
Perhaps if they balanced it better or put ou more frequent balance changes, the population would grow naturally and we’d be able to have solo Q, but that is not the case
Ever since they took away solo Que I’ve been over 50% win rate, always solo only. Most teams suck, no need to be scared of them.
Were people really expecting solo Q? They literally deliberately took away solo Q about 2 years ago because the pvp population was not large enough to support multiple separate queues- anyone expecting a solo Queue for sPvP with about a 5-10k pvp population was in dreamland.
So yea solo que would be great, but nobody should’ve reasonably expected it considering they removed it for a specific reason that has yet to be resolved (pvp population)
The lack of a balance patch is way more worrying. They are getting wayyyy too greedy trying to sell HoT copies via revenants and elites being broken. Wonder how long they’ll keep it up….
Surprised nobody mentioned that they are bugged and give 25% boon instead of 20% like they are supposed to. I knew these would be the top runes ever since I saw them, even if they werent bugged. 300 in stats that scale with eachother + 25% boons + a good on hit, lol OK
I use marauder. I also think soldiers is good and valkyrie is really underrated. Valk you can actually make use off with all of our free crit. Wish there was a P/T/F amulet with power as main stat
I find these builds a lot more engaging to play then standard signets, and both do quite well. Unfortunately power reaper can be easily countered in high tier PvP
When I run Maurader I run almost the same exact build (great build) but you are wasting your native 54.% crit chance by not running at least one fire and or sigil (I am greedy so run 2x) The last thing our build needs is more might, air or fire would be WAY better than strength sigil IMO. Cant argue with hydro or energy though, but do try the air/fire (esp air with dagger) Just one air sigil would increase your DPS by significantly more than the chilling nova trait
I purchased with real $$$$ GW2.0 (x3) almost 3 years ago so I am not a freeloader. Why do I feel like I am being held hostage for $50?? Is this the future of F2P?
While viper looks very good, I would think Carrion could be really good as well. The +power goes well with the free crit traits if you opt to go with those for a good mix of hybrid damage
Don’t power nercos destroy targets under 50% hp? If bosses take a long time to burn I don’t see why they wouldn’t be desired. If the raids are actually difficult they will also have an easier time surviving than other melee oriented DPS roles IMO
Your spiteful spirit suggestion might be a bit too OP with the Shroud cooldown trait without an ICD though. Agree with most of the other buffs though, except 50% damage on terror would be too much. Maybe extra damage per condition, 10% more per condi
As far as nerf secrion
Disagree on deathly chill, its actually borked right now, if someone else applies a chill it writes over your damage. I think the damage on it is balanced
Rise is pretty insane though. Would not argue if they nerfed that, its pretty much a must. Maybe 50s CD up from 40s
“You are all weaklings” also has a pretty short cooldown for being a stun break and the shout
…However, for some reason +vitality doesn’t add to your life force pool in sPvP, and with our high base HP combined with the fact that power damage seems more common, I find toughness scales way better than vitality in sPvP
Actually it does, but you need to give it a few seconds when swapping amulets for the change to show up in your UI.
In that case its more of a wash between Cav and Valk, but I still prefer soldier, thank you for this tip though, I gogole searched it and couldn’t find anything, I thought it was weird
Yea I still use DS for WvW (reaper for pve and pvp). It would be nice to have the option to spec reaper for that 15% attack speed for DS well bombing. I drool for it
I like it a lot- I run a very similar build in PVE and WvW with Valkyrie (+ 4-5 zerk trinkets) , and its pretty good for PvP but I’ve found more success with cavalier and especially soldiers. (slightly different traits). I plan on trying more carrion as people here are suggesting.
However, for some reason +vitality doesn’t add to your life force pool in sPvP, and with our high base HP combined with the fact that power damage seems more common, I find toughness scales way better than vitality in sPvP
