Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

I actually think LC vs Terror is fine, if the rest of our profession was balanced including those two traits. LC gives you better conditions over-time (it shouldn’t give condi damage imo), it makes you a longer-term threat, whereas Terror makes you a legitimate burst-threat, something “unique” to Necro (though not atm due to terror being fairly weak).

What they should do is buff Terror so it actually allows for burst conditions, and push for that difference of LC being a more utility pickup, and Terror for burst damage.

call me crazy but I almost feel that Master of terror should be fused with Terror.

Bhawb.7408:

So the reason is because as far as the game is concerned your signets aren’t equipped while you are in DS. Its an issue of coding, probably left over from when DS was a downed state. Not exactly a “good” reason, more a holdover of bad coding decisions earlier in game design that needs to be fixed but hasn’t been.

I think we’re finally getting through to the Devs actually. I’m starting to get a bit hopeful though i don’t see them directly addressing many of our other issues for at least half a year after the release of HoT. The reason I say half a year because this is when I expect them to release new Elite specializations. This is just my personal hypothesis. What might happen is the passives might trigger when we enter death shroud and eventually fade if we are in DS too long. This is what I see as the most likely as a quick fix but I don’t see this as a solution to our utility problem in DS.

Cecilia.5179:

I’m actually really excited to try condi reaper. I assume the best trait options would be to run standard terrormancer in curses, Master of Terror and Dhuumfire in Soul Reaping (I really wish that Vital persistence + Path of Midnight was still adept), and Chill Damage in Reaper. The AoE Fear may seem a little weaker than the single-target Death Shroud fear, but this actually allows reaper to further pressure foes who are stealthed, as well as doubling as a stability for the heavy cc builds, like hammer warrior, who can potentially wreck a necromancer, as well as applying chill and chill damage due to reaper traits. Dhuumfire on reaper shroud auto is an amazing source of damage that turns reaper shroud into an amazing source of pressure, and Reaper Shroud might have just enough power damage to break the Diamond Skin eles who will become far more common when choosing earth means picking a grandmaster for them.

Yeah its going to be really exciting. Still the 100% condition duration is really good. You see that a 2 second? 1 second? I can’t tell with the way its worded. It makes a big difference. But you can run full into the fear duration and get 150% duration fear. You sacrifice the damage from terror, sure But thats a worth while trade off in my opinion because of the up time. Also, Lingering curse in the past didn’t count toward your total 100% possible duration. So having this with master of terror should give you a 150% before runes and sigils. Throw that in and your condi duration for whatever you choose could be quite impressive. A crazy idea might be to run Runes of the Necromancer and get 170% fear duration. Not the best suggestion but its still fun to think about. I think Runes of the Nightmare will still be the best option. But I like the idea of using fear to control your foe and not as a source of damage to have long periods of locked down foes sounds like a real option to me. Making it harder for them to defend against you sounds like it could be quite viable.

I’ve even thought about a crazy idea of running Lingering curse in a power build. Which I will test because I actually like the possibility of running a more fear control build.

Shadow Dragon Ad.2409:

As for Condi Reaper running something along the lines of this will probably work out pretty well (at least on paper), lots of chill stacking and the free stability/stunbreak every 10 seconds is super strong on necro (you can also go dhuumfire if you want to be more offensive ofc). Worth noting one of the the strongest parts of any reaper build is the 15% damage reduction from chilled foes which is going to be suuuuper strong in duels and just in general in team fights with the amount of chill stacking you can do.

Obviously this is a bit of an aside but the base necro gets a pretty decent buff with the new specialisations as well when you run a more offensive orientated build (this one is terror but you can also run lingering curse). You get a free axe #3 whenever you enter deathshroud as well as the boonripping/chill from spinal shivers and a free cover condi with the vuln on chill. You also get access to the stability/dhuumfire depending on preference which has always been an issue for necro, if you went 30 points into soul reaping/spite you just missed out on too much.

Personally I feel that running Terrormancer isn’t going to be as effective as running Lingering curse with Dhuumfire. My thought is something like this http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQG6AKkBew~ or http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQG6ALkBew~ as a relentless pursuit Condimancer. Not saying your build is bad, just not what I would prefer. As for weapons I wouldn’t use Sword. I mean you could, But running scepter at all times might be the best idea. With either Focus or Warhorn as your second offhand.

Salamander.2504:

Is there a good reason the signet passive effects are disabled while in death shroud?

Welcome to the necromancer. Where synergies don’t matter and the “works as intended” is completely made up.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Lily.1935:

Once that’s fixed and encounters are designed to be played out how they were intended the Zerker meta will die naturally over time.

You got some inside info huh? How they were “intended” if it’s not a secret?

It never was a secret. Old interviews with arena net. They expressed the damage rotation of the game and how ranged and Melee dps were supposed to go down. Melee was supposed to be high risk high reward. As it stands now the wall stacking method was not intended to be a viable methods to push through content. This just wasn’t the case. How anyone can believe that intentionally abusing bad AI was how arena net intended the encounter to go is beyond me. There is zero risk when wall stacking. There is no skill, no tactics to it. Its honestly mindless game play and I’ve hated it since I was first introduced to it. It was so boring. So mindless.

Also, Arena Net is working to fix this issue. They’ve hired someone to improve the game’s AI. This isn’t just minions and pets. This includes enemy encounters.

Neox.3497:

Cyninja.2954:

Do you see zerker players complain about tanky builds being able to run through 80% of the pve game without ever having to dodge or pay attention to what is happening around them? No.

Do you see tanky players complain about zerker builds being able to run through 100% of the pve game 10 times faster? No.

Yeah, actually I do.

The only reason the zerker meta exists is because of AI abuse. The Zerker “meta” is nothing but bad for the longevity of the game. People who play berserker well should be rewarded with tactical attacks against foes. At the moment there is NO risk as a zerker. Not with corner stacking and the insane abuse of poor AI. What’s happened is players have gotten lazy and expect everything to fall into their lap.

The gear stats are not the problem. its the AI These encounters which people take advantage of. Once that’s fixed and encounters are designed to be played out how they were intended the Zerker meta will die naturally over time. And Chances are if the game progresses a few years down pugs will be telling you not to run Zerker unless you’re a specific profession rather than all professions.

I have a tone of Zerker stuff too. I put a lot of work in Zerker gear. I wont be sad If I have to change to a different stat type to be effective. Because its about enjoyment for me not a single type of gear that isn’t even that fun to run on most professions.

Khisanth.2948:

Lily.1935:

Khisanth.2948:

Looking through the list this looks like adding more junk results to the table when trying to forge major runes. They are about as appealing as a grawl slaying sigil for the same reason.

I don’t understand your comparison.

All the ones you described are situational. People don’t carry multiple different “of __ slaying” weapons around(except maybe undead) and carrying multiple armor sets around will be even less appealing. They would have to offer a lot of power for that tradeoff. Why use a rune set that increases damage with swords when I can use a rune set that increases damage with everything?

How are they situational as you put it? How is a rune set that cares about blast finishers in anyway a comparison to Grawl slaying? You can always have access to blast finishers and aoe fields. If you’re running a sword you’ll always have access to the sword. If you are using blocks on your build you’ll always have blocks.

Why run them? because they might provide you with something that other rune sets currently can’t. Giving use to unused things is a good thing. And at the moment you seem to be looking at how encounters currently go with corner might stacking which was never intended in the first place. These suggestions promote the player to use existing tools and rewarding them for doing so. Not rewarding players doing the exact same thing at all times.

The AI is being worked on and encounters are pushing away from the corner stacking abuse that has been going on for far too long. So having runes and sigils that are more dynamic in combat and function better for a longer fight will be better as time progresses. However with the options we have now its mostly just passive which doesn’t reflect the dynamic combat Arena Net are trying to execute.

So No, I don’t understand your comparison. It seems like an extremely poor thought out comparison with no insight into the future.

Druid is actually a really interesting class in something like Dungeons and Dragons. Often times they would fill the role of healer but they were not limited to that role and it really wasn’t where they shined the brightest. A few of my friends absolutely adored the class since they could do so much with it, from heavy front line brawler to back line supportive summoner/caster to healer. The Class was extremely versatile with a wide variety of roles it could play.

Druids in the Guild wars Lore were nature lovers and devout Melandru followers according to the Wiki. But I remember hearing that they were actually cured by Melandru to protect the Jungle but I could very well be mistaken. Either way their isn’t a whole lot to go off of for abilities.

If we Think about the lore then the Druids clearly would be about preservation which would be control and healing. But if we expand that idea to what we see what D&D then they could go in a very unique direction. But the ultimate conclusion of this all seriously depends on how they use their weapon, what sort of new skills they get and what their new profession mechanic will do.

My personal hopes/theory is that the Druid will be getting Glyphs that change function slightly based on the pet the have out at the time. This could fill several and massively different types of builds and play styles that could be closer to what the D&D druid was all about. The only issue is balance. It means that they’d have to balance the skills for several different pets rather than just one which might be undesirable. But it would be so cool to play with and experiment with. It would be very exciting to use and could give far more diversity among druids than any other specialization.

Best? Oh I couldn’t stand only wearing one outfit all the time.

loseridoit.2756:

Lily.1935:

loseridoit.2756:

insanemaniac.2456:

loseridoit.2756:

insanemaniac.2456:

loseridoit.2756:

Please no. I do not want this game to be anymore gear dependent than it is already is.

runes and sigils already make or break your build, especially in pvp and wvw where “merely viable” doesnt cut it at even casual levels of play. aint no one stopping you from being “merely viable” in pve though.

That what I hate for the most part. There already a limited supply of everything. Now, we just add more sigils that are highly sought after. OP is just shifting another meta. I have to say that PVP is a non issue since there is an unlimited supply.

For other things, I want other things from pve like better encounters so stats will matter less but playstyle will matter much more. I like interesting enemies from what I seem from Anet, I afraid I will never get it.

your issue is that maybe someone could control the market and make it expensive?

I am just ranting. My largest issue is that suddenly there is an item that suddenly is become necessary. It is a gear grind in disguise. Sometimes, I am ok with gear grind if it solves an in game problem. However, my issue is that these items feels like forced when it does little to address the core problems when game play such as lack of variety of pvp modes, mob ai, etc. are much larger road blockers to more viable builds than lack of gear variety.

If anything, this change will be another small meta shift and we just play like usual with minor variations.

tl:dr; why make everyone suffer through transition pain when the proposal does not really make things that interesting but have a wide impact on the game. I prefer if stats matter less and gameplay to matter much more since I would like this game to be more skill based

So your issue is exactly how runes and sigils are now?

Adding more play to runes and sigils and provided more options to diversify players isn’t a bad thing. A vast majority of players will run nothing but strength runes in PvE at all times and their price shows. A few runes have a high price tag and a few that do generally do very similar things. The same is true for Sigils.

And another note Runes and Sigils are often easiest part to get for a given set of gear you’re building. Especially if you’re building Ascended armor. So your complaint about the suggestion seems misplaced. Especially considering Arena Net has expressed a desire to make runes and sigils more interesting.

I do have an issue with how rune and sigils are now. There are a few runes and sigils that are highly sought after. I will stay that is a problem with content. Even if you change the meta. All classes will be stuck with one or two build. Nothing really changes in the end.

I do not really care if rune and sigil are the easiest part to get. It just another added annoyance. Why add do people want to increase the time that people are not playing for content for not very conservative amount of change in general

Currently Armor isn’t very diverse among Professions. Even if each used 2-3 different rune sets and sigils that catered more to them than using all the same runes and sigils that would be an improvement. At the moment runes mostly provide passive buffs with the occasional random chance trigger and trigger on healing, elite or amount of health. With Rune of the Trapper, Rune of Perplexity, Rune of Evasion, Rune of the Trooper and Rune of Resistance being the only ones that really break this mold. Sigils are even worse than that.

There isn’t really much decision making when choosing your runes and sigils. But they are still extremely important to your build and have a major impact. I’d like to see more runes that have a more unique feel to them or a more focused impact than just these universally good runes that everyone must run at all times.

Khisanth.2948:

Looking through the list this looks like adding more junk results to the table when trying to forge major runes. They are about as appealing as a grawl slaying sigil for the same reason.

I don’t understand your comparison.

loseridoit.2756:

insanemaniac.2456:

loseridoit.2756:

insanemaniac.2456:

loseridoit.2756:

Please no. I do not want this game to be anymore gear dependent than it is already is.

runes and sigils already make or break your build, especially in pvp and wvw where “merely viable” doesnt cut it at even casual levels of play. aint no one stopping you from being “merely viable” in pve though.

That what I hate for the most part. There already a limited supply of everything. Now, we just add more sigils that are highly sought after. OP is just shifting another meta. I have to say that PVP is a non issue since there is an unlimited supply.

For other things, I want other things from pve like better encounters so stats will matter less but playstyle will matter much more. I like interesting enemies from what I seem from Anet, I afraid I will never get it.

your issue is that maybe someone could control the market and make it expensive?

I am just ranting. My largest issue is that suddenly there is an item that suddenly is become necessary. It is a gear grind in disguise. Sometimes, I am ok with gear grind if it solves an in game problem. However, my issue is that these items feels like forced when it does little to address the core problems when game play such as lack of variety of pvp modes, mob ai, etc. are much larger road blockers to more viable builds than lack of gear variety.

If anything, this change will be another small meta shift and we just play like usual with minor variations.

tl:dr; why make everyone suffer through transition pain when the proposal does not really make things that interesting but have a wide impact on the game. I prefer if stats matter less and gameplay to matter much more since I would like this game to be more skill based

So your issue is exactly how runes and sigils are now?

Adding more play to runes and sigils and provided more options to diversify players isn’t a bad thing. A vast majority of players will run nothing but strength runes in PvE at all times and their price shows. A few runes have a high price tag and a few that do generally do very similar things. The same is true for Sigils.

And another note Runes and Sigils are often easiest part to get for a given set of gear you’re building. Especially if you’re building Ascended armor. So your complaint about the suggestion seems misplaced. Especially considering Arena Net has expressed a desire to make runes and sigils more interesting.

The Wizland.8435:

I like your suggestions. Personally I think a #6 skill in DS would be a good solution. For example, here’s something I thought of off the top of my head.
Enveloping Shroud: Channeled skill. 1/4 sec Cast Time, 20 sec CD
When channeled, increase LF degen to 8% per second, but gain invulnerability while doing so. This would give 12.5 seconds of invulnerability if used from 100% LF.
The cool down and cast time force you to intelligently use it (don’t pop it for minor attacks, use it for large bursts or when focused). The CD is much lower than other invulnerability skills to make up for the increased LF degen, but you’ll lose much less LF if you use it at the right time.

For Reaper it could be…
Leeching Shroud: 1/2 sec Cast Time, 40(?) CD.
Gain 20% damage reduction for each enemy within 600 units, for 3(?) seconds.
This would encourage getting enemies close to you, force enemies to play smart, and give good damage reduction if used well. At 20% per enemy, that’d be 100% for 5 enemies. Even with only 2 you still have pretty good damage reduction (40%). This would obviously be countered by switching to range weaponry. Unlike the first skill, this is not channeled, meaning you can continue to use skills for the duration of it.

I don’t know whether the CD and/or duration are unbalanced for these. Anyways, it’s more about the concept than the exact numbers.

I’d honestly rather have access to our utility skills than to add more skills to the death shroud bar. Which would include our heal but I feel the heal’s active shouldn’t work in DS. But that’s a different topic all together.

But thanks.

its not as big of a deal as you might think. I’m a bit tired so I’m not going to go into it too much at the moment. But just to start us off we’ll have some pretty solid support from allies who care more about applies boons than raw healing.

Bhawb.7408:

Lily.1935:

And quite frankly there really isn’t a way it could.

There absolutely is, scaling LF generation. Hypothetical situation: if all of our LF generation abilities gained X% per target hit, they would scale linearly with how large the fight was, and accordingly how “dangerous” the situation was. This means you might gain 1% LF per hit 1v1, but Xv5, you gain 5% LF per hit, scaling up evenly with the number of enemies that can hurt you. This works with ICDs so long as they are per-attacker instead of global, and works on all multi-hit abilities, and even could work on traits like Soul Marks. This isn’t the entire picture, as we’d still need better counter-CC options in order to reliably keep up our offensive-defense, and we’d still need at least a few abilities that reflect/block/invuln in order to work in PvE and give us those chances to apply our “defense” even while being trained down.

There is nothing that actually stops our current mechanics from scaling except ANet’s fetish with ICDs and non-scaling LF generation, and lack of a few “necro” styled more traditional defensive options.

Right. Sorry, I’m a bit tired its late for me. Also, doesn’t change the core suggestions I’m making here.

One of the biggest complaints about the necromancer is its inability to deal with focus fire and poor ability to escape or pursue an enemy. Personally, I wouldn’t mind this so much as other people do if we had a few more options for defense. Death Shroud (And by extension reaper’s shroud) is supposed to make up for all the other defensive abilities other professions have in the game. Most of our defensive game play comes from us being aggressive. Which is again, something I don’t personally mind. Weakness, blindness along with soft cc abilities are what make up the majority of our defense outside of Death shroud. The issue with this is that its far more difficult to applies these debuffs when fighting multiple foes. And Death shroud itself doesn’t scale up the more foes you fight. And quite frankly there really isn’t a way it could.

It honestly doesn’t matter how you spin it the necromancer really does need access to some form of scaling defense. easy access to resistance would be an excellent start but I feel it wouldn’t quite be enough. Giving the necromancer that along with a single Projectile block skill could easily push them from being useless in something like PvE to an actual desire profession.

So my Suggestion here would be to have the toxic landing trait also grant Resistance to you and your allies. Currently, the trait is pretty bad. And even with the corruption reduction its not something people are going to want to take. Giving us a way to grant resistance to ourselves and allies could go along way.

In that same Idea. One skill that I’ve always personally liked but felt it was a bit underwhelming was Corrosive poison cloud. A suggestion I heard awhile ago was to have it destroy projectiles. Which could make the skill extremely good. With it comboing with the Toxic landing suggestion you could provide resistance to allies along with protecting them by triggering it, giving some more defensive play to the necromancer which they normally don’t have.

And last, since I’m kinda scatterbrain at the moment, Would be Death’s charge. When I first saw this skill the first question that popped into my head was “Does this block projectiles?” and I was a bit confused when it was revealed to not have this function because of how it looked along with its rather short range. Personally, I think it should block projectiles to add to the necromancer’s defensive and proactive game play.

Would these suggestions be too much? I honestly highly doubt it. Health is no substitute for active defense. And the necromancer is in some desperate need of scaling defenses.

Huh.. Yeah, I’d suggest finding another server. I’ve never had those problems. People are generally rather friendly. I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such a hard time. I’ve left a few guilds that were unfriendly and disrespectful but that was isolated. Map Chat in LA can be kinda trolly though. Sometimes they’re actually helpful to people. So Its a bit of both there.

Tissitra.4153:

OK so first of all the trait ‘chilling victory’ does not exist. I guess you mean chilling force.

Power necro has more sustain than terrormancer right now. Here is why it will be the same with reaper:

1. LF generation on scepter and offhand dagger very low compared to what power necros have.

2. Picking up terror locks you out of lingering curse -> you have to take master of terror -> you cannot take vital persistance (which obvously every power necro runs).

3. You can no longer pick up reaper’s precision since that would lock you out of path of corruption.

4. Most power reapers will be running blighter’s boon since the alternative reaper’s onslaught is subpar anyway (at least as it is now). On condi however picking up blighter’s boon would mean losing condition damage from chill.

Basically, you can pick up more sustain on condi only by losing a lot of your potential damage, whereas power hardly has to make that choice. It will be the same in that respect as what it is now.

Thanks for the correction in that. I was thinking of a GW1 skills.

Anyway you seem to be missing a big point. Which is you do have the sustain options if you want them. I never said it was optimal or didn’t lock you out of something. Chilling Force does provide life force for the condi build which will have just as much access to chill as a power build. And power builds are going to look very different than what you might perceive at this time since Valkyrie will be a real option players might choose. Though Berserker isn’t out of the question. A player who chooses Valkyrie for example wont be taking blood magic, death magic or Chilling Force. They’ll be valn stacking to maximize their damage while being pretty tanky. How much Sustain one has over the other is yet to be seen. At the moment, yeah you could say that power has greater life force generation than Condi does.

But quite frankly. I have no idea why you’re comparing condi and power when I was comparing the pros and cons of Condi necro to condi reaper to express that it has potential.

Sigil Suggestion:

• Different types of Charge Sigils: At the moment charge sigils are kinda frustrating to use and can quickly become useless if you go down. They’re not very fun to use. So this suggestion is to have Charge sigils that can be charged in combat without involving deaths. Much like the Rune suggestion above only the difference between these and those would be these would charge based on your proactive gameplay rather then reactive gameplay. So landing a crit could charge it. Or interrupting a foe, knocking them down. Maybe leaping toward a foe adds a charge depending on the sigil. Each of them could have a minor pay off or a big pay off depending on the difficulty of the action that its asking you to do. Their charge number shouldn’t be super high either like the on death sigils. So 5 to 15 charges at most should be enough to make these rather interesting. So maybe you have a sigil that causes an AoE daze. So lets say you need to Interrupt a several skills in order for it to trigger. This could make for interesting game play that players have to think bout how they land their skills.

• Skill Sigils: These sigils could trigger when using a specific type of weapon skill. I touched on the idea above. Such as triggering on interrupts but also triggering when executing a leap with a weapon or a pull. So perhaps you have a sigil that grants you a lightning aura when you execute a leap. Something along those lines in order to really make you think about how you use your skills.

As always, these are just suggestions. Any ideas here are not complete and are intended to simple give you an idea of how they might work. Please leave a comment and leave your own suggestions on what you might like to see on runes and sigils. I look forward to hearing from you all.

Runes and sigils are some of my favorite aspects of build making. I absolutely love seeing what I can do and how I can modify my build with runes and sigils. More so runes than sigils since they have a wider range of what they can do. But at the same time I feel that Both of them are really lacking in what they can and can’t do. Most the time you’ll end up having to run something like Runes of Strength or sigil of force because that’s whats best for your build. And I find those runes to be rather boring. I much prefer runes like Rune of the Pirate that have a bit of flavor to them. Or Runes of Perplexity that can actually change the way you might use some skills or engage in combat. I’d very much like to see more diversity in these so I’m going to make a few suggestions for runes and Sigils that could open up a new way to use them.

Rune suggestion:

• Charge runes: Charge runes are an idea that I had where it would gain a charge much like the on death sigils. But rather then gaining a charge when something dies you could gain a charge when using a specific skill, dodging, blocking or being struck. These runes would have the basic buffs we come to know and love that are common among runes but would have an effect that goes off when its fully charged. So for example maybe once you’ve been struck 10 times while in a fight the charge resets and grants protection to you and adjacent allies for a few seconds.

• Combo Runes: This idea was one I’ve had for a long time and I still like it. The elementalist has a trait that grants fury when they blast in a fire field. I rather like this idea and feel it would fit right at home with rune sets as well. So it could combo with projectiles, whirls, blasts or leaps to add an effect to fields that might otherwise be under appreciated in the game or under used. One example might be using a blast finisher on a poison field might cause a combustion effect that burns and damages foes.

• Mastery Runes: These runes would function a bit differently than something like rune of strength but still be fairly simple. Mastery Runes are a type of rune set that care about the specific weapon the user is wielding at the time. So lets say you’re wielding a sword. The Mastery Runes might improve that weapon in some way. Like perhaps you get a 5% damage bonus while wielding a sword and sword skills have a chance to grant some sort of boon. This type of rune could reward players for using specific weapons and really make them feel like “I am a sword master” or “I am a axe master” to really help flesh out their play style.

• Skill Runes: These runes already exist in the game, but are few and far between. I’d like to see more Skill runes with greater impact on the players build. So for example maybe they reduce the cool down of that type of skill or give minor improvements to its effectiveness. Really play more into the build. So maybe a Rune set that increases the duration of Wells by one second or something along those lines.

• Summoner Runes: This one is a bit more specific than the other ones. But I feel like it should be mentioned. This category of runes wouldn’t just care about one skill type but rather would impact skills or other effects that might Summon allies to aid you. So Rather than buffing your damage like Runes of the ranger these type of runes might buff the damage of your summons. Which would include minions, Elementals, Spirit weapons, spirits(if we ever get attacking spirits), turrets and whatever else you might summon. The effects could very greatly from set to set, such as increased health or combine with other ideas I had like adding a charge to it when you summon or one of your creatures dies.

Tissitra.4153:

Lily.1935:

Tissitra.4153:

Lily.1935:

When you compare it with the base Necromancer they get torment, terror, dark path’s bleed, Dhuumfire and of course barbed precision. So each of them can inflict the same number of Damage conditions as the other. But the disadvantage of the Core necromancer is how slow it is on activation. It has some range advantage on reaper which will always be a factor. But its raw condition damage potential is far lower. Especially when we take dhuumfire into consideration.

Life blast is slow. I mean, really really slow. It has a 1 second cast time and an after cast delay. The life rend cycle is much quicker in comparison. at 1/2 a second cast time per strike and the last strike hitting 5 targets, it has the potential of applying 3 stacks of burning by the time life blast is ready to strike its second time. This also means that barbed precision has more chances to trigger as well, thus higher damage from that as well.

One major thing that you are I believe neglecting here: reaper shroud not only has a lot less condi application than death shroud, it is also all melee. You can neither interrupt/cc someone with fear from range in rs, nor do you have the teleport from dark path (the movement skill that replaces ist is not much better than just running with swiftness). Given how most high burst classes do their burst up close, I think what you should really ever want to do on a condi necro (or any condi class in this game) is kite. RS is really bad here.

Picking up chill damage also means losing the sustain from blighter’s boon. So the fact that condition builds have far less sustain than power builds will still remains valid. Even if one cannot know now precisely how condi reaper will compare to current terromancer, I am fairly sure that if everything will be as we know so far then it will at least be far inferior to power reaper.

Not really. Looking at it as it stands the reaper gets a 15% damage reduction against chilled foes. And since they can combo to get frost armor and have very easy access to child this will make even a full glass reaper have close to the same damage reduction as a full Rabid necro. And if you run rabid you’re looking at about a 31% damage reduction without protection. Combine that with Spectral armor and you’ll have a 64% damage reduction combine with our natural high health along with the addition of that 15% death shroud boost Soul reaping will give us. Overall, we’ll be pretty tough to kill and we can become even tougher then that, but for a rather controlly condi type build it’ll be quite threatening. Especially in WvW. PvP we struggle allot as is. We might have to see quite a few changes there before we can determine how good it will be. I’m not entirely sure myself since we don’t have the full information. But from what I see at the moment there is absolutely no reason to think that a condi reaper wont be just as effective as condi necro if not more effective.

Hmmmm? How does any of that refute the point that condi reaper will have less sustain than power reaper? You still have a lot less LF generation AND you will not be able to spec into blighter’s boon if you want to pick up condi damage with chill.

Actually, necro on paper already is one of the tankiest classes: by default you get 50% damage reduction in death shroud to which you will obviously add some toughness if you run rabid. However, damage reduction is NOT sustain. Especailly if you are constantly focus fired because people know that you have no way to disengage.

And concerning your last point: terrormancer is mostly unviable in group play right now. So condi reaper being just as good is hardly something positive…

Actually they do. Running With chilling Victory they still get the life force from that plus might. So we have that. And I never said you absolutely had to run Deathly Chills. its an opinion and depending on its damage I might just run blighter’s boon anyway. The sustain is about even and it really depends on how much boon removal you want to take. Since you can take reaper’s precision if that is your desire. And Power can go pure DPS and run reaper’s onslaught which is more comparable to Deathly chills. So its not like Blighter’s boon isn’t an option for one build and is an option for the other. Both will need to make the choice between more damage or greater sustain.

Lynnie.7213:

Lily.1935:

Lynnie.7213:

I agree with you in some points. Condi reaper has a high potential on paper and i am looking foward try it out when beta comes. I think it has same potential or even higher than the traditional terrormancer. Perma chill + burning, can definitely cover for terror damage. But gotta wait and see …

You can still run terror if that’s your cup of tea. Personally, the 100% condition duration is going to be needed for a condi build and is just too good to pass up. At least in PvE. Hard to say about PvP. But considering Terrormancer is pretty lacking at the moment we’ll have to see how that turns out.

Yeah, like you said, the 100% condi duration trait is too good to pass. I’ll give up on terror and go for that trait. Chill and burning damage will surely make up for terror damage, easily.

thats what I’m hoping. Terror really needs to be more burst while Lingering curse needs to be more sustain. At the moment, terror is a bit weak to be a grand master and considering how good Lingering curse will be I think its sustain will out do terror in the short run and long run of the fight.

Don’t confuse good with broken though. Lingering Curse isn’t at all broken. In fact I think it need to be buffed slightly. And By slightly I mean I’ll make the argument I’ve made a couple years ago. It should effect conditions while wielding a scepter OR trident. other than that its great. Keep it as is and we’ll be happy.

Tissitra.4153:

Lily.1935:

When you compare it with the base Necromancer they get torment, terror, dark path’s bleed, Dhuumfire and of course barbed precision. So each of them can inflict the same number of Damage conditions as the other. But the disadvantage of the Core necromancer is how slow it is on activation. It has some range advantage on reaper which will always be a factor. But its raw condition damage potential is far lower. Especially when we take dhuumfire into consideration.

Life blast is slow. I mean, really really slow. It has a 1 second cast time and an after cast delay. The life rend cycle is much quicker in comparison. at 1/2 a second cast time per strike and the last strike hitting 5 targets, it has the potential of applying 3 stacks of burning by the time life blast is ready to strike its second time. This also means that barbed precision has more chances to trigger as well, thus higher damage from that as well.

One major thing that you are I believe neglecting here: reaper shroud not only has a lot less condi application than death shroud, it is also all melee. You can neither interrupt/cc someone with fear from range in rs, nor do you have the teleport from dark path (the movement skill that replaces ist is not much better than just running with swiftness). Given how most high burst classes do their burst up close, I think what you should really ever want to do on a condi necro (or any condi class in this game) is kite. RS is really bad here.

Picking up chill damage also means losing the sustain from blighter’s boon. So the fact that condition builds have far less sustain than power builds will still remains valid. Even if one cannot know now precisely how condi reaper will compare to current terromancer, I am fairly sure that if everything will be as we know so far then it will at least be far inferior to power reaper.

Not really. Looking at it as it stands the reaper gets a 15% damage reduction against chilled foes. And since they can combo to get frost armor and have very easy access to child this will make even a full glass reaper have close to the same damage reduction as a full Rabid necro. And if you run rabid you’re looking at about a 31% damage reduction without protection. Combine that with Spectral armor and you’ll have a 64% damage reduction combine with our natural high health along with the addition of that 15% death shroud boost Soul reaping will give us. Overall, we’ll be pretty tough to kill and we can become even tougher then that, but for a rather controlly condi type build it’ll be quite threatening. Especially in WvW. PvP we struggle allot as is. We might have to see quite a few changes there before we can determine how good it will be. I’m not entirely sure myself since we don’t have the full information. But from what I see at the moment there is absolutely no reason to think that a condi reaper wont be just as effective as condi necro if not more effective.

Lynnie.7213:

I agree with you in some points. Condi reaper has a high potential on paper and i am looking foward try it out when beta comes. I think it has same potential or even higher than the traditional terrormancer. Perma chill + burning, can definitely cover for terror damage. But gotta wait and see …

You can still run terror if that’s your cup of tea. Personally, the 100% condition duration is going to be needed for a condi build and is just too good to pass up. At least in PvE. Hard to say about PvP. But considering Terrormancer is pretty lacking at the moment we’ll have to see how that turns out.

I’ve seen allot of people saying that condi reaper won’t be a thing and or wont be good. And I’d actually say otherwise. I see it having much higher potential for condition then the base necromancer. Now of course you lose out on somethings when going from death shroud to Reaper’s shroud. A terrormancer might prefer the ability to run Death shroud in order to push people off points or fear people off cliffs. And this is a legitimate reason not to run reaper. But other styles of builds might very well function far better with reaper than the core necromancer.

So lets say you trait fully to damage with conditions in Death shroud. We don’t yet know much blood magic will change so I’m just going to use what we know at this very moment to compare. So lets say you go full terrormancer. You run terror, corrupted path and weakening shroud. You can run the same traits on reaper so no real difference there. Blood might give you a boost to your dagger skills or death could give you some damage reduction, but none of them really provide a whole lot for the necromancer in terms of condi outside of Curse and Soul reaping. But soul reaping really only provides a grand total of ONE trait that directly impacts your damage with conditions without being comboed with another trait. Master of Terror doesn’t directly cause damage.

So what does that have to do with Reaper? well, first of when we look at the trait line its in the same boat as Soul reaping. It only has ONE trait that directly impacts your condition damage, Deathly Chills. But like Soul reaping it has traits to support Itself. Unlike Soul reaping you don’t need to take another trait line to benefit from the damage boost. Chilling Nova works with Deathly chills rather well as does Chilling Force giving you might and life force to further benefit your damage. It works well in a vacuum.

Although the Argument I’ve heard has mostly been about the fact it doesn’t inflict damaging conditions. Which isn’t true. The reaper’s shroud inflicts Poison, which sure is the only condition that directly deals damage while in the reaper’s shroud. But combining it with traits you suddenly have your auto, the poison, the fear and the chill all dealing damage. Not to mention the bleeds you get from barbed precision which will be triggering more often with the reaper because of the reaper’s shroud having more multiple hit attacks to trigger it.

When you compare it with the base Necromancer they get torment, terror, dark path’s bleed, Dhuumfire and of course barbed precision. So each of them can inflict the same number of Damage conditions as the other. But the disadvantage of the Core necromancer is how slow it is on activation. It has some range advantage on reaper which will always be a factor. But its raw condition damage potential is far lower. Especially when we take dhuumfire into consideration.

Life blast is slow. I mean, really really slow. It has a 1 second cast time and an after cast delay. The life rend cycle is much quicker in comparison. at 1/2 a second cast time per strike and the last strike hitting 5 targets, it has the potential of applying 3 stacks of burning by the time life blast is ready to strike its second time. This also means that barbed precision has more chances to trigger as well, thus higher damage from that as well.

I could go on and on about the comparisons. I know there are a few advantages for Condi necro over condi reaper and its hard to determine the damage output that Deathly Chills will provide as well, but even without that the damage potention for conditions is much higher then with the basic Necromancer. Some have said “Running Great Sword is a bad idea as a condi weapon” and I agree. Its a terrible condi weapon. Thats why I wont be running it. Scepter/dagger and perhaps scepter/focus. But that’s up in the air. Personally, I like the idea of Hybrid condi reaper for PvE. And I’ll be having a blast with my condi reaper with my high stacks of burning along with heavy bleed application and I’ll finally be able to go in melee as a condi spec on my necromancer. Something I’ve been longing to do for a while now.

castlemanic.3198:

Lily.1935:

This would put the revenant at 4 heals, 4 elites and 12 utility skills at the base profession if the 5th is indeed a specialization. Which puts them at a staggeringly low amount of skills in comparison to any other profession. Although this does make me think that each legend WOULD have 5 utility skills each as it would put them at 20 skills in total. Which is much better, but skill types are also rather important when talking about rune synergies. I’d like runes to be much more impactful to your build and your skills which i think Arena net is interested in doing with runes that specifically care about a specific skills type beyond almost universal skills like Signets and Shouts.

wait, why wouldn’t the revenant get 4 signets? Has there been something that says that revenants won’t get signets as their last 4 utility skills?

I didn’t actually say they’d get signets. I was using that as an example for how runes impact skills and made some suggestions that it’ll go a bit further then that.

Jordo.5913:

There are 5 trait lines, one generic, and 4 base trait lines that are tied to legends.

There will be a specialization that will add another legend which equals 5.

I also have concerns with how many people I saw said they wanted to main Revenant, but have come out of the beta with concerns over the class rather than nothing but joy.

It does have me a bit worried as I have not been into the beta yet.

This would put the revenant at 4 heals, 4 elites and 12 utility skills at the base profession if the 5th is indeed a specialization. Which puts them at a staggeringly low amount of skills in comparison to any other profession. Although this does make me think that each legend WOULD have 5 utility skills each as it would put them at 20 skills in total. Which is much better, but skill types are also rather important when talking about rune synergies. I’d like runes to be much more impactful to your build and your skills which i think Arena net is interested in doing with runes that specifically care about a specific skills type beyond almost universal skills like Signets and Shouts.

I’ll admit I’m not really one to dive into PvP much if at all. Its not my cup of tea and I’ve never cared much for the game type as a whole. Though I am interested in balance of our profession and I’ll always be keeping an eye on the PvP scene as I am somewhat interested in spectating the game type. Seeing my profession shine in PvP is important to me even if I’m not personally taking a part in it.

Listening to the complaints the necromancer community has about the Necromancer and by extension the reaper I’ve been thinking allot about Stronghold. I don’t think the necromancer will ever be good in conquest. We have too many weaknesses there and struggle getting from point A to point B with out decent gap closers.

So I was thinking. An a good Foe will often leave a necromancer be after burning through their DS while they go to recover. Then return to finish the job when they’re healthy and ready to go. Well, the necromancer wants them to stay with them. To continue the engagement for as long as possible. And I think the Reaper does this far better then the Necromancer does currently. But they could still leave if they want. But then I though, although in Conquest there isn’t much of a disadvantage to leaving a necromancer to go recover, but in Stronghold this could be devastating!

Our Roll in Stronghold is actually fairly solid in theory. If we have the right tools we could easily and quickly wipe out enemy NPCs far easier than any other profession I’ve seen so far. Our ability to scale up against a higher number of foes makes us rather Ideal to go full offense on the enemy strong hold. Our damage would increase, our defenses and AI isn’t worth as much as a player. If a player does decided to try and take you on while you’re attacking their NPCs you might actually have an edge over them. If everything goes well that is. This is still all speculation.

In this engagement the Enemy will lose far more if they retreat then if they stay and stick it out. Forcing them in a situation where they’ll have to fight against your damage and attrition abilities to defend themselves. And this seems to be the perfect role for us to play. I think we’ve been geared more toward Stronghold then Conquest and I think our strengths against higher numbers, if done correctly could easily make us one of the most useful Professions in Stronghold. We aren’t fast and we can’t force our opponents to stay with us as long as we might like. But we can put them on a clock. And that might just be more valuable.

Diovid.9506:

Lily.1935:

The Concern I have it the lack of customization of the revenant’s bar. You choose a mainhand weapon and an offhand. Then you choose your Legends. So you are effectively making 5 choices for your build in total IF you’re going to be making that much choice and decided on a two handed weapon. To me, this is concerning.

Except the majority of customization for all professions comes from traits, stats, runes and sigils. This is also the case for Revenants.

Except you forget that each trait line is linked with a legend limiting that customization even further then you think. Also, read further down where I mention runes specifically.

The profession is fairly fun, I’ll give it back. I felt that the beta armor they gave us was WAY too tanky for my taste. I never felt like I was in any real danger while playing but thats not the concern I have.

The Concern I have it the lack of customization of the revenant’s bar. You choose a mainhand weapon and an offhand. Then you choose your Legends. So you are effectively making 5 choices for your build in total IF you’re going to be making that much choice and decided on a two handed weapon. To me, this is concerning. Although it gives the devs a really easy way to balanced the profession because they’ll know exactly what skills are paired with what, it also will have the effect of making the profession rather predictable and boring. More so then any other profession aside from the necromancer, because lets face it you can’t get more predictable then the necromancer. (Sorry, a bit of a small jab there)

There are a few ways that this could be remedied. The first way is to add a couple more skills to each legend so that their utility can have a bit of customization to it. I think this is the simplest way to go about it. Another way is to make a relatively small pool of skills that each function differently depending on the legend you have equipped. Both options are doable, but they might not be perfect solutions.

Another concern i have is with Skill types. At the time I was in the beta all skills were linked to the legend specifically but didn’t have their own identity outside of that. With the expansion of skills into other professions such as mesmer wells and Guardian traps this seems like a bit of customization that could be locked out of the revenant which limits our options even further.

The last concern I have is with the weapons themselves. Both the Elementalist and engineer have a way to change their 1-5 skills through utility. I feel the revenant might need that as well. This is a bit harder to speculate on because of the utility swapping but if it is consistent with what I played in the beta then I don’t feel it would be enough.

Akikaze.1307:

Revenant’s Hammer can be compared to Mesmer’s greatsword. They share a unique ‘feature’ in which a supposed melee weapon is used as ranged. Both also have a weaker auto attack than most other classes. To top it all off, weapons on both classes contain flashy animations that may require the use of animation cancelling.

The majority of consensus is that Revenant is lacking in outputting major damage. No, neither gears or the legends is not the factor. Lets not forget that legends does not change the weapon skills. Utility is often only a minor part of a char’s dps tool. ALL professions in the beta used celestial gears, players (myself included) made existing professions to confirm the difference. It is possible the cause for lack of damage is because of the missing traits.

Revenant also isn’t your conventional “tank”. They might contain skills that enable them to survive longer but they’re not a meat-shield like warriors. Though they’re lacking in PvE, many of their skills can be quiet strong in PvP. From the 2 legends given in the beta, the word ‘redirect’ perfectly describes the class. It attracts enemy to hit them, Rev then can utilize the enemy’s focus to redirect the harm either by pulsing conditions back or retaliation.

I personally found the Revenant’s defenses to be extremely good. Like, off the charts in how easy it was for me to avoid and prevent damage. But I also main a necromancer. That might have something to do with my perception of it. You also have to note that we don’t yet know the rotation of the revenant. You switched classes but that doesn’t really help us any because the profession you chose is probably one you know very well and are fully aware of their damage rotation. Which will skew your results pretty heavily.

I personally didn’t have a problem with their defenses or damage. I was able to take things out quick enough considering the armor choice.

Akikaze.1307:

Here are some of my biased impressions.

• Revenant is pretty lackluster in PvE like others have stated. It has flashy animations that seem cool but fails to hold up after a while. Damage is moderate-low, even on the mace/axe combo. It’s basically giving us a lv11 Elementalist and telling us to go test things with only fire/water attunement.
• I don’t find the class particularly fun. It’s not the damage that worries me, it is lacking in impact overall. I started gw2 on mesmer and their dps was abysmal yet I had fun on mesmer. Reason could be the limited legends or maybe the limited weapons.

You do know that in the beta you’re running Celestial gear with runes of the Dolyak. You’re basically super defensive with moderate damage.. Its hardly a good example of how high the damage out put is. Because on full zerker with might and cons that hammer will hit seriously hard. Basically the armor set up is bad for both a condi and power build. Its designed for people to get used to the profession, not to show off its power.

Khenzy.9348:

Lily.1935:

someone has never played a necromancer before.

Shoosh you.
Way to nickpick and miss the point.

Reaper with greatsword and its respective death shroud plays nothing like a Necromancer with lets say, Axe or dagger. Staff is a backup set.
The difference from a Mesmer to Chronomancer is going to be abysmal.
Also, I play every profession.

And my point still stands.

You said Revenant felt too slow. And then you compared it to the “Superior” necromancer’s reaper design. Which I have to say.. no.. The Greatsword is another slow weapon. The necromancer’s weapons are all rather slow. The Dagger only feels fast because of its auto. Its other two skills are rather slow. Yeah, the GS looks superior but its nothing out of the ordinary for the necromancer. Honestly, its execution style game play is already a part of the necromancer’s style. The only unique aspect about the greatsword is it has 2 life force generating skills without traits. Which is something that no other weapon in the necromancer’s kitten nal can claim. Though I personally wish the off hand dagger had a LF generator and the staff had a second LF generator as well, but that’s beside the point.

The revenant is much faster then the Necromancer. They also hit allot harder. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As a necromancer main I’d rank them as faster then the necromancer in combat but slower then something like, say, mesmer.

Now if we are going to talk about Reaper’s Shroud, that is unusual for the necromancer. Its much faster then what the necromancer is used to. At a comparable speed to the revenant.

First off. Not enough time to appreciate the visuals. The 2 hour window really didn’t help my wanderlust. But thats a minor issue.

The old build that was provided for the revenant was interesting to say the least but didn’t provide us a real insight into the how things are going to change. Again not a big deal this was more about the events then the revenant. But I’d still like to give my impressions of the profession.

The Profession has loads of internal synergy and is great for a party due to its many fields, and blast finishers. The ability to defend allies through other means or pull conditions from allies to fuel your offensive abilities is great. After playing with both Mallyx and Great Dwarf I have to say that both are geared fairly well toward melee combat. Although they do have some ranged and mid line utility, they defiantly function best in the heat of battle. They complimented each other very well even if it wasn’t a perfect match.

Some of the issues I noticed was with the Unyielding Anguish which didn’t always path right and with Forced Engagement which seemed to have too high of a cost with little to no pay off. At least in PvE. In PvP this could be a completely different story but in PvE the skill wasn’t very favorable for me to use. The last problem was with customizing the skills. It seemed that skills from the demon stance and dwarf stance were linked with each other so if I changed the location of one skill it swapped the location of the other stance’s skills. I didn’t like this one bit. It made my rotation less fluid for one by trying to make the other fit my needs.

The Hammer, Mace and Axe were all very good weapons. Mace being rather quick along with Axe which functioned very well together. The Hammer was a bit slow but really powerful. I look forward to seeing the hammer with zerker stats. I imagine it’ll be rather painful if you get caught in its range.

The Map was great though I found it difficult to level the appropriate Masteries. I spend the entire time on the ground and couldn’t glide around like I hoped I could. The meant I had to walk around to get to an event that should have only taken me seconds to get to. I missed too much content without the ability to glide and I couldn’t seem to get the points to get the glider. This is really only a beta problem and not a release problem seeing as letting me wonder around without real aim at release will be just fine for me. But for the beta when we’re trying to experience the events, it wasn’t ideal.

Over all, it was fun. The events felt a little easy to me and it wasn’t possible to fail. While other events failed and it wasn’t clear at all why they failed. When the NPCs were in danger, if there was danger we didn’t have any warning of it. Unlike in Silverwaste were the hold captain would be loud enough to inform you that they were in danger and you could have a much easier time seeing it. Maybe I did something wrong, but it would be nice to know why I failed and see how things are going down hill rather then just a pop up that says it failed. I’d like to learn from my mistakes. Even in the failed events I never felt like I was at risk from the Enemies. They were never very threatening. And that might be something to look into.

I look forward to seeing more. I’d like to recap on this as well. I defiantly want to get the chance to play it again to see what I can do differently and see where it could be improved or I could improve.

Khenzy.9348:

I found the Revenant profession disappointing. It’s slow (mobility and animation-wise), it feels clunky, and both lengends don’t compensate for the use of a single weapon. Most of the utilities are mostly situational.
The play-style doesn’t really change when you swap legends, seriously, it really doesn’t, the utilities change it very little, if at all. What defines your play-style is the weapon you’re currently wielding. That’s why Chronomancers and their puny shield still play like Mesmers, and Reapers with a greatsword play nothing like your tipical Necromancer.

All in all, this one’s not going to be my main from what I’ve played so far, definetly.

someone has never played a necromancer before.

I have to disagree. For a ranged weapon the hammer has some very sizable damage. Its also handy for control and combos. Its a very fine weapon. Its a bit unwieldy at first but once you get used to it its great.

Dwarf Stance and Demon stance are actually perfect for each other. Both of them are heavily melee focused and favor each other very well. Demon stance is allot more powerful but also much riskier to use. Once I got the hang of it in the beta though I spent more time in demon then dwarf. Its gap closer and ability to ignore conditions made it ideal for both escaping as well as pressuring foes. I like’d dwarf stance but I felt that I wasn’t using all the abilities because of how lacking some of them where. Mainly the elite and the taunt chain. The Taunt chain was way too expensive with too short of a duration.

Just going to inform you. This skill seems to have a tracking issue. When I was moving it wouldn’t always spawn at my feet but behind me. Sometimes I wouldn’t even be in the aoe when I land, which threw me off. I don’t know if this is fixed in a newer version of the revenant that has the trait changes, but it was apparent for me. I really liked that skill but it would be nice if it tracked my feet properly.

Too bad? honestly the new trait system is still better in the long run then the old system. You should be able to find what you want. Especially considering that allot of abilities are becoming baseline.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I’m not biased, a-net is.

Axe is a 1v1 power weapon and what it does, it does well. There’s a sick burst under #2, some decent damage and vulni stacking under auto, and some retal under 3. These skills make sense and axe is a viable, dangerous weapon for a power necro.

Scepter is a viable, dangerous condi weapon…on a mesmer. Just take a look at their scepter to see how it’s done. On necro it’s a sloooooow damage build up, 0 defense, semi-ranged 1v1 weapon. Not even able to see the dirt behind axe in terms of practical combat.

You are extremely bias. Axe is easily our worst weapon. Not just my opinion, but everyone excluding you feels that way. Its life force generation is too slow, valn stacking also too slow, feast is also extremely slow. Its range is just awful and its damage is rubish to say the least. Scepter doesn’t do quite as much raw damage as the axe does but it has +300 range, condition application and coverage, shorter cast and targeted cripple. Comparing to two though is like night and day. They’re different weapons with different functions. But when the scepter auto actually out damages the axe auto we have a problem.

Its life force generation is also a major problem. Both dagger and staff far exceed the axe in this regard with far less effort. Not to mention when you compare the axe with weapons from other professions that fill similar roles it becomes abundantly clear just how weak the damage actually is. Averaging HALF the damage output of weapons with twice its range.

Compare the Scepter on necro with other profession’s weapons with similar roles. The Scepter sits somewhere in the middle. Not the best but defiantly not the worst by any stretch of the imagination. Mesmer Scepter is far more defensive then necro’s. And you can see this with its skills. While necros focuses more on field control, all be it minor field control, the Mesmer’s scepter is a defensive condition weapon. Its torment application is really slow compared to the necro’s bleed and poison application. The two weapons serve very different play styles. I think Feast of corruption needs some work as its kinda awkward with a pure condition set up as opposed to a hybrid set up but its still not bad.

Jekkt.6045:

blood magic is bad and spite is good, that’s the difference.

reapers might + death shiver + close to death. that’s where your damage comes from + dhuumfire, and also your sustain from the might = heal.

run blood magic and you won’t have any damage but more self sustain. but i don’t think it’s worth it.

I personally wouldn’t Run Dhuumfire without Lingering Curse. As long as it works the way other weapon bonuses do currently, you wouldn’t want to use Dhuumfire with out it. The damage would be subpar otherwise. Death Perception would be better. You can still do hybrid but you’re still probably going to want to run Lingering curse.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

why you not haz some cavalier love?

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to abuse Cavalier. But its a bit tougher(No pun intended). With the toughness you kinda want the bonus from Death magic to gain 14% toughness to power but you also want the 50% crit chance from deathly precision and the valn stacking in Spite.. I’m sure there is a way, in a group that stacks might really high it shouldn’t matter. But we’ll see. I’m still working out a heavy damage tanky build.

Tadsoul.6951:

I Feel like those cons arent true.
Death perception is alrdy used with wells, others skills do very little damage, too little info on shouts
Death shroud degenerates over time.
Weapon skills can do more damage and provide different effects than death shroud
spectral armor can alrdy be used like that.

I would say that the animations would be the main problem

I would prefer using our own utilities rather than getting specific death shroud utilities

this is what you need to think about currently when entering or exiting death shroud.
death shroud decay
meaningful weapon skills
healing
utilities skills
death shroud cd
weapon swap

Death shroud will still be complex even if you remove utilities from the list

Having 100% crit chance as opposed to 50% crit chances for each tick of wells or future skills isn’t so much a con as a fact of life for balance. The con comes in when we start seeing balance for these skills which might account for you having that 100% crit chance at all times forcing you to take that trait regardless if you want to or not in order to keep your damage decent.

Also, Spectral armor can’t be used like that. There is a brief window where your opponent can see you enter it without watching your UI. In a 1v1 it might not be as big of a deal as it would be annoying, but in larger fights where you don’t have the necromancer targeted this could become a problem as knowing when to attack and when not to is important.

But what do you think could be some potential cons? Because there are a few. I’m currently trying to view both sides of the issue.

spoj.9672:

Id just like signet passives to work in DS. And maybe see utility cooldowns with a grayed out effect. I feel like access to utility inside DS might be too much. Especially if Reaper allows permanent lifeforce upkeep inside RS under certain conditions.

This is also the possibility of requiring a Life force tax for using your utility skills. So for example it might cost you 5% life force to use a utility while in death shroud. so, yeah you have the option but each time you use a skills cuts your time by that much. This would be great for skilled players and still not be too much for new players to learn and adjust the the way Death shroud currently works.

How many times has the axe been buffed over the years? And has still since then always been bad? Its almost like the new animation was put in place to mock us.. o_o

Noha.3749:

Utility would be great in DS to slightly compensate for the lack of scaling vs more than one target. (Personally that is not that much of a deal for ME, but an argument alot of players have when wishing for fixes/buffs)

Might be a bit too overwhelming for foes in 1v1 though.

At least ,definitely not for Lich/Plague form. That would rip too much.

It honestly boils down to tells and traits on weather or not it would be too much in 1v1. DS doesn’t have easy to see tells. RS does, but DS doesn’t. Traits give massive power buffs while in DS which is more concerning. Lich/Plague can easily be addressed by making them force you out of DS.

Cons:

• Some traits are really powerful. I doubt it’ll be argued that death perception is one of our strongest traits we have. Some traits might actually become too powerful with this sort of change. Imagine taking the wells or other offensive utility and having each of them become super charged by our traits. This could create an unsettling amount of power creep.

• Why would you want to leave Death shroud? Even though I’ve suggested this change before It becomes abundantly clear that we would lose incentive to be out of death shroud. Before our weapons and utility would provide us with something. But if we get our utility along with all those powerful traits then we will never want to leave the safety of DS.

• Some skills would have to be re-balanced. If we are capable of always being in DS some skills would either need to be nerfed or completely changed while using DS. For example, spectral armor is one of the necromancer’s best stunbreaks. It gives us 8% life force when someone hits us. in Death shroud this could out “heal” the damage we are taking and sometimes it does. We could have this on active and currently its hard to tell if a person in DS has spectral armor up or not. You can look at the UI but thats not intuitive for active game play. Even going further then that spectral grasp’s tell is with the movement animation which isn’t so easy to see with the black shadows covering you while in DS. Which could be a perfect grab for the necromancer plus 15% life force while your opponent would have a much harder time seeing it.

• More work. This would be more of a con for the devs as it would mean re-balancing and retooling of the entire profession. They’d have to go to great lengths to make sure everything worked correctly and that we didn’t get out of hand.

Other:

• On the last note this could open the door for some interesting ideas for future specializations. Weather or not it could be a good thing I’ll leave it up to you guys. The idea of having skills that function differently in Death shroud was a fun one I teased with for a while. Suddenly having access to something like glyphs that have valuable functions both in and out of death shroud could create for very interesting profession design. But it also increases the balance requirement.

• One solution I will suggest that could offset some of the cons would be making the Utility skills have a life force tax while in Death shroud. Meaning that when you use them you burn your shroud through quicker then before. This could could increase the skill cap for a necromancer player as well as create more dynamic game play.

What do you guys think? What are your opinions on the idea of getting utility while in death shroud? What do you think would be good or bad about such a drastic change to us?

This is a question more for the necromancer community as a whole rather then the devs. Though the devs can read what we have to say. That is always welcome to see what the community thinks about this situation.

So the question. Should we as necromancers be able to access our utility skills while we are using death shroud? This has been something that has been suggested multiple times and its been thrown around quite a bit. And the question is a rather big one. “What about our heal and elite?” some might ask. Would it be too much to give us those in death shroud?

I’m going to give my opinion on the discussion then open the floor to whom ever feels like discussing the topic.

To start us off lets compare us to other professions. Currently the necromancer is the only profession that locks out a major part of our bar by using our mechanic. No other profession does that. Some professions lock out some skills when using their elite but those are generally short lasting and have a major impact on the field. Death shroud will always have an impact for you but their impact can’t be so big it warps the game because of the nature of the mechanic. Because of this the necromancer can only have a total of 5 skills while in death shroud and these skills don’t change. Regardless of your traits. Now I know that the reaper will give us 5 new skills and there will be a time when people can’t predict us so easily but it will soon suffer from the same predictability that the core death shroud currently has. This has been a major problem for the necromancer since its inception. And was even worse earlier in the game’s life due to it only providing 4 skills at the start. (For those who are new to the necromancer tainted shackles was later added and not originally part of our bar.)

But looking at the other end of things, what about our elite and heal? Surely we can’t just disallow us to access those while using death shroud, right? The interesting part about this question is we could. Having both those skills grayed out would mean we would have to leave to benefit from them. Or for the elite it could just force us out of Death shroud when we trigger them. At least for the transformation. But would that be too complicated? would it be counter intuitive to the necromancer and would it be unfriendly to new players? These are a few questions we would have to ask.

So now lets get into the pros and cons of allowing access to our utility in death shroud.

Pros:

• We’ll be able to stunbreak. This is something that plagues the necromancer pretty heavily. With the changes to Foot in the grave this has helped a bit. But this only acts as a way to enter death shroud safely and doesn’t give us safety while in death shroud. If we had access to our utility then we could use a stun break without having to drop our primary mechanic. This would make hard CC less of a hard counter to us even for builds that don’t care to use FitG.

• Signets suddenly become far more useful. The community has wanted to access the passives of signets in Death Shroud for a long time. And its hard to argue that signets are just always worse with the necromancer then other professions. One possibility is that suddenly vampiric signet could become one of our best heals due to the fact that with this change, even without being able to trigger our heal, having the passive heal from this signet could make it a strong choice over consume condition which is and for the foreseeable future will be the default heal.

• More unpredictable game play. With access to our utility it becomes much harder to predict the necromancer’s next move. Suddenly we would have easier access to skills and methods for countering our DS counters.

• Skill combos. Provided we have access to our utility we also gain the ability to combo with it like we have never been able to before. Lets say you use Death’s charge through a Spectral wall and suddenly get chaos armor. Although you can do that now its much easier to see that coming. And you can’t currently do that from a defensive position.

So currently in the game we have gear with 4 stats. But this gear doesn’t provide much of a benefit compared to its 3 stat counterpart. At least this is true in WvW and PvE. In PvP its quite different. All gear is going to be getting a flat buff in order to compensate for the over all stat lose. This also means these gear types that have 4 stats rather then 3. So with these changes it opens the door to allow full sets of armor with 4 stats. And you might want to bring them. The change is good for Armor diversity. It gives you allot more then you think not having the stats tied to attributes.