Guild Wars 2

Skoigoth.9238:

Falcon.8713:

We don’t need any buffs, we get reaper ????

I wish it were that simple, but it´s not. The addition of Reaper doesn´t magically fix all of the issues the base profession has.

Edit: To add to your list OP, I think we really need reworks of/buffs to some weapons, mostly Axe, Scepter, OH Dagger, Focus and maybe even Staff.

Basically, every weapon we have other than warhorn.

Even mainhand dagger could use some tweaks coughdarkpactcough

Shiki.7148:

Falcon.8713:

Bhawb.7408:

Greatsword is really strong in PvP because enemies are always forced to fight on point with you (or near another objective), it has the potential to nearly one shot people with gravedigger, and its 4 skill is a really strong denial. GS is quite nice in PvP, and the addition of even more superspeed is annoying. That said, I don’t think the superspeed that is accessible is actually going to be used/abused much, it requires a really heavy investment most people won’t make.

Except that it isn’t. Since every other profession will try to permablind you with everything they do, GS hits will be knows as ultimate luck attacks, while d/wh provides the best anti-blind skill ever + acces to immob/daze/swiftness & High damage on mara/zerk.

Cast Plague Signet mid gravedigger to surprise oneshot the blindspammer -> Profit.

Or any utility shout other than YAAW.

Robert Gee.9246:

A raid boss having defiance doesn’t mean soft-CC won’t be valuable in a raid encounter.

This does bring up the question of “how,” I’m afraid. Because last we heard (and from you, I might add), it just provided a DoT on a bar that’s only there for a short period of time.

Which really is quite useless.

Chill is one of those hidden power conditions. Other than the movement speed debuff, which is obvious, the cooldown increase is difficult to see the full impact of. Important skills like stunbreaks and blocks are often not used on cooldown, but rather at opportune moments, meaning they could com e off of recharge long before they’re used the second time normally. In that case, Chill’s increase frequently had no real effect.

However, when watching the preview tourney before the first BWE, it became apparent to me how strong Chill could be when watching the Reaper segments. Numerous times I caught myself thinking that an opponent should have used a particular skill significantly earlier, given their rotations.

Anchoku.8142:

For example, Boss A’s break bar decays 50% more for burning but 50% less for chill. Other conditions do a standard amount. Boss B’s break bar may be weak to darkness/blind/siphon skills and combo’s but strong to light skills and fields, maybe stripping retal and regeneration.

Burning does damage to health bars, not break bars.

Lily.1935:

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

High DPS are doing more like 9-10k sustained. Still better than the 8k bleed ticks, but bleed is still not the only source of damage in a condi Necro’s kit. Granted, Torment is negligable, but poison is a thing.

Gluttony is fine as-is. If I were to make any change, it would be to merge Soul Comprehension with it.

Vital Persistance getting baselined, I can entirely get behind. When every build is making one particular choice exactly the same, something needs to be looked at.

At least Reapers will have a choice on underwater elite.

spoj.9672:

Im surprised I was able to correct you on a mechanics related topic. Usually your the one correcting me/everyone else.

To be fair, it’s not often that this particular one even comes up. Even with RS5+4, you’re dealing with a bunch of 1 second Chills, making it incredibly difficult to stack 6 chills before the first falls off.

Ahh, all right. My mistake, then.

There is a very simple middle ground, though, that will make boon removal important: Long duration boons provided on similarly long cooldowns.

If, for example, a boss gave himself boons with a 30 second duration on a 30 second cooldown, boon stripping would be useful, unlike giving himself 3 second boons on a 3 second cooldown. Both bosses have 100% boon uptime without stripping, but in one case, boon stripping is actually useful.

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

Dadnir.5038:

Not really. Current open world PVE, I rarely even consider using active defenses. Really, I only do that at all at Golem Mark 2 to escape the lightning floor. In dungeons, it’s a lot more prominent.

Strangely enough, I do not think that the golem mark II is a good example of a hard openworld boss. The only need for active defense on this boss occure when he push back (because I’m lazy enough to not want to have to come back after being pushed back). Otherwise, avoiding the electric floor is super easy, you just have to stand in a corner of the electric field and do two step to the right or to the left when the electric field appear… I’m out of the subject here…

I was refering to what you can expect of trash mob not what you can expect of a situational boss. Because I would be shocked if trash mobs were kind enough to be skipped in raid as easily as they are skipped in dungeon. Beside there are boss in dungeon that actually boon themself to death (CoE golem and HotW P1 last boss). Do you happen to ask for a Necromancer to do these boss? The answer is no.

Oh, I don’t think the golem is hard either, just that’s the only time when I usually dodge roll instead of thinking about if I should or not.

And the boon-heavy dungeon bosses don’t have necros brought for them because they literally reapply the boons every 3 seconds. There is no point to stripping them at all outside of a Chill of Death proc (and then, just because it’s decent extra damage).

Dadnir.5038:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t recall any need for boon corruption in BWE2…

Raids also weren’t in BWE2. Actually, no instanced content was.

I expect open PvE mob to be a good example of what you may encounter in instanced content. Don’t you think it’s legit to expect that?

Not really. Current open world PVE, I rarely even consider using active defenses. Really, I only do that at all at Golem Mark 2 to escape the lightning floor. In dungeons, it’s a lot more prominent.

It was a similar deal in BWE2: While it was (thankfully) harder than current open world, I still never had to use more than one of my dodges at a time. If Raids don’t require me to be wondering if I’ll have enough endurance, I’d say they’ve failed at making them challenging entirely.

There are a few cases where a racial skill grants something otherwise barred from a profession (most, usually to Necros, who get new tricks from Hidden Pistol, Battle Cry, Charrzooka, Pain Inverter, Take Root, Snow Leopard, and who have a profession skill outdone by Radiation Field. Reaper of Grenth has strong Reaper syngery).

However, the acutal power of the skills is overall low.

Dadnir.5038:

I don’t recall any need for boon corruption in BWE2…

Raids also weren’t in BWE2. Actually, no instanced content was.

nekretaal.6485:

Does jumping block shouts?

I ask because I’m pretty sure that a ranger without stability blocked my “fear me” in a Pvp game yesterday three times. There do exist skills, even instant cast skills, that are avoided by jumping.

(Winning Keg brawl is totally about avoiding fumbles by jumping after you used your dodges).

There aren’t a lot of offensive shouts currently in the game to test this with, but if it turns out that you can block shouts just by jumping…. That’s a serious problem.

More likely the Ranger had Shared Anguish equipped. Its cooldown is just as long as Fear Me. It’s an incredibly common PvP trait.

It’s always the case with duration-stacking conditions: if the stack cap is reached, the oldest get shoved off. If this weren’t the case, Bitter Chill would not proc Vulnerability on the 6th application.

Since now none of those naturally scale with stats other than condition duration, I would love to see ANet re-work them, with new stacks only kicking off old if they would last longer.

ronpierce.2760:

Zenith.7301:

Why nerf spectral mastery? The cost to benefitting from spectral mastery is using spectral skills themselves, which are little more than glorified stun breaks on long cooldowns relative to everybody else.

No, thanks. This pvp crap nerfing skills for everybody else has got to stop. I don’t want to be further restricted on skill and trait usage.

If Vital Persistence went base line (which is necessary) Spectral mastery would have to be changed to prevent it from being over the top with, essentially, the free VP. It’s “overtuned” atm due to the fact that it has to compete with VP, and is not in addition to.

To expand on this, while it used to be possible to get all the benefits of current Vital Persistence and Spectral Mastery, at the time, that required every trait from Soul Reaping (so no Grandmaster) and a Master tier trait in Curses to pull off. If the degen reduction from Vital Persistance is made baseline, the total cost has been reduced to one Master trait for effectively the same benefit.

No, if the degen reduction was made baseline, Spectral Mastery would need a nerf from its current state because the cost of the total benefits has shrunk so drastically.

Better idea: make the NPC’s run on all fours when not wielding weapons.

ronpierce.2760:

mazut.4296:

I understand what you are saying, but that’s major change, to the rest of the trees as well, probably. And who knows what else will need balancing… Don’t see it happening.

I’m not suggesting it just be base line and call it a day. It would likely require a few additional tweaks (such as Spectral Mastery needing to be toned down to adjust for them being used together), sure, it’s a bit of a task. However, it’s a very important one.

Spectral Mastery could just lose the 5% Life Force on spectral use and I’d call it good.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Whirl finishers: Whirl finisher bolts are capped at 5 bolts per skill, and only deal 198 damage per bolt. It is technically a DPS increase, but again, negligible enough to not matter over the course of a fractal/dungeon run.

Not true on the cap. For example, Soul Spiral and Whirling Axe both send out far more than 5 bolts. Each one can actually shoot out more along the lines of 30 or more. Shredder Gyro puts them all to shame, though, setting off 30 whirl finishers on its own (with many, many bolts).

Whirl finishers will produce more than 5 bolts, but only the first 5 will do anything. After 5 bolts hit, the rest of the bolts do nothing.

Which is why whirl finishers are pretty much useless.

Considering there are zero texts, whether in-game or even on the wiki, or even anyone else stating this, I will have to call bullkitten on this claim.

Perhaps you are confusing things with Chilling Bolts where only the most recent 5 matter?

Well considering that chill whirl is reapers main combo it seems very relevant.

Why is it that every other class can get 20-30 bolts but reaper’s whirl combo only gets to use 5 bolts? Just another way that anet screwed over reaper with their chill changes.

We do get full benefit of all the bolts as far as application goes. Sure, the oldest stacks fall off, but, for example, Bitter Chill really racks up the Vuln. Even at the old Chill cap of 9 stacks, we would still have seen some bolts being “wasted.”

However, Necros do have other fields to combo with for greater stacks. Our poison fields stack up poison stupidly with Soul Spiral, for example. Dark Fields, while we don’t get the healing, do add a lot of damage. Well of Blood results in mass cleansing like mad.

Quarktastic.1027:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Quarktastic.1027:

Whirl finishers: Whirl finisher bolts are capped at 5 bolts per skill, and only deal 198 damage per bolt. It is technically a DPS increase, but again, negligible enough to not matter over the course of a fractal/dungeon run.

Not true on the cap. For example, Soul Spiral and Whirling Axe both send out far more than 5 bolts. Each one can actually shoot out more along the lines of 30 or more. Shredder Gyro puts them all to shame, though, setting off 30 whirl finishers on its own (with many, many bolts).

Whirl finishers will produce more than 5 bolts, but only the first 5 will do anything. After 5 bolts hit, the rest of the bolts do nothing.

Which is why whirl finishers are pretty much useless.

Considering there are zero texts, whether in-game or even on the wiki, or even anyone else stating this, I will have to call bullkitten on this claim.

Perhaps you are confusing things with Chilling Bolts where only the most recent 5 matter?

meow one twenty.4376:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

meow one twenty.4376:

Since there are ways to make skills unblockable, we should also have ways of knocking people out of Evades, right?

We do actually have a few of those methods already in the game. Line of Warding, Ring of Warding, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, and Spectral Wall will all interrupt through evasion (and interrupt the evasion itself).

I’ll concede after I ask my question and I mean it sincerely, do those work against Mesmer Sword 2 and Thief S/D 3 or only when you dodge into them? Ive never seen it happen so I honestly dont know.

I know it works when you move through them, but I think it will interrupt if the skill is placed right on them. I haven’t tested this, though.

I do like this idea quite a bit.

meow one twenty.4376:

Since there are ways to make skills unblockable, we should also have ways of knocking people out of Evades, right?

We do actually have a few of those methods already in the game. Line of Warding, Ring of Warding, Static Field, Unsteady Ground, and Spectral Wall will all interrupt through evasion (and interrupt the evasion itself).

Quarktastic.1027:

Whirl finishers: Whirl finisher bolts are capped at 5 bolts per skill, and only deal 198 damage per bolt. It is technically a DPS increase, but again, negligible enough to not matter over the course of a fractal/dungeon run.

Not true on the cap. For example, Soul Spiral and Whirling Axe both send out far more than 5 bolts. Each one can actually shoot out more along the lines of 30 or more. Shredder Gyro puts them all to shame, though, setting off 30 whirl finishers on its own (with many, many bolts).

Quarktastic.1027:

Lightning hammer auto is both a blast finisher and an AoE blind. I’ll give you aegis, but blind is only 10% effective on current bosses, and on new HoT bosses, it doesn’t do anything (except damage the break bar slightly)And like I said before, weakness doesn’t affect critical hits, so it’s less reliable than outright healing.

Dude, Weakness not affecting crits was changed just a few months after launch. What have you been on?

In fact, Weakness neuters crits, since if a crit fumbles (they can) all crit damage is negated.

Besides, Lily’s point about Dark fields being better was on the offense front. Those lifesteal procs actually contribute quite a bit of damage.

Zenith.7301:

And who the hell uses trooper runes in PvE? I’m tired of you PvP people being obtuse when I make it clear I’m talking from a PvE perspective and you guys bring in your PvP crap into the discussion.

Currently? Nobody. Once Heart of Thorns hits and mobs are using conditions with regularity? Will probably become more popular.

Zenith.7301:

And it’d only take adding some group utility to them, which there is this weird resistance to.

Why are they so opposed to adding utility to necromancers to empower/aid their allies if they’re going to implement a breakbar that negates all the debuffing they can do?

I also have to ask why we got stuck with a cooldown on enfeebling shroud while the equivalent engineer trait applies 9 seconds of weakness and 5 stacks of vulnerability and has no ICD.

Engineer trait gets stopped out by Stability, for one. I also feel that trait is going to get slammed with the nerf hammer at some point, since it’s too easy to get 36 seconds of weakness in a 2 skill combo. Land Hammer 5 and you’re guaranteed to land all three hits of Hammer 3. That’s 4 stuns/dazes.

In PvP they sure aren’t.

Don’t get me wrong, for group utility, yes, Gyros are better.

ronpierce.2760:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

ronpierce.2760:

Pimsley.3681:

Another reason why the necro forum thrives is because the mature, helpful tone is influenced by the leadership of folks like Bhawb, Ronpierce and a handful of veteran usual suspects.

These guys know necro inside out. Other class subforums lack that kind of presence so threads are sometimes teeming with misinformation and a hostile tone.

<3 I love you for your kind words. This made my day. I hope that doesn’t make me egotistical. x.X

We’ll be there to knock you down a few notches if it does

Get out of here, I’m am GRENTH!

No you’re not. I met the guy.

((Actually, in my Necro’s RP backstory, he would have been the eighth Reaper, but he died in the battle against Dhuum. Dhuum cursed him to never know the afterlife, so he’s been reincarnated for over a millennia. Yes, same character as I had in GW1, despite being a charr now))

Zenith.7301:

Our shouts are pitiful compared to scrapper gyros in terms of group utility ;(

Truthfully, most of the gyros I wouldn’t even consider using. Most Reaper shouts, on the other hand…

ronpierce.2760:

Pimsley.3681:

Another reason why the necro forum thrives is because the mature, helpful tone is influenced by the leadership of folks like Bhawb, Ronpierce and a handful of veteran usual suspects.

These guys know necro inside out. Other class subforums lack that kind of presence so threads are sometimes teeming with misinformation and a hostile tone.

<3 I love you for your kind words. This made my day. I hope that doesn’t make me egotistical. x.X

We’ll be there to knock you down a few notches if it does

Tommyknocker.6089:

Because they needed to give the necro something and even though every other class got more we need to be happy with what we got. Seems to be the necro credo at this point.

I am quite happy with the Reaper, personally. Sure, still needs a bit of fine-tuning (what doesn’t?), but it works quite well with what it’s supposed to do.

However, Necros do need a reason to be brought in raids, and since they can’t buff the party, their debuffs need to warrant their inclusion.

Eh, we already knew Vulnerability was going to be a penny a dozen in Heart of Thorns.

Menadena.7482:

Which will make it odd because so many traits depend on the shroud. So any traitline that has all 3 major traits at some point using the shroud is pretty worthless because you are foregoing some of the advantages of traits. Since I just rolled my necro a few weeks ago I have not gotten used to the shroud yet and I have had a terrible time trying to pick traits that would play to that style.

Maybe they need to rework necro traits then?

How? All traits that affect Death Shroud affect Reaper’s Shroud just as well, if not better. The only base Necro trait that loses anything is Unyielding Blast, because the piercing function doesn’t apply. Even then, it’s much higher application rate makes up for it.

Marjory’s Dagger in your mainhand is a good idea. It helps camouflage Life Blast and Dark Path.

Patchi.9061:

Zefrost.3425:

Anastasis.7258:

7. Necromancer’s Spectral Armor while in Death Shroud Mode.

I had to lmfao at this.

The once upon a time considered to be a top warrior complaining about what is effectively a weaker version of defiant (due to ICD) stance on a necromancer.

Do you know what the counter is when a necromancer uses that skill? Don’t hit him. Do you hit a warrior with defiant stance? Hilarious that I should even have to tell you that. Unless he’s a large burst away from being dead, all you’re doing is healing him.

The best way for a necro to utilize spectral armor vs a warrior is to save it for when the warrior uses berserker stance so that the necro can survive the warrior for the duration. Do you know what counters necromancer? CC. I guess the warrior doesn’t have any CC though.

Maybe you should get some l2p tips from Rom.

Hey man, did you know that drinking water helps maintain a Healthy Salt level in the body?
No need to bash on anyone in order to have a proper conversation. Necro at its state is incredibly powerful. The nerf of d/d ele will immediatly result in people turning to Cele necro and other viable Bruiser builds. His point was not completley invalid.
I don’t really know much about the overall state of the meta as I have not yet formed a team and participated in high level of competitve play. Nonetheless, do drink some water friend.

Actually, nerfs to D/D ele are indirect nerfs to Cele Signet Necro. The build is really nothing special except that it checks D/D ele.

Nerf its niche and the build falls out of favor.

It would be like when Decap Engie was popular, but instead of changing what they did, they instead made all capture points much larger. That would have seriously hurt the build’s viability without touching the build itself.

If it removes stealth without applying Reveal, that would be a much healthier anti-stealth mechanic than they have been using thus far.

Transfusion on Reaper actually has 3 more ticks and the pull range is is the same regardless. The heal radius is smaller, though.

But folks are probably right in that Curses might be a better fit than either Spite or Soul Reaping for support Reaper builds.

Scrapper, in this case, has a wonderful double-meaning, both of which fit the specialization.

I’d say it’s a perfect name choice.

You might actually find that Blood/Reaper works out (pick Spite or Soul Reaping, Spite for better Blighter’s Boon synergy, Soul Reaping for Vital Persistance and crit rate), mainly due to the insanity that is a Reaper Transfusion (8364 total AoE heal with Cleric’s amulet when the Necro is above 75% health, Runes and sigils not accounted for).

It would be a weird build, but consider also running Ritual of Life. One of your allies goes down in a 3vX teamfight, you jump into Reaper’s Shroud and start the Transfusion. Transfusion does actually proc the Well of Blood on Ritual of Life, so now you add in an AoE 4100 heal on top of the 8364. But, Well of Blood being a Light Field and Soul Spiral being a Whirl Finisher means you are also throwing out tons of condition cleanse while this is going on.

40 second cooldown on the well, but that’s basically a reset for your team. I would not suggest running support Reaper without an organized team, though. Don’t forget Runes of the Trooper for high group condi cleanse in teamfights.

Ranger in general needs a proper Teamfight presence, which they will hopefully get with Druid. Sorry, but Entangle isn’t enough.

The change to Gravedigger from BWE1 to BWE2? Word for word what I suggested.

Robert Gee does a fantastic job with responding to feedback and suggestions. I would say I want him to do all Necro elite specs in the future, but really, every profession could do with having some Geelief things can be better, so I don’t want to seem greedy.

Potential boss fight concept:

Boss is a melee fighter with rapid,smaller hits, but still puts out good DPS. Boss also has a skill where he leaps to an area and pulls everyone within 600 range in with an undodgable shockwave. AI is set to use this attack on the largest concentration of players, but won’t use it if most players are already in melee range.

So, now we have a fight that Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize would be really handy in. However, they do not win you the fight as the boss will get most players into melee range anyway. Strong Weakness uptime is also valuable to mitigate the rapid hits. Because the pull is a disable, stunbreaks and stability become helpful to perhaps allow players to maintain the kiting.

Very simple idea that shows an importance on debuffs, but that is not the only way the fight can be won. You could instead kite with Swiftness (guess what, this will happen to any melee boss, regardless of how break bars work) and could potentially even melee the boss with good Toughness and Protection. Also, due to rapid hits, Retaliation is actually helpful.

But this choice for break bars negates half the options right off the bat.

Gerikstoof.9563:

You might run into a little bit of difficulty if you were not around during Living Story Season 1. Since a lot happened during season 1 and also a lot of characters were introduced back then and I imagine you can feel a bit overwhelmed if you don’t know what happened during season 1.
Still, you can probably find what happened story-wise in season 1 on the wiki (or fan sites) if you are interested in the story.

There is actually a Priory member in Lion’s Arch that has a Season 1 recap.

wolfyrik.2017:

Matt Stacey.7415:

With all the feedback on reaper it’s possible necromancer could really turn a new leaf with HoT. It’s widely regarded as the “worst” class in game, and even “useless in dungeons.” Between the flack necro gets for “cheesy” PvP or lack of utility in organized groups, it can almost be a bit discouraging to play. I think because of this ANet is going to be taking all the necro feedback a bit more seriously this time around. The way Robert talks about necromancer makes it seem he genuinely cares about making this class well rounded

Consume Conditions and Plague suggest otherwise. Change for the sake of change without any thought whatsover to outcome, is not encouraging. Let’s not forget that Robert is the master behind;

“hey, slow powerful hits and not being able to catch up to people are what make monsters scary right, how about we tweak it slightly and make it even better! It can have slow weak hits with long cast times that are easily interrupted in a game where active defences are key to survival! Oh and lets still not any form of active defence, because what class would need active defence in a game where active defence is key to survival?”

Makes me think you didn’t try Reaper yourself. It actually works well, even with those slow cast times. Heck of a menace in teamfights .

hennrick.4623:

if ICD is out of discussion, what about making it scale with cast speed? sure, there are utilities that might skew that a bit but shiuld be still farr less skewed compared to live.

Could be even worse. Take a look at Grasping Dead compared to Well of Suffering. Well of Suffering not only casts faster, but also hits five times as much. Or compare Volley (Warrior Rifle 3) to Rapid Fire. Same cast time, but Rapid Fire has 3 additional strikes. Plus, how would Quickness and Slow factor in?

An ICD on Vampiric Presence makes more sense than one on Vampiric, don’t get me wrong, but realistically speaking, the only thing that needs to happen is that it gets balanced around average situations rather than the perfect one.

Shockwave.1230:

Regarding the recent blog post about the Mordrem Guard, is there an explanation as to why Scarlet Briar’s appeance didn’t change to be that of a Mordrem Guard?

Is it that she, had some end game besides having Mordremoth as a master? If so, is this something that will be answered in the HoT story?

Mordremoth hadn’t awakened yet and probably couldn’t initiate that change.