Guild Wars 2

meow one twenty.4376:

I know this is the opposite of what most everyone else here is thinking but I have to say it. I support Moa destroying minions.

Here’s why…

*It discourages using 5 minion skills at once
– Most (all?) people just sit with all their minions out. This is hard for me to put down into words, so bear with me, please. Most every other build in the game requires timing for skills to be effective, MM with all minions does not.
- A skillbar completely filled with the same type should not be as effective as diversifying at least a little.

• Hardcounters aren’t necessarily bad
  – Sure, it sucks to be at the bad end of a hardcounter, but they help keep certain builds from being too powerful or common.
  – Mesmer has few other alternatives for killing MM’s. I remember people here telling others that MM was a hardcounter against the OP Mes builds post June 24, it might not be that lopsided but MM holds its own very well.

Feel free to flame.

I think most people dislike it, because it doesn’t just counter it. It kicks you when you’re already down.

When you get moa’ed you:
a) Lose your minions, which is a prime source of your damage.
b) Lose all benefits they give you (toughness, condi clear, death nova.etc)
c) Lose your utility skills / minions for a long while, even after you come out of moa.

Now I’m fine with moa countering point A. But a necro just gets punished too hard.
You lose all your utility skills for several seconds even after moa ended. Assume you got moa’ed on a point and you decide to disengage. Now you’re out of combat and you can do jack for the next 15-60 seconds.

As for your points:

- Most (all?) people just sit with all their minions out. This is hard for me to put down into words, so bear with me, please. Most every other build in the game requires timing for skills to be effective, MM with all minions does not.

That’s not how it works. Minions might to a lesser degree miss some timing based aspects (Although you still have minion abilities you need to time). But they make up for that in Minion Management.
You can’t just summon 5 minions and send them off to attack something and it’ll get destroyed. That’s maybe how MM works in solo PvE or in low MMR PvP, but not when things get a bit harder.
You need to be aware of their position; standing on top of your bone fiend will make sure your dps minion gets cleaved down in no time.
You need to be aware of their health. You are their master and their caretaker. A well timed transfusion can be the difference between losing 3 minions or not.

You see, where MM loses out on some “timing based skill” that other utilities bring, they have to make up for that in “pet management skills”.

You can’t NOT have your minions out when all the traits force you to have most of them out. You get your sustain through them being there (condi transfer / toughness / CC / etc).

- A skillbar completely filled with the same type should not be as effective as diversifying at least a little.

Normally I would agree with you. A build, especially in PvP, needs to think about hitting certain checkboxes to work well. You can’t just load up with 3 offensive utility skills and be done with it.

Minions are slightly different again.
First of all there is the trait synergy to think about. Every minion extra, is extra toughness for you, is extra condition transfer for you, is an extra death nova.
On top of that minions are soft of designed around having them out as they fulfill different roles by themselves.
You have an elite that can CC, you have minions that blow up for burst and debuffing, you have a fiend that snares people and deals good dps. A wurm that lets us teleport for increased mobility and disengage. Soon we will have a shout that doubles as a defensive cooldown.
Minions are designed to go all in on, more or less; although there are plenty of MM builds that sacrifice a minion slot for something more useful at that point in time.

Silverkey.2078:

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t understand why any profession should be able to press a single button and completely delete an entire build’s setup, putting it on full CD without any traits taking effect. How is this even a discussion? If Moa morph put every utility for every build not only on full CD but also erasing their effects from the game the instant it lands the skill would be completely broken and no one would debate this change, yet against AI builds this is worth a discussion? Furthermore, this was a known function that was then added onto Engineer in AoE form.

It makes absolutely no sense, and I guarantee if this wasn’t AI builds we wouldn’t even have to talk about it.

I think what should happen ideally is that your minions disappear during the moa (because moa IS supposed to disable you completely) but reappear when the skill is over. Now I doubt that will happen, but this is exactly how it should be.

This would be ideal. But I doubt it will ever be implemented. I don’t think it’s technically impossible for them to do it; but I do think they don’t want to invest so much resources in just fixing this one single thing.

Frankly the fact I can’t have my minions when I get transformed; fine, I can understand that more or less. But the fact that they ALL go on cooldown for 20-60 seconds is just unacceptable. It’s a major anti-fun factor, and I don’t see what balance has to do with that at all. (I’m talking specifically about the cooldown part here !). There is no justifiable argument for not only destroying the minions, but also making the spec unplayable for the next 20-60 seconds.

WOOT

I intended to say a whole lot about the buffs, but the only word popping up in my head is: “WOOT”

I hope they fix that for PvE, because it will hinder us a ton. Going into shroud only to see the druid toss out a ton of heals and not benefiting the slightest from it will be a major downfall for necro raiding viability.

origin.1496:

The Scrapper and the Tempest offer great ways to apply superspeed, constantly.

First, I don’t play the necro. I main engi and ele, and I’ve not played the Reaper yet, however even then I am concerned with all of the ways to dish out super speed (primarily in sPvP) and how the reaper’s slow swings/chill will effect the gameplay of reaper’s now. the F- skill for engi’s Slick Shoes completely bypassed their means of catching me on the last beta, and made the reaper feel like a joke to fight against. Also I do understand that not many were great playing a brand new mechanic, BUT STILL! With all of the super speed incoming and dazes from Scrapper alone, how well would a greatsword Reaper be in a team if you play against a team with a Scrapper?

The way I see it, you can super speed all you want. But I’m still standing on the cap point. So if you want it, you’d better superspeed your kitten back in my range :>

For real though. Mobility is a major weakness for the necromancer. And personally I’m fine with that, in return we should be one of the better 1v1 classes.
In fact I think a lot of high skilled PvP players agree with this. (I know for a fact that Five Gauge Caithe from the Abjured actually literally said on his stream that Necro should be best 1v1)
Necro’s have low mobility, no way to disengage a fight. So if there is a fight, they should be able to come out on top.

Rising Dusk.2408:

ronpierce.2760:

It’s much more of a diversity issue in terms of PVP than is PVE, I would say. I feel like (and maybe not in your case), much of the question of ‘is it really even necessary?’ comes from people trying to look at it from different views. In PVE its really not even a concern in the slightest, mostly because shroud is hardly used.

It’s certainly a far more relevant a question in PvP than PvE, I agree.

I actually think the effect of having VP and not having VP is far more prominent in PvE; because you’re not being hit as much.
So the uptime of shroud is much more a factor of the passive degen than in PvP, where the degen is a factor, but secondary compared to the damage drain.
Granted, the reliance on shroud is much higher in PvE at the moment, which makes uptime of shroud in general a much bigger factor.

I personally also think VP should be made baseline, because of many stated reasons.
Mainly though, because 2% degen just feels much better. But also because I think that it is taking the wind out of the other two traits’ sails. Spectral Mastery is a pretty good trait, but VP is just out of it’s league.

However, I also think that the importance of VP is partially overrated.
I personally think that the other traits (mostly the minor ones actually) in Soul Reaping are the pillars for better survivability in PvP. And that people actually “forget” about those and too easily point towards VP, being the primary sustain major trait in the tree really, for the reason they do worse without the SR-line.

As Danikat stated, it might be better to wait and see how things turn out.

That said. Berserker gear will probably always be useful in some form. Be it for solo stuff, dungeons, certain fractals, maybe raid trash, etc. So if you really want to get started, it probably won’t hurt to get some of those. If you aim for getting your amulet/rings/accessories you can always mix match later.

If you’re doubting. I would most definitely wait though.

I like to just keep it clean.

I use a CM Storm Spawn mouse. It’s a small mouse which fits my grip (fingertip grip; basically only your finger tips are touching the mouse, palm of your hand is on the mouse mat).
I used a Razer Naga Hex before, which is a sister of the Naga with the many buttons on the side. The hex has 6 buttons on the side, but I never really felt better using those. The grip I use really doesn’t work well with many side buttons as you basically lose control. So back to simply 2 side buttons for me.

Keyboard is a CM Storm Quickfire TK. Mostly coincidence that it’s the same brand.
I’m a big fan of mechanical keyboards, they react a lot better to input compared to the rubber dome ones. Frankly though for a game like GW2 you don’t really need it; but I play a lot of counterstrike.

My opinion. Logitech is solid. Steelseries is quite OK as well, although much like Razor it likes tossing a lot of big terms and marketing tricks (like high DPI on mice, which is mostly useless) at stuff while they use cheap plastic components.

Remasuri.2458:

I can understand that we lose something for a new gamestyle, but i cant understand why other speccs dont have to ( so much as we do ). Why cant a Chrono lose the ability to create clones ( because now he can travel in time ). Or a Daredevil loses the ability to steal ( cause he isnt a thief anymore ). Just like we lose the ability to range ( cause we are a kittening pyramidhead! ).

I think you’re underestimating what other classes lose when they decide to pick up their elite spec.
It’s not just abilties; a lot of classes have very good synergy through their traits and they’ll lose that by picking up the elite.
For example a lot of elementalists would have to drop the Arcana traitline; which means they lose out on a ton of versatility and utility.

Also your comparison isn’t fair. The right comparision to:
“. Why cant a Chrono lose the ability to create clones ( because now he can travel in time ).”
would be for a necro to completely lose shroud in general.

But we don’t. We get a different kind of shroud. It’s no different than the dragonhunter getting other virtues.
Only instead, our reaper shroud opens up a cool new playstyle that is refreshing. Whereas the dragonhunter so far mostly gets shafted it seems.
On top of that, other classes who get something EXTRA without sacrificing something, tend to get much less than what necro’s get. For example the thief getting an extra dodge is nice. But reaper shroud giving several new abilities and possible combinations is much bigger.
The fact we get a gap closer; easier access to stability, is nothing to sneeze at.

Believe me. NEARLY EVERY OTHER CLASS is jealous of what necro’s are getting.
Several of people who are die-hard fans of their own class, either look at necro with envy or are likely to roll necros to try out reaper.

Arantheal.7396:

Kodama.6453:

Extremely awesome. Well, it seems like the functional gyroscope is destroyable. If so and it is dying as fast as our turrets, it won’t be able to deliver just a single stomp. ^^

Jupp, that’s the last concern I have. If they tell me they’re indestructible, but interruptable I’m a happy engi.

Ye I’m really curious about this.

The ideal would be if they are interruptable but not destroyable; but that might also be too strong.
Maybe something more likely would be that they are immune to damage when they hover around you and when you send them out to do stuff, they become destroyable.
Or maybe they’ll make it so that they only take direct damage and no AoE cleave.

Guess we’ll know by this time tomorrow.

Kodama.6453:

Does anyone actually know how functional gyroscopes are going to work? Seems like we still have to go to the target and press f. Only difference: after pressing f to summon the gyroscope we can go away.

The posts actually states you can rez people from range.

Becoming a scrapper changes your interaction prompt (usually done with the F key) to summon a multipurpose function gyro to rally a targeted downed ally or finish a targeted downed foe at range.

That is what the blog post states. If you read that, it litterally says we can press F when we target a ranged ally or enemy and it will send out a gyro that goes out to rez/stomp. There is probably a max range of 900 or so.

Manuhell.2759:

Can’t see what’s the point of the Sneak Gyro. It stealths people…and then gives the location away with the gyro itself, as that is still visible. It essentially depends on your enemies not noticing it.

Let’s see how it works out first.
The Gyro being visible is a weakness, but that doesn’t make the ability useless.

- The cooldown could be short.
- There could just be the engi in the cloak field, there could be a whole zerg in the cloak field, they don’t know.
- The gyro might disappear long before the actual stealth fades.
- Insert a few more reasons.

Calcifire.1864:

as someone who doesn’t PvP or WvW, I’m underwhelmed as hell.

the big profession mechanic is utterly useless in PvE unless there is someone dying nearby, and the elite is purely a PvP ability considering how insanely situational stealth is in PvE for non-thieves.

consider that for the elite mechanic revenants get a new legend, necros get a new death shroud, mesmers get to save-scum, and thieves get a third dodge, the ability to rez/finish someone at range is so situational outside of PvP that unless HoT adds a LOT of finishable enemies like the toxic alliance, it may as well not exist.

Scrapper looks good for PvP. I had my worries for PvE as well, but I want to see it play out first.
Reasons:
1) Hammer might be a solid weapon dps wise

2) The ability to ranged stomp and rez can be really useful in the upcoming raids. I’m not really sure how the gyro reacts to damage. We know the gyro can be interrupted with CC (otherwise there is no need for the stability); but if the gyro can’t be damaged, we might have a very powerful PvE tool in hands for rezzing people in dangerous spots.
Similarily, I wouldn’t be surprised if some mobs/bosses have downed states. ANet experimented a lot with it.

3) Gyro utilities might be beneficial.
If we can provide long duration cleansing and some other stuff through the gyro’s we dont know of yet. It might play out interesting.

I’m slightly disappointed how PvP focused this is (even though I PvP regularly as engi), but I’m not sure yet if this is really all that bad for PvE just yet.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Bosses are far easier to balance and far easier to make diverse and challenging when you don’t have to balance them under the presumption that they’ll be suffering 100% chill and weakness (which good organized groups would obviously take advantage of).

I want to quote this, because I don’t think this people realize the importance of this.

Leaving bosses open for soft CC can create a bunch of technical difficulties with encounter design.
I don’t think they offer as much dept as some people claim they do, because you either:

a) Design encounters with the idea they are always up. Make encounters tough and requiring a 100% uptime on chill / cripple and the like. This means that you NEED these things up all the time. It makes group composition a bit more rigid and makes encounters very binary in the sense that if you drop the soft CC, you’re going to lose.

Yes, this would possibly open up a slot for the necromancer, as we’re one of the few classes that can probably keep a 100% uptime on weakness and chill. But I don’t think it would improve PvE as a whole. And this game desperately needs to have it’s PvE sorted.

b) Design encounters with the idea that without them you’ll succeed as well, but with them it’ll be easier.
The problem with this design is that it leads to a LOT of exploiting and wonky mechanics.

Think about Cripple kiting a boss around.
Think about chilling a boss so it skips certain mechanics
(example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZP9z7MY8tw)
Think about a combination of protection + weakness allowing you to circumvent certain mechanics easily.
Etc.

I’m not saying the way they use soft CC as a Defiance DoT is the best solution. But I think people severely misjudge the “added dept” that soft CC would bring to raid boss fights. (Because we’re talking about end game content, which will be certain raid bosses I’d guess).

For PvP I wouldn’t take Scholars.

For PvE you could; it works pretty well for dungeons and solo content, especially with reaper being self sustaining with might without the need for strength runes.
That said, with raids coming up and fractals becoming harder; plus the fact reaper is taking a lot of heat in melee range. Scholars might not be the best either.

Not sure yet what i’ll take. But I personally prefer Strength out of those two.
Might go mess around with some other runes though, I think the bruiser nature of a reaper allows for some more variation. Plus with things like Chill being big and Dhuumfire making a bit of a come back, there are some options with runes that play in on chills and burning as well.

I’m not so sure. Necro has some decent roles in sPvP, but they’re hardly OP really.

Reaper looked really potent; but I also hope the devs realize that currently a lot of tactics fighting necro revolve around pressuring them. And with reaper you play right into the hands of the bruiser playstyle who can outsustain whilst dealing good damage.

They could nerf the reaper; but then once people learn to counter we’ll have an even harder time.

Khristophoros.7194:

Necro staff is so insanely good in WvW they can’t buff it. And reaper is adding another AoE chill to staff.

It’s also decent outside of WvW because every skill hits 5 targets, and it is good at kiting with the regen spam and CC.

If you’re confused about the role staff has, think deeper than power vs condi vs defense. Think gameplay. Staff is primarily for kiting and CC with some AoE damage. The AoE works well because it allows you to kite and CC multiple enemies while wearing them down.

Staff doesn’t need any real buffs for most part. Maybe the #2 could use a nice buff. The bleeding is pretty “meh” for condition specs, the direct damage is also really meh for power.

Making the marks manually triggerable though would be a really solid change that’s not a direct buff to it’s potential; but makes the weapon more versatile in a lot of situations.

Also #1 is just not quite there yet. It’s not about doing a lot of damage. It’s just very dull and easily one of the least inspired abilities in our kit. It doesn’t do burst, it doesn’t do anything special, it’s slow attack speed and slow travel time make it really easy to dodge.

Staff has a bad image with non-necromancer players. The image is created, because:
a) It is very often used by necromancers as their secondary weapon
b) It does a lot of bursty damage

This has given it the illusion of being good, when it’s really mediocre at best.
The reason it’s used a lot is because necromancers don’t have a real good ranged alternative and there is much less synergy between weapons than other classes have.
And the bursty nature is mostly an illusion as the skills have a 20 second cooldown, and if you burst them you forfeit all utility on them (chill / condi transfer / CC)

Frankly I think the marks are mostly fine; but I would really love if we could indeed trigger them manually. It would give the staff a lot more options without really giving much more direct power:
- We’d get an on demand blast finisher so we might finally contribute a bit more to out of combat blasting.
- Staff #2 would get a lot more interesting as you can either put it on the opponent for bleeds or on yourself for regen.
- Staff doesn’t become utterly useless vs structures and downed players.
All good things.

Staff #1 is one of the most boring auto attacks in the game. It’s low on damage and it’s low on entertainment factor. Maybe a chain would make it more fun.

Jerus.4350:

Sorry for the novels, but really, I think there is value in Nemesis’s stuff, I just think it’s overshadowed to the point that it’s lost in his desire for controversy. It’s sad, but again he’s right, controversy gets views, whether they understand it or not seems to be ignored.

Agreed. I personally don’t like it either.
But you can’t disagree that to some extend it worked.

I’m not even sure he’s doing it for the views or just to spark discussion.
If the latter then good work maybe. I would’ve liked to see it done differently probably, but I doubt many other ways would have worked.
I’ve seen a few videos over the past years addressing the same issue, but none of them really had this much attention. Most were just discussed for half a day, buried and forgotten.

If the former and he just wants the views; then it’s both lame and rather dumb. YT average age is about 13 years. Make some minecraft videos while you make poop jokes and you’ll attain much more views. I’ve seen the harsh truth -.-

eleshazar.6902:

I agree that Reapers are way to high in dps right now. The answer is constantly, “Well just stay away from them”. The problem is in conquest game mode you can’t just stay back.

Yes and no.

I understand that in conquest a reaper can play to the strength of the point by just standing on it and holding it with decent tankiness and decent dps.
However that doesn’t mean you can’t at all play to the reaper’s weakness. In stead of running onto the point to try and duke it out with him mano-a-mano. Try nailing him from range. I’ve seen GS mesmers tear reapers apart; I’ve seen rangers tear reapers apart (if reapers ever become the new meta for sPvP; rangers might well become the counter-meta for that); even warriors can deal with reapers by using a combination of the longbow and/or high CC.

Let’s see it play out first. Before we nerf the class, that together with ranger have been down in the dirt for WAY too long, prematurely

The current meta is very full of builds that thrive on being in melee range and duking it out with relative high bursty damage in short fights.
Reaper seems to be a semi-counter to those kind of builds. Reaper can out sustain the initial burst, drag out the fight a bit and then rip through the rather low defenses.

ronpierce.2760:

draugris.9872:

pierwola.9602:

On the other hand, Necro should be the dude you CANNOT get away from.

The problem is, what would you give up to be this dude. You can´t expect to do crazy damage in melee range, having a second life pool AND being unkiteable.

If give up all of Necromancers high mobility, blocks, evades, invulnerabilities and instant burst skills. Maybe even some of our reflects and excess stability.

Are you mad?! No class would function without those things. /s

Jerus.4350:

Might want to cut down the drama if you want to actually make a point without people finding fault in your first few phrases. Just a little tip. Again, I think you make some great points, but they’re hidden behind all the controversy that you like to stir up. You rarely hit the potential damage, and the professions aren’t as imbalanced as they seem on paper, that’s what I get from your comments, and I fully agree, however you cloud that with the controversy, you simply do yourself a disservice by being abrasive and callous. If your goal is to actually change the minds of many players you’re doing a terrible job, if your goal is to provoke a lot of people into following you on youtube you’re doing a great job, keep it up.

You think his video would have gotten the attention it did without the drama ?
Look at how much attention it’s getting, just because Nemesis is poking a beehive with a stick a bit.
And all the suckers are massively falling for it.

I seriously haven’t seen a troll bait work this well since…. well ages ago.

Not that his video isn’t trying to be serious. But he adds drama and stuff on the sides. Like salad with a steak dinner.
Like I said before. I’m not buying the math until a second (independent) person confirms that math. I’m a scientist by nature, that’s how things work.

But I do think that some of his theories hold true; and not just ice bow. Because everyone is falling over the ice bow thing. But the whole concept of the meta is that 1% of the PvE community makes up a certain tactic and posts a video about it; and then the other 99% copies it blindly, doesn’t even KNOW what they are really doing and think they are also pro by doing it the same way.

Looking back at the beta, and some footage.

I do think that reaper has got an awful lot of damage for the tankiness they bring. I don’t think it’s “elementalist OP”, but it’s definitely strong on conquest play for example.
Problem is you can’t just flat out nerf reaper, because it still has the big weaknesses I mentioned before (no active defenses; easily CC-able with minor coordination/timing; next to 0 ranged options and low on gap closers)

Tim.6450:

Nyth.3492:

I personally never found damage meters to be a bad thing for WoW. With a trinity they generally give a clear overview of who’s performing well and who isn’t (mostly for dps, it’s a bit different for healers).
Gearscore / ilvl on the other hand, now THAT was the dumbest piece of BLEEP factor people ever judged on.

But isn’t in a trinity game dps a group effort (this is my first mmo)? I mean if the healers and tanks do a bad job will the overall dps decrease? I think it would be like tequatl : dps will drop if you have bad turreteers.

Yes it does work like that.
The thing with trinity MMOs is that people have set roles. In a 5 man party you generally have 1 tank, 1 healer and 3 dps. If people die because the tank doesn’t hold aggro, you blame the tank. If people die because they die from non-excessive damage you can blame the healer. If dps dies from standing in fire, or is clearly underperforming on the damage meters (which is where those come in), you can blame the dps.

Now, it’s not a blaming game (as that creates a toxic environment) but at least you can base your opinions on something solid.

In GW2 it’s a lot harder, because:
1) You have no set roles. Everyone needs to do top dps, but also needs to buff. And nobody knows how much those buffs add, or how much damage you can sacrifice for doing X and Y.
2) There is massive lack of factual data. Hardly anyone knows how much dps they do, nobody knows how much dps their might buffs really add. People base most of their opinions on guess work and on what they see.

People think necromancer is kitten, not because necromancer is kitten. But because a party with a guardian, warrior, mesmer and 2 elementalists made a video about how they killed a boss in 10 seconds flat. Using might stacking, time warp, banners, and ice bow.
Nobody even gives a kitten about why that is the case; nobody gives a kitten if banners didn’t contribute at all in that example. But that setup somehow performed a magic trick, SO WE MUST REPLICATE IT AT ALL COST.
LF SPEED RUN MESMER ELE WARRIOR ONLY !

Sometimes I think this game could benefit from damage meters, just so we can get rid of some of the most ridiculous misconceptions that this game contains.
If you’re in any way an experienced MMO player (and I would say I am with nearly 15 years on me), you know that mechanics are WAY more complex than most people assume. It’s like an iceberg, 90% is below the surface.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Its probably going less distance cus you hit something and its not supposed to pass through stuff anymore. As for it not going where you want I guess now that u mention It I may have not gone where I wanted a couple times.

Either way it goes less far. And whether they changed the ability, or the ability gets stuck on irrelevant stuff (because it doesn’t travel full length on plain grass fields either) doesn’t matter. It lost range.

Quote from the wiki:

The sixth bonus activates on any shout and applies to nearby allies, regardless of who is affected by the shout, e.g. “On My Mark!” triggers the condition removal for party members even though it targets a foe.

So I assume it just works for all all allies in your area, regardless if the shout affects them or not.
Not sure what the range is though.

Aren.9478:

So I went on the forums…a few days back.

Shock and horror were apparent as I read the Necro section, because……..chill was “useless” against bosses.

I play the beta.

Well, it seems I have some form of bug, because my chills take down the defiance bar. That’s definitely not intended. Oh no. Must be a bug. Chill is definitely meant to suck in pve. Yeah.

Or maybe before you go to write here about how chill sucks you might go and have a look at what chill does to defiance. Especially with our amount of chills.

Personally – I like it.

So how about we all chill and let Gee do his work. From what I can see Reaper is shaping up really nicely. So let’s stop flaming him about chill, otherwise he might melt

When 90% of the reaper traits don’t work because the boss can’t be chilled; we have a major issue right there.

As for defiance. What chill does to it might be nice. But I’m not sure if that’s really special in any way.
Maybe if chill would affect bosses, necromancer/reapers might be a solid addition to a group by providing solid dps while keeping bosses chilled and maintaining vulnerability.
I see the latter as being more solid way to go at things.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Did you guys not read the notes or something. It works exactly like warrior sword 2 Savage Leap. I Found this skill to be absolutly perfect now. It doesn’t spin past the target anymore. You can still untarget everything and use it to dash in the direction you want.

If you untarget it sometimes goes in random directions, example: https://youtu.be/IF20TBlpR-A?t=46
(Note: no target, and brazil isn’t using auto targetting)

Another example (same video):
https://youtu.be/IF20TBlpR-A?t=26

Also the distance traveled is significantly less than before. Compare the last link there, to the distance (couldn’t find a better video this quickly) traveled in the OPs link from the BWE#1 (https://youtu.be/Nl6IcQivNhU?t=36s).
And you’ll see it’s easily half the distance if not less.

People just need to learn to deal with reaper. But reaper has some big innate weaknesses that people will learn to deal with soon enough.

1) Reaper, though less so than normal necro, is still an attrition class. The reaper isn’t killing you with pure extreme damage, as much as it’s killing you by outlasting you with 2 life bars. I’ve seen most people die thinking they would burst me down. And then realizing their on 30% HP by the time they got rid of shroud.

2) Reaper is real melee class. Just like you don’t let a ranger sit and snipe you from 1200 range without countering. Just like you don’t just dance around in melee range of a Hammer/GS warrior you have to play in on their weakness.
Necro’s really don’t have that much for range. The staff seems to do a lot of damage, but it’s sporadic. And necro’s pretty much gave up their main range nuke (Life Blast from Death Shroud) when they picked up reaper shroud.

3) Necromancers are still pretty vulnerable for hard CC as we have no active defenses. Reaper has stability, but only in shroud form and that is counterable as well (outlast it, or land 2 hard CCs at once as it’s only 1 stack).

GS got a ton more enjoyable in BWE#2 compared to the first.
Much less rooted in place, and the risk/reward ratio feels much much better now.

I just hope they make the auto attack a bit less backloaded (all LF gen and the chill are backloaded on the chain); increase the range of #3 a bit; and they fix the #5 skill as it doesn’t work most of the time.

Obtena.7952:

Aenesthesia.1697:

SlyDevil.3952:

Where exactly is this exploit being used that you consider it the only thing holding necros back from being generally accepted as meta? Since you know, you’d have to compare the non-icebow dps of every other class to necros before deciding whether or not it was the best choice for the available dps slots.

Actually, the only thing that has put us in this stupid discriminating situation, is not the lack of offensive buffs, or the not so good dps, nor the linecasting icebow.

It’s the lack of a damage recount tool.

In all my years in wow i never saw such discrimination against a class. Why? because you had Recount to separate the real damage dealers vs the rest.

That kind of tool would be death for any in class in this game that wasn’t #1 because lacking trinity. The actual problem is WoW-type players who think that’s how performance is measured.

I think a recount (dps meter) would be a bad addition to GW2. But solely for the fact that 95% of the people have no clue how to interpret them in a non-trinity setting. They see the phalanx warrior doing 70% of the DPS of the others and don’t see past the fact that he’s using a sub optimal dps spec to buff the whole party for more overall damage.

But the problem in GW2 is, that people are still drawing the same conclusions. But instead of reading (and often misinterpreting) damage meters; people now base their opinions on “gutfeeling”, hearsay about “meta” and sites which proclaim which composition is optimal for their run.
Badly played elementalists are guaranteed spots even though they might be horrible; and well played necromancers are dismissed before even seeing combat.

I personally never found damage meters to be a bad thing for WoW. With a trinity they generally give a clear overview of who’s performing well and who isn’t (mostly for dps, it’s a bit different for healers).
Gearscore / ilvl on the other hand, now THAT was the dumbest piece of BLEEP factor people ever judged on.

IMO the old death’s charge needed some adjustment, because it was too uncontrollable most of the time.
You had very little control over the direction and next to no control over the distance traveled.

The new one isn’t better though. Often it just goes in a random direction (without a target).
And the distance covered is barely 2/3rd of the distance of the BWE1 charge, if not half.

Some fun combo’s can be made with it.
Chilling Nova with Deadly Chill might be nice for condi reapers.
Chilling Nova with Chilling Force and Blighter’s Boon, give a lot of extra sustain; since I believe the other traits work if you hit multiple targets (though correct me if I’m wrong).

The main issue with Chilling Nova is the duration of the chill in combination with the ICD.
IMO a 2 second chill with a 10 sec ICD is not quite there yet. Frankly Superior Sigil of Hydromancy is better. 1 second shorter cooldown; more control; bigger AoE.
Danger, as Bhawb said, is that if you adjust it too much you end up with a potentially too strong of a trait (especially due to aforementioned synergy).

TheLastNobody.8319:

Mind if I ask how quickness would affect our LF gain? Just curious.

50% increased attack speed = 50% faster LF gen/sec from auto attacks.

skarpak.8594:

yeah, and nemisis missed (or ignored completly in full consciousness!) the point that he got fully buffed by everyone else in that group setting (especially by that warrior) and compared his dps to that of a phalax warrior…a support setting!

I think he could have been clearer. But I think his approach was not to say necromancer is better than warrior. Because I think most of us agree it still isn’t.
I think he’s merely trying to prove (whether that succeeds or not) that even though a necromancer doesn’t bring buffs, it brings dps that is at the very least not WORSE than a support clas.
Silly as it might be, that this is about not being worse dps than a buff bot (and that is extremely silly balance wise); there are many who claim we are both worse dps and worse teamplayers than just about any class setup.

But if we can bring other good stuff; which might require some changing to the vulnerability of bosses to certain debuffs, like weakness and chill; and still do dps that at least challanges another support class like Phalanx Warrior. Then we might have an entry into at the very least being taken seriously.

That said. A 90% lich uptime is not DPS. It’s burst. It’s quite literally what he stated at the start of his video.
And even though you can probably have high lich uptime in every current content fight. I think it’s much better to focus on 3+ minute fights to get a more fair picture with the upcoming raids and all.

draugris.9872:

Dude, pls read thread titles. This thread is about LF generation from GS

I’m sorry but that’s not how this game works.

Yes in a complete vacuum greatsword has poor LF generation.
Yes against a (mobile) single target, like a single pvp opponent, greatsword will have poor LF generation.
But that’s not how this game works.

You have to see the whole picture.
First of all there are other ways to generate LF:
1) Weapon swap to a different set (e.g. Dagger/Warhorn or Staff)
2) Traits (e.g. Chilling Force / Blighter’s Boon)
3) Utilities (basically all spectral skills, shout heal, some minion skills)

Second of all. The greatsword should NOT be the ultimate weapon for all possible situations. I look forward to swinging that thing around on my main as well, and using it where ever possible.
But please be realistic, if the GS would also have great LF generation on top of what looks to be very high burst, good sustain sub-50% HP, good AoE, good access to chill. Then the weapon will be the only option and our builds will become lackluster.

There is nothing stopping you from taking a different weapon combination with reaper spec into PvP.

Please don’t drop your sense of realism and balance; just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.

Tim.6450:

Nyth.3492:

Chill damage hits for about 800ish with full condi damage gear and some might/vuln. I didn’t get enough time to thoroughly test it, but I guess that with max might and vuln (quite easy with reaper on a medium+ fight), you should be able to get 850 damage ticks on targets below 50% HP.

I got a tick for 934 in mostly exotic and some of it has celestial jewels.

Good to know. Like I said, i just experimented very shortly with it.

Tim.6450:

Nyth.3492:

I don’t think the skill is super weak. I mean if you compare it to bleeding, it’s equal to about 3-5 stacks of bleeding.
If the trait would have been: “Whenever you chill, you also apply 4 stacks of bleeding” people would be a lot more positive I think.

That’s becuase it would be ridiculous with epidemic . I could stack 20 extra bleeds with it.

I wasn’t suggesting to change it to bleed.
I was merely stating that people see “Chilling now deals X damage” as weak without taking a step back and realizing how much damage it really does. If the condition would have been that every chill application also stacks 5 stacks of bleeding people would have been more content, because it “feels” stronger even though it might not be (disregarding epidemic).

Fun note. Chilling Nova is good fun with Deadly Chill.
Fun note #2: So is Reaper of Grenth the human Elite skill.

Tim.6450:

Well I think its on the weak side because to get your damage to a reasonable amount you have to invest in chill, precision for target the weak and slot lingering curses.

Regardless. I think it could use a little more umph, purely because it’s a GM trait. I think the problem we have now is that the other reaper GM traits aren’t really all THAT strong either. So just buffing Deadly Chill would indirectly make the other 2 GM traits less attractive. (Granted DC is only interesting as condi reaper).

Chill damage hits for about 800ish with full condi damage gear and some might/vuln. I didn’t get enough time to thoroughly test it, but I guess that with max might and vuln (quite easy with reaper on a medium+ fight), you should be able to get 850 damage ticks on targets below 50% HP.

That is about 30% stronger than 1 stack of burning. (So above 50% it would be roughly equal to burning).

I don’t think the skill is super weak. I mean if you compare it to bleeding, it’s equal to about 3-5 stacks of bleeding.
If the trait would have been: “Whenever you chill, you also apply 4 stacks of bleeding” people would be a lot more positive I think.

I think the trait is still a bit on the weak side, mostly because unlike burning/bleeding it can’t be stacked. But if they would buff deadly chill, it would without restriction become the strongest GM trait for a condi reaper by far.
Reaper’s Onslaught is nice, but currently it really only applies an 1 extra stack of burning with dhuumfire. And like I said, Chilling Death is already stronger (or roughly equal) to 1 stack of burning.
That’s not even mentioning that dhuumfire only works in shroud and chilling death works constantly.

Maybe a removal of the sub-50% restriction for it’s full damage would be a good thing to start with. This game is getting incredibly stacked with backloaded execute phases.

Anchoku.8142:

Dagger is 0/2/6% and attacks much faster. Greatsword should be something like 2/6/8 %

Thank god you’re not in charge of class balance then :P

GS needs worse LF generation than dagger, because it has other advantages.
It now deals higher burst damage and quite a lot higher sustained damage below 50%. It cleave 3-5 targets.
Basically it serves a different purpose than the dagger does. So for that reason it doesn’t need the same LF generation.

I think it’s pretty slow too, but I feel it’s a weakness the weapon needs to have. And there are ways to get LF generation through other sources (utilities / shout heal / etc) if you desperately need it; plus there is weapon swap. Swapping to Dagger/Warhorn for some quick LF generation (or maybe another combo like axe / WH for #2 + #5), is an option as well.

EDIT: Note that I’m not saying the weapon doesn’t need adjusting. I just think that it shouldn’t ever be on the level of LF generation that the dagger auto attack chain is.

I dont know. I agree with a lot of what he says, but disagree with a lot of other things as well.

I agree with how Ice Bow ruins the game (and has done so since pretty much forever) and I also agree that people overestimate the benefit of buffs and underestimate the benefit of debuffs.
I agree with him that dagger isn’t always the best option, and that it’s very fight dependent.
Also agree that time warp is awfully misused most of the time.

I disagree with a few fundamental things as well.
First of all, removing Ice Bow won’t suddenly wipe clean the meta slate. The top classes aren’t just top because of ice bow. There are significant other benefits they bring.
On top of that he’s talking like our ability to bring certain debuffs to a group is unique, when that’s far from.

Secondly, he talks about the difference between burst and sustained dps. And yet he kind of makes the same mistakes when he starts with full LF and brings a lich to a 25 second boss kill.
Dont get me wrong, that’s fine with current fights as most bosses don’t last longer anyway. But with upcoming raids, your dps will be a lot lower since you don’t have a high% uptime on that lich, not as high % uptime of that death shroud, etc.

Third. He tries to sell the axe and the scepter as weapons. Which I’m fine with, but he’s using them solely for the axe #2 / scepter #2 / scepter #3 abilities by the looks of it.
That stuff is fine, since he spends the rest of his time in death shroud, where he basically uses DS #1 as his auto attack.
So far so good, the problem arises more when for some reason you:
a) Get hit and take a good chunk of LF damage
b) Flunk a skill like Axe #2 or Focus #4 and you’re low on LF generation.
Suddenly you’ll have to make due with scepter or axe auto attack, which are both embarrassingly bad dps wise.
This doesn’t invalidate his build, but it has a few drawbacks that he seems to glance over.

That all said. I usually quite like his videos.
He’s a bit annoying at times; like when he killed all the mobs with his scepter #2 and wells. I was like: “Dude, if you just let them come to the group you would’ve killed them much faster. You’re now just crippling them so it takes longer to get to the rest of your party .”

I tried playing with axe again for like the past week. Try to get a good feel for it, and find some good uses. But I really can’t find many situations where it’s shining.
The range is too short for it to be considered a real ranged power weapon, and the dps of the weapon as a whole is horrible compared to dagger auto.

At the moment for PvE I would probably go with Dagger/Warhorn + Dagger/Focus. Or Dagger/Warhorn + Staff.
Staff isn’t great either, but unlike axe it at least gives you a few things:
1) Utility (condi cleanse, fear, chill)
2) AoE. Not particularly good. But if you’re up against 5 opponents at least dropping a few marks is decent damage.
3) 1200 range. Frankly the 600 range that axe provides provides no real advantages over the melee range of daggers. 1200 (and 900 largely as well) range on the other hand gives you room to work with if encounters require you to keep some distance.
4) 2H damage in Deathshroud

Again staff is still mediocre at best, but it provides a few good things. And that’s not even considering the Soul Marks trait.
Axe on the other hand provides nearly nothing over daggers. The damage is lower, the burst isn’t really there, the range is not enough to provide a noticeable advantage, LF doesn’t stack faster really. Hell dagger even has better utility as the quasi-heal on #2 and the immob on #3 tend to have more uses.
Axe might have the vulnerability going for it, but from testing it this week, I generally found the stacking to be too slow to make much use on it. Might be more beneficial if the vulnerability was put on the #2 ability and making it function a bit more like Rapid Fire (Ranger – Longbow #2).

For PvP it’s a bit harder as it’s more about what you want to achieve and which tools you want in that regard.
That said, I don’t really see how the axe would help you out here. The damage is insufficient and at least the staff gives you unblockable condi transfer chills and a fear.

Axelwarrior.9084:

Tbh, if their statement about Condition Builds being a thing in raids is true, I think Necromancer will most certainly have a place there, due to Epidemic.
Unless conditions are only relevant in single-enemy encounters.

I can’t say for sure how GW2 is going to work out. But experience in other MMO raids (again, as far as that holds up here) tells me that you generally end up beating the one tough big guy.

Epidemic is great in certain fight scenarios though, like:
a) Boss summons strong adds every 20-60 seconds. Having a necro will most certainly make those add phases MUCH easier, as you can just epidemic off the boss for a MASSIVE headstart. Granted the adds can’t just be cannonfodder or the spreading is mostly useless. On top of epidemic we would also bring wells here, which might make it even better fight scenarios for Necros.
b) Council fights (instead of 1 super strong boss, you have a set of 3-6 mini bosses that together form the fight); since generally you have to focus one target down first, or swap between at set intervals. Necro could ease the DPS timer here because of “free” condi spread every 20 seconds.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Bhawb.7408:

No offense to ANet, but they aren’t known for being good players. I’ve seen their PvP streams more than enough to know I wouldn’t trust them when it comes to high level gameplay. Necromancer would need some insane buffs to be worth bringing over Ele.

It shouldn’t really be that shocking to anybody. It is a common occurrence for developers of a game to be less skilled that players.

Players generally have all the time to dedicate to the game to hone their skills. Developers usually work on a very specific items and probably are not inclined to waste more of their time, playing said game at home.

Unfortunately it’s often the developers that forget this. A lot of developers seem to think that if content is tough for them, it’ll be tough for the players.
But they forget that they are:
a) Simply not the best players.
b) Only get a few weeks to play with the content; where players have to last years with it.

These two factors are massive. What the devs find extremely hard, often ends up being not really all that challenging for the better players. And over time also waters down for your average groups (as they gain experience).

It’s a pitfall even the veteran developers tend to fall for though. I’ve seen Blizzard make that mistake with WoW even a few expansions down the road.

I might be one of the few that actually likes the sound somewhat.
Granted some abilities sound kinda “farty”, but at least it sounds more like a warhorn and less like a plastic toyhorn.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I can really only imagine two ways raids play out.

1. No DPS check, everyone wears nomad’s and soldiers and wears the bosses down.

2. DPS check, highest dps comps and active defenses reign supreme once again.

Maybe. But there are in between ways.

If there are DPS checks on extended fights, with tight mechanics it might prove worthy to go for a combination of survivability and dps.
You can go full berzerker gear, but if the fight is harsh enough that your elementalists go down every other AoE, then you still won’t make the DPS check.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

PS: please don’t say rezzing, if you need to be rezzed then you have done something wrong, not right. That is not a role.

Funny you say that. Because in WoW back in the days, you needed at least 2-3 druids because they had a combat rez.
It’s not about doing something wrong, it’s about being flexible enough to recover. Everyone makes mistakes and if the raids are truly hard, people WILL go down.
Hell maybe there are even mechanics that require people to go down or certain mechanics that can be circumvented by having someone go down.

That said. I don’t think necro’s currently, with the current knowledge and tools, bring enough to warrant a spot in an optimal setup. Of course every class can be taken to a raid and you’ll be able to finish it; but we all know meta/optimal setups are ultimately going to be much more common.

However, things might change.
The encounter might require people to prop up their defensive to stay alive, the necro might benefit here.
They talked about changing boss encounters to react on more debuffs, and certain encounters might allow for boon corruption; another pro for the necro.
Maybe there are encounters with timed add spawns that need bursting down. If adds spawn every 40 seconds in an encounter and they can be grouped up; well bombing could become a thing for a certain encounter.

Too soon to tell. Only thing I fear is that so far ANet has been disgustingly poor at reacting to imbalances. Certain classes have been top of the food-chain for the past 3 years, and other classes (including necro) at the bottom. And there has hardly been a serious attempt at fixing that.

I haven’t checked yet. But reddit seems to be full of necro’s who say that minions finally respond properly.
They attack, they move as a group and when you swap target, they swap target as well (not always what you want, but it’s an improvement either way).

Again though, haven’t checked yet. Mostly hearsay.

I had some hope that Spectral Mastery would see more use with HoT, seeing as GS users can really make use of those skills.
Spectral Grasp for gap closing, Spectral Armor for sustain, Spectral Wall for CC/sustain. And on top of that they all get a pretty hefty LF bonus on top.
They all quite fit with the GS quite well.

Vital Persistence felt semi-mandatory though for Reaper Shroud. If that wasn’t as much the case, it would actually make that line interesting.
I also hope they fix it so Spectral Wall and Spectral Walk fully benefit from the duration bonus.

Tim.6450:

Nyth.3492:

The fact you can transfer those negative conditions is a bonus, it’s a combo unique to the necromancer. That shouldn’t however take away from the skills’ strength, which is what ANet is doing now.

It is NOT a bonus . Transferring is just a way necro can deal with condition pressure. The skills that deal with condtion pressure are balanced in itself. What people are doing is double accounting the value of a transfer when it comes to corrupting and transfers.

That’s exactly what I’m saying, is it not ?
(EDIT: Apparently “isn ’ t it” is counted as a swear word -.-)

Currently ANet seems to handle corruption skills as “strong enough” because “we can also transfer the selfhurt”.
I’m saying that corruption skill shouldn’t be balanced with the transfer in mind, but rather AS THEY ARE. In which case the abilities are WAY to weak for the negative aspect they bring along.

The fact you can transfer them is merely a combo we can do that also consumes the cooldown of a very valuable transfer skill.
And most of the time the negatives we get are too badly designed to transfer them in the first place.
(4 second 5-stack vulnerability is not worth my transfer skill, but it sure hurts like BLEEP when I’m getting wailed on).

I think you’re misunderstanding my use of the word “bonus” in this case. Maybe I should’ve used a better word, like ‘side-effect’ or something.

Sororita.3465:

Bhawb.7408:

Applying themes across every profession isn’t balance, its homogenization. Neither Warriors nor Berserkers have any real connection to direct self harm.

It is balance when it directly affects game play. If it’s not a question of thematics, don’t you agree that corruptions need to be stronger to justify the damage they do to the caster?

I don’t think he ever claimed that corruptions were fine.

Corruptions are currently stupid, because:
a) The strength of the skills frankly don’t weigh up against the self hurt.
They’re neither remarkably strong; most classes, hell even the necromancer itself, has skills that surpass it in power without weird strings attached.
Consume Conditions was the only one that really stood out tbh.

b) The implementation of the corruption effects often makes no sense.
A lot of them are very short duration, which makes them uninteresting to transfer really. (E.g. 6 second poison; 4 second 5-stack vulnerability).

c) Master of Corruption just makes it worse. And again has the stupid design of very short, yet very annoying, making them dodgy to transfer and at the same time annoying to ignore.
This would make more sense if the corruptions skills had a bigger impact, or if the trait itself had a different implementation. E.g. increase duration of self-hurting corruption skills, because then you make it a downside that we can combo with our condi transfers for more depth.

Sororita.3465:

Thematics such as those of corruption skills and Mallyx skills don’t work in a PvP environment, this includes WvW because you have player vs player activity, completely due to the fact that don’t offer anything additional for the conditions applied to the user. They do not fit practically in a PvP environment, thematically or not.

They have worked just fine in countless other games, including Guild Wars 1.

Like Bhawb said: The problem isn’t in the thematic, but in the implementation. For corruption skills to be so hurtful to the necromancer himself, the skill should have much more power.
The fact you can transfer those negative conditions is a bonus, it’s a combo unique to the necromancer. That shouldn’t however take away from the skills’ strength, which is what ANet is doing now.