Guild Wars 2

Unholy Feast is pretty fantastic with Blighter’s Boon, and the retal can really wreck some other professions like thief. Staff isn’t needed for regen when dodges are proccing Marks of Blood, and you still get a condi transfer from the o/h dagger.

Have Rise minions been changed to transfer conditions with Necromantic Corruption? They weren’t last time I tested.

misterman.1530:

geek-speak.

He says, on the MMO gaming forum.

But they already made DS1 pierce innately! What more do you need??!!~~XX

The initial problem with that sort of lifesteal effect in beta was that it didn’t really work well with any ability other than Death Spiral. The weapon is all over the board in terms of how many hits its abilities deliver and in what time frames. If abilities stay as they are now, that lifesteal effect would need to look like the Revenants’, where it has an internal cooldown.

Attack speed would be fantastic.

The big question with Soul Eater, even buffed, is would you take it over Chilling Victory? Can the lifesteal give you enough healing, and the attack speed + cdr enough lifeforce that you aren’t reliant on Blighter’s Boon to stay alive in pvp?

Steelstickfig.9146:

Also this. Rip kawaii spinning asura.

Let’s be clear, this is the biggest issue with axe.

But those of you saying it’s “not undertuned” or “it does enough damage”, have you actually compared the amount of damage a necro wielding an axe does compared to equivalent weapons of other classes? Or even to the scepter?

As for scepter being overtuned, same question – have you compared the damage a necro can do while wielding a scepter to that of other classes wielding their ranged weapons? It may seem overtuned in comparison to axe, but that says more about the axe right now than it does the scepter.

Darkside.7182:

Still laughing.. yes your build is amazing if you are emerald division, rank farm room or NA player.. offical forum becomes a garbage dump

It’s not even amazing there, nor was it claimed to be. No one tossed this out as The Meta Build To Destroy Tournament Play.

It’s just fun. That’s it.

AirWick.1769:

Quit fooling the less experienced necro/reaper players in the community with this nonsense. It’s an eyesore. This video can’t fool me by how fixed it is. I am just afraid that this video will fool the Devs.

Not a single person has claimed this build to be good, strong, effective, or whatever metric you want to deem relevant other than fun.

No one’s going to expect to ride this through Diamond, especially with the resurgence of thieves who can just walk by and make this build fall over.

Relax.

After trying this even more… if I even see a Thief on the other team, I just switch back to a tankier build. I feel like decent thieves just make me evaporate, through nightfall, decent LF, using wurm, anything. : (

Those were fun to watch!

Tried this out the last couple of days:

Leeching bolts from Nightfall → Soul Spiral are so nice now! The healing is actually noticeable.

It feels better than Valk, because Chilling Victory > Decimate Defenses when Blighter’s Boon is proccing (Suffer/GraspingDarkness → Nightfall → Infusing Terror → Soul Spiral is just a boatload of healing). With Valk, I felt I had to rely on DD and Sigil of Intelligence.

I don’t think I’ve ever given Wurm enough of a shot. I still don’t entirely love it, but I have a bit more respect for it in sPvp over having just another shout or a well.

Consume Conditions still feels worse than YSIM, BUT without running plague signet, the extra condition removal was pretty huge.

Overall, I enjoyed it, though I still felt like running Sigil of Agility on the GreatSword helped way more than it should.

PS – picking the GS back up using an amulet that doesn’t need DD reinforces to me that picking Soul Eater basically ever is awful. Why didn’t that trait get redesigned?

The scepter aa corrupt isn’t a big deal.

The nerfs other classes received this last patch are the big deal.

Flumek.9043:

GS is trash to the point its justified to report someone using it in pvp….and same for wvw since i hear it now gives points for kills..

I’m glad you bring this point is up in every thread with a GS mention. It’s totally reasonable and well substantiated. The reporting is particularly edgy.

It’s definitely just the icing. Mostly what made me stop running it was Diamond Skin, or just feeling not tanky enough in general (which also made me stop running Viper’s).

My first time logging in after the patch had a thief or three on every enemy team I went up against. I stuck to Merc.

My big issue with the line is I 100%, without fail, will cancel Shroud .00001 seconds after Unholy Sanctuary puts me into it. Then I die anyway. :|

Simzani.4318:

Many of us warned on this forum about the scam that represented this dlc. Given the flop in all areas of the game and the poor sales, many chose to not buy it and to quit playing gw2.

Clearly the forums are still providing value.

Wanderer used to feel atrocious almost purely because of Diamond Skin. It also doesn’t help retal procs very much. BUT if you’re not using Spite (or not using Spiteful Spirit, specifically), and you’re playing after the patch (so you’re not a time magician), Wanderer is in a better spot.

Spiteful Spirit always did less damage than Unholy Feast, so that’s just the same. Though the tooltips for its combat log ability vs its traitline ability don’t match up. Maybe they forgot to buff the damage as well in this patch?

That it’s flat-out worse than Close to Death or Signets of Suffering is false. The former does barely anything for condi builds, and the latter is only useful for signets. I find I have less issues finishing someone under 50% than I do actually getting them there in the first place, especially factoring in Chill of Death; so I tend to run SS over CtD. SS is also surprisingly effective when run in tandem with Blighter’s Boon, especially when you can hit 3-5 targets. Not only that, you would also be surprised by how much power damage the retal adds, especially with 900-1200 power amulets. SS isn’t bad, it’s just not quite there.

I would agree that it could be given a passive proc that doesn’t require you to be switch into shroud, similar to Weakening Shroud’s ‘weakness on crit’ proc I disagree with Fury, though, as Spite isn’t a crit line. It’s a generic damage line (through multipliers, might, and vuln). Off the top of my head, I’d say retal procs causing might (with an internal cooldown for each opponent hitting you) and/or vuln.

Unholy Martyr isn’t total trash, but it’s just not compelling. Am I running even one Well? Vampiric Rituals is the obvious go-to. Am I running no wells, and I’ll be around someone else and/or have minions? Why would I run UM over Transfusion? The latter helps my allies more, helps my minions way more, and makes you capable of pulling off “Clutch Plays” by pulling a downed ally far away from stomps. There are definitely some builds that could have synergy with it. UM + Shrouded Removal / Plague Signet / Plague Sending / Necromantic Corruption could help you stay in shroud longer while also helping your allies with condition removal. But… meh? The other two are still better.

And… and there’s a glaring hole in the GM choices of Blood Magic. None of them help you in 1v1s. Transfusion does literally nothing for you personally, other than bump your healing meters up. So if I’m running a build without any wells or minions (that I want to keep alive), that’s focused on being by myself, I can just leave that slot unfilled. The obvious trait here would be a big, fat, stinky vamp effect, similar to what Revenants have. Another might be a protection/retal proc with a passive that causes you to be healed whenever someone hits you while protection/retal is up (possibly giving this passive effect to allies in a radius). Hell, give me another button right next to Shroud that lets me bite someone for a kittenload of damage and healing and possibly a stun. Something. Please.

AsurasRCute.4136:

I feel misled: Maybe I read it wrong but I was under the impression that these balance patches would attempt to be total fixes for everything that is known to need work.

Not that they would only deal with a subset of known problems, and completely ignore all the others… folks thus ignored then having to wait for another three months minimum for a fix.

Quoted for content and name (:D).

While I love the necro buffs (and all the crying they’ve caused from people not used to necros being strong) and the indirect buffs from other classes being nerfed (though, poor mesmers), I felt like these patch notes didn’t address everything they should have. Condi necros were already widely considered as decent to strong, with power lagging far behind. Farther if using a Greatsword. I think… everyone was expecting Greatsword buffs/changes, and that the “trait changes in the Reaper line” would include Soul Eater.

And changes to Death Shroud need to include more (much, much, much, much more) than just Lifeblast piercing.

But… they didn’t? And if there’s only going to be one of these passes every quarter , that’s a disappointingly long time to wait for glaring issues to be addressed.

nekretaal.6485:

How did anet ignore focus when addressing anti-boon spam? The weapon is underpowered and already had an anti-boon theme that is now obsolete.

Seemed the strategy here was mostly to buff what was already popular, with a couple of additional changes thrown in.

Almost seems like they ran out of time changing things.

Try some new ones!

Fenris Amarok.4052:

Death shroud is far from needing to be fixed. // Shroud is still very good for range, but core necromancer also had a lot of other roles it can play. // Everyone is just so focused on damage dealing that they don’t pay attention to what else arena net had given us.

What? Death Shroud is horrible compared to RS for more than just its damage dealing. It doesn’t provide Stab, and Stab is both helpful for damage dealing and defense through rezzing.

Its synergy with Transfusion is lesser, since the cooldown of Life Transfer is 1/3 longer than Soul Spiral (and can’t be further reduced through Reaper’s Onslaught). And, again, you don’t have stab up while casting LT, so you’re easier to interrupt.

DS doesn’t have a stun, like RS, that can be used to interrupt enemy rezzers/stompers in addition to its fear. And its fear is single target rather than aoe.

Life Blast, even with innate piercing, is just a poor skill. It has a massive aftercast that destroys its sustained dps.

While core necro can fill some other roles (BloodMagic/Curses/Spite signets, for instance), any role that uses condis is let down by the shroud immensely. Lifeblast doesn’t apply Dhuumfire well. Life Transfer does so little damage, I’m pretty sure it actually heals opponents. Tainted Shackles is an ok skill, but is nowhere near what Reaper and RS are putting out.

Listing the pros and cons of Dark Path v Death’s Charge is just a hilarious waste of time.

Give Paladin a shot!

zinkz.7045:

Obviously it is too much, it is wrong the answer to the problem, a typical lazy poorly thought through Anet “fix”.

What makes this “obvious”?

Now I’m seeing procs… maybe I was kitten about something!

I’m really, really enjoying these changes, but I seriously hope that there are Great Sword and Soul Eater buffs/changes in the wings. The Chilling Darkness change is an indirect buff, and the Corrupt Boon change could be seen as an indirect buff, but that trait is still garbo.

Also, with the buffs to Spiteful Spirit and Weakening Shroud, I have an even harder time wanting to run Blood Magic. I prefer Corrupt Boon to Well of Corruption now, so when it comes time to pick a GM trait in BM, I’m just… sad?

Ran this all night.

Being able to fear people with scepter auto is pretty amazing, and Corrupt Boon feels much, much better now.

I’m not sure if the boon corrupt is too much yet. So far it just feels like I’m kind of sort of playing a decent class.

Merc amulet + more boon corrupts + mesmer nerfs + rev changes might be a lot for people to process right now.

Is sigil of ice working for you? I’ve not seen any procs.

gavyne.6847:

Is leeching bolts working for anybody? I didn’t notice it healing me in shroud.

The healing doesn’t show up in the combat log, but it’s happening.

I see no problems here.

JollyDoctor.5738:

every

:|

What Mega said. You now don’t have to take Unholy Fervor to get Spiteful Spirit to play nice with your normal shroud cd (which further kills UF). It also buffs the synergy between Speed of Shadows and SS.

The damage discrepancy between SS and Unholy Feast remains, even though the combat log tooltips are the same (though the trait tooltipss are not).

Cecilia.5179:

There was no point for Spiteful Spirit, and there still isn’t, because signet of corruption is flat out better.

Unless you’re not running signets.

Salamander.2504:

So whats the point of spiteful spirit now if weakening shroud does it all better?

Dagger 5 is now a ground-targeted boon corrupt…whats the point of axe 3 now?

Different traitline, different mainhand, doubling up on entering-shroud effects. Plus, Spiteful was buffed with this.

The good stuff got even better. The less-good stuff stays the same, so is even worse in comparison? O_o

I was really hoping for DS to get some condi love, and for lifeblast to get some big QoL improvements.

Was also hoping for a buff/change to GS… wasn’t expecting a buff to dagger.

Was Chilling Nova really the ONLY trait they felt needed to be changed in Reaper? Soul Eater says “hi, help plz”.

Overall, there’s a lot of buffing here, I’m just disappointed that some already languishing areas will continue to.

Nice reminders Scott. And I think you’re on the nose about why people don’t like Plague – it’s just boring.

Jelzouki.4128:

Why tf are we getting

All we’ve seen is a preview. Tuesday is a much better date for your rage!

Dropping Wurm for Rise can help a lot with DHs. The one spawned directly on the DH will pop his first set of traps. The spawned one on you stands a chance of popping the second set if he drops that immediately. IF one stays alive, it will also help you mitigate the damage of his bow / GS.

Your scepter will kill him faster than he kills you, if you’re dodging his true shots instead of using your dodges to pop traps. Also be sure to walk out of Symbol of Energy and Hunter’s Ward. You really don’t want to get held in place by the latter, but you don’t need to use a dodge for it either.

If same skill level, he’s 9/10 going to land Spear of Justice, since he wants to wait out your dodges. Try to get Infusing Terror up between your dodges and before he drops his second set of traps. That may save you from the pull.

(Rise also helps a boatload against Revenants and Thieves, but is worse if you’re against team makeups that can just burst down your horrors quickly).

I find it ‘misses’ less and fails to pull people more, unless I specifically set it up. It DOES have a lot going for it, though, and doesn’t take up a utility slot that Ragion brings up has to be used for something else to fill the holes in our weapon/passive functionality.

Imagine if we always had 2 or 3 buttons next to shroud that gave us, say, projectile destruction, an evade, and healing or condi removal/transfer? : D

Zoso.8279:

Ive always seen Axe having more synergy with Shroud then the Scepter and Staff being the Condi weapon with good Shroud synergy.

Probably a holdover from Unholy Fervor affecting shroud when the player is holding an axe AND that Death Shroud does diddly for condi damage.

If anything, scepter synergizes better with either by… actually doing damage and being effective : /

Well THAT’s good to hear!

Wait, no it’s not. : (

Ramoth.9064:

The key is sigil of agility.

Which is pretty sad. Imagine if necro had anywhere near the access to quickness that some other classes do? GS would be legit.

Anchoku.8142:

Third, axe seems fine as it is. It has been buffed I-don’t-know-how-many-times.

This says more about where axe started and has been than where it is (which is the bottom of the barrel).

I’ve stopped even running anything but tanky builds in spvp. Every time I was playing a 1mil dmg Viper build, I would run into a thief every few games who just pewped on me.

Not sure if I’m just super-bad or if there was just no way to play around getting 1-2 rounded, and if i survive, being unable to keep the person from just bolting away and coming back later to try again.

The most success I’ve had with GS has been with a cele amulet, deathly chill, and blood magic. The healing power definitely doesn’t do anything for me, given that siphons scale horribly with it, but here’s hoping we get a new Grandmaster or scalability.

Tadsoul.6951:

as a power necro i use axe over staff
the biggest weakness i find when using the axe is the offhand choices

I want to agree with this, mainly because lacking a quality condi transfer (o/h dagger is terrible) is pretty much the worst in pvp, but… the damage on axe is just poor. Even taking into account that it doesn’t have projectiles to destroy, the damage is just flat out bad. Axe + a power build doesn’t come close to scepter + condi build for dealing with ranged threats. Axe becomes a GC for life force, Feast for retal and corrupt, then stow it for a real weapon.

spoj.9672:

Im still hoping for aftercast reduction on gravedigger. And if not then at least a damage buff.

“Some damage increases and some aftercasts removed so you can activate skills quicker.”

Is happening for warriors. While I’m not super hopeful for us, I’m kind of, sort of.

zapv.8051:

Dead.5829:

zapv.8051:

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

In which League bracket?

Does it even matter?

Sure! Mainly I’m asking because as I climb rankings, I find I’m having to prune more and more builds out of my bank. Possibly because they don’t work, possibly because I’m not good enough to make them work : (

Whenever I run one of the less sturdy amulets, I find I’m just food for thieves and shatter mesmers.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

gavyne.6847:

It’s funny everybody’s got their hopes up, but we’re probably going to see a few lines of changes, nothing worthy of wow’s lol.

My hopes are basically only dealing with Soul Eater getting improved, since it’s the one trait in the Reaper line that nobody uses.

Chilling Victory is good on its own, and plays into Blighter’s Boon so well. Decimate Defenses makes up for a lack of precision on some of the best amulets for pvp Reapers. Once Diamond Skin stops just ignoring condi application, DD will get a pretty big indirect buff. These also affect you at all times.

I wonder what they could even do to Soul Eater beyond quickness procs or ability-cast-time-reduction stacks to make this trait pickable beyond the other 2 when GS isn’t even a campable weapon and the other 2 will help your other weapon AND your shroud. It almost needs to make GS be the only weapon you need to use in melee (unless you need a transfer, fear, or poison field).

Sarrs.4831:

I wonder how much this will actually do. Having a bunch more healing from dropping Nightfall and RS spinning in it certainly won’t hurt.

0-3k healing depending on how many bolts hit and your healing power.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirl_finisher

It’s not a colossal change, especially for 1v1, but it’s certainly appreciated, especially since chilling bolts can only stack so much and most of our fields are Dark.

zapv.8051:

I actually think marauder d/w staff reaper is good in this meta.

In which League bracket?