Guild Wars 2

Finished Tangled Depths just now. Got nothing.

Seems to be hit and miss for me. Most of the time I get an error message or infinite loading screen when I try to log in on a character. I get in some times, but then I usually get the same issue when I try to change maps.

I also finished Verdant Brink and got nothing. My character had 100% world before HoT.

Don’t know about those maps, but Verdant Brink is not granting me any rewards for 100%.

I just finished the Verdant Brink map, but got no map completion reward.

Oh, this explains it. I actually dodge quite often right after I get it in, y’know… for survival. Would be nice to get this fixed.

Got mine last night from doing hero points in the jungle.

So… zerk gear, chrono runes, spite+blood+reaper for traits and then a full bar of wells for max deepz, or so I’d think?

It only shows one unlocked weapon for me, and it’s one I don’t have.

I have the same problem. Gonna try to play through it on another character so I can have masteries at least.

Yeah, I agree with Tim. The scaling just needs to be better.

I could see the healing minion and flesh golem being taken more often now, but I don’t know about full MM.

Pretty sure we’re getting that greatsword and hood from the trailer, but I guess we’ll see in just a few days if that’s correct. :p

Well, I started this game as a PvE minion master, guess it’s time to go back to the roots.

I’ve been considering both Curses, and Blood Magic as possible alternatives for Soul Reaping in my PvE reaper build. Never thought I’d be considering Death Magic.

Yeah, the human female animation looks particularly bad. :\

Cerbeius.7129:

I actually never used Axe till since a few weeks ago now, but I wonder how the old animations looked like. Can’t seem to find anything related on the webz.

You’ll be interested in seeing this comparison that was made in the first thread:

For those, who will never forget and never forgive:

The Good ==> The Ugly

Good Asura ==> Ugly Asura
Good Charr ==> Ugly Charr
Good Norn ==> Ugly Norn
Good Males ==> Ugly Males
Good Females ==> Ugly Females

Link to original post:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Axe-skill-1/page/6#post5360460

I know axe isn’t very good (hopefully will change), but Fashion Wars 2 dictates that my necro needs that new legendary axe.

Yes please.

Much agreed. Lingering Curse is a boring GM trait, and Terror is very rarely worth it.

Main thing we need on this well is a cooldown reduction, and a big one at that.

I do support this idea though.

But is it worth taking Soul Reaping over Curses or Blood Magic to make RS auto competitive with Dagger?

Reaper’s touch is mostly fine I think. I would like for it to be a projectile finisher.

The boon seems a bit out of place like others have commented. Protection would be better than regeneration I think, or an offensive boon like fury or might. Not too fussed about it though.

Spinal Shivers needs a cast time reduction. No more than 1 sec, 3/4 sec would be ideal.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I would like to have a link to that thread, or at least a pointer towards it if you know where it is. The reason being I’m wondering if he would consider reworking any core functionalities.

Link to the post OP is referring to:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Axe-auto-still-bad-10/first#post5545064

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cyclone_Axe

Maybe a slightly modified version of this could work?

I think the Corruptions are mostly fine at what they actually do, but I can agree that the effects generally don’t warrant the drawback of self harm. Realistically I could see us getting small buffs like 50% more might duration on BiP, CB corrupting all boons and some small casttime/cooldown tweaks to Epidemic, Plague and CC.

These buffs would be nice and all, but I’d personally like Corruptions to have more interesting effects and more utility.

Corrosive Poison Cloud is quite powerful now as is, and Epidemic is very unique but potentially very powerful in the right situations. However I feel BiP and CB are pretty dull, so here are some suggestions to how the devs could make them more interesting and useful.

Blood is Power is a pretty plain skill that grants might in a small AoE for a short duration. My idea for this skill is to have it also apply stability and be a stunbreak, giving us some anti-CC not attached to an elite skill. I’d not expect an increase in might duration if a change like this was implemented.

Corrupt Boon corrupts 5 boons on a target. It’s a fair amount in one go, but we have several ways to corrupt boons. My idea would be to turn the target into a potential condi bomb by adding a unique effect to the current functionality of this skill. The enemy hit by CB receives a debuff that corrupts all boons they produce (for themselves and allies). This means an unaware enemy affected by this could potentially wreck themselves and nearby allies by generating too many boons.

And the trait should grant resistance, or have something else that makes it worth using (affected enemies immune to effects of boons for a short duration maybe?).

Luke.4562:

Make way, adulescents.

A large well similar to Elementalist’s Static Field and Necrid Trap from Lupicus.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Static_Field_
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Giganticus_Lupicus

A more proper Unholy, Dimensional Cage stopping people inside and maybe draining large amounts of health to heal the Necro and his teammates.

This would effectively combo with Wells, Minions, Marks, Epidemic…
Also it would give control in WvW, and solve some PVP focusfire and chasing problems Necro has.

omfg yes… o__o

Life Force appeared the same way as health on the squad UI last beta, I hope it would be possible to address this.

meow one twenty.4376:

Muchacho.2390:

Jerus.4350:

With RS you can also get the weapon strength boost from using GS with it. So don’t forget that.

I dont think this is correct. RS doesnt work like DS regarding the the weapon coefficent. If i remember correctly RS always uses the hammer weapon coefficent but depends on the rarity of your equipped weapon much like weaponkits do. So GS and dagger for example should give the same damage in RS if they have the same rarity (and level).

I believe it is actually an exotic level Hammer.

That would be horrible. If this is the case I hope it gets changed.

I love what they did with the skill, but I think the self-weakness really has to go.

We don’t need a cap.

These minions are weak anyway, and we can’t realistically expect to be keeping up a huge amount of them. In any big fight they will be cleaved down fast (WvW zerg), and in any small fight (PvP, WvW roaming) we won’t be able to generate enough for it to become a problem.

Brokensunday.4098:

OlliX.1705:

I’d just love to see a whirl finisher on Axe 2.

and 10% dmage buff

And small cleave? Ok, maybe too much. But whirl and 10% damage boost seems perfectly reasonable.

(and let’s not forget that blast finisher on skill 3…)

Scholar or Strength for dungeons. Flame Legion might also be a good option if running dhuumfire.

I’d just love to see a whirl finisher on Axe 2.

scarydogie.3024:

Thank you

Onerios.4962:

Think about what your asking for a moment. If blighters boon did not heal you while you were in shroud, why would the tooltip explicitly make a case for healing you while in shroud, it would simply state “while not in reapers shroud, gain life force when you gain a boon”.

True, however I’ve been gone for almost 2 months and wasn’t entirely sure of the state healing and death shroud were in. Do any other heals work while in shroud, other than unholy martyr?

All siphons from the Blood Magic trait line works through Shroud.

Power, condi, ferocity.. that would be really nice… and I think necros would be the best class to utilise such a combo.

There have been some changes I’ve not agreed with, but there is plenty of amazing changes to give him credit for.

To think there was actually a time we could not siphon health through shroud. Now we can even share those siphons with allies. Boon hate is through the ceiling with signets. And now this posion cloud that blocks projectiles and all this delicious scepter torment.

Now we really just need some finishers on that axe. #Geelieve

(and I would love some stability, but…)

Here’s my feedback on the Reaper traits.

Generally I think we have some really good traits in this traitline, but there are some that are underperforming. And the grandmaster slot has very little to offer for any power build that doesn’t capitalise on Shroud, so I will try to address that.

First a look at the adept traits.

• Augury of Death: I actually like this trait now. The shouts are a bit better than in the last betas, and the small heal for each target you hit is nice.

• Chilling Nova: This trait needs to change in order for it to be worthwhile. If we’re gonna have this long ICD it needs to proc on critical hits with no added requirements. Even then I think we’d we well off with an additional effect, such kitten extra damage against chilled foes.

• Relentless Pursuit: It’s fine in its current state, see no need for change here.

In the master tier I think we have a really good trait, a decent trait with good potential and one trait that really underperforms.

• Soul Eater: This trait just can’t compete with the other two, and I really don’t have any specific ideas on how to fix it, but I’ll just trow out some ideas: Gravedigger corrupts boons, 10% increased damage with greatsword, chill and deal damage to foes around you when you swap to greatsword in combat. These are just some ideas, hope it helps.

• Chilling Victory: It’s pretty good. The ICD is a necessary evil but not too harsh, the might duration is a bit low though. I think an 8 second base duration would be more appropriate.

• Decimate Defenses: This is awesome. Needs to stay as it is.

In the grandmaster tier we have two traits that benefit Shroud a lot, and one that’s supposed to benefit condi. None of these traits really bring much benefit to a power build that doesn’t want to sit in Shroud.

• Blighter’s Boon: This is a powerhouse of a trait. When paired up with the Spite traitline it really brings some sustain. If you manage to hit a lot of enemies with your YAAW shout, this will also build you quite a lot of life force. It gets even better if you have allied players with you pumping out boons. It’s very strong and definitely deserves the grandmaster spot. I think it’s in a really good spot right now, and I don’t currently think it needs any changes.

• Deathly Chill: This is supposed to be the condi trait, but I find it underwhelming. It makes your chill deal damage similar to Terror, which is nice, but chill is such a common debuff that you can easily end up overwritten by other chills. The damage from it is decent, but nothing spectacular. What I would like to see on this trait is some additional effect, and I have a couple of different ideas for this. The one I thought of that I liked the most is that you apply a group buff to yourself and allies around you in combat that increases all outgoing damage (power and condi) by 5% against chilled foes. This way necros that don’t want to trait heavily into shroud gets a great beneficial trait to choose that also buffs nearby allies, and this trait will not get nullified by other players applying chill to the same target.
  Some other ideas would be that applying chill also corrupts a boon (would open for some really cool builds in PvP), or that applying chill also applies an additional condition like torment (more condi pressure).

• Reaper’s Onslaught: In any situation where you need sustain I think Blighter’s Boon will be the go-to trait. If you don’t need sustain and you’re just looking for dps, is auto attacking from Shroud what you want to be doing? Maybe? I don’t know how the numbers add up. It’s not a bad trait, but it doesn’t do much unless your build will be auto attacking a lot from Shroud. If this trait granted you a short burst of Quickness on Shroud entry I think this could be an important trait for glassy necro burst builds, or any Shroud flashing build.

I hope my thoughts and suggestions are considered and will be of help to the team that’s working on this specialisation. Thanks for all the good work you do, and I’ve had a blast playing the Reaper and look forward to playing more at launch!

Here’s my Reaper feedback. I’ve played Reaper in PvE, mainly in Verdant Brink and I’ve also played some PvP with it. First just some general impressions:

In PvP I found that I was very vulnerable to being kited, and while out of shroud getting CC’d was still a big problem. I don’t think we should be invincible or anything, but those are some big weaknesses I currently see.

I still think we need a stability somewhere in our utilities that’s not attached to some elite skill. This could be put on a shout, or on one of the base Necro skills. Even making the Infusing Terror we have in Reaper Shroud continue pulsing when we leave would be a great help.

Other than this, I found that I was pretty reliant on Shroud to sustain myself. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but going into Soul Reaping so I could take Vital Persistence pretty much felt like a must unless I was running a minion build where I could juggle conditions around with Unholy Martyr instead. I think this reliance hurts build diversity, and I’d like to suggest lowering the baseline lifeforce degeneration a bit to alleviate this (i.e. partially baselining Vital Persistence).

Another thing that became very apparent when playing Reaper is just how combo starved base Necro is, and this goes for both PvP and PvE. Greatsword and Reaper Shroud have good access to combos which are very fun to play with and adds a new layer of play to the combat. None of our other weapons (except staff) have this, and basic Death Shroud has nothing of the sort either. I think this is a good time to implement some of the combo finisher ideas the necro community have been wanting for a long time.

And now to comment more specifically on the weapon, shroud and skills. Let’s start with our weapon, the greatsword. I feel the greatsword is starting to get in a good spot and it has a good feel to it, but I still think there are tweaks to be made, mainly with the auto attack and the pull.

• The Auto Attack: The problem I see with this skill is mainly a PvP problem. Nobody’s gonna stand still long enough for you to hit them with the last attack in the chain. It takes too long to get there and then just apply a short amount of chill. This auto attack chain needs to be sped up, and adding a short chill to the 2nd part of the chain would not hurt either. Another option I see would be to make the last attack apply an ice field on the ground, similar to how the guardian hammer chain works.

• Gravedigger: This attack feels rewarding now. It’s slow, but it hits kitten hard. I am quite satisfied with how this attack works now. It could possibly be a little bit faster like other people have commented, but it still needs to have a decent tell so people don’t just get instagibbed out of nowhere in PvP.

• Death Spiral: It has a good effect, and is overall a solid skill. I still think the range of this skill needs to be increased though for better reliability.

• Nightfall: This field is huge and I love it. I don’t think this skill needs to be changed.

• Grasping Darkness: The life force is good, the chill is good, the damage is fine. My problems with this skill is that 600 range really doesn’t seem to cut it as a gap closer, and as a mass pull for gathering mobs the arc is too small in many situations. I don’t think it needs both of these things, but what I think it needs is a range increase and a ground target indicator so we can more accurately get an impression of what’s in range before we use it.

Now for Reaper Shroud. I feel it’s kinda in the same alley as greatsword. The Shroud has some good functionality, but needs some tweaking.

• The Auto Attack: Overall fairly satisfied with it. I still think a small damage increase wouldn’t hurt, but it’s not strictly necessary. Life force generation is a little on the low side. It’s good if you hit several enemies, but if you’re fighting several enemies chances are your life force is going down quite fast. You could increase the life force gain a little bit more I think.

• Death’s Charge: I like how this works, but it bugs out some times. If those are ironed out I think this skill will be fine.

• Infusing Terror: This is a really nice skill, but there is one thing that I’d really want to see changed. It needs to keep pulsing if we leave Shroud.

• Death Spiral: The burst poison application is nice. Not sure if it would be too much, but I’d love to see some life force generation on it. Overall it’s a pretty solid skill. The big problem I see with it is not really about the skill itself, but more about how Shroud works. It produces a whirl finisher, and most of our combo fields are dark fields which produce leeching bolts. Sadly we don’t benefit from this combo because they don’t heal through Shroud. I’d love to see this changed so we can get the full benefits of this skill.

• Executioner’s Scythe: I love the stun and ice field, it’s good utility, but the damage is too low. It needs a pretty significant buff to damage if it’s going to be used as high damaging execute attack, which I believe was the original intentions behind it.

Now for the shouts. I really like that many of them are instant cast now, that’s a great improvement.

• Your Soul Is Mine!: The healing part still feels a bit weak. I’d like to see it heal a little more or added healing per target hit. Other than that I think it’s good as a life force generating heal.

• You’re All Weaklings!: At first I wasn’t really a big fan of this one, but I’ve come to like it more. The weakness duration is pretty good, and the burst might is nice. My main complaint here is that the might duration is a bit short. I’d like to see it increased to the same duration as the weakness.

• Rise!: This one is great now, and if you hit lots of enemies and have it traited you can run around with lots of small damage absorbing minions. I love it.

• Nothing Can Save You!: This one is potentially quite powerful, but you only have so many slots on your utility bar. I want to suggest a change to this skill. I’ve been of the impression for a long time that Reaper needs to have a source of stability that doesn’t rely on being in Shroud or casting an elite skill with a long cooldown. I know it already does a lot of things, but this is the shout that I think is the most fitting for a stability per target hit effect. May I suggest the following: Standardise the unblockable to 5 seconds, and then add stability for each target hit instead of increasing the unblockable duration (or you could add stability to the current version and just increase the cooldown). I think it would make its way onto a lot more utility bars this way, and give reaper something it really needs.

• Suffer!: I feel like Plague Signet would just be more beneficial in most cases. What this skill should have is a stun break, and then some additional effect to help you in sticky situations. I’d suggest either a very short daze to interrupt skills, or a short immobilise or both. This would give you the option to use it offensively, or to try to get out of a bad situation. The immobilise would also make this skill helpful when trying to chase someone.

• Chilled To The Bone!: It’s great that it can’t be stunbroken, and it can be really really good when timed right. That being said, it’s really easy to dodge it and the cooldown is quite long for a skill that gets negated that easily. The stability seems to be kinda slapped on there for good measure. My suggestion here is to move the stability to a different shout (NCSY or Suffer seem like the best candidates for this) and then cut the cooldown to 60 seconds.

Trait feedback coming in a separate post.

Optimus Prime.8015:

Hmmm So I decided to try Try Silver-wastes today and Also V/Brink as well today

Firstly Odd thing is I am doing more dps to the new adds than I am to SW and there is a huge differece on G/D

1: Best grave digger I can do vrs Normal/Elites in SW is 5k ??
2: Best Grave digger I had in V/Brink is 9/10k (Same gear)

3: Overall dps seems lower than last BWE for reaper

Were you in the beginner celestial gear or something? I’ve been running full berserker, and the highest gravedigger I got was just over 21k on a regular veteran mob.

silvermember.8941:

DTATL.9641:

Pompeia.5483:

Third, Gravedigger… I know it has been mentioned but it needs something to handle not being spammed for bosses/mobs that have a large HP pool. Maybe, instead of reducing the cooldown 100%, only drop it down 75% or something… I get that it is a clean-up styled skill, but it really is silly and, with the trait to leech HP on the skill, you are not going to die in these cases…

Thank you. First one I see that feels the same as I. Gravedigger is nice but for mobs with large Healthpools it’s just silly(and quite boring). Personally I feel that the full CD reduction is pointless as it has quite low CD anyway. And everything else you can only really use it on once or twice. I would rather have something else on it. The lifesteal on the trait is pretty bad though. When gravedigger is such a slow skill the amount of life stolen should be higher.

I don’t get the logic behind both of guy’s comments and maybe it is best that way.

Maybe they didn’t play BWE1. Anyone who played BWE1 should remember how clunky and awful that was when reduction wasn’t 100%.

I don’t notice any differences in gravedigger from last beta. I am still critting 13-18k on mobs in Verdant Brink.

Edit: And that is in full berserker gear.

Okay, let’s do this. Been a while since I did.

Death Shroud:
Projectile finisher on life blast. Much faster projectile on Dark Path, and give it a leap finisher.

Axe:
Auto attack needs a good animation. Ghastly Claws gets a whirl finisher. Unholy Feast gets a blast finisher.

Focus:
Shorter cast time on both skills, but especially on Spinal Shivers.

Warhorn:
Wail of Doom gets a blast finisher.

Dagger:
Enfeeble could get a blast finisher.

Staff:
Increasing the chance of a projectile finisher from the auto attack would be nice. Add some additional condi to Mark of Blood.

It’s mainly finishers I’ve added in. Some might possibly argue it’s too much… but currently necro is pretty starved of finishers, and having those extra finishers will add some more utility to our class and additional depth to how we can play.

Too strong.

Slap some stability onto one of our utility skills instead.

I’m using the white ascended warhorn. Quite easily one of the nicest ones IMO, and they come in different colours so you can probably craft one that fits your colour scheme.

Brayzz.6524:

CPC is very good but people cant see the effect on the ground. Its should be something like this (http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/img_b07_thumb3.jpg) in green.

Yup, that’s pretty much exactly how I’d like to picture it in my head. In green of course.

Only thing it needs is to have its cooldown reduced to about half of what it is now.

Rising Dusk.2408:

554883kitten.1705:

Weird, cause everyone else in my guild insists that other projectile absorptions and reflects don’t work against those projectiles. Guess I might have to get on my thief and try to see how smoke screen works in comparison.

Many of them used to, but don’t anymore. I am entirely certain that CPC blocking the normally unblockable projectiles is unintended and will be fixed in the next bug fix round. It is not critical enough that it will get hotfixed, though.

That said, I love the new CPC a lot. I wish the special effect would be updated to look like the Toxic Alliance krait AOE field, but that can happen later. Functionally it’s great right now.

The only thing I absolutely hate is the self-weakness. Seriously, any other condition, but weakness is crippling to DPS and has to be cleansed immediately or you cannot even capitalize on the projectile destruction.

Yea, I absolutely agree about the special effect. Most of the time when I used it my team mates didn’t know I had it up. I probably wouldn’t either if I wasn’t the one that placed it. It just looks like another combo field, and just sort of blends in with your wells if you use those too.

As for the weakness, I’ve been saving my Consume Conditions just so I can cleanse right after I cast CPC… but I agree, I’d rather have any other condition so cleansing wouldn’t be as crucial.

Weird, cause everyone else in my guild insists that other projectile absorptions and reflects don’t work against those projectiles. Guess I might have to get on my thief and try to see how smoke screen works in comparison.

I also found out last night while doing fractals that you can block unblockable projectiles with it, such as Mai Trin cannon phase. That seems a bit broken, but I thought it was fun. :p

I really don’t mind how the damage is right now seeing how the attack works, but I’d really like some more utility on it. Could we not have Axe 2 be a whirl finisher at its target, and Axe 3 be a blast finisher? That would really add some awesome utility and combo options for this weapon.

As for the auto attack, this just feels horrible and looks horrible and it really ruins the feel of the weapon for me. Could we have something with more of an impact? Maybe you could re-use or modify an already existing animation? Warrior axe 2 maybe, or 3rd attack in warrior or guardian mace auto chain… or even a modified generic swing, like guard scepter auto?