Guild Wars 2

Akrasia.5469:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Akrasia.5469:

We are not best at DPS, We are not best at bunkering, we are not best at boon removal,

I have to nitpick, but Necros are very, very much the best boon removal in the game right now. Mallyx Revenants are second with Mesmers third, but Necros are a level above all other professions on that front.

Necros are the best at boon corruption. This is where they excel in fact, but Mesmers have way more access to boon removal and can steal boons. So in terms of effectiveness this one is debatable. But in shear numbers of boons that can be removed Mesemers have the crown

Okay, time to rip this apart.

1. Of course Necros are best at “boon corruption.” They are literally the only profession that can do it! By definition, they are the best. And worst.

2. “Boon corruption” is still “boon removal.” Let’s compare mesmer boon removal and Necro boon removal, shall we?

• Mesmer Sword auto vs. necro Scepter auto. Both are auto attacks. Necro Scepter has superior reliability, being 900 range opposed to 130, but Mesmers can supplement it in PvE with clones. I say “in PvE” because in WvW and PvP, the clones die before they can complete the chain for a boon strip.
• Mind Stab: vs. Unholy Feast. Ignoring the fact that Unholy Feast is on a bad weapon, we have two 5 target AoE boon strips (1 boon each) on an identical cooldown. Probably the best comparison you can get. Unholy Feast, though, is much easier to land on multiple foes due to being a much, much larger AoE.

That’s it for weapon skills on Mesmer, but Necros still have Dark Pact, Enfeebling Blood, and Spinal Shivers to go. Advantage: necro.

Utility skills:

• Null Field vs. Well of Corruption. Both are identical radius, and pulsing boon removal. Despite the basic description for Null Field, it only strips 1 boon/pulse. So, it matches on boon removal. Null Field does enjoy longer range and a shorter untraited cooldown. When both skills are traited, the cooldowns are identical, but Null Field lasts longer. Null Field overall wins out on this one.
• Arcane Thievery vs. Corrupt Boon. This is not even close. 3 boons removed either way, but Corrupt Boon being available three times as often when untraited means Corrupt Boon blows Arcane Thievery out of the water without even trying on boon removal.
• Phantasmal Disenchanter vs. Nothing Can Save You. This one is weird, but these are the only utilities left on each profession to compare. Overall, NCSY works out to be better on the boon removal front. More boons removed instantly and provides unblockability while not being able to just be killed. The Disenchanter prioritizes allies on its bounces, making its boon removal quite poor.

Okay, that wraps it up, right? Well, traits.

• Shattered Concentration vs. Path of Corruption. I picked these two to compare because both modify profession mechanic skills. Each one has its benefits, Path of Corruption being more reliable while Shattered Concentration works better for spike boon removal (when it lands more than two illusions, which is rare in PvP/WvW).

Okay, that’s it…wait. Necro still has:
Chill of Death
Signets of Suffering (which means the entire right side of the bar sans elite can rip boons)
Spiteful Spirit
Weakening Shroud
Grim Specter (a total boon rip, albeit only in Lich Form).

And unlike Mesmer, multiples of these can be used in a typical build.

So no. Necros are the kings of boon removal, both in practical and theoretical situations. Revenants are second in practice, but third in theoretical. Mesmers are second in theoretical, but third in practice.

Tim.6450:

Also condi reapers are specs which have to be handled differently. You can’t just focus on your strengths and win, they will turn it against you, you have to focus on their weaknesses.

This is 100% true, and probably the root of why Reapers are so easy to have decent performance with. Their actual output on damage and defense are nowhere close to the top, but they turn strengths against you, amplifying their own power. But people don’t react to this properly.

If you try to fight a Reaper like you fight everyone else, you will almost always lose. You can’t rely on your own build’s strengths. Instead, you have to exploit the Reaper’s weaknesses (and yes, they do have them!).

This becomes quite clear if you look at the top tiers of PvP where more than one Reaper on a team generally means that team loses. The players at that level know how to exploit weaknesses (such as the fact Reapers really can’t handle focus fire and are pinballs outside of Shroud, nor can they rotate well).

Aidan Savage.2078:

insanemaniac.2456:

DGraves.3720:

When I started three years ago taking condition duration was “stupid”. Now it’s the opposite; the belief that 100% is the best option no matter what has emerged which is the same extreme assumption. Black and white, no?

You would think that a 3 year old problem would have been solved three years ago since nothing has actually changed but … yeah.

in general condi duration has always been the optimal choice for condi builds. its severely overbudgeted. but you used to only take enough to ensure that you capped out whichever condis you were using, similar to capping out crit rate in your assassin/zerk comparison. that constraint was removed.

Actually, before the changes which currently limit you to 100% condi duration, it was entirely possible to EXCEED 100%. I’m not certain of the exact number, by my necro’s autoattack was, with runes, traits, foods, etc, was able to break 15 seconds on the bleed.

That is unique to Necro Scepter only. That’s because Lingering Curse changes the base duration of the conditions.

Wow, the intentionally placed comeback mechanic enabled a comeback. Who could have ever seen this happening? Something must be wrong.

/sarcasm

Three reasons:

1. Reaper is on the lower end of skill floor. To be completely honest, you don’t have to be that great of a player to have a decent performance as a Reaper.

2. The counter to Reaper is not so much a build as it is tactics. Lower skilled players see Reaper as overpowered because they haven’t figured out how to take on an opponent in anything outside of a straight-up brawl, which Reaper is designed to be absurd in. Any profession can beat a Reaper, but it does take thinking.

3. Necros as a whole throw a monkey wrench in how people like to play. From neutering healing with poison and screwing up rotations entirely with Chill to laughing at your Stability and Protection that you were relying on. Necros force people to change their play by screwing with them. People hate being weakened in games, and Necros are the kings of debuffing (always have been, even across games).

Works the same way as Guardian hammer auto. Just because the attack doesn’t hit anything doesn’t mean the Symbol isn’t created.

That’s because “yesteryear,” bleeds were the only condition to really benefit from condition duration, and even then, only in a solo setting.

Burning and Poison stacked duration, so even without investing in duration, permanent uptime was easy. Confusion was only brought by Mesmers and really did suck terribly in PvE (in WvW, condition builds as a whole were worthless due to mass cleansing, and in PvP, they would usually die to Confusion before duration became an issue).

So that leaves us with just Bleeding where condition duration is important. And then, only if you are the only one trying to stack them because, contrary to your belief, there was no regard for strength of a condition when the stack limit was reached.

Now, though, all damaging conditions stack intensity, making duration much more valuable. Now the strength of each application can be considered instead of just the presence of the application.

Shala.8352:

-snip-

You are confusing “hit” with “DPS.” Unless your damage is all delivered in a single hit, you cannot compare the two.

Yes, an individual hit can be an obscene reduction in damage. But an individual hit can also not be affected at all. Weakness calculations are tougher, but you have to use averages.

Hmm, 300k copies of the game sounds really, really low. Are we sure pre-sales weren’t reported in their respective quarters? Remember that pre-purchase started late in Q1 2015, so it’s not so easy to compare Q4 to Q3 and say “they didn’t sell much”.

Shala.8352:

Edit: for the noob saying weakness doesnt diminuish dps by 50%, go read wiki.
And also always for that noob saying that 3 seconds is too much time for a corrupt boon, i can tell 2 things: first, you are not slapping butterflys while autoattacking, and really 3 seconds is too much for having a corrupt boon? what do you want? corrupt boon on every kittening attack??

How about you read it? Weakness is a 50% chance for 50% non-crit damage. Assuming no crit chance, that is only a 25% reduction on average (50%*50%). It does go up from there based on Crit Chance and Crit Damage, but it can’t be a 50% reduction in damage without an absurd crit damage stat (read: impossible to get high).

For Weakness to give a 50% average reduction in damage, you would need 300% Crit damage and 100% crit chance. This requires the impossible Ferocity value of 2,250.

And never once did I say that the boon corrupt on auto was fine (although it’s not as overpowering as I feared). I said to get your numbers straight before using them to make an argument.

Shala.8352:

guys i dont get what you are talking about. You dont have to land consecutively 3 autoattacks to land the boon corrupt, you dont lose the chain if you get dodged the second attack. i can dodge meanwhile, using an utility and still not lose the chain. So what are you talking about? THIRD AUTOATTACK FO SCEPTER IS NOOOOT HARD TO LAND, its 1 second and half and you wil land it.

I get that there’s a lot of stability spam (still remember that for some melee class, playing without stab is like saying “you cant land your skills”, i already explained a lot of tons of times, that getting stunned for a melee is much more worst than for a ranged, since he is not loosing only those seconds of stun duration in terms of dps, but he is also loosing the gap closing, so he lose much mooooar dps), but really the stab corruption is not the only problem. If i get corrupted my single stack of might wich is 2% more dps i have, to get weakness for 10 seconds, if you really want all this corrupt spam, we should rewiew also the corruption table entirely.

I tried it, the scepter is fast, in 1 second and half i will have corrupted your boon, and if it’s might, means you will have 10 seconds of weakness, this is already a 50% less dmg i’m recieving, wich is much more less damage than the ele protection time.
I think we are lucky necro still have to understand the power of the scepter autoattack, else people would agree much more with me.
I dont even start talking about resistence that should be the counter of condi and is countered by… corruption… so what will be next step? add the boon/traits/skills/utility uncorruptable? Wake up guys, stop defending necro cuz you finaly had a chance to get legend carried by this class. We are talking of not ruining the game. Scepter autoattack is one of those thing that goes on the direction of ruining the game.

I rlly want any of you come to challenge my necro scepter spam with his revenant and see how much dmg they will be able to do with perma weakness and perma chill, while my condi are thicking. Rlly try it, there’s not a second you dont have weakness or chill on you, and this is horrible gameplay experience.

If there’s people who dont agree that scepter autoattack is too strong, then all is vain, we already lost our objectivity and people are defending it cuz of personal interests.

First, if you’re going to make an argument, double-check your facts. Weakness cannot reach a 50% average damage reduction. At most, it’s around 40%, but keep in mind this is completely variable based on your crit chance and crit damage (interestingly, only on those). A 40% reduction requires high amounts of both.

Likewise, you completely forget aftercasts on skills when you talk timing. The Necro Scepter auto chain actually takes about 3 seconds to complete in full, or half the frequency you are using in your argument. Necros have no native sources of Quickness either, so this is largely a non-factor. This does mean that a Necro can’t interrupt your stability stomp that way unless he was already autoing you, as the stomp will complete before his chain does (even then, the only profession this will likely work against is ironically Necros themselves).

Finally, if you’re trying to auto-spam against a Revenant, they will just destroy you if they have any skill. It might work against a Glint/Ventari Cleric’s build, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone run that in PvP.

Try Zealot’s gear. This lets you combine well bombing and midline support nicely. The downside is that Transfusion and Vampiric Rituals compete, so you have to choose which you want to focus on more. Also, it’s expensive.

Akrasia.5469:

We are not best at DPS, We are not best at bunkering, we are not best at boon removal,

I have to nitpick, but Necros are very, very much the best boon removal in the game right now. Mallyx Revenants are second with Mesmers third, but Necros are a level above all other professions on that front.

Red Zero.1850:

Okay, thanks. So after a dive down the GW1 wiki, their native to Elona, which would be at the very Southwest bottom of our current GW2 world map. It just seemed like a strange omission that there were no lions about, so I wondered if there was a story behind that.

They’re just not native to this part of the world is all. They do exist.

Deedrick.4372:

I don’t see the problem with stacking chill. Its the same problem we used to have with condi’s. When I am specced to bleed and some one overwrote my condi… there when my build. I don’t think a stack of chill should increase the base effect. If there are 5 necros hitting the same target though, why don’t we all get the benefit of our chill stacking and doing damage, like burning? I think the nerf on alacrity was overboard and uncalled for as well. All I am saying is if burning, poison, bleeding can all stack to do the damage, why cant chill.

Because Chill is used by more than just Reapers that picked Deathly Chill. Changing Chill to stack intensity instead of damage might be a buff for those times when you have multiple Reapers all maintaining perma-chill anyway on a target, but for literally everything else, it’s a hard nerf because it effectively won’t stack at all anymore.

Burning functions the same for everyone. Chill and Fear do not.

Trepidation Lost.3469:

did you see how stronghold panned out, they dont know how to implement other game modes succesfully

I’d say “how Stronghold panned out” is because ANet didn’t really support it properly. Nobody will care about Stronghold if the tournaments are only in Conquest. If, for example, ANet went for 4-6 seasons, alternating which mode the tournaments were in (so each mode would have 2-3 tourneys), then you would see a hell of a lot more interest in Stronghold.

Sure, people would still have their preferences, but right now, there’s no reason to get good at Stronghold. And when there’s no reason to do that, people, unsurprisingly, won’t bother to learn.

Deedrick.4372:

Oh wow, is nerf chill the new mount thread. It seems there’s constantly a new one being moved off to another location by moderators.

I agree chill needs fixed. There is no reason for it not to stack like burn damage. It is totally broken.

The reason it shouldn’t stack intensity is because Reapers are not the only ones that use Chill. Every profession but Warrior does to some extent, and nerfing the Chill condition would also be a hefty nerf to base Necro and Power Reaper, which need no nerfs.

Make it stack intensity and…only Reapers can stack it. That doesn’t make sense.

Zintrothen.1056:

One Reaper is hard enough with all the CCs going around. All they need is one well timed CC (when you just switched attunements is usually the best time because your only real stunbreak is on CD) and your done without support. 1v1, reaper is difficult if they know how to wait till all your cleanses are on CD before they burst, but against two, they can just faceroll their way to “victory”.

To be fair, if you’re trying to 1v2 anyone at equal skill levels, it shouldn’t be hard for them to kill you.

I keep seeing people saying things like “Reaper is OP, I got two of them beating on me and I died.” Duh? You were in a 1v2. You should die if you don’t massively outplay them.

All right, so they wanted to make it a base race against a team that most likely had better DPS than they did (MM is a bunker build) and could move faster than they could.

And you didn’t capatalize on this…why?

Sub 80, unless you want to play Revenant or do a lot of PvP and want the elite specs, there’s no reason to get HoT. Other than not needing to worry about buying it later when you reach that point.

Jump pads like on Skyhammer would be interesting as well.

On average, Greatswords have the highest skill coefficients and the highest weapon damage. So, at a basic level, Greatswords are the most damaging weapons.

But the game is not “basic” on this front. While I believe the highest possible single hit damage is on a Greatsword skill (Gravedigger has a massive 3.0 coefficient), the actual highest DPS is on other weapons due to better attack speed and modifiers.

…was that all one sentence? I’m not even sure what you’re saying other than that you’re upset.

Please, use punctuation. It helps get your point across so much better.

Sunshine.5014:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Sunshine.5014:

style.6173:

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Believe it or not I want the old diamond skin eles back.

I just want the current bunker tempest nerfed hard

The current support (not bunker) healbot Tempest is 100% hard countered by a Reaper. Any half decent Reaper will win over the Tempest. If you want to test that, I’m happy to jump on my Reaper and duel your healbot Tempest.

#permachillislove

Support Tempest has a variant that can solo Reapers all day long. Even the standard aurashare one isn’t helpless against them.

Please enlighten me with the build because I’m not aware of it. Thanks!

P.S: and yes, the standard aurashare one will get decimated by any decent Reaper.

Swap Powerful Aura for Cleansing Water.

That is literally all that changes.

@LionChain: That doesn’t look like a problem with Necros. That looks like you got focused by three people. Do you really think that should have ended in any way but your death with virtually no chance?

There was something you could do: play the other two points. Reaper balls are almost impossible to take down, but they are extremely easy to rotate around. When they split up, now you aren’t dealing with the ball and they can be killed with some focus.

Zero Solstice.9754:

The concept of healing on Necromancer has always been a fun thought, it’s just that it gets outclassed by everything else, and being so suboptimal isn’t really that fun.

Necro self-healing is fantastic. Healing others…well, it can work, but there are better choices.

Sunshine.5014:

style.6173:

Oh Snapalope.1378:

Believe it or not I want the old diamond skin eles back.

I just want the current bunker tempest nerfed hard

The current support (not bunker) healbot Tempest is 100% hard countered by a Reaper. Any half decent Reaper will win over the Tempest. If you want to test that, I’m happy to jump on my Reaper and duel your healbot Tempest.

#permachillislove

Support Tempest has a variant that can solo Reapers all day long. Even the standard aurashare one isn’t helpless against them.

Axe/Dagger is mainly to maintain Quickening Thirst, regardless of weapon set. The main reason why Unholy Sanctuary instead of Corrupter’s Fervor is that condition application rate really isn’t that high while Healing Power is.

The main reason why I picked the runes I did was extra team support and extra Blighter’s Boon life force. Each time you pop your heal, it’s 9-24% life force gained.

Chilled to the Bone of course works just as well. It can go either way.

The CC is to prevent your opponents from simply kiting the minions.

I know this build won’t become meta. It lacks basically everything unique that you want to bring a Necro for (condition pressure, boon corruption), but my god, this thing just does not die.

I need to test it more, but the first match I played resulted in me never going below half health through the entire match.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBIhdG1JzmQ3mYtNg7mA7NYpawi3gjwTo0AIAEsmWArsIAA-TZBGABAcQAYb/h8LDEwTAAhTAAA

It is a high survivability build that puts out respectable (not fantastic, but good) damage. It’s easy to heal up 6k each time you go into Shroud, and frequently I’d get much more than that. It also has some team support from AoE heals and a small cooldown “For Great Justice” on your heal.

The healing in this build is enough that I was more or less ignoring the condition damage I was taking, albeit the other team had no Necros. There was a condi Revenant and a condi Mesmer, though.

Supreme.3164:

Lordrosicky.5813:

An amulet killed me once. It was ridiculous. Nerf it

Do necros know the meaning of the word hypocrisy?

Look all the necros who cried for months to have celestial amulet removed
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Is-it-true-celestial-amulet-is-overpowered

Do you? Celestial amulet was being called for removal by players of every profession. I know you somehow got it into your head that there’s a big anti-Ele consipracy run entirely by Necros, but you are completely wrong on that. Celestial Amulet was being called for removal primarily by classes that couldn’t use it. Necros could, but unlike Eles, Necros had obvious alternatives, so they didn’t care as much if it went.

The main reason for that is that it is highly unfair to players who join and learn quickly. Their skill level will climb much faster than their MMR can, since the MMR of your opponents is factored in to your change.

At 0 (or 1) MMR, it could literally take them years to even reach an average rating.

It does work like that, but it’s not as helpful as you are assuming. “+X% outgoing healing” applies to all healing that you personally are the source of, but not on yourself.

Basically, it’s not that helpful because minions, by and large, are disposable. Use sigils that provide CC or personal survivability instead.

From GW2, I’d say Scarlet.

From GW1? I’ll be weird and say M.O.X. Or Razah.

I don’t see any ball of light when I’m getting stomped by a gyro. And my graphics are basically on the highest settings. And yes, I am looking for it. The only time I see the “ball of light stomp” from a Scrapper is from the scrapper himself, never the gyro.

It works perfectly. I don’t know why people keep thinking that it should show up in the hero panel when it is entirely based upon what your enemy has on them at the moment you hit them.

Reaper does have one other thing that’s quite attractive in raids for condition builds, and that’s Soul Spiral. Combos quite nicely with the fire fields you usually have.

narwhalsbend.7059:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

As a reminder to folks, ANet was rather upfront about Heart of Thorns being on the light side of content due to being so focused on setting up systems for the future.

Now, however, those systems are in place. The next expansion won’t have to devote nearly the resources to those and will most likely be delivering significantly more content as a result.

I don’t recall this. Got a source?

Multiple streams and I believe at least one of the blog posts pre-HoT launch. Sorry, I didn’t save the links, nor do I have the time to watch 20+ hours of streams at the moment, but it was mentioned on multiple occasions.

If you’re doing ranked, it’s quite possible right now that you are simply outmatched. It’s the start of a new season, which means everybody, pros and newbies alike, started at the same ranking.

Give it a week, then try again.

As a reminder to folks, ANet was rather upfront about Heart of Thorns being on the light side of content due to being so focused on setting up systems for the future.

Now, however, those systems are in place. The next expansion won’t have to devote nearly the resources to those and will most likely be delivering significantly more content as a result.

The coefficient got reduced by 15% (now 25.5% of condition damage instead of 30%). Base damage is untouched.

Eh, it’s fair.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

i see a lot of players bandwagon to reaper because they think its OP, then they fought against real necro players and actually decent players and get destroyed.

Pretty much this. It’s rare I have any issues at all with fighting Reapers when I’m on mine because necro is the class I have mained since head start, consisting of basically 75% of my playtime.

I should wipe the floor with almost anyone going for flavor of the month.

style.6173:

Because skyhammer jump maps are stupid.

That said, the daily should be changed to “Win a ranked or unranked PvP match”

I think it already is. The first game I played tonight in Unranked, I lost and did not get the daily, even though I was in the match from start to score screen. The second game I got it when I won.

kreven.6017:

meta is the stab trait

Pretty sure meta is Dhuumfire right now.

The time and energy tax when you swap to Ventari is immensely frustrating. That’s what I’ve noticed. I don’t have Herald yet, but I’m running around with Ventari/Shiro. I almost never actually enter Ventari.

“Inefficient” is the word I would use to describe Ventari. It could be good with minor tweaks, such as an auto-tablet summon when you swap to Ventari (especially since it summons right on you anyway), and removal of cast time on moving the tablet. Other possibilitiesfor tweaks exist.

Supreme.3164:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

EthanLightheart.9168:

Anyone stating reaper is not completely imbalanced hasn’t played much or even worse plays the build and wants to defend it. The damage output versus tankiness IS ridicolous. I never said it can’t be countered. Other builds can be countered 10 other ways. Ur arguments are very poor.

Or, people like you haven’t played the build and learned what it doesn’t handle well.

Reapers are strong, no doubt. But they do have plenty of counterplay to them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t too strong, but it is definitely by a small margin if they are. A very small margin, since 6/9 classes either have the advantage or an even matchup against them. Unless you are trying to run a condition build yourself, in which case that’s been a bad idea since day 1 of beta.

There is always counterplay….but only when you’re the one that must be countered, despite the claims of multiple counters…you still see double/triple necro for match( not force me to post every single screenshot) almost for team.

And ofc the ones who see the counterplay are always the reaper themselves..while the rest need to l2p

Right now, I’d say ample counterplay exists for everything but Scrappers and the bugged bristlebacks. Scrappers need sneak gyro to have a cast time and function gyro to have a stomp animation. There is probably more, but I think most people can agree on those two changes.

You do realize that skill chains advance if you hit an enemy, regardless of if said enemy is visible or not, right? Everyone can melee him for full DPS just fine.

Heck, we knew they would be working on another expansion before Heart of Thorns even released when they announced the pricing.

EthanLightheart.9168:

Anyone stating reaper is not completely imbalanced hasn’t played much or even worse plays the build and wants to defend it. The damage output versus tankiness IS ridicolous. I never said it can’t be countered. Other builds can be countered 10 other ways. Ur arguments are very poor.

Or, people like you haven’t played the build and learned what it doesn’t handle well.

Reapers are strong, no doubt. But they do have plenty of counterplay to them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t too strong, but it is definitely by a small margin if they are. A very small margin, since 6/9 classes either have the advantage or an even matchup against them. Unless you are trying to run a condition build yourself, in which case that’s been a bad idea since day 1 of beta.

Flumek.9043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I mentioned this to Bhawb the other day, but I do have an idea for Well of Darkness.

Keep its current effect and cooldown, but make it form an opaque black dome for enemies (allies see it as a transparent dome like the toxic krait bubbles). Inside the dome, it’s like one of the dark rooms in PvE/Obsidian Sanctum (for enemies only). You can’t see things properly in there.

Now, you can still maintain a target, perhaps, but do you know what is being hidden during those 5 seconds? It could be absolutely nothing, or it could be reeeeeeal nasty.

Wouldn’t affect PvE use at all, but I could see some crazy plays coming from it in PvP/WvW.

Well of refuge

Well, it won’t drop target or grant stealth, but it would be able to hide spell effects as well