Guild Wars 2

Vulnerability is already so common that it won’t change Axe place in the least.

Gyros are good additional targets for Reaper. You even get to spam Gravedigger earlier when they reach 50% HP.

I worry more for base Necromancer but not for condimancers. They need a traits and mace rework before we start worrying about the Scrapper.

Indeed Adaptive Armor is a much more improved Corrupter’s Fervor.

Lily.1935:

I’m not talking about a 100% perfect scenario. Thats another point I’ve been arguing against. That the meta builds are often run as perfect scenarios and believed that they are even when they’re not. I’m talking about chaos. In a chaotic situation I can keep up 25 stacks of might and vulnerability at all times, I can keep myself at full health, I can maintain perma chill. I can boon strip without a problem. I’ve done the testing in the beta. I ran fractals and dungeons on my reaper. I’ve run organized events. I did it specifically to test their usefulness in groups. And its astounding! We are absolutely amazing. Extremely valuable.

Any chaotic raid is destined to fail or take a long time to complete. They told us raids will be nearly impossible for random unorganized pugs. Yes, at launch raids will be chaotic because no one knows the encounters/mechanics, but it won’t be necessarily true afterwards.

Guess what, I’ve done testing in the beta too. Yes you can hold your ground against bosses very well but since Reaper has no taunt it isn’t really helping others to survive nor deal more damage. Your average dungeon pug reaches 25 might and vuln without too much trouble, in fact decimate defenses is better than chilling force in any PvE group setting. Any organized dungeon/fractal group is guaranteed to reach might and vuln cap 100% of the time.

Raids are designed to be an organized and coordinated effort. Self might has little use since it’s expected to have a PS warrior, blast it, etc. and while vouln is always nice it’s a dime a dozen in group settings.

Seriously, I even duoed AC with a friend trying various build and tactics. Facetanking a boss while dishing full zerk damage was amazing but they were mostly dragged out fights that ended with me standing over corpse of the boss and reviving my friend. The most useful supports were wells’ protection, blood well heal, blood well on revive, and vampiric presence. Still they weren’t enough, Vampiric Aura is too weak to be anything other than a cute bonus, Transfusion is mostly useless with Reaper because you are in melee, you want to camp RS in a sustained fight so you are not flashing Life from Death enough to be relevant. :-/

Again, unless chill outright stops defiance regeneration, we are losing a very valuable support tool for generic defiance stripping that can be provided by any other profession at little to no cost.

@Lily: You can argue (with reason) that we are too worried because of our past experiences that may or may not be applicable to raids, but you have to concede that your “perfect Reaper scenarios” are no better.

@Everyone: Look at scrapper’s hammer, it’s going to function at 100% capacity regardless if there is a defiance bar, while stripping it if it’s present. Chill’s effects are our support. It’s what’s allowing us to keep up with the enemy, it’s gaining us the time need to land our slow blows, it’s mitigating damage by reducing the foe DPS by delaying attack and helps buy time for the cooldowns to be up again. This is all valuable party support, and we are giving it up for generic defiance stripping that other professions are getting for free on top what they are already doing.

Don’t get me wrong, Reaper is a good and well designed specialization, but the chill DoT is trivializing its role by making it replaceable by any other defiance stripping effect/skill. Unless chill’s DoT greatly reduces defiance regeneration, allowing more breathing room to burst the bar, it’ not easy to justify a Reaper’s spot over more supportive professions.

Reaper traded ranged damage for AoE melee damage. Personally I find Reaper shroud was designed way better than our base shroud so it’s a really good trade.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Anyway, I still mostly disagree with what many of you are suggesting, but I forwarded your concerns to the developers to evaluate. I’m sure they’ll consider that feedback before making a final decision.

Thank you for forwarding our concerns and I apologize if I was rude.

Lynnie.7213:

Would be weird if a raid boss can be kited around because fo chill, tbh.

Why it’s fine to have perma swiftness but not cripple? Why are they allowing the scrapper to blast AoE superspeed? Why you can have quickness and alacrity but not chill and slow?

Seriously, the “offending” conditions have the same net effect of the corresponding boons. If their effect are considered too strong place a cap or a reduction so they are on par with boons.

The whole “but they would be too strong” argument is a joke when you are currently achieving the same results with boons.

OlliX.1705:

Necro has lots of chill and cripple as well as hard CC. If anything we will probably be one of the best (if not the best) classes to take down defiance. Necro has a lot more CC than the OP gives it credit for.

That being said, I don’t really like the solution to this problem and I’d have prefered to have these debuffs working on defiant enemies, even if heavily toned down.

I’m not questioning the amount of soft CC necro has. I’ve even said we are a profession with a huge debuff component. My argument is that if everything goes in the defiance bar then our debuffs are no different from the hard CC of, for example, a hammer warrior which can bring way more support and utility on top of that.

Necromancers are designed to fight their enemy by debuffing them. Kitten, the whole Reaper theme is to bring the enemy down to its level with chill. It’s pretty obvious that professions are designed to bring support by either empowering allies (ele/war/guard), weakening foes (necro/ranger), or a mixture of the two (engi/mes). But then the weakening part was neutered in high end PvE.

He does read our feedback and cares. Same for Mesmer and Warrior’s elite specialization. We are lucky to finally have him.

@Rising Dusk:
Control is attained via impairing debuffs. If all of our signature control effects are no different than what available to other professions because everything goes in the defiance bar, we can be easily outclassed by any profession with better support on top of defiance stripping.

We can easily perma move 25-33% faster but slowing with cripple or chill bosses by 15% destroys key mechanics? LOL How about we make them 15% faster to level the ground with swiftness and so a 15% speed reduction from chill and cripple is substantial? Why protection isn’t destroying “key mechanics” right now? It’s much more effective than weakness.

Reapers are melee, even base necromancers are melee since dagger is our only viable weapon. When the situation gets hairy we’ll be in cleave range in the middle of your hypothetical huge AoE with everyone else. Do you really play necro? Have you ever played a thief in dungeons/fractals? Your remarks are making me question your experience.

Warrior’s banner regeneration and Vampiric Presence aren’t mutually exclusive but the spots available in a party are limited. So for all practical purposes they may very well be. Again, are you familiar with party composition?

That’s the issue if everything helps in defiance striping nothing is really necessary, so professions will be valued for what they do on top of that, and we have little to offer because our base profession is weak. How many professions are currently valued for their vulnerability stacking? Defiance striping will be the new vulnerability if everything affects it.

Are you kidding me? Boon corruption IS debuffing, you are literally converting buffs in debuffs. And then you insists we are not a profession with a huge debuff component…
(-_-")

The real Reaper niches are:
1) Nearly zerker DPS while wearing more defensive gear thanks to the traits boosting our crit chance.
2) Good sustain against 3-5 foes without giving up too much damage.

Unless the majority of HoT raid encounters are designed with those exact two points in mind, it won’t be enough. It still wouldn’t fix our problems with the current content. Either Chill DoT is high enough to stop defiant bar regeneration (unlikely) or they need to make debuffs into true party support tools.

The Reaper is a good and fun specialization. I just want to play it in high end PvE while feeling as effective and useful as when I’m playing with alts.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Really, I understand where people like spoj and drarnor are coming from, but I don’t think they realize what an impact things like chill or weakness would have on bosses.

We do realize it. That’s why we are asking for them to work but in a weakened fashion. And we realize that the impact of boons and buffs can melt every boss in 20 seconds flat so worrying about debuff being OP makes no sense. You have to make debuffs as meaningful as buffs if you want to gain a place alongside buffing professions.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Bosses are far easier to balance and far easier to make diverse and challenging when you don’t have to balance them under the presumption that they’ll be suffering 100% chill and weakness (which good organized groups would obviously take advantage of).

Bosses aren’t balanced against 100% fury, 25 might and banners uptime, nor they are balanced against the spamming of aegis, quickness, reflects and vigor. I repeat, it’s ok to melt bosses in 20 seconds flat by staking boons and buffs but not to debuff them albeit in weakened manner?

Rising Dusk.2408:

If Necromancers are valuable in raids, it will be for Vampiric Presence, Transfusion, and boon corruption. That would be true even with the changes being suggested to chill and weakness uptime on bosses. With the break bar functioning as Robert Gee mentions, it’ll be far better off in general for boss design.

A thief can stealth ress allies better then any necromancer, warriors can trait banner regen that laughs at our vampiric presence, mesmers can rip boons more effectively than us. Let’s be honest, we are mostly a debuff profession, if our debuffs have no effect, or are easily replaceable by the gazillion of other defiant stripping skills/effects, we have no place in high-end PvE. Do you think chill will be mandatory to strip a defiance bar?

@Dristig: Were did I said this is a nerf? It sure is a buff against previous iteration of defiant bars. But you are missing the point and in the wrong compared to current state of the game. Currently chill applies to unshakable mobs. It seldom has effect because most bosses have no skills with cooldowns and they are treated as auto attacks. But against some defiant bosses it’s really valuable, e.g. you can kill the legendary shaman in two phases if you use chill, since he phases on a timer and not on HP thresholds as most peoples think.

The point you are completely missing is the flattening of functionality that makes unique or thematic profession effects replaceable by any hard CC, blind and cripple. If everything has the same functionality (defiance bar stripping) the profession will be judged by party support, group utility and, least important, DPS.

You can already see we are going to lose on 2 of 3 points and even if dps is on par it won’t be enough.

Answer to my question, if a hammer Warrior hits hard both the HP and defiance bars while giving party support and applying defiance DoT with cripple, why would you want a Reaper with chill?

If you missed the news: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Defiance-and-Soft-Crowd-Control/first#post5495163

They are trowing everything, chill included, in the defiance bar mechanic creating a huge functionality overlap.

I fear soft CC will become like Vulnerability: everyone has some so there is no place for a dedicated build or a profession with good Vulnerability application like Necromancer and Engineer.

Why should you bring a Reaper with chill when a hammer Warrior hits hard both the HP and defiance bars while giving party support and applying defiance DoT with cripple?
Why should you bring a Mesmer with slow when a Thief with pistol off-hand provides the same functionality with zero investments?

I honestly don’t understand why they fear debuffs when buffs are melting the hardest bosses in 20 seconds flat. Debuffs should be as valuable as buffs, period. If they are too strong reduce their effectiveness, but they should stand on equal ground as party support as buffs.

Please reconsider the idea. You are creating a massive functionality overlap that makes debuff heavy professions irrelevant in high end PvE content.

Liege Tai.8249:

How does fear work in this category? Is it a hard or a soft CC? also how will the damage effect of terror trait work?

Fear is currently considered as Hard CC because it disables your skills, but I guess it will be treated as Soft CC because of the Terror trait.

In my opinion Fear should be the only DoT that you can apply to a defiance bar. Debuff should just apply their stated effect, albeit weakened if it’s too strong. Otherwise Soft CC debuffs will be like Vulnerability: everyone has some so there is no place for a dedicated build or a profession with good Vulnerability application (e.g. Necromancers and Engineers).

This is bad news. Debuffs must be as valuable as buffs. Period. If they are too strong reduce their effectiveness, but they should stand on equal ground with buffs.

This goes against a.net stated philosophy that everything works as advertised in every game mode. We can’t have split balance between PvE/PvP but it’s fine to make debuffs ineffective in 90% of high end PvE?

A huge chunk of the instanced PvE profession imbalance comes from the imbalance between buffs and debuffs. Even if Icebows and Elementalists were deleted from the game it wouldn’t make Necromancers, Rangers, Mesmers and Engineers more valuable (note: I’m not actually asking this). Make debuffs valuable in their advertised way without trivializing the content. Yes, the break-bar at least adds a use to previously ineffective debuffs, but if they do the same as hard CC why should I choose them? Bring a weapon or profession with a lot of hard CC and don’t bother with debuffs. You will still hit the defiance bar while doing more damage and giving superior party support with buffs.

I honestly don’t understand why they fear debuffs when buffs are melting the hardest bosses in 20 seconds flat.

The changes are good and I can’t wait for the next BWE.
Thank you for listening to the community!

I hope they copy our bank anew so I can test ice runes and sigils.

Robert Gee.9246:

• Chilling Nova: Increased damage by 50%. Increased number of targets from 3 to 5.

I feel the Reaper has enough AoE damage. I’d like to see this trait boost single target damage while keeping the AoE chill. Unless the new content requires insane AoE, then I take back everything I said. Still Augury of Death competes for the same use case scenario: fighting against many foes.

Robert Gee.9246:

• Soul Eater: Changed recharge reduction to a flat 20% without conditionals. Lifestealing from this trait increased significantly but the lifestealing now only applies to Gravedigger. (Approximately 140-180 health.)

I still have some reservation with GS life leach and it was noticeable only with Death Spiral. I’ll see in the next BWE how it works out.

Vulnerability is the only debuff that always works in every situation and any party composition can reach the cap without even trying. Thanks to unshakable, which every champion or above mob has, blind is 10% as effective and weakness lasts 50% less time. Chill has no effect on most bosses except for a handful like the mossman. Most mobs don’t heal so poison isn’t useful either. Nor we see a lot mobs with buffs that can be stripped or corrupted. :-/

Yep, kind of okayish in some corner cases/build but not worth it compared to the other 2 Master traits. How would you change it or what do you like from the GS trait?

Btw cool stuff your PvP Reaper video.

Many will stay as Necromancers because they need to map complete to gain all the hero points needed to fully unlock the Reaper. :-P

pepsis.5384:

Cant we be the enemy debuffing, sustain tanks instead?

Pretty much this. They should make debuffs as effective as boons without trivializing the content. The defiant design of 100% negating all debuffs is horrible and the major responsible of the Necromancer’s lack of party support.

Robert Gee said they are readying something for soft CC like chill on defiant foes. I hope it’s not just a plain breakbar reduction. Debuffs should work exactly like advertised, albeit in a weaker but still relevant fashion. If chill added even a small flat delay like 0.25-0.5s between one attack and next Reapers would be wanted in every PvE instance.

@draugris: I feel the Reaper is already really close to the intended necro design. If you played it or watched PvP footage you can see the Reaper wins by outlasting enemies in melee. You just need to add projectile destruction to Spectral Wall and make GS5 and Spectral Grasp more reliable, so you have a fair chance to get close. Spectral wall with projectile destruction would give you a small window to LOS ranged enemies anywhere.

Greatsword attacks steal health. When gravedigger hits a foe, all other greatsword skills recharge by a small amount.

• Life Siphon Damage: 55
• Damage Life Siphon Healing: 49
• Recharge Reduced: 3%

I tried to use it both in PvE and PvP and it didn’t feel much useful. I appreciate they tried to move away from the uninspired “20% CDR plus bonus effect” master weapon trait design, but I don’t think it works very well with the greatsword’s design.

Overall the greatsword isn’t really suited as a Life Siphon weapon, but if you manage to hit multiple foes with Death spiral you do get a small heal. This effect can be good but it suffers from “unlikely perfect case scenario balance”. Since GS attacks are slow, and Death Spiral has target limit or 3 nor it’s spammable, it should be safe to rise the siphon heal and damage.

The CD reduction is good only if you hit multiple foes below 50% HP. But if you are hitting something at <50% HP you want to keep spamming gravedigger as much as possible instead of using other GS skills. I would like to see something that helps you when you are fighting a foe that is above 50% HP, like:

• Recharge reduced by 3-5% whenever a GS attack hits a foe above 50% HP (doesn’t scale per foe but works with all GS skills).
  or
• If your GS attack hits a foe above 50% HP your next GS attack is 15% faster (doesn’t scale per foe).

The second idea is interesting. Finally the GS would be fast enough to land hits on PvE bosses without cancelling or missing your skills because you have to move away from, or dodge, the hard hitting attacks. GS DPS gets boosted too, currently above 50% HP it’s only 3% better than dagger assuming all of your attacks land. In PvP it rewards skillful play since you want to setup your enemies to chain hit them and you gain nothing from face-rolling the keyboard. Note: even with 15% faster speed, GS attacks are still slow enough to give both the attacker and the opponent a fair chance to hit and avoid. Soul Eater needs something good to compete with Chilling Force and Decimate Defenses.

What do you think of Soul Eater? How would you change it? Do you think my proposal would work?

If you rise 4-5 jagged horrors at once and they don’t get oneshotted they are good tank and damage even in non MM builds. The problem is they die too fast to AoE or boss hits.

I liked the video and the intro is gold.

Keep up the good work!

I suck at PvE ;_;

Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmxuc0dl7rg

I feel the same with anything involving jumps. I can’t do JP to save my life ;_;

This bug is affecting all classes with on hit effects and procs like Warrior’s adrenaline and on hit sigils. It has its downsides too since it keeps you in combat.

The only sensible solution is to fix this bug at its core. Nerfing Reaper is unfair since other classes can exploit it, it’s limited to few maps and spots, it has been there since launch and still base Necromancer has always been mediocre.

This bug has to be fixed, but I still think most of the complains against Reaper are due to players fighting it as if it was a base Necromancer.

This bug is affecting all classes with on hit effects and procs like Warrior’s adrenaline and on hit sigils. It has its downsides too since it keeps you in combat.

The only sensible solution is to fix this bug at its core. Nerfing Reaper is unfair since other classes can exploit it, it’s limited to few maps and spots, it has been there since launch and still base Necromancer has always been mediocre.

This bug has to be fixed, but I still think most of the complains against Reaper are due to players fighting it as if it was a base Necromancer.

I think Rise! has good potential for tanking and supplemental damage. But shambling horror either need to be more spammable or a guarantee they won’t die in 5 seconds flat under heavy AoE or 1 boss attack.

Maybe if they die faster than X seconds they should rise up again just once?

• Reaper Shroud is pretty much a walking AoE. You don’t stand in Lava fonts, Wells, or Rapid fire, you try to get away from them. You should do the same when you enter Reaper Shroud.
• Once you go below 50% HP rotate out of the fight or run away and heal. Any player near a Reaper with <50% HP is setting himself up for a burst and giving it free sustain.
• By ganging up close against a Reaper as if it was a regular Necromancer you are actually doing it favor. Multiple enemies hit at once equals more sustain and might for the Reaper.
• Range and kite are it’s weak points.
• Trying to burst a full HP Reaper is a bad idea.

RS2 is good and pretty spammable. We just need projectile destruction outside of RS2 and a slightly better GS5. Spectral wall needs projectile destruction and 7-8s duration. GS5 should have a shorter CD (20-25s?) and auto-facing the targeted enemy.

Highly relevant to the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlh6nleAd0

We can be actually good if they don’t nerf Reaper’s sustain before people learn how to deal with the elite specialization.

Reaper Shroud is pretty much a walking AoE. You don’t stand in a Lava fonts, Wells, or Rapid fire, you try to get away from them. They should do the same when you enter Reaper Shroud. Foes should rotate out of a fight too, or go ranged, once they go below 50% HP. Any player near a Reaper with <50% HP is setting himself up for a burst and giving it free sustain.

By ganging up close against a Reaper as if it was a regular a Necromancer you are actually doing it favor.

Agree, aftercasts are the only thing holding back the GS. You end up
cancelling your skills and missing far too often. However GS is much better than the previous BWE.

What I don’t agree with is:

Shouts summary
———————————
The main problem is still their poor effectiveness on a single foe and this a problem with all shouts. There’s not really an easy solution for this other than having inverse exponential scaling (which you did do partially with “you are all weaklings”). I like that the base effect works without hitting a target now. Unfortunately Rise does not work this way so it needs to be fixed. Generally speaking i still think shouts in general need way more damage and more single target usability.


Traits
———————————

Augury of Death
—-
This trait doesn’t really have a lot of use in PvE because shouts are weak. In PvP it doesn’t make sense because you aren’t going to hit many enemies. Not sure what to do about this other than making shouts better.

Ideally we should mix shouts with 1 or 2 utilities from the base class to cover for this weakness. The issue is that our base utilities are bad, or have long cooldowns, and many encounters both in PvE and PvP don’t involve many foes.

If you are fighting multiple enemies shouts are already in a good place,

I soloed Operative Belka in Arah path 2. All her attacks are ranged and do a lot of damage. Blinds are useless and any chill you apply vanishes in less than 0.5 sec. You pretty much have to eat all of her damage since you don’t have evades, blocks or projectile destruction (except RS2), and you have to save your dodges for the 1 shot Pulsing Orb when she teleports.

To beat her I used “Your soul is mine”, “You are all weaklings”, “Rise!”, “Chilled to the bone!” with Augury, Soul Eater and Vital Persistence. Since the barrels count as enemies I had crazy sustain, most of the fight my health was above 80%. When I got out of shroud my shouts were ready, after using them and GS skills the shroud was full and ready.

Yep, shouts and Augury definitely need some tweaks especially the damage, but they are already good in the right setting. I hope the new content makes use of this and we should accept that shouts necro is suited mostly for mid fight and stronghold in PvP and situational in current PvE. Note: I’m not saying that shouts should stay bad in 1vs1 but that we have to acknowledge that they are not meant for single targets so at best they’ll always be a bit under powered in those situations.

draugris.9872:

Dude, pls read thread titles. This thread is about LF generation from GS, the thread you mentioned is talking about something completely different.

Dude, pls read the previous posts in this thread and the linked one. GS doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and if you want the DPS you have to give up something. Still you can generate more LF than dagger if you are smart enough to use the GS for it’s intended purpose: team fights. Even then you have many option to boost your LF generation with Gluttony, Soul marks, Spectral mastery, Unholy martir, Chilling victory, Blighter’s boon, Your soul is mine, Spectral armor, Spectral grasp and Spectral walk. You simply slot a trait and/or utility and you are good to go. Even base necro with D+WH has to take something to boost the LF generation, weapons are not meant to be the only source LF in a build.

Arguing that the weapon should generate all LF need in any build is dumb and in bad faith.

You say LF generation is bad but there are already threads asking for a nerf of Reaper’s sustain. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Reapers-are-WAY-to-tanky/

Ithilwen.1529:

It clearly doesn’t fit. The reason is that it is too tanky. I literally can’t touch the necro elite specs. It heals faster than guardians.. that fits how?

It fits because it doesn’t has aegis, vigor, reflects, heavy armor, block and evades, so you have to facetank all the damage. The profession is still susceptible to chainstun and kite i.e. it doesn’t has the melee tools other professions take for granted and instead it has to rely on debuffs and sustain to be on par.

And nope it doesn’t heals faster than guardian unless it’s cleaving 3 opponents below 50% HP and the teammates spam boons.

insaneseagull.7063:

Cecilia.5179:

Agreed. Pick up a 15 foot pole and try to swing it around. It is simply not feasible, and it looks silly in a game that tries to be logical.

Does this game try to be logical? It’s high fantasy lol. And I’m pretty sure our scythes is not ACTUAL scythes of wood and iron/steel/mithril w/e. They’re created from magic or something necromancy. They’re probably as light as they need to be. Maybe they don’t weigh anything at all?

That’s the joke.

As not reading the warnings about it I suppose.

The only profession with no active defense finally gets scaling sustain so it can’t be utterly wreaked in team fights? Preposterous! Nerf it now!

Never mind that Reaper is a low mobility melee with easily avoidable attacks and it’s sustain requires team support and a 50% hp enemy, it’s clearly unbalanced as hell. It should just eat dirt first in every team fight like all necromancers do.
/sarcasm

On a side note the complaints about Reaper sustain in the necromancer’s forum are ridiculous too. Yes, GS and Reaper sustain in 1vs1 isn’t good as Dagger and base Necro, but it’s different specializations for different purposes. Bringing a Reaper to a duel is dumb.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Charblaze.6958:

GS generates more LF per second than dagger if you are cleaving 3 enemies.

And then there is warhorn we can pair the dagger with.

And then there is GS4 and 5.

GS doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There are many means to boost LF generation if you want to use the GS as 1vs1 duel weapon.

Narenek.9085:

Overall it’s an improvement, but fast moving mobs can still ‘interrupt’ it.

Tip: Movement doesn’t interrupt GS2 and GS3. Chase them to ensure you hit. Keep going and pass trough the enemy model after hitting to avoid the enemy attack. Gravedigger is not rooted like 100blades, take advantage of this. :-)

In my opinion yes. You are slow but you hit hard, we are getting there with the risk/gain ratio. :-D

I only have 2 issues:

• While doing smaller events in the VB with other players mobs melted so fast, and Reaper attacks are so slow, that I had trouble landing more than one hit. Sometime not even one hit since our mobility is not stellar and they died before I could get in range. :-/ A longer reach for the pull and/or a lower cooldown may solve the issue. Let us snatch the mobs first!

• I know they are still working on CC condi & defiant bosses, but they have to make our debuffs as relevant as boons and vulnerability in PvE. Otherwise we have no chance to bring anything meaningful in PvE, short of buffing the Greatsword damage to the Icebow’s insane and broken levels. TL;DR: Make our chills and other debuffs matter.

PvE Reaper shines brightly on sustained fights. I did Ascalonian Catacombs with a friend (duo run). I kept the Spider Queen and Kholer at bay like a boss. Vampirc wells + aura + GS trait, gives you good sustain even in Berserker gear while dealing full damage. I hope raids will make this kind of play relevant.

Overall I’m happy with were they are going but a couple of issues are worrying me. Keep up the good work and make justice to this profession for the first time since release.

GS generates more LF per second than dagger if you are cleaving 3 enemies.

Greatsword is a DPS weapon while Dagger is meant for sustain. You can’t have the same life force generation on Greatsword as you can’t have the same DPS and cleave on Dagger. Yes, in the past BWE the greatsword life force generation was bad, but now it’s in a good place keeping in mind that that GS isn’t, and shouldn’t be, a dagger 2.0. Different weapons for different purposes.

Btw, if you are cleaving 3 opponents you generate more life force than with dagger, so when it does matter you get more sustain. In PvP use blighter boon, if you want better sustain choose Reaper’s sustain traits.

ronpierce.2760:

Personally, I think a hit can get too high. What I believe, and I realize this differs a bit from Bhawb here, in terms of how Life Blast’s cast should be handled, but here’s my list of thoughts:
- Life Blast damage is too high to cut the Cast time in half.

- Life Blast DPS is too low, and as a resource driven class mechanic, much like the soon-to-be Berserker, it should feel rewarding to trigger, even if that means a minor dps drop on weapon skills (I have little sympathy for those who think Dagger 1 spam should maximize DPS, playing both to their maximum utility would be best, though, more Greatsword with Grave Digger being used at optimal times as dagger is purely sustain).

- Cast time should be halved to .5 second cast +.2 after cast (effective .7, doubling the cast speed from 1.4 seconds.) while reducing damage by 40%, resulting in significantly lower burst damage, but a higher sustained output. The “super slow at everything” niche is dated, and slow, hard hits can remain a Lich Form niche that you can opt into.

- Rather than making it a two-hit channel, as a few are suggesting, to allow some traits to hit twice and others only once per cast (likely Reaper’s Might being the biggest issue), those traits that are seen as too strong when coupled with a faster speed (RM, possibly Unyielding Blast) need to be “nerfed” (see: rebalanced) to have lower durations instead.

Note: The reason this needs to happen is because Reaper already has this faster attack speed. If it’s a problem with a .7 cast Life Blast, it’s an issue with Reaper as well. Not to mention Reaper’s Might vastly over shadows Chilling Victory as a might mechanic, holding non-spite reapers back. Plus for a minor adept, its just a touch too good anyways, especially if Life Blast were to be a stronger DPS option.

- Lastly, Life Blast needs to have a baseline pierce. Piercing is already harder to control than cleave and Life Blast is currently lacking in DPS single target, let alone on multiple targets, this limitation and added Soul Reaping semi-mandatory trait should just be taken away. Also, with the piercing part removed, the trait would no longer appear to be half-effective for Reaper and future shrouds.

Sorry if its a bit wordy, I plan to make a write up following BWE2 and will have it cleaned up and discuss with some other Necromancers before hand, but I want to test some things first with Reaper before I get too deep into suggestions, but these are my general thoughts right now.

TL;DR: Baseline Piercing, Double Cast speed of Life Blast, Reduce damage by 40-45% to bring it in line with Reaper’s capabilities, rebalance non-reaper Traits to compensate for the new speed that fits both Shrouds.

+1

Bhawb.7408:

Bruh 2 hours is short, its Saturday. Also not really news honestly, we’ve known they were reworking PvE to more properly highlight the gameplay.

Nope bruh, they only talked about IA and break bars, with only the later to be extended to 100% of the old content.

Atherakhia.4086:

Rather than making these debuffs relevant in PvE, it’s far more likely they’ll simply allow the debuff to be active on a boss but they simply won’t effect them. This way your traits that do X when Y is Z’d still work but are still largely irrelevant when it comes to utility.

It would be the same of the current system. You can fear defiant mobs and still have damage ticks from Terror even thought the condition has no effect. They wouldn’t need to work on new tech to do that.

People are thinking that that chill & co. will be included in the defiance breakbar mechanic, but this wasn’t said or implied anyware. They aren’t control effects, and soft CC is a player base misnomer, nor it makes sense to change them like blind.

So no one is interested in party support via enemy debuffing as a viable option in PvE?

It would help even base necro a lot.

Quote from mesmer’s forum:

Robert Gee.9246:

Nilgoow.1037:

Any comment on Slow and the interplay of Lost Time+Danger Time in PvE on bosses? Will enemies currently immune to CC get the debuff with a reduced/no effect to allow for the bonus crit, or are those traits irrelevant for PvE?

We have a tech solution in the works CC effects like slow, chill, cripple, etc on defiant creatures. I don’t want to say too much about it since I’m not sure when it will ship or how much it will change before then but we do want your traits to work on bosses.

PvE reapers and necromancers have more to look forward to than just plain DPS buffs. It seems they are working on making all debuffs relevant in PvE.

Exiting times ahead!

Crosspost from Bhawb’s feedback thread.

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree with more shout target scaling. I actually found it to be downright frustrating that these utilities were ONLY useful in situations with large numbers of foes.

My thoughts were buff them baseline to still be acceptable, but add in minor effects that ultimately add up with more foes. As it stands, the shouts feal downright weak if not utilizing them against at least three targets. I’d push them more towards the 2/3 target area base, and just add smaller increments per target to still fully reward going up against 5 targets, but not punish the reaper for not doing so.

Only if reaper’s shouts get the same cast times and base cool downs of tempest shouts. As they are now they leave you too exposed to focus fire from multiple opponents when you try to take full advantage of their scaling. Higher base effects and smaller increments would make the risk/reward trade off even worse than it already is.

Shouts are not meant for 1 vs 1. Trying to make them kinda ok in 1 vs 1 it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, a pretty dumb idea. You would end up with a mediocre 1 vs 1 utilities that don’t encourage you to use them for their true purpose.

Instead, can we have really really good team fight utilities for once?

It’s not 1 vs 1 were necro has troubles. Actually we are in a really good place if you start with enough life force. Hard 1 vs 1 are the ones involving professions summoning tons of junk like mesmers. Nor shouts should be used in a vacuum, a balanced build requires shouts + other skills mixed in.

Any 1 vs 1 issues should be addressed in the core profession by fixing and improving our current weapons, utilities and life force management/generation.

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree with more shout target scaling. I actually found it to be downright frustrating that these utilities were ONLY useful in situations with large numbers of foes.

My thoughts were buff them baseline to still be acceptable, but add in minor effects that ultimately add up with more foes. As it stands, the shouts feal downright weak if not utilizing them against at least three targets. I’d push them more towards the 2/3 target area base, and just add smaller increments per target to still fully reward going up against 5 targets, but not punish the reaper for not doing so.

Only if reaper’s shouts get the same cast times and base cool downs of tempest shouts. As they are now they leave you too exposed to focus fire from multiple opponents when you try to take full advantage of their scaling. Higher base effects and smaller increments would make the risk/reward trade off even worse than it already is.

Shouts are not meant for 1 vs 1. Trying to make them kinda ok in 1 vs 1 it’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, a pretty dumb idea. You would end up with a mediocre 1 vs 1 utilities that don’t encourage you to use them for their true purpose.

Instead, can we have really really good team fight utilities for once?

It’s not 1 vs 1 were necro has troubles. Actually we are in a really good place if you start with enough life force. Hard 1 vs 1 are the ones involving professions summoning tons of junk like mesmers. Nor shouts should be used in a vacuum, a balanced build requires shouts + other skills mixed in.

Any 1 vs 1 issues should be addressed in the core profession by fixing and improving our current weapons, utilities and life force management/generation.

I crossposted this post with the augury thread if you want to discuss the issue further without derailing this one.

Overall I agree with your feedback, but why you pretty much trashed my attempt to discuss an alternate change proposal for augury to then say the same things here?

Bhawb.7408:

I think at least one of the shouts has to be a defensive measure at this point; Reaper still gets it really bad for not having any active defense, and shouts are a way for us to get a scaling active defense.
[…]
Augury of Death – I think this either needs to be 10% base with 5% per person hit (still 35% with 5 people hit, but only need to hit 2 to go even 20%), and/or needs a slight secondary effect. I think its a solid idea, increases the strength of shouts, but it has to compete with a very strong trait in Relentless Pursuit, and just about every CDR trait in the game gives more than just CDR.

@Bhawb: You should know better than anyone that playing a necro in a team fight means the focus fire is always on you. Currently using the shouts leaves you exposed to several seconds of focus fire without any defense. 600 range still means you have to run up to, and stay, exactly in the middle of everything if you want to guarantee five hits (no ambient or teammate los to defend ourselves). And I’m accounting for summons and other stuff, someone will always range or move in and out of the fight. You are pretty much setting up yourself for an enemy team burst or at least a guaranteed interrupt.

In a vacuum I would completely agree with you, but since we are exposing ourselves to our greatest weakness, I don’t. Shaving off 2-18s more than other CD traits isn’t wort it if we die before we can use them again.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually I fully disagree. The thing about the trait is you only need to hit 3 people for it to be better in slot than other CD traits […]

A whopping 1% more than other CD traits, hurrah! Nope, we need 3 hits to have a reduction on par with other traits. And we would still be worse since all the other CD reduction traits that I can remember have a second effect.

Bhawb.7408:

and here is the thing: many professions bring extra stuff for you to hit. Elementalists can have elementals, Necromancers have minions, Rangers always bring their pet, Engineers have turrets, Mesmers and clones, basically in any given Xv2 you are almost guaranteed to be able to hit three targets. However, that isn’t the point of this trait, this trait is meant to be used for teamfights where hitting 5 people is common, and there it shines.

Ele elementals and Engi turrets everywhere! Pfft, don’t make me laugh. Rangers will try to range (and kite) a necro or a team fight so it pretty much counts as 1. Mesmers have an insane kite and disengage and are a bad match-up for necros. MM are uncommon and if they have half a brain they won’t bring their minion in a team fight to have them die of cleave and AoE. It’s because of the extra stuff that we have a fair chance to hit 4-5 foes. Without the Ranger pet and Mes clones running in our face 3 hits would be the max we could hope for.

Bhawb.7408:

Giving it a second effect is too much imo.

No it’s not. I can’t remember a CDR trait without a second effect. You can argue that the bonus CDR is our “second effect”, but it isn’t always available and we have to put ourselves in danger to take advantage of it.