Guild Wars 2

@Zudet: how did you calculate 25% up-time on your chill in a raid? I just looked through the list of abilities/utilities/traits that apply chill, and I’m curious which ones are actually being used regularly.

Here are the Necro abilities that inflict Fear, and their durations based on the following thrown-together build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWCO3YJYwiHiNxoI1VYK8riSABgIAA-TRBMABnq+TqK/eZ/gR1HAwCCkCAmpRA-e

Staff:

Chillblains: 7 seconds. 16 second cd.
Reaper’s Mark: 5.25 seconds. 32 second cd.

OH Dagger:

Deathly Swarm: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 18 second cd.

Reaper Shroud:

Death’s Charge: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 6 second cd.
Terrify: 5.25 seconds. 20 second cd.
Executioner’s Scythe: 2.25 seconds. 30 second cd.

If Chill is really doing it for you, you can use Spectral Grasp to give another 7 seconds of chill (and a quick 16% LF). Chilled to the Bone! also gives 10.5 seconds of Chill you could use if you needed it, unless Lich is higher DPS even with a condi build (or maybe Flesh Golem? I’m assuming Plague is terrible for PvE DPS).

In short, I’m a bit skeptical about a 25% uptime.

This is the list of attacks/traits/utilities that apply Chill. Which of these are the real offenders in your raids?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment.

I think you’re mistaking “raiding” for “Vale Guardian”. Who knows how these conditions might be useful as encounter design evolves?

Norjena.5172:

The numbers don´t lie.

The numbers don’t lie, you are correct. But people very often misinterpret/misuse them. It’s like the telephone game, only far, far worse.

@Zudet: I’d be interested in seeing the sheets that perform the calculations. I’d also be curious to see an analysis on how realistic it would be to reach this theoretical limit, and how much of an impact mistakes/latency/bosses moving/boss mechanics would have.

If anything, all they need to do is provide timings/phases where a boss is susceptible to certain conditions. Perhaps a phase where he uses a heavy-hitting ability on a cooldown, and Chill helps spread that ability’s usage enough for survival. Or a phase where the boss starts hitting everyone with a bunch of small attacks, and Weakness helps mitigate enough for survival.

Also, they could have a boss pulse boon-removal via some mechanic, perhaps one that the raid has to manage/turn off in some way via interaction with the environment. Maybe the boss calls a machine operator every so often that you have to chill/cripple and DPS down to keep it from turning on a machine, otherwise all of your boons get stripped every second. Then maybe there’s a phase where the boss turns it on himself, so you have to deal without precious Protection in some way. Or, maybe the boss will have an aura that reduces Protection’s benefit to 0. Or, maybe the boss will start to do a series of small crits while becoming susceptible to Weakness, increasing Weakness’s mitigation even further.

The world is ANet’s burrito. That doesn’t mean they should have to worry about balancing around 100% Chill/Weakness uptime on all bosses all the time. Balancing around Weakness is an RNG-fest anyway, so they really should try to incorporate that condition specifically. At least Protection is consistent, so it can be reliably incorporated into design.

And are they not balancing around boons? Maybe a combination of Zerk gear with Protection up-time is a key to beating Vale Guardian, one type of encounter out of all kinds of potential variations. Maybe they are easing the community into raiding by giving them a fight that sort of fits the same PvE meta that has been seen, just with an enrage timer and some soak mechanics.

The point: We’ve seen what, one boss so far? Why all of the conclusion-jumping and torch-waving?

And if that chunk of our profession that is made irrelevant by the Defiance Bar fully worked, they’d just have to re-balance all of the encounters with it in mind. Suddenly, you have to keep Chill up 100% of the time, because boss abilities are balanced around the cooldown increase. You have to keep Weakness up 100% of the time, because Weakness + Protection is an incredible amount of mitigation that 10 players can easily maintain, so the boss would be tuned accordingly. Bosses would have to have some mechanism to avoid being kited the entire fight with the movement slow/immobilize.

And in those situations, you may just have to bring a Necromancer, because the Necro can manage those conditions fairly easily. Is that what we’re aiming for, being absolutely necessary in raids? That doesn’t feel like balance, either, I don’t care how many other builds for other classes are deemed necessary. Do you really think that they can provide enough mechanics in a boss where a raid has to bring one of every class, at least? That’s a really tall order.

In short, I really think designing raid encounters without making bosses/specific mobs susceptible to soft CC like chill, weakness, and cripple is the correct approach. They’re just going to have to find another way for Necros to be useful.

If they want, they can create a situation where waves of enemies spawn that you can greatly help mitigate with AoE Weakness, or kite with AoE Chill/Cripple, or otherwise manage. The Necro can help manage chaotic situations by debuffing specific mobs that are meant to be debuffed.

This is also ANet’s first foray into 10-man encounter design. They are going to need time to hit their stride. There’s absolutely no way Vale Guardian is going to be the template by which all raid encounters are built in the future.

Charblaze.6958:

Lemondish.3268:

We know of very few fights in the raids. Those that we do know about include mechanics that we’ve never seen before in GW2’s PvE content. The value of any profession in this content cannot be accurately predicted at this time.

But we do know our debuffs and control do nothing thanks to defiance bar invalidating half of our profession.

*On certain types of fights. His point is that we know nothing about the design of other raid encounters, so there’s no reason to dismay. Raising the point is fine, but raising pitchforks seems premature.

And if they promised the complexity of PvP in PvE, that’s their fault. They should design PvE with PvE in mind, not PvP, otherwise their fights are most likely going to be more susceptible to the silly AI-exploiting cheese strats that plagued my dungeon experience. There’s no reason to try to get the feel of PvP into PvE, and to try demonstrates a lack of understanding of the two (in my opinion).

Atherakhia.4086:

Lynnie.7213:

From what i’ve seen about this first raid boss, necros are not necessary and can be easily replaced. I wish the others bosses have mechanics that make necros really wanted.
Like a consistent boon removal. We can have that every 5 sec with RS#2.

Mesmer can have that with their auto attack…

The only way boon removal would benefit the Necro would be if a boss got 5+ boons at the same time every 30 seconds.

If I read it correctly, Mesmers can strip 1 boon with Sword Auto every 1.5 seconds (is there any aftercast? I just used the cast times.) If that’s the max they can do via Sword Auto, then one of the boons is going to last 3 seconds, unless the Mesmer perfectly times the application of boons and prepares the 3rd attack in the chain for when they land.

If something like 25 stacks of Might lasts for 3 seconds every 10 seconds, that could completely wreck the team. If the boss has Protection for 3 out of every 10 seconds, that could severely limit DPS to put the group behind. Path of Corruption would clear both at once.

If Mesmers can trait their sword auto to strip 2 boons per chain, then it’s different. However, no one ever shares details, just sob stories about how class X can do Y, regardless of how the interaction would actually take place in a fight.

Would you consider this a threat in the “high-level” sPvP scene, or just a pubstar build?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Reaper can certainly tank the vale guardian, one low damage hitting mob with slow movement speed, even my thief could tank vale guardian.

However when you have 5 bosses hitting you at once, or one boss doing 10K+ hits I doubt reaper/necro will hold up as a tank.

Everyone seems to only use the Vale Guardian when evaluating whether Reaper will get a slot in the raid, but when we start to discuss a role Reaper might be able to fill based on Vale Guardian, the boss is discarded for other theoretical mechanics that the Reaper might not be able to survive.

There’s absolutely no reason, at this time, to discard the possibility that a Reaper could serve as a tank at best, or perhaps an off-tank at least. To do otherwise would be an unhealthy stifling of the class. People need to be trying things, not ruling things out with rough napkin theory.

That “rotation” is supposed to look impressive, but that’s because it isn’t actually a true rotation. It’s a priority-based rotation using about 12 skills, it looks like.

“The engineer has the most complex DPS rotation in the game to memorize, and while there is an optimal way to order skills, it boils down to using the strongest skills across all weapons/kits on recharge. The three main skills that take priority for this condition damage rotation are Blowtorch , Fire Bomb and Shrapnel Grenade .”

Odds are if you used those 3 abilities on cooldown, while filling with whatever random abilities you wanted that applied conditions, you’d come close to the same DPS without much loss.

Engineers are also the special case is this game, so if you want a playstyle that does not throttle ability usage based on weapon/form cooldowns, go play Engineer. The best you’re going to get with a class like Necromancer is cycling through a few abilities, maybe flashing DS, and occasional utility usage.

Plus, even while spamming GD, you’d still be using your utilities and probably at least flashing DS for the weapon sigil trigger.

If you’re tanking as a Necro, why would you go into shroud when you hit no health? Shouldn’t it be a pro-active mitigation mechanic instead of a reactive one? Or wouldn’t you wait until you used your heal, then hit up Shroud to help cover the time between your heal’s cooldown?

And if you are missing support heals while in shroud at high health, is it a big deal? With all of the boons going out, Blighter’s Boon will probably help top you off in that case.

We can reduce damage from Poisoned foes by 10%. We can reduce damage from Chilled foes by 10% as well. Rise! increases that reduction further if the horrors are kept alive (and they would receive heals while we are in Shroud). We can gain +180 toughness while in Shroud, and an additional +300 toughness from Corrupter’s Fervor.

Everyone keeps saying Herald has a 90% protection uptime, so why are you worried about self-applying protection? Lack of invuln/block might be issues, but this might actually work better than people think.

A 48 skill rotation, eh? They use 48 unique abilities to maximize their DPS? Apologies if I seem skeptical, it’s because I think you’re exaggerating for effect.

And even if they did, it would probably look something like this:

5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 1, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 2, 5, 4, 3, 2, Utility 3, 5, 4, 3, 2

Rotations are fundamentally basic, even if you’re using 48 skills. And if you’re only using something like 6, it’s hardly more interesting than if you’re using 2-3. That’s how I see it anyway. GW2’s combat seems to cater more towards PvP with complexity. For PvE, they should focus interesting mechanics on the fights themselves, not necessarily the damage rotations.

I wasn’t trying to compare the support of Reaper to what appear to be the two best supports you can bring to PvE. And this game really needs meters, because I have a really difficult time believing anything anyone says on these forums about how much damage classes do, or how much support classes bring. It’s nothing against the people, but humans are too easily biased, and data analysis is a difficult skill to master.

And if the goal is to clear content as quickly as possible, I wouldn’t be surprised if multiple classes are left out. I can’t help but feel like all classes being able to complete the content as part of the group is ANet’s goal for PvE balance. Otherwise, do you expect representation from all 9 classes in a 10-person group designed to complete the content as quickly as possible, given the variety of builds/utility/etc. each class can potentially bring? Providing feedback to try to ensure a class isn’t totally left behind is definitely a valuable exercise, but if you’re arguing for a meta/goal that doesn’t agree with the developer’s, you might be setting yourself up for sadness.

Charblaze.6958:

@Cogbyrn: Please read the first post. This topic is raising and discussing the following concerns:

• Defiance bars are creating a massive functionality overlap between soft CC and hard CC.
• Reaper brings chill and damage.
• Chill has the same value as any other CC available to all professions.
• Reaper damage is good, but other professions are equally good while bringing more support.
• Base necro has little support and what it has isn’t in high demand.
• Our other debuffs have little or no value by design in PvE.
• Reaper’s spot in raids is in jeopardy because his signature functionality (chill) becomes a featureless commodity against defiant bars.

If you are wondering where Necro/Reaper is fitting in a party composition for it’s defiance DoT, well they aren’t. As the beta showed us the defiance bar is immune for 99% of the fight and when it’s available it melts in seconds. Really there is no strategy/management to defiance bars. In my opinion they are more boring than the current system and taking away even more power from the players. A shortcut to outright erase and forget control and disables from PvE except for 10s they arbitrary chose to script in fight where it’s just blind CC dumping fest. Big deal having a damage over time that doesn’t actually do damage over time because defiance bars have only a small time window accounting for 1% of the fight.

To learn said knowledge you need effort. I’m not dismissing PvE in the least. It’s hard to find people that really know what they are doing in PvE.

Defining what high end PvE actually is it’s an interesting topic but with a really broad scope better suited for the “Fractals, Dungeons & Raids” sub forum.

If Reapers are supposed to be the part of the group that razes down the Defiance Bar by design, then I think that’s really terrible role design. Also, the fact that the soft-CC conditions have little to no other value could just be a factor of the design of the first boss they showed, the simple 10-man example to see how people thought it felt.

I think it’s valid feedback to say “The Defiance Bar feels like a really boring mechanic”, because hopefully ANet will take that and ensure they actually design interesting mechanics that could utilize said conditions.

With respect to damage comparisons, this game is in desperate need of a damage meter system for proper evaluation. So many statements made on the forums about damage and support are anecdotal and contradictory. If Reaper brings about as much damage as another class, but that other class brings more “support”, is that difference in support going to make or break the kill? What is the difference in support? Will it actually matter at all?

It’s the conclusion that a Reaper’s spot in a raid is in jeopardy that I think forces the conversation to evolve. Sure, the Defiance Bar seems really boring. If Reaper is designed to be a major “Defiance Bar Killer”, then something will have to change, but that roll also seems ludicrous given the insane amount of conditions that fly around. I agree with that.

But does that really then conclude that the Reaper’s spot in a raid is in jeopardy? I’m just not sold, but then again, I’m not sure what the raid in which the Reaper’s spot is in jeopardy is trying to actually accomplish, which is why I was trying to figure out the goals of said high-end PvE raiding group.

I don’t think AI needs to try to behave more like a player to be interesting/engaging. I also don’t think AI acting more like a player would help secure a place in a raid/dungeon for Necromancers. If anything, it would just add behavior that would get analyzed, then most probably cheesed.

At the end of the day, I thought this thread was about whether Reapers have a slot in Raids/Dungeons, not specifically the Defiance Bar alone. Is it off-topic to think about where/how a Necromancer fits in compositions given soft-CC applies a DoT to the defiance bar? Where does that leave the class, and is that position acceptable?

Also, PvE skill is not just “encounter knowledge”. It’s about the ability to listen, learn, adapt, execute, and maintain focus. At least, in well-designed PvE. I constantly see players sell PvE short because it’s an AI fight, then I actually play games and watch droves of people fail simple mechanics.

Is it also off-topic to define what high-level PvE actually is? If we’re talking about how soft-CC rolling into the Defiant Bar and not affecting the mob knocks the Necromancer class down as a desired class, what situation are you looking to have Necromancer be desired in? Speed-running raids? Progressing fastest through raid content?

How are you measuring the success of a class in PvE?

Brayzz.6524:

We have 25xvulnera 25xMight and 100% crit chance from selfsustain and still do less dmg than other classes nice balance.

And do you think a class that can self-stack 25 vuln, 25 might, and 100% crit chance eclipsing other classes in damage would be good balance?

Silverkey.2078:

If you look at PvP, while still having a “meta”, you see that the top teams are players, not classes. Many of them have their favorite class and just stick to it, regardless of the meta. Nos for example is playing necro, and while people almost accuse him of being a burden to the team, the fact is that he is still a core member of the best team in NA, because he is a good player. (On that subject, if you look at the twitchcon, I absolutely hate how Grouch and Hugh Norfolk kept insulting him during the stronghold match).

The sole reason why the PvE community got so toxic is that the content is doable by anyone who knows reasonably the dungeon. The goal is just to do the content as fast as possible to maximize the income. The dungeons are basically not fun-driven but reward-driven.

From what I can see, currently raids reward coordination more than the choice of class. So the problems may be less. Also, since you will most likely play with regular friends and not PUG, the chances of being bullied for being a necro are minimal… or change your friends.

I agree on all accounts. I’ve always found it really interesting how people will immediately discount the fact that Nos plays Necro at a high level. All kinds of excuses are used, but the crux of the matter is that given the current community of players, a team demonstrably shows that bringing the player, not the class, can bring success. The class’s shortcomings do not restrict the team from succeeding since they have coordination and cohesion. Is ANet supposed to balance the game around some theoretical group of professionals who don’t play as their “high level” meta? Seems like a tall order to me.

Part of the problem with PvE is that it has almost always, in all games, been a reward-driven experience. GW2 tried to do something different in not rewarding gear power, but gear aesthetic instead, but PvEers want their progression. At a high level, they also want some means of competition. Dungeons were not suited to accommodate that at all, and Fractals started down that path with stat-based gating without power creep.

So what will raids do? Will ANet keep them difficult, requiring more organized groups? Or will they succumb to the parade of complaints that will ensue if people cannot easily pug the content? And if people can pug the content, what does high-level PvE turn into again? A race to complete as quickly as possible? If so, balance is going to be a nightmare of super-optimal class combinations which will inevitably lead to class exclusions (most likely more than just Necromancer).

If content stays difficult and requires organization, I hope they can maintain a “bring the player, not the class” methodology.

Dead.5829:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Part of the issue that ANet is going to run into is that they have two roles, “support” and “control”, that are so insanely general that I don’t know how you even begin to balance classes for those roles. “Damage” is damage, and I know there is AoE vs. Single Target, but at least it’s pretty cut and dry.

General, but I don’t know if they’re unable to balance around the ideas.

Control is how you affect enemies, outside of damage.
Support is how you affect allies. (*Possibly outside of direct healing, depending on source and game).

Added to:

Damage, single target.
Damage, AoE.
(*Healing).

So the classes have to have enough of those different categories mixed together in order to be “viable”. Though, as you say, some specs will be better at one scenario than others. But keep in mind your other point…

Cogbyrn.7283:

When every class can sort of spec to do basically anything, they fuzz the lines too much to really have a clear vision of balance for PvE.

If every class can spec to adequately fill each above category, you have less fuzz and potentially total balance. Unfortunately, you also get closer to homogenization, where the differences in classes are aesthetic. ¯\(?)/¯

Though that brings up an interesting point. How many people would be perfectly happy playing a Warrior that has Reaper aesthetics (animations, scythes, spell effects, etc.)? Or an Elementalist, with the same Necro aesthetics?

I really, really hope they can find a good balance, but quantification of Control/Support is where I start to question. How do you quantify a class’s ability to control, or support? Necro can do all sorts of control all by themselves, with AoE chills, AoE cripples, AoE fears, AoE weakness, but potentially none of that is useful on an encounter focusing on a single boss. Potentially all of it is useful if there’s some sort of wave-based swarm fight where management is key and those conditions land/take effect.

Heck, even quantifying damage in GW2 seems like a pseudoscience. Based on what I’ve seen, it has felt like most evaluations of damage are based on isolated fights with a known mob with as ideal of conditions as possible. Depending on the design of an actual encounter, that could mean close to nothing. Or it could mean everything. The rub of data is that good analysis is difficult.

Also, it seems people are approaching PvE balance on the forums from the “bring the class, not the player” perspective. My personal hope is that ANet is trying to balance based on “bring the player, not the class”. However, that road ends at homogenization, so you have to strike a careful balance. With a lot of the unique types of things various classes can bring to the table, they’re a pretty long ways out from homogenization, but it also means that compositionists (that’s a word now, because “composers” didn’t feel right) are studying what classes to bring. They’re hamstrung even in the Damage category, because meters do not provide them with the evidence that their Necromancer, who theoretically does less damage, is outperforming their Engineer, who theoretically does more. In this instance, the Necromancer player is potentially filling his/her role better, but all people know is that the Engineer can do more damage. The blessing and curse of meters.

I’m not entirely sure how you create a culture that values a player over a class. I don’t think it ever happens in an ideal sense, but I think you have to start with each class having an overlap of viability across a unique set of desired qualities. If a Necro/Reaper is something along the lines of Damage/AoE Damage/Boon Strip/Healing (ignoring soft CC condition application for the moment), is that something a compositionist could make use of and feel good about? I’m not talking about the weeds of “X does Damage better, Y does Boon Strip better, and Z does Healing better”, I’m talking about the big picture, where you don’t need X and Y and Z, because you have a Necro. I’ll admit that ANet has a struggle ahead though for PvE balance, because when you bring 10 people, compositionists are going to minimize the necessary support/control, and maximize on damage. Depending on how well certain classes fill those support/control niches, versatility may not matter, depending on encounter design.

And I’m still curious to hear what people think the metric defining “high” end PvE is going to be, because I think it’s important to know how you’re measuring success before evaluating whether or not Reapers will have a place helping groups achieve that success. I know for a fact it isn’t just completing content, because the current Necromancer can do that, and people have already touted the “No Necromancer/Ranger” community of today’s PvE.

Drekor.5217:

Quells.2498:

I’m not sure why some think we have to do the same dps as any other profession. Will it stop you from playing Necro?

I’m sure some guilds will require specific classes/builds in raiding and hey, that’s how they like to play. But for me, I’ma play whatever I think is fun and I’ll do my best to be optimal without worrying too much about the whole min/max ideal.

It’ll stop people from accepting reapers

I wouldn’t want to play with those people anyway. I’m not sure how to manage public opinion for 9 classes with roles as squishy as damage, support, and control.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

HardRider.2980:

lol What was you playing a cel corruption only build? lol Ive been doing insane damage as a reaper and was doing ok-nice dps as a necro before hand

Big Number != big DPS

Sinister engineer does a lot more damage than you do, full stop.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8AKNIO_q2Q

I don’t see how anyone can honestly watch that video and say that Necro/Reaper DPS is fine…

I started watching the video, but was bored because the beginning didn’t seem that impressive. I saw some 2k burn ticks, 1.5-2k bleeds (varying), some poison.

If you want to talk data, you need data. Not videos where people will most likely just see what they want to see (such as: periods of high damage, while ignoring all of the rest of the periods of not nearly as high damage).

Human beings are really, really bad at intuiting statistics.

PlatinumMember.5274:

it might suck being a reaper in “high” end PvE.

I’m still curious what measurement is going to be used to differentiate “high” end PvE from “casual” PvE. If it is some sort of progression ranking, and there are Reapers in the top 10 guilds to complete content fastest in the world, does that mean Reaper is fine? Or are people going to say that it was the group’s coordination that won the day, not the class? At that point, does it really matter, since coordination is more important than a Reaper’s shortcomings? Where do you draw that line?

Part of the issue that ANet is going to run into is that they have two roles, “support” and “control”, that are so insanely general that I don’t know how you even begin to balance classes for those roles. “Damage” is damage, and I know there is AoE vs. Single Target, but at least it’s pretty cut and dry.

What defines support? Different fields at the right time? Boon stripping a target? Providing boons to allies? Healing allies through banners/unique buffs? Helping rez downed allies? Blocking/destroying projectiles in an AoE? How do we rank the value of each of these and balance accordingly to make sure each class that is supposed to be able to “support” can “support” an appropriate amount?

Same issues with “control”. There is already a differentiation between hard-CC and soft-CC, and with the implementation of the break bar, how do you evaluate a class’s ability to control a fight? Is it based on ability to drop a break bar quickly? Is it about controlling a single add? Maybe controlling groups of adds?

At this point, players are defining what is important given what they have seen so far, which is understandable. Determining the value of all of the different components of support and control could very well be an encounter-by-encounter process though, which makes me wonder how exactly they are looking to balance PvE, if at all.

When every class can sort of spec to do basically anything, they fuzz the lines too much to really have a clear vision of balance for PvE.

As a result, if Reaper doesn’t cut it for “high” end PvE (whatever that is going to be), I won’t really be surprised. Something is going to not cut it. If everything can be completed with all of the classes, though, without one completely hampering the raid, I imagine ANet is going to consider that a success.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And as long as break bars absorb those debuffs and appear on every boss? Not a chance of them being useful.

I hope ANet doesn’t limit their encounter design to boss mobs. That would be a design failing, not really a Necromancer failing.

If the break bar didn’t absorb cripple, chill, weakness, and immob, would the conversation just switch to “Necros don’t apply <insert key condition for a particular fight> as well as <insert some other class>”?

Is there any merit to Necromancer being able to potentially fill multiple holes in a potentially changing encounter/raid environment?

Is it possible that debuffing capabilities will be a special consideration on certain fights, just not the one that is currently on display?

Also, what is the metric for high-level PvE going to be with raiding, do we think? Progression? Time-to-Clear? Smallest Group to Clear?

Can someone please provide something that isn’t anecdotal? I don’t trust blanket statements/stories, and I’m curious.

Based on Char’s description, it sounds like groups are specifically trying to build to not include a Necro. It makes me wonder what might happen if they allowed the Necro to have a place.

Also, how many boons did you need to strip every 10 seconds? With a Focus and Path of Corruption, I feel like you could do that without issue if it was just a couple. If it was more than 3, what class can strip 3+ boons every 10 seconds alone? What does that class sacrifice in order to gain that ability?

Blaine Tog.8304:

No one else has even attempted to formulate specific suggestions for how one should choose between how to use one or the other at any given moment.

It really does feel like you’re getting too deep into the weeds here. I’m all about theorycrafting, but you’re really going to just need to get a feel for them.

Based on what little I know though, maybe you need to close distance with a Ranger shooting you from afar. Are you going to use GS’s pull? Probably not, because I don’t think the range is very good. However, you could close that gap with Reaper, and destroy projectiles to boot.

Need to pop pulsing Stability? Go into Reaper.
Want to pulse blind to turn around in a fight? Greatsword.
Need an AoE Fear to buy some time/space? Reaper.
Want to threaten large AoE burst damage/combo large AoE damage with your pull? Greatsword.
Need to buy time for your heal cooldown and absorb damage into LF? Reaper.
Want to set up a large stack of Vuln to combo into pressure? Greatsword.
Want to try for a sub-50 or sub-25% execute? Start with Reaper.
Did your Execute miss/get dodged? Drop into Greatsword and try again.
Need to leap or whirl through a frozen/darkness field you just dropped? Reaper.

I do think you’re thinking too high-level though if you’re trying to measure effectiveness based on general similarities. And you still get another weapon set along with the Greatsword, so any other gaps you want to fill you still can. Maybe you want to combo Dagger #3 into GS #2 to secure a burst, since everyone is talking about how GS is too slow to land anything (my Warrior Hammer bone is tingling from 2.5 years ago). Maybe you want the utility of Staff to supplement. Maybe you want a Scepter for the AoE cripple/condi pressure (if you’re doing some hybrid jazz or something), along with whatever off-hand you want to bring (such as a Dagger for the AoE weakness on #5, and the potential bouncing blind/condi transfer on #4).

Can you link the vid? How did you calculate 5k sustained direct DPS from a video? Is there a damage meter in the game now? What was the uptime on the burns/bleeds/poison?

This was actually an interesting thread to read, so I’m glad it was revived. I’d love to comment, but I haven’t kept up enough on raid design/break bars/etc., so whatever I say is going to be ignorant.

What I will say, is that the PvE I’ve enjoyed most has required the raiders to deal with interesting boss mechanics via positioning, timing, movement, etc. Beyond occasional interrupts, managing mechanics via debuffing the boss just doesn’t seem exciting to me personally, so I’d rather they design encounters around not worrying about the effects of cripple, chill, slow, weakness, and immob in particular. I might actually PvE if they make the fights more mechanically engaging.

I don’t even know that the damage you get from Chill outshines the damage you get for Power builds with Decimate Defenses. I suppose it depends on how much Ferocity you have stacked and how much vulnerability the target has.

I really don’t agree with the argument this thread is trying to make. Power options abound, even for Reaper.

The more I think about it, the more I actually like locking new weapons to new elite specs. Giving everyone access to every permutation of everything they can use will reduce the number of meaningful decisions you have to make.

I also think diversity is extremely overrated when talked about on these forums. I would gladly sacrifice some diversity to have to think harder about trade-offs.

Forsaker.9213:

in high tier pvp gs wont be vailble , just to slow.

Everyone always said Warrior Hammer was too slow to ever be viable in PvP as well.

Never say never.

They very well might remove traitline dependencies for weapons down the road, but they might also keep them as Blaine mentioned, especially if they mean to continually add new weapon options to new elite specs.

And along that line of thought, GS and Reaper do share a theme, which is awesome if you want to specialize in that theme. Yes they might have redundancies, but that gives you the option to choose to have said redundancy to really specialize and give you more options for the same goals, or you can simply use the Reaper Shroud and choose other weapons to round out your build.

Using both GS and RS is going to be my jam.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Both have AoE damage.

Both have a strong defensive skill.

Both have a gap-closer.

Both have an execute.

Both have Chill.

Both have CC.

For PvP at least, those all seem like things I want a lot of. If I can get them from two sources, then all the better.

Could it be that people have just been using VP for so long that they can’t imagine a build without it? Or did Reaper give people a reason to sit in Shroud, and now they want to sit in Shroud and feel that they should be able to without baking Shroud traits into a Shroud build?

Are Necros in all aspects of the game (PvE, sPvP, WvW in its various forms) looking to stay in shroud as long as possible, either before or now with Reaper Shroud? Or do some use it more situationally to absorb bursts of damage or supplement rotations with an ability or two in Shroud at a time?

Also, someone said Reaper’s Shroud degenerates faster than Death Shroud. Is that true? If so, that just seems like a bug.

I haven’t been sold yet that VP needs to be baselined. You’re creating builds for a specific purpose (staying in RS for survivability/utility/whatever), so you’re choosing the Shroud trait line and choosing Shroud-beneficial traits. You don’t go with Spectral Mastery because you might not be Spectral-focused (VP perhaps helps you utilize other utilities instead of Spectral for Shroud up-time), and you don’t want the increased Fear duration because Fear isn’t necessarily the key to your build. So you go with the trait that helps you remain in RS longer.

Where’s the problem, exactly? Do you want to not have to take the Shroud line for a Shroud-centric build?

I may be alone, but I sort of don’t think build diversity as high levels of play in any realm (PvE, sPvP, WvW a la GvG or Roaming) is a very feasible goal. It’s what everyone always clamors for, but it’s a balancing nightmare. Where do we draw the line with traits/etc. when saying they should be baselined? If you’re looking to compete, there is going to be a Best Thing. If you aren’t, then you can already tinker with options and come up with some unorthodox builds that you can make effective to suit your needs.

So I suppose I’m wondering: are people just so excited that they want to now have their cake and eat it too? Or would baselining VP be good for the game/balance?

Otherwise, it’s really thrilling to hear so much positivity about Reaper. I played it for a hot minute in one of the BWEs, and I really liked what I saw. Looking forward to the expac.

Kristine Heath.1483:

shadowpriests had dispersion and they added a .25-.5 sec wait before you could turn it off and it was only ever a good thing. any game ive ever seen with toggleable stances has this mechanic and its only a good thing. adding a delay wont break your precious gameplay, it will only help people who have the problem. its a win-win, or a win-neutral. there is no loss here. its not like adding a tiny delay will stop you from flashing or entering and leaving death shroud.

WoW caters to the lowest common denominator, doing everything for those who have no inclination to do anything for themselves. It isn’t necessarily an example to follow.

And I’m not sure Dispersion had flashing mechanics that other players used legitimately as part of a playstyle.

You’re better than this. You can fix this mechanical issue you’re having with practice. I believe in you.

You’re going to have to provide more context in order to have a discussion around this. As of now, we have no idea what the circumstances are when you tried using RS without Vital Persistence, how long (in seconds not “rotations”) it lasted, and how long it is lasting with Vital Persistence.

How long do you think you should be able to sit in RS without traits that extend its duration? If your build is focused on staying in RS, why would you not choose traits that synergize with that build decision? If your build isn’t focused on staying in RS, shouldn’t you be using it for targeted purposes, and not “rotations”?

There’s already a post about this on the front page of the Necro forum, and it is already flooded with disagreement.

Really, just practice. QoL shouldn’t sacrifice playstyles.

I generally have design issues with the Condi Mesmer (don’t attack during the short cooldown block, don’t attack with confusion stacked, used to be don’t attack clones because they’d just blow up for more condis, can’t really attack the Mesmer because of stealth/block/dodge spam, etc.), but I realized a while back that it was a much bigger issue in WvW than in sPvP. And the reasons it is an issue in WvW aren’t really the Mesmer’s fault (food, other runes, etc.).

I’m not sure I consider Condi Mes broken, but I always thought their design sapped a lot of fun out of a fight.

Considering how spammy stealth seems to be for those classes that have access to it, channeling is one way to actually combat it. If stealthing broke a channel, I’d be disappointed.

Then again, I’m in the school of thought that any direct damaging abilities should break stealth, so I’m pretty critical of it.

Warkind.6745:

Thanks for all your help guys. I guess it seems like an awkward weapon combo, but I’m glad to hear it’s not obsolete. Am thinking of using pack runes with it.

That’s the spirit. Take chances. Make mistakes. Just because someone might try to bluntly say “no, that combo is bad” doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it in your mode of play.

Sometimes it’s about having fun over being A-#1 Leaderboard Steak Sauce.

Leeto made a job of running a D+D/Staff Necro, if I recall. He had a few videos a while back of him roaming to demonstrate the capabilities.

People don’t often combo D/D, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. The condi transfer on Dagger #4, plus a blind, gives you good flexibility. The AoE weakness on Dagger #5 also helps you stay in melee for more Dagger #1s to pile on the damage without worrying as much about retaliation (not the boon).

It’s all about what you need. D+Wh is common, but by no means necessary. D+F also gives you interesting possibilities for damage, boon control, and movement control.

If you do go D/D, I’d probably recommend Staff as your off-weapon to help control movement and give you some more CC to chain into. Also, with both Staff #4 and Dagger #4, you can potentially skimp on utility condi transfer while still having a lot of transfer capabilities, opening up some utility options as well.

Play around with it for sure, and you might find it to your liking.

As others have said, flashing DS is something people do legitimately. You would want to ruin their playstyle, because you don’t want to practice a bit. That’s all it’ll really take, some practice. Sometimes you’ll still accidentally flash, but that’s your fault, and you can correct it.

I’ve also seen this request a few different times on the Necro thread, and I’ve never agreed with it.

Also, as a note, calling out that people are going to tell you to L2P doesn’t automatically negate the argument that you might have to just practice something to correct your mechanical mistakes.

Narrrz.7532:

Edit: actually, i’m wrong – there’s no difference whatsoever (lol)

Haha, dang. I was hoping there was some really cool math in there making them different that I hadn’t intuited, and it looked so close. I appreciate you working through an explanation though.

This just in: employees at ANet play their own game and use siege in WvW, to boot.

Get your pitchforks, because how dare they.

Narrrz.7532:

If vuln were reworked to reduce boss effective life, it could be made to stack beyond 25. at 0.5% reduction per stack, 25 stacks would give 12% reduced life, 50 stacks 23% and 100 stacks 40%. (13.3%, 28.5% & 65% increases in damage)

I’ve played a few games in my time, but I don’t know what the difference is between “reduced effective life” and “increased damage taken”.

I thought people had been clamoring for a range increase for months. Now it’s here, and people claim it’s unnecessary.

Also, Axe #3 has always been good as a soft-CC that can operate against stealthed opponents. Yes, I’m talking about PvP, but I don’t need the “are you trying to balance solely around PvP?” shenanigans, because most of what I see is people trying to balance solely around PvE. They don’t seem to want to separate the balance because it makes going from one to the other much more confusing. So this is what we’re working with.

Crippling and detecting (by way of acquiring a boon) a stealthed opponent in a 600 range of you is very useful out in WvW. Channels are also very useful out in WvW, as they continue on opponents who go into stealth while also removing blinds/blocks while still maintaining usefulness. Pesky D/P Thieves, for example, can be hit with all but the first tick on Axe #2 every time they try to Heartseeker into stealth. With the range increase, it’s just added pressure from further away.

I don’t think Axe is designed to keep people from running, and that’s OK. You could take Focus for the chill on #5 at 1200 range, for example, to help with that. Or you could work other utility into the equation. At the end of the day though, 900 range provides much more flexibility in the way of spacing/pressure than 600 range did, and Axe #3 being 600 range still gives it potential usefulness, even if you can’t just rotate through your cooldowns at 900 range.

Lily.1935:

I’m not a negative person. I try to be critical about what I’m saying. Though sometimes I just need to vent and I think we can all agree that that happens some times. I do post positively from time to time intentionally because I’m a human being. Not some rage machine. I’m generally a fairly calm and bubbly person. If you really get to know me.

I totally believe you’re a calm and bubbly person. I just always enjoy seeing when people who I’ve personally seen be mostly critical in times past on the Necro forums (again, I could have easily missed some/most of your posts) show excitement. To me, that says ANet really did something right.

Plus, in some of the responses to the changes, I kept thinking “Wait, did no one read the CPC changes?” Then I saw this thread and wanted to give kudos. So kudos.

I can’t wait to play around with this skill personally.

I know I’m only around periodically, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lily happy about Necro things. It’s truly a treat to see people get excited about things.

Also, I’m super glad to hear this change is operating as awesomely as I hoped when I read it. I’m looking forward to coming back to my Necro in the expac.

I hope the OP realizes that raid balance is notoriously unforgiving from a diversity perspective. If each class has a single viable build, then raid balance is a success. If it isn’t a player’s build of choice, that’s too bad (though complaints will happen anyway).

However, I think staking a claim that this is suddenly a raiding game is bombastic at best.