Guild Wars 2

War Mourner.5168:

KashimKudal.2961:

So for instance. If you were to take that example into a 5m dungeon coupling it with Plague Signet . This literally means that every 10s you’ll receive a potential x15 (1 condition from every party member every 3s – 5 potential condition every 3s) conditions from your party with it totaling 150% OF YOUR LIFE FORCE alone IF you were in KS without the Unholy Martyr passive procs-with it this means you’ll total a MASSIVE 180% gain in Life Force. In my opinion, with the newly reworked Blood Magic offer vampiric aura (We don’t know how it’ll work yet exactly) with the ability to take x6 condtions every 3s while in KS (Knight Shroud) with the new Unholy Martyr trait will mean you literally might be able to out “heal” the damage the conditions might be doing to you from PvE,Fractal instances. While all along applying tons of vuln and crowd control for your party to actually DPS while doing tons of damage yourself. Is this not supportive enough for ANY PvE content. It literally matches the extreme condition cleanse of Mesmers traited Mantra of Recovery. Btw all of this could be done in DPS armor, if you were to place this Reaper in ANY sort of tank PVT armor. He’d literally be able to tank most if not all boss fights in the game without dodging in PvE/Fractals instances I suspect.

What are you even talking about? Signets don’t work in DS, and plague signet only pulls one condition per 3s, unless it has changed recently.

The buff to unholy martyr is quite significant though.

The passive of signets still work in DS. As far as Plague Signet- I suppose it’d have to be confirmed or I’ll simply test it in PvE today. Even if it only pulls 1 every 3s that’s still quite abit of LF sustain along with Unholy Martyr and AA. Either way it’d be a nice part of a build.

@WhiteCrow I agree, a good necro is hard to stop. A good Reaper will be pretty hard to escape or skill even.

Roe.3679:

I’m more concerned that a lot of this will be nerfed. There are some very, very strong combos right now. Which I think is needed, and we’ve always needed, but some of these traits and skills will be incredible in the right circumstances/with the right team/in the hands of the right player.

I agree with Roe. With some of the insane concept builds coming to life the Reaper will be devastating. Teleports on a Reaper don’t make sense conceptually speaking as it wouldn’t fit into the theme Reapers have been given which is I might be slower GS wise and lose range from DS shifting to KS (Knight Shroud or Reaper Shoud) but eventually (any good Necromancer able to setup and adjust to fluid combat) will catch his prey with the amount of chill the spec has to offer along with the abilities from other weapon sets. As for group play if you want condi removal equip Trooper runes and they will condi clear on your shouts. Or, another lesser known option is Unholy Martyr which will periodically remove 1 condition every 3 secs from 1 party member at a time. However concept wise, every 9 seconds you’d remove 3 condi’s. When compared to a skill like Mantra of Resolve that has a 20 second recharge it can AOE cleanse 4 condi every 20 seconds. Or with the rework traits coming to Mesmer’s core line the skill Mantra of Recovery coupled with the new Mender’s Purity trait which will make the actual channel heal as well as the two casts heal for upwards of easily 6k+ to you with a 10s CD removing 6 conditions from 5 members around you. This is alot of condi removal for PvE,PvP, or WvW for your party while giving healing to your party. This is an EXTREME case of condi removal and group play. Unholy Martyr will only remove 3 every 10 seconds which is on par with the Warriors Burst ability clearing 3 conditions. It only scales the longer you’re in KS which with the newly reworked Unholy Martyr recovers 10% of your LIFE FORCE per condition it receives. Meaning you will recover 30% of your LF every 10 seconds just sitting in it without even attacking with the AA. This will allow you to almost stay in KS, and knowing that health siphoning abilities will work through the new KS it means you could effectively flip your actual health bar into your second health bar IF you needed to recover LF if you took on to many conditions yourself in which Consume Conditions becomes a much better heal don’t you think? Reaper doesn’t need saving-maybe some small tweaking but not saving. Btw I made this up small part of a build below in less than 5mins overlooking the new traits with Reaper builds. Imagine the possibilities after finding out the builds that aren’t discovered yet?

So for instance. If you were to take that example into a 5m dungeon coupling it with Plague Signet . This literally means that every 10s you’ll receive a potential x15 (1 condition from every party member every 3s – 5 potential condition every 3s) conditions from your party with it totaling 150% OF YOUR LIFE FORCE alone IF you were in KS without the Unholy Martyr passive procs-with it this means you’ll total a MASSIVE 180% gain in Life Force. In my opinion, with the newly reworked Blood Magic offer vampiric aura (We don’t know how it’ll work yet exactly) with the ability to take x6 condtions every 3s while in KS (Knight Shroud) with the new Unholy Martyr trait will mean you literally might be able to out “heal” the damage the conditions might be doing to you from PvE,Fractal instances. While all along applying tons of vuln and crowd control for your party to actually DPS while doing tons of damage yourself. Is this not supportive enough for ANY PvE content. It literally matches the extreme condition cleanse of Mesmers traited Mantra of Recovery. Btw all of this could be done in DPS armor, if you were to place this Reaper in ANY sort of tank PVT armor. He’d literally be able to tank most if not all boss fights in the game without dodging in PvE/Fractals instances I suspect.

Also I just realized that the Suffer shout would become MUCH more useful with this build giving you three ways to clear alot of conditions if you were loaded down too much via Consume Conditions and Suffer hitting 5 players transferring 5 conditions and Plague Signet itself active ability. Tbh this might be brought to great devastation in a Condition Reaper build wearing Carrion armor in tandem with Epidemic conceptually speaking.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Sigmoid.7082:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Shiki.7148:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

Tim.6450:

you forgot terrify will always chill due to master minor trait.

Even so that’s not much chill up time in shroud.

Even with that & the number 5 your looking at around 1/5-1/4 up time.

After looking at the evidence put forward by Xaylin, The only suggestion I make is changing deaths charge so that it applies 3 seconds of chill & poison in a small AOE when it ends.

That ought to be sufficient to help keep enemies in melee range.

You also forget that you can spin to win through the cold field for even more chill.

Ya but wouldn’t you rather have a short duration chill on demand with a short CD them something on a long CD that you have to combo through ?

Cant you take chilling dark then drop the well or nightfall to get your chills. They are both persistent skills so fire ad eneter RS to stack burns on auto attack.

Im talking about access to chill while in shroud. Those require you be out of it to use them.

Unless of course they gave access to utility skills while in shroud which would be frekin fantastic and also solve this issue.

As of right now for what I see the only skill within KS to apply chill is the #5 the only other way you’d apply chill in KS is with the trait Chilling Nova – Critical hits against chilled foes cause an explosion that chill nearby foes. Cannot happen more than 3 times within 10 seconds. That or the spin to win which would also proc Chilling Nova

Honestly, I’ll take Spite and Reaper and interchange between Blood, Death and Soul Reaping as needing.

Shiki.7148:

They should simply balance it around 3 targets, so 5 will be better than normal and 1 worse than normal.

The shout already hits five people. Also we don’t know if the vocalization is called after the 2s or before(Someone Confirm). If its after then it looks like any other regular channel right? Besides applying 12s of chill to anyone is pretty strong. Keeping in mind guys the KS #5 is quite similar to the shout in some ways. So you can see it as having 3 executes if you like CTTB being longest to cast at 2 the others Gravedigger and Executioners Scythe taking 1 1/4s to cast.

Underwater DS is a life ender tbh, the projectile is so fast and it attacks much faster also we all know since its a single hit the damage modifier on it is higher I believe and it scales easily to 7-11k hits on my Necro in WvW underwater. If they made the same to land DS AA it would be a toss up between a faster ranged nuke or front-lining to Mid-lining.

Shiki.7148:

KashimKudal.2961:

Shiki.7148:

KashimKudal.2961:

Shiki.7148:

Elorna.5329:

If we’re talking SPvP here you won’t need to even go with a zerker or assassin amulet, because of 2 massive crit traits. Even with one of them, getting a celestial amulet will probably be better overall.

The thing is 100% crit doesn’t say much if your Crit-dmg is bad.

Even without the inline trait attributes a Necro should be able to reach 200% crit damage w/ 50% crit chance in the right gear with the current gear stats. This’ll rise with the gear state adjustments coming.

I wish there was a power-ferocity-healing power-gear set…

Lol, you could achieve those states too. You’d have to take Blood Magic for Blood to Power for the additional 300 healing power while below 75% health. That way you’d get PoW-Vit or Tough-Ferocity with the healing power.

Yeah but the healing power isn’t enough, at least not with current scalings… And you also need to sacrifice a more meaningful trait. But hey, maybe they’ll make life siphons scale as % of damage dealt and damage scaling with power…

A lot of people have downplayed the life siphoning effects the Necro has already. But honestly when I play my necro in a fractal I have about 2.8k power 50%crit chance running pack runes for that fury and swiftness so 70% crit chance with over 200 crit damage. I run 1-2 wells depending on if its trash mobs or a boss fight and usually Blood is Power for might with sigil of Blood in one dagger. I honestly don’t need to take 50% crit chance in DS since I crit so much but I do for wells if my health is full while I Life Blast. However, if I’m at 25-50% health. Literally all I have to do is focus #4 for regen to myself, drop my wells and use dagger #2 then auto and I’ll 100% my health from 50% or nearly to like 89% from 25%. I have literally out healed boss DPS with my build while maintaining extremely high DPS. In the ascalonian Charr fractal with all the AC fire I’ve stood in it and tanked the boss and all the siege for my party as well as other instances. All without using my heal skill.

I honestly only use my DS in a fractal to take AR damage instead of my health. With the KS accepting heals to my health it’ll make PvE content even easier for me tbh.

Nemitri.8172:

I think shroud knight is gonna overshadow (pun not intended) Death Shroud, due to the stipulation that life blasts gets better if you are under 600 range of the target, life blast also fires very sloooooowly compared to the new shroud knight auto attack, making all the old procs super awesome now, and mediocre with life blast. So I’m going to make a simple suggestion; remove the range restriction from life blast to compensate for its shortcomings to make it a meaningful choice, do I want to blast safely from range with all of its well known drawbacks, or do I go face to face and reap (ok this one was intended) the benefits of attacking faster.

Thoughts?

I think the reason why you’re sort of culled into the 600 range on the Life Blast is because the DS 5,6 are 600 range skills. This pulls you into range to use those skills anyway. Since you can cast 6 then DS AA it makes sense in this regard. IMO if they lifted the range modifier on it they’d have to also increase the ranges of 5,6 to make it have the same feel that it does now without feeling clunky. In some instances yes DS will be out shined however it will always be the original “Second Life Bar”

Rexx.1805:

I was not impressed by the Shouts at all. Why? Because they’re clearly being balanced around the “best case scenario” of hitting 5 enemies & being traited with “Augury of Death”. If we don’t meet those conditions most are very weak.

“Nothing can save you!” is the exception. It’s always good…and becomes awesome when the conditions are met.

Though what you’re saying is true. From a dev point of view to facilitate that the Reaper actually want to go into groups to fight they’d need skills that scaled with more enemies. Although for one enemy your weapon sets and KS should be more than enough I feel. But it is sort of sad that they do falter in lower number skirmishes.

Sigmoid.7082:

War Mourner.5168:

15s CD on withdraw, instantly cleanses all that chill.
The they just shadow step off and 5 seconds later are at another point.

Or they just blind chain you since all the attacks are slow as hell.

Nightfall counters blind by being aoe and putting your own blind down. Also GS #3 and RS#4 have so many hits blind wont effect them at all. Throw in a well or horn #5 and you are immune.

True they can do that but means they wasted time trying to take the point instead of being somewhere more useful. Sure they could get there fast enough but in the 10~20s they have been attempting to fight you they would have done more else where or the fight is lost by the time they arrive late. Also means they have use shadowstep or other cooldowns to drop the easily reapplied chill an dont have them for the next fight they are going to starting at a natural disadvantage and with less options.

Sig’s right you’d burn way to many CD’s trying to get away and cleanse chill as a core thief spec fighting a specialization that now wants to fight you upclose. Unless you’re going the easy cancer thief route which as soon as your chilled and caught will be a wrap. You have to engage at close range and ultimately take a damage spike. Keeping in mind that even if the GS is slow the Dagger isn’t and Dark Pact, Spinal Shivers on the focus by themselves will cause you to blow CD’s while we close in with GS or KS. That Dagger auto can still annihilate a thief nearly instantaneously. I hoped the thief specialization gives them some more versatility or magic oriented ninja stuff but with a rifle ( I assume that’s what thief is getting.) I imagine they’ll just have more ways to stealth and deal ranged burst damage then stealth to dagger for a backstab or something. Making them still just as predictable since the class by nature isn’t a brawler class but an ambush one.

Darwec.3784:

Actually, im fairly certain necros will beable to maintain high vulnerability stacks while doing max DPS with the new proposed changes. Will take some testing once it actually comes out, but with a bit of luck, yeah.

So hopefully that will put our damage inline with the newly nerfed ele. Then its a matter of: do you want an ele and fury or a necro and 25 vuln.

Granted, the meta set up for dungeons will likely become guardx2, warr, theif, other. The other will likely still be ele, but we might get close enough with damage and high vuln stacks to be an acceptable replacement.

True that’s what the meta would probably do, but at this point with the dungeons and fractals. Any competent player in his or her class wearing semi dps gear can speed run. Soon Necro will be able to heal you, take away conditions to sustain his KS and continually apply x25 stacks of vuln most likely. I’d say that’s pretty good.

War Mourner.5168:

The recharge half of this trait is trash.
In PvP on death effects are worthless, but even in PvE and (maybe) WvW, it’s still just really bad.

I mean, look at it, the base CD is only 6s.
So even in the ideal situation, you’re saving 5s at best, when the real limiting factor of the skill is how often/long you are in RS for.

If the trait buffed the skill in some other way (projectile reflect/absorb would make closing with long range classes like ranger less suicidal) it would be a lot better.

I see what your saying, but if it reflected projectiles or absorbed them. It would make ranged classes ineffective against a Reaper in his shroud. You’d simply auto attack and nullifying their ranged attacks. As far as Gravedigger recharge and its animation. Like they stated Reaper is a setup class not just a insta cast big damage. It takes knowing when to use skills to make them effective. Making an enemy blow those condi clears to get rid of chill just to blow their dodges once their out makes Gravedigger a nearly guaranteed hit and in a team fight though everyone might see it coming not everyone will be able t to escape or live through it.

If it were to stack with condition damage- all I have to say is “oh my”. There would be nothing stopping you from taking damage on fear and chill and cycling between the two while upkeeping dhummfire in KS since you’d be tanky in a carrion or dire stat armor. Indeed oh my. Fear, chill, fire, bleed…. bringing the pain.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Invictus.1503:

Aenesthesia.1697:

If only signet of vampirism was buffed tenfold, we would have the offensive support we need to be viable in pve

This exactly. When that first came out I was very excited that maybe the lifesteal build would be viable, too bad the signet’s numbers fell flat on it’s face.

I really hope to see a boost in lifesteal and shouts that spread lifesteal out will happen. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Lifesteal builds could be interesting in pvp. In pve, where damage and active defense are kings, a life steal build would either be a waste of dps (hence, unwanted) or the most op thing, if you are able to deal top damage and heal yourself on top of that.

I do just that in 40+ fractals with my Necro and am able to sustain myself without party support.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

To a group but damage..?

I assume you’re talking PvE / Fractal wise?
In both aspects a good Necro brings the reliability of being self-sufficient and sustaining (atleast I do) without the need of group buffs or help while maintaining high DPS. The Reaper would now bring Vampiric Aura, can now really use Unholy Martyr to full affect since it helps sustain KS for upkeep of now sustained high damage w/ vuln stacking and CC of mobs. If Anet delivers on the new AI reworks coming to HoT and brings some truly challenging PvE raid like gameplay requiring the control of mobs. Reaper would play an almost neccesary part in this aspect. A self-sufficient alive dps is better than a dead or constantly downed player requiring to much help in raid or high level fractals.

Shiki.7148:

KashimKudal.2961:

Shiki.7148:

Elorna.5329:

If we’re talking SPvP here you won’t need to even go with a zerker or assassin amulet, because of 2 massive crit traits. Even with one of them, getting a celestial amulet will probably be better overall.

The thing is 100% crit doesn’t say much if your Crit-dmg is bad.

Even without the inline trait attributes a Necro should be able to reach 200% crit damage w/ 50% crit chance in the right gear with the current gear stats. This’ll rise with the gear state adjustments coming.

I wish there was a power-ferocity-healing power-gear set…

Lol, you could achieve those states too. You’d have to take Blood Magic for Blood to Power for the additional 300 healing power while below 75% health. That way you’d get PoW-Vit or Tough-Ferocity with the healing power.

Oh My God.8423:

The two working together will make things very interesting indeed

Reading that made me shiver, those two working together would be absolutely debilitating to a group of people. The two going against each other would be interesting. Chronomancer does have access to chill,slow,stun, and daze with their f5. Along with their persisting phantasms that could spell disaster for most classes if not dealt with especially necromancer with its sub-par mobility

I honest like a lot of people have said already until we get the definitive product we cant say, but quote me on this- the obvious builds we see are good. It’s those funky combinations with runes that’re going to take Reaper to a new level.

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

I chose answer C: Racial elite.

Ragnar knows what he’s talking about. Human Racial Elite will be amazing with Reaper for sure. Reaper of Grenth

War Mourner.5168:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Strike
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator%27s_Arrow
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadowstep
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Roll_for_Initiative
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Powder

Good luck trying to put down a competent thief without any proper ranged abilities or good mobility.

I do it all the time in PvP or WvW Roaming. Dark Pact is a heck of a skill, adding in more chills only makes my ability to stop thieves and make them even more predictable and easier to kill. I honestly hope the thieves get a specialization that makes them more versatile, because their current game play makes them painfully predictable. Although they get more rewarded for it in PvP with normalizes stats. In WvW if a thief doesn’t surprise me and down me immediately, 9/10 I’ll instakill him.

War Mourner.5168:

GoogleBrandon.5073:

You say this, but in all honesty – how many times does for instance a Warbanner get succesfully interrupted? Even in Solo-play, not even a third of the community has a clue how to deal with it – added with either the CC from Fear Me, or just a regular Stability, suddenly the person you spent so much time on getting downed is up and running

I get you, the cast time is long for it’s effect, and I would not say no to a decrease of it – but the effect is literally huge…
Mechanically, if you are somewhat capable of using the thinkerbox, shutting down a Lich is easy as cake… The play for it is so straightforward, it creates no oppertunity like Chilled to the Bone does. Will you be able to cast it if you randomly start charging it within a teamfight? Probably not, Warbanners get interrupted the same way – but with some minor coordination (stability is somewhat more accesible now), you can easily pull of something this huge

Sometimes you need to look at it from the perspective of Teamplay – and I tell you, this elite screams “Teamplay” way more than any other elite that the Necromancer profession currently has… Lich has to be played around with, Plague is potent, but makes you very much a sitting duck aside from plague ressing – and this one is an opener, an oppertunity for the whole team to strike down, which leads to interesting play rather than “Heal the Lich while he spams 1”

Again, Cooldown Reduction? Fine by me, but the elite, in my very humble opinion, is really interesting, and really underappreciated

The difference is banner’s effect is allies.

With the shout, after effectively stunning yourself for 2s, even if you’ve got stability (which is enough 90% of the time for a warrior to use banner), a single blind will cause the skill to miss. A stack of aegis, say from courage’s active, an evade or a dodge – all these things render the skill completely useless.

With the warbanner, they only thing stopping that from working is CC, which stability cover, or killing the guy in like 2 seconds.

Literally every thief in pvp, when they see a necro using the shout will just (assuming the necro has stab) simply use blackpowder.
Hell, they don’t even have to drop the field on us, just the actual projectile is enough to make the skill fail, since the only way we have to cleanse a blind that wouldn’t interrupt the cast, is that minion trait.

I see what you guys are saying, but isn’t this true for any hard hitting skill with a cast time. Even with skills that are instant if you know the animation cues its easy to dodge or counter. CTTB seems very much a situational skill that when applied correctly will reek havoc and provide you with some good benefits. Also we don’t know how well this scales with power/ might stacks. This might be one absolutely scary executioner move on mid-light armor classes. So if that’s the case, let them have a chance to run or evade or blind or what have you. IMO it seems like CTTB rewards players who make tactful decisions in combat. I wouldn’t see using it as an opener, I’d simply bait out their dodges chill fear and use it then.

Hmm, honestly I don’t really have that hard a problem with thieves since they’re so predictable. The axe #3 is an aoe that lets you know if they’re within the area or approaching and you can simply lure them in to use their Basilisk Venom. Pop Spectral armor go into KS and let them regen your life force as you hunt them down lol. Chill is a horrible condi to have on a thief over and over.

I like the sound of a Reaper and Chronomancer dueling since I love both classes aspects so far. If a Chronomancer sets up that f5 properly though or uses the phantasms that apply slow to a Reaper GS which is already slowed down. Those actions and attacks will be telegraphed for days.

phys.7689:

KashimKudal.2961:

phys.7689:

KashimKudal.2961:

With all of the damage potential of the GS and KS (Knight Shroud) I feel that having revved up damage on the shouts also would make the Reaper too much of a power house. Most theory crafters and build makers have pin pointed a lot of insanely hardcore specs already (I know I’ve found at least 6 so far). High damage shouts would be adding something the Necro already has in wells with the same CD’s relatively speaking – Keeping in mind that all Necro wells are dark fields and with the subsequent Whirl Finishers you have equal lots of leeching bolts each healing around 170per (Robert did say that all Siphon effects would heal through KS maybe leeching will be considered a siphon effect?-Someone Confirm). So I understand the devs reasons for making them a true utility and not the source of damage themselves. Personally I like “Nothing Can Save You” and “Chilled to the Bone”. NCSU is an instant damage increase in any team or WvW skirmish fight ripping boons for conditions. This is amplified if you’re going focus offhand for even more boon stripping – Keeping in mind that Reaper’s Touch bounces x4 giving x4 of Vuln per hit on target and Regen to yourself if you’re close (Which you should be since you’re a Reaper) This alone sets you up for some big damage spikes. CTTB, offers a big shot of damage with soft and hard CC’s whilst giving resistance. For those looking for an instacast hay-maker this skill isn’t for you because of the 2s setup, but for those who’re able to accurately predict enemy movements and judge distances (I.E staying within a 2s cast time of the skill to connect) will have no problem using such a versatile skill. Don’t get me wrong though, Lich and Plague won’t lose their place but for Necros who truly master CTTB it will be devastating when used in the correct scenario( Plus you won’t be a huge Lich catching all the aggro!)

On a side note. I’m a human Necro and have always loved Reaper of Grenth although it saw no love from others apparently. With the new trait reworks in place chilling a foe will inflict x5 Vuln. In RoG this Elite hits x10 targets pulsing every 3s in a 240 radius over 15s. This elite can be activated before entering DS. There is also another trait that pulses Vuln every 3s while in DS. Essentially when you start you will definitely be throwing insane amounts of damage out. This is just with a few traits and ONE skill. I explain this because I thought of this in about 1 minute while watching the stream lol. If a Reaper can do this, why would we need high damage shouts? IMO – We wouldnt.

the shouts dont need insane dps, they need to be on par with other utilities that provide similar benefits.
most are not.

I do agree that some are not on par with others of similar effect, but when coupled with the sheer magnitude of now Mid and short range burst damage and CC support of a Necro – having all of them be on par would probably slide them more into an overpowered state IMO.

a utility that is similar but weaker is just a utility people dont use. what you say might make sense if you had to use shouts, but you dont.

If they arent good, people just dont take them, which makes them kind of a waste

That’s true, and I hate to say it but there will always be lesser used utilities or none at all. Until someone discovers a nice way to combine them. I see your point though and hopefully in balancing they’ll become more effect in their utility and CD sense.

Shiki.7148:

Elorna.5329:

If we’re talking SPvP here you won’t need to even go with a zerker or assassin amulet, because of 2 massive crit traits. Even with one of them, getting a celestial amulet will probably be better overall.

The thing is 100% crit doesn’t say much if your Crit-dmg is bad.

Even without the inline trait attributes a Necro should be able to reach 200% crit damage w/ 50% crit chance in the right gear with the current gear stats. This’ll rise with the gear state adjustments coming.

Axelwarrior.9084:

If we had gotten shouts inspired by GW1’s orders instead of underwhelming offensive ones, I would be satisfied

With all of the damage potential the GS and KS has with its new trait reworks from the core necromancer class; If they gave the shouts any sort of real damage it would be too powerful to say the least. It would be counter intuitive to the Reapers “Slow and steady…but I’ll get you” hay-maker theme. If the shouts busted for insta or even semi casted DPS with some of the builds currently floating around it would spell sheer dread for the other classes in melee range. Also we don’t know how well they scale with power since we don’t know the armor he wore for the spotlight for Reaper. Since honestly hitting someone with x10+ stacks of vuln with a shout that scaled to 700~900+ damage on it with any sort of might with the attack power of a high damage PvE or WvW Necro would hit pretty kitten crit.

phys.7689:

KashimKudal.2961:

With all of the damage potential of the GS and KS (Knight Shroud) I feel that having revved up damage on the shouts also would make the Reaper too much of a power house. Most theory crafters and build makers have pin pointed a lot of insanely hardcore specs already (I know I’ve found at least 6 so far). High damage shouts would be adding something the Necro already has in wells with the same CD’s relatively speaking – Keeping in mind that all Necro wells are dark fields and with the subsequent Whirl Finishers you have equal lots of leeching bolts each healing around 170per (Robert did say that all Siphon effects would heal through KS maybe leeching will be considered a siphon effect?-Someone Confirm). So I understand the devs reasons for making them a true utility and not the source of damage themselves. Personally I like “Nothing Can Save You” and “Chilled to the Bone”. NCSU is an instant damage increase in any team or WvW skirmish fight ripping boons for conditions. This is amplified if you’re going focus offhand for even more boon stripping – Keeping in mind that Reaper’s Touch bounces x4 giving x4 of Vuln per hit on target and Regen to yourself if you’re close (Which you should be since you’re a Reaper) This alone sets you up for some big damage spikes. CTTB, offers a big shot of damage with soft and hard CC’s whilst giving resistance. For those looking for an instacast hay-maker this skill isn’t for you because of the 2s setup, but for those who’re able to accurately predict enemy movements and judge distances (I.E staying within a 2s cast time of the skill to connect) will have no problem using such a versatile skill. Don’t get me wrong though, Lich and Plague won’t lose their place but for Necros who truly master CTTB it will be devastating when used in the correct scenario( Plus you won’t be a huge Lich catching all the aggro!)

On a side note. I’m a human Necro and have always loved Reaper of Grenth although it saw no love from others apparently. With the new trait reworks in place chilling a foe will inflict x5 Vuln. In RoG this Elite hits x10 targets pulsing every 3s in a 240 radius over 15s. This elite can be activated before entering DS. There is also another trait that pulses Vuln every 3s while in DS. Essentially when you start you will definitely be throwing insane amounts of damage out. This is just with a few traits and ONE skill. I explain this because I thought of this in about 1 minute while watching the stream lol. If a Reaper can do this, why would we need high damage shouts? IMO – We wouldnt.

the shouts dont need insane dps, they need to be on par with other utilities that provide similar benefits.
most are not.

I do agree that some are not on par with others of similar effect, but when coupled with the sheer magnitude of now Mid and short range burst damage and CC support of a Necro – having all of them be on par would probably slide them more into an overpowered state IMO.

Although some people will flame me for saying this. I see the potential for the leeching of GS in big fights. I already use a life siphon build I made for myself in fractals that does tons of dps while healing me so I don’t particularly need all the support the rest of my group does in high level fractals. Say for instance that the leeching effect of your GS persisted if you went into Knight Shroud (KS). That would be x11 hits an auto chain, if you’re a blood magic spec that turns into x22 hits- if all those hits were crits somehow that turns into x33 hits. If you were to drop ANY well which is a dark field with Vampiric Rituals this further scales. So for instance lets use WoS which lasts 6s and pulses every second hitting five targets. This well alone without crits has the potential to hit x30 along with your KS auto totaling 63 hits and of course if that well were to crit every pulse…well you see my point. This doesn’t take into account that instead of using the KS-AA (Knight Shroud Auto Attack) you could simply use KS#4 Soul Spiral which is a whirling finisher on a dark field which causes leeching bolts. So simply dropping ANY necro well before going into KS and using one skill would yield MUCH healing keeping in mind that with the new trait rework for blood magic “Blood To Power” you’ll receive an additional 300 healing power to increase all the healing you’d take since leeching bolt in some small way is effected by healing power as well. BTW if we check the tooltip for Soul Spiral if I’m interpreting it correctly is x11 hits across 5 players. 11 * 5 = 55 ( If all those are crits) it turns into 55 * 2 = 110 + (Potential WoS w/some crits) escalating that to 110 +30~60 = 140~170 hits [ This doesn’t include Vampiric Aura or Leeching Bolts][Also I’m not sure if Leeching Bolts is an on hit or piercing effect – either way that’s a lot of bolts healing for 170 per bolt.] All speculation however, but the only way that gets better is somehow using Chill on blind and Vuln on chill to really ramp up your KS #4 damage while healing.

With all of the damage potential of the GS and KS (Knight Shroud) I feel that having revved up damage on the shouts also would make the Reaper too much of a power house. Most theory crafters and build makers have pin pointed a lot of insanely hardcore specs already (I know I’ve found at least 6 so far). High damage shouts would be adding something the Necro already has in wells with the same CD’s relatively speaking – Keeping in mind that all Necro wells are dark fields and with the subsequent Whirl Finishers you have equal lots of leeching bolts each healing around 170per (Robert did say that all Siphon effects would heal through KS maybe leeching will be considered a siphon effect?-Someone Confirm). So I understand the devs reasons for making them a true utility and not the source of damage themselves. Personally I like “Nothing Can Save You” and “Chilled to the Bone”. NCSU is an instant damage increase in any team or WvW skirmish fight ripping boons for conditions. This is amplified if you’re going focus offhand for even more boon stripping – Keeping in mind that Reaper’s Touch bounces x4 giving x4 of Vuln per hit on target and Regen to yourself if you’re close (Which you should be since you’re a Reaper) This alone sets you up for some big damage spikes. CTTB, offers a big shot of damage with soft and hard CC’s whilst giving resistance. For those looking for an instacast hay-maker this skill isn’t for you because of the 2s setup, but for those who’re able to accurately predict enemy movements and judge distances (I.E staying within a 2s cast time of the skill to connect) will have no problem using such a versatile skill. Don’t get me wrong though, Lich and Plague won’t lose their place but for Necros who truly master CTTB it will be devastating when used in the correct scenario( Plus you won’t be a huge Lich catching all the aggro!)

On a side note. I’m a human Necro and have always loved Reaper of Grenth although it saw no love from others apparently. With the new trait reworks in place chilling a foe will inflict x5 Vuln. In RoG this Elite hits x10 targets pulsing every 3s in a 240 radius over 15s. This elite can be activated before entering DS. There is also another trait that pulses Vuln every 3s while in DS. Essentially when you start you will definitely be throwing insane amounts of damage out. This is just with a few traits and ONE skill. I explain this because I thought of this in about 1 minute while watching the stream lol. If a Reaper can do this, why would we need high damage shouts? IMO – We wouldnt.