Guild Wars 2

In reaper shroud, yes.

I think something is wrong if you’re rating axe that much higher than scepter.

The bad design is there but I don’t think it’s for the reasons you lay out, and you’re clearly biased towards power necro.

Laraley.7695:

Roe.3679:

Laraley.7695:

Roe.3679:

Laraley.7695:

Toxsa.2701:

Nutshel.7264:

Bhawb.7408:

Its being nerfed when the new specialization changes hit live, we’ve known that since they showed off the preview.

that’s what, half a year away? year? maybe more. They should srsly start fixing bs with higher frequency then once every half year.

Yday I had 1v1 downed state as ele vs necro. Necro got down first, before I went down he ate ligtnining strike, sigil flame strike, few auto attacks and arcane shield explosion… I still lost that 1v1

Some classes have more advantages in down-state, that’s class design. I think downstate specialty fits Necro quite well. People shouldn’t think they win the fight when put people to down state. In a team fight, down state means nothing because there’re plenty of ways for people to rev the teammates, and it’s totally intended.

Also class balance shouldn’t be considered v.s. each downstate. For example, if both you and warrior go down, you’d lost the fight because he’ll eventually stand up for awhile. When you down together with a ranger, ranger will eventually win because of pet rev. However, for thieves, mesmers, and ele, even though you can’t save yourself and win the down-state fight, your skills allow you to stall time until your teammates are able to help you. That’s entirely how balance works. And for engi… Yeah their down skills kinda suck, but at least they’re strong when they’re not down lol…

Please stop talking.

Everyone knows that downstate skills are not balanced at all and they should be. Rangers interrupting you several times and before you can actually atempt to stomp, they will be getting ressed. Necro who can one shot thief, zerker ele etc. from a downstate. ‘’Totally Intended’’ Yeah, right.

’’That’s how balance works.’’ Well, glad you are not on the balance team.

QQ about necros and Rangers. Classic.

Wondering people do not like specs that take little skill and revolve around pressing one button. Classic.

If they take such little skill, then use some of your own and deal with the down state. It isn’t difficult. You’re a superior ele player, right? Much better than those necro and ranger players. You can do it. I believe in you.

Again, this goes back around to where other threads like this have gone if you don’t like the downed state, spinal shivers, or whatever, then you should advocate for builds that don’t require them or replace them effectively instead of whining about downed states of classes that aren’t viable.

Lol. You do understand that they’re nerfing, right? So can you explain to me how that’s intented when they decided to change it?

Also, I wasn’t crying about anything. I was stating a pure fact that downstate skills are not balanced and that it’s definitely not intended, but I guess someone like you cannot understand that.

Nerfed? The percent increase was toned down, and then merged into a minor trait. Every power specced necro will now have that increase as opposed to only a few now. Hard to see that as a nerf. Hard to see your point with that in mind.

Edit – forgot the might and vulnerability that will come into play. Damage could be similar even after the change. At baseline for power necros.

Laraley.7695:

Roe.3679:

Laraley.7695:

Toxsa.2701:

Nutshel.7264:

Bhawb.7408:

Its being nerfed when the new specialization changes hit live, we’ve known that since they showed off the preview.

that’s what, half a year away? year? maybe more. They should srsly start fixing bs with higher frequency then once every half year.

Yday I had 1v1 downed state as ele vs necro. Necro got down first, before I went down he ate ligtnining strike, sigil flame strike, few auto attacks and arcane shield explosion… I still lost that 1v1

Some classes have more advantages in down-state, that’s class design. I think downstate specialty fits Necro quite well. People shouldn’t think they win the fight when put people to down state. In a team fight, down state means nothing because there’re plenty of ways for people to rev the teammates, and it’s totally intended.

Also class balance shouldn’t be considered v.s. each downstate. For example, if both you and warrior go down, you’d lost the fight because he’ll eventually stand up for awhile. When you down together with a ranger, ranger will eventually win because of pet rev. However, for thieves, mesmers, and ele, even though you can’t save yourself and win the down-state fight, your skills allow you to stall time until your teammates are able to help you. That’s entirely how balance works. And for engi… Yeah their down skills kinda suck, but at least they’re strong when they’re not down lol…

Please stop talking.

Everyone knows that downstate skills are not balanced at all and they should be. Rangers interrupting you several times and before you can actually atempt to stomp, they will be getting ressed. Necro who can one shot thief, zerker ele etc. from a downstate. ‘’Totally Intended’’ Yeah, right.

’’That’s how balance works.’’ Well, glad you are not on the balance team.

QQ about necros and Rangers. Classic.

Wondering people do not like specs that take little skill and revolve around pressing one button. Classic.

If they take such little skill, then use some of your own and deal with the down state. It isn’t difficult. You’re a superior ele player, right? Much better than those necro and ranger players. You can do it. I believe in you.

Again, this goes back around to where other threads like this have gone if you don’t like the downed state, spinal shivers, or whatever, then you should advocate for builds that don’t require them or replace them effectively instead of whining about downed states of classes that aren’t viable.

Laraley.7695:

Toxsa.2701:

Nutshel.7264:

Bhawb.7408:

Its being nerfed when the new specialization changes hit live, we’ve known that since they showed off the preview.

that’s what, half a year away? year? maybe more. They should srsly start fixing bs with higher frequency then once every half year.

Yday I had 1v1 downed state as ele vs necro. Necro got down first, before I went down he ate ligtnining strike, sigil flame strike, few auto attacks and arcane shield explosion… I still lost that 1v1

Some classes have more advantages in down-state, that’s class design. I think downstate specialty fits Necro quite well. People shouldn’t think they win the fight when put people to down state. In a team fight, down state means nothing because there’re plenty of ways for people to rev the teammates, and it’s totally intended.

Also class balance shouldn’t be considered v.s. each downstate. For example, if both you and warrior go down, you’d lost the fight because he’ll eventually stand up for awhile. When you down together with a ranger, ranger will eventually win because of pet rev. However, for thieves, mesmers, and ele, even though you can’t save yourself and win the down-state fight, your skills allow you to stall time until your teammates are able to help you. That’s entirely how balance works. And for engi… Yeah their down skills kinda suck, but at least they’re strong when they’re not down lol…

Please stop talking.

Everyone knows that downstate skills are not balanced at all and they should be. Rangers interrupting you several times and before you can actually atempt to stomp, they will be getting ressed. Necro who can one shot thief, zerker ele etc. from a downstate. ‘’Totally Intended’’ Yeah, right.

’’That’s how balance works.’’ Well, glad you are not on the balance team.

QQ about necros and Rangers. Classic.

It’s like you’re upset about the down states of the professions who spend the most time there.

It’s almost like you need to consider if you should stomp at that moment.

They look the same to me, only difference is how big the characters are.

Also make your character the way you want it. It’s just a game. I’ve changed my character multiple times and I’m expecting to change it again for HoT.

sinject.4607:

Roe.3679:

sinject.4607:

Rym.1469:

Give Necromancer any other option to be partly okay in this crazy meta, they will take it over wellspam anyday.

Untill then, proc wars. Not like Necromancer is the only one here.

no other profession can drastically lose a 1v1 (enemy has more than 8k hp) and still win through downstate procs. so yeah, necro is alone in that regard.

No other profession is focused as heavily as Necromancers are. Perhaps this makes you reconsider that? This is a l2p issue anyway, especially If you play thief where there are multiple safe stomp options. You can also LOS or get out of range. Plenty of counters to an easily stomped down state.

I seriously wonder what some of you guys do against a well played engi or ele if there is this much QQ about power necros.

your response doesn’t actually address my topic and instead you bring up how “heavily focused” necros are as justification for being able to win 1v1s (which is completely unrelated to how heavily something gets focused in teamfights) almost entirely from downed state.

in 1v1s, first person to go down should always lose. i don’t care what build or profession you’re playing there should be no exceptions to this. yes, this means ranger downstate needs a serious nerf too, and warrior as well (not so much nerfs as totally new #3 skills). no profession should be designed to have a distinct advantage in down state fights just to compensate for poor upright performance. this is just dumb no matter how you cut it.

it’s like reading a guardian moan about not being able to escape teamfights as justification for being stupidly strong in 1v1s against anything with zerker amulet.

if i lose to an engie or ele im fine with it because there’s at least a hint of complexity to them; power necro, just like power ranger, is all gimmick. you should not be defending either or in their current state but asking for major redesigns so necro has more than just “sit behind a mountain of HP and pray you can auto attack whatever is killing you to death”, same with ranger except “sit on an actual mountain and pray you can kill whatever is coming at you before they get to you and signet of stone wears off”.

I’m not asking for nerfs to either professions because they are the worst off right now, i’m asking that they be given lower skill floors but considerably higher ceilings through improved redesigns that are more reliant on active (but more rewarding) defensive play a la thief, mesmer, and engie.

Feel free to search my post history where I’ve made literally dozens of suggestions and at one point compiled every constructive necromancer post for months into one metapost with the intent of bringing positive change to necromancers.

But of course I’m going to defend my class. It’s actually taken some significant nerfs even while it hasn’t been in the meta for over a year. I don’t want to start feeling like even as a good necro that I can’t play the class I enjoy.

I also can’t help but find the irony that you put a necro into downed state in a 1v1 with 8k health left, yet the necro is the one that needs toned down?

And yeah, what Rym said.

Agree with OP’s first two bullets a lot, and Bhawb.

Rednik.3809:

Roe.3679:

I seriously wonder what some of you guys do against a well played engi or ele if there is this much QQ about power necros.

Its not like cele engi and ele takes really much more skill than that.

The point is that they are far more viable specs.

sinject.4607:

Rym.1469:

Give Necromancer any other option to be partly okay in this crazy meta, they will take it over wellspam anyday.

Untill then, proc wars. Not like Necromancer is the only one here.

no other profession can drastically lose a 1v1 (enemy has more than 8k hp) and still win through downstate procs. so yeah, necro is alone in that regard.

No other profession is focused as heavily as Necromancers are. Perhaps this makes you reconsider that? This is a l2p issue anyway, especially If you play thief where there are multiple safe stomp options. You can also LOS or get out of range. Plenty of counters to an easily stomped down state.

I seriously wonder what some of you guys do against a well played engi or ele if there is this much QQ about power necros.

Weez.6315:

its not like the necro power dmg would be bad compared to other classes even without chill of death. The active defense is the problem and i dont think any necro would want to keep chill of death in its current state when he could get a viable active defense instead.

All this talk about nerfing a already weak class wont help us cause noone wants to nerf the necro but to change some stupid traits and mechanics to something better.

the funny thing about Chill of death is that it would be a super strong trait even without the damage. And it would be a super strong trait without the boon remove.

#No unavoidable Dmg Procs
#No RNG in fights

The damage without chill of death is noticeably worse. For about 50-100 games I played a different power necro spec without chill of death and then went back to the meta spec, and the damage is much higher with it.

Removing chill of death means you have to replace it with a trait that is equally strong but not an instant proc. I welcome any advocates for necro active defenses, but this change of one trait won’t all of a sudden bring a necro some legit defense. Which is why these threads aren’t really helpful, you can’t just say “remove chill of death but revamp the class defensively” because the only idea there is removing chill of death.

I don’t like passive procs either but when you have panic strike, incendiary powder, sigils, runes, and a huge number of defensive passives from procs or signet heals or whatever, it’s just a drop in the bucket and not running it is gimping yourself.

I don’t really think Augory is the problem, it should be plenty effective. Bhawb is right, there will be a lot of targets a lot of the time, even in pvp. The bigger issue is that the shouts are still not that great even with the reduced cooldowns. Or at least that is my thought on it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m personally hoping it’ll affect everyone it hits. The cost of this being so strong is that it is on a fairly immobile class and is essentially melee range. If you can coral enemies and reave boons like that, then I’d say that’s just playing exceptionally well.

I can see it working on AOE when the posion is applied, but corrupting boons on that wide of an area for that long is like a full…. path… of… corruption…..

0.o

Is this another week where everyone judges all the changes without seeing them?

Aktium.9506:

Roe.3679:

Second, this skill only hits at the end of the leap

In the PoI you see the spinny traveling part of the necrocopter do a whole bunch of small hits before the bigger hit.

Good to know, but I still really doubt it will be everyone hit in between.

First, we deserve to have strong traits.

Second, this skill only hits at the end of the leap, so landing it won’t be quite as simple as it seems. Not to mention that every activation looks like a scene from Black Hawk Down, so it will be easy to dodge.

Wasn’t this addressed at some point, like back when they nerfed DS so it couldn’t save you from a fall?

Necro would be a joke if chill of death were just removed. You should be advocating for more balanced classes instead of straight removing these things.

I’ve played well over a thousand games on my power necro and I would be 100% fine with removing chill of death if the class was actually compensated for it, but just railing against one strong feature on a weak class feels a lot like QQ without accompanying suggestions.

I don’t even see the point in sigils since the same 6-8 of them get used by nearly everyone. Doom, intelligence, energy, air, fire, and then maybe some others like geomancy or hydromancy, anything else is probably a tiny fraction of sigil use. They need some.serious rebalancing and I think reverting the change to alow 2 of the same type.could go a long way.

War Mourner.5168:

Chilling nova is actually the key factor to keeping a high chill uptime.

It’s effectively a chill only epidemic which runs 3 times every 10 seconds. A traditional ICD would actually be more effective for keeping constant chill (for example ICD 3s etc), instead of the more likely burst of AOE chill that the x3 every 10sec will do (depending on crit chance), but I’m not complaining there.

It is important to note that using nova means not taking Augory, which significantly weakens the potential strength of using the shouts.

On the flip side, running Augory significantly effects your ability to maintain AOE chill due to the lack of chilling nova, although I honestly don’t think running multiple shouts on a condi build would be worth it anyway, but we’ll see.

I only see 2 of the shouts being desirable for a condi build, and chilling nova will be really strong if it’s combo’d with chill dealing damage, not to mention the reduced damage from chilled enemies. No contest, in my opinion.

Walk, wurm and corrupt boon are so strong I just can’t see replacing them, at this point.

You guys use axe?

Gexim.3289:

Fhenrir.5297:

well of darkness + Chilling Darkness will now be a potential viable condi well on top of being ultra defensive too. Plague with chilling darkness will be insane (stacking poison + blind + chill + on crit bleeds?) dhumfire potentially stacks 12+ burns on 3 targets, path of corruption is now as low kitten sec cooldown for 2 boons corrupted plus you get base 100% condi duration if you hold a scepter. If you use all these plus your transfers you should do ok as a condi necro ;o.

12+ burning stacks?? Since when does burning stack? What did I miss? Can you please explain

Burning and Poison (only the damage from poison) will now be stacking conditions in intensity as opposed to duration. I think this was announced with the new trait lines.

http://dulfy.net/2015/04/24/gw2-specializations-ama-livestream-notes/

It may be more a reaction to the observations that many Necromancers made that a lot of these damage numbers were actually pretty low, rather than too strong.

I have more fun on my necromancer. I’ve played my necro since launch and I know it better than any other class. It may not be meta but I’m sure I’m not holding my team back by playing it.

I did the same thing once and stumbled onto the same thing. It was weirdly not bad.

I ended up running a 2/6/0/0/6 build with corrupt boon, well of corruption and spectral armor, zerk amulet and dagger/staff. Obviously I took path of corruption and the rest were just power traits.

Before shoutbows and medi guards took more of the meta over, it was very strong against eles and engineers, and pretty much any boon heavy class. I still run it when it seems to make sense depending on the enemy comp, but that build will die with the new trait set up. Otherwise it is a very fun playstyle and you can completely own some meta classes.

manveruppd.7601:

Shiki.7148:

The thing is you don’t factor in the extra bolts from whirls, and for whatever reason completely ignore how Dhuumfire will actually work with RS. With the faster attack trait and 100% condi-duration, You should be able to retain 6-7 stacks of burning on 3, and 3-4 on 5 foes… And currently burning seems to hit like a truck (6 stacks = ~4.5 k damage with 25 vuln which we can also easily sustain now, see DH bursting chieftain).

The extra finishers are awesome (not just the whirls, reapers will get a leap finisher on a 6" cd too!), but it’s not like they’ll help chill uptime specifically: we get one ice field on a 30" cooldown. You can leap through that for 5" Frost Armour, which will probably chill an enemy for 4" if you’re lucky and they hit you twice.
Also, the activation time is REALLY slow, and we don’t know if the ice field forms if they dodge the attack.
Bottom line is don’t count on the finishers for extra chill uptime, and my post was specifically on what Reaper brings to conditionmancer. I think I argued pretty convincingly that the only things the specialisation brings that are useful for conditionmancers require either high chill uptime or frequent reapplication, and I’ve yet to be convinced we can get either of those without GS.

GS chill is coming mostly from the auto attack, which is highly telegraphed and slow.

A condi reaper could get chill from RS as mentioned, plus chiliblains, every application of fear and blind, every corruption of stability and fury, plus runes of grenth seem like they’d help a lot, not to mention sigil of ice.

All while doing this from range.

1. There are posters in this forum who don’t understand the possibilities that the Reaper spec opened up, so of course that lack of knowledge will exist in other forums. It’s not a negative thing, they just don’t see everything that there is to see.

2. Did you expect them to say that they thought this new class would destroy them or something? If you did, you have a lot to learn about human ego and emotion. Otherwise, of course they didn’t fear the Reaper, I wouldn’t expect any different answer.

The best, most generic advice I can give:

Condi – Kite like a champion. Know your teleports, and don’t waste your fears and corruptions until they will count.

Power – It’s all about your life force. Play aggressively, but don’t get yourself killed.

You will be focused, so you have to have the tools and skills to properly deal with it.

MethaneGas.8357:

Roe.3679:

War Mourner.5168:

He explicitly said it works with it, but because charge hits all enemies along it’s path, it potentially means PoC is really strong with Charge.

I know it works. Im wondering how it works.

Hello Roe I think Death’s Charge has an explosion thing at the end of your leap. Path of Corruption will remove boons at the explosion. I heard em say that in the stream, I’m 95% sure.

If it works as an AOE boon corruption, that is really strong. I suppose it doesn’t home now, and doesn’t chill, but if it works in aoe that would be a big buff.

Also I am really curious as to what a healing reaper could do. Could be really interesting in stronghold

War Mourner.5168:

He explicitly said it works with it, but because charge hits all enemies along it’s path, it potentially means PoC is really strong with Charge.

I know it works. Im wondering how it works.

Question – Did anyone catch how Path of Corruption interacts with Death’s Charge?

Renewing Blast may also be not totally awful now.

Lily.1935:

I’d defiantly like to have both Resistance and Stability. But I don’t think the cast time should really be touched. Considering how low it can get with the trait, its pretty big. Like, down to 78 seconds big. Or something like that. I think they’re using Celestial gear in the video as well, so the damage being at 1k is pretty nice. But since its celestial the heal’s actual heal is a bit too low in my opinion. Its basically a 3k heal. Should be 4k base in my opinion. 3k is a bit too low.

3,954 According to Dulfy’s screenshot.

spoj.9672:

Lets be honest though. The 2 second channel is way too much. It should be around 1 second.

Most of the shouts have long casts, in my opinion. 4 of the 6 are at 1 second or longer.

Megane.2103:

Roe.3679:

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

Holy kitten, the fact that you need to specify these stipulations makes the “very, very strong combos” kind of lackluster and lame. If everyone received nerfs because they were good in the right situation, this game would be absolute garbage.

Have you mained necromancer at all? Honestly asking this.

Necromancer has had comically weak life siphons and no healing in death shroud (and I suspect no cleave) because of these perfect storm scenarios. ICDs on Signet of Vampirism, Spectral Walk and Spectral Armor, Siphoned Power, nerfs to Lich Form, the super short stability on Foot in the Grave up until this most recent change … there are probably more I’m forgetting, but all of those skills/traits/features are bad because they are put in a box to be sure that in just the right situation they aren’t OP.

Reaper will have perfect storm scenarios and then people will cry and cry about it – and the worst part is that something may be done about those perfect storm scenarios well before the meta is established. The reaction will be just like with LB Rangers now, except I think Reaper will be more viable.

0.75 sec cast time isn’t bad but the heal seems very weak to me. Seems to me that it’s balanced around 5 targets with the cooldown reduction trait.

LCV.7245:

So, I just finished a PvP match where I faced a tanky Necro with more chill than I’ve ever seen. He was constantly applying it and there seemed to be no end. He was running staff and I didn’t see him swamp to another weapon set. He was extremely survivable and was a massive pain to deal with. Any ideas on the specifics of his build? I can’t find anything on Metabattle that seems to match what he was doing.

I can’t help but think that the Reaper reveal did this.

Chillmancer was always a thing, but someone was probably inspired to try it out since the reaper reveal.

Death shroud was always sort of doomed (no pun intended) because it was originally a downed state from way back when. They patched it well enough with traits but it probably was always going to be subpar.

Shroud knight is our revamped death shroud, I think.

MethaneGas.8357:

No.
Out of all things… “the scythe is too big” -_- seriously…?

The ONLY reason I care is because I don’t want it to be another “kill this necro right here” sign, like Lich form. Otherwise I think it’s epic.

Also, <3 you Methane

I’ve written a haiku for Robert:

I, necromancer
pledge my loyal allegiance
to Robert Gee; Boss

Tissitra.4153:

I mostly agree. People see the new flashy animations and particle effects + all the benefits you can THEORETICALLY get with chill and are excited. Then from the point of view of the developers the discussion is over. Meanwhile, most of the issues that have caused necros to be bottom tier almost throughout the existence of GW2 are still not addressed. I believe this will become painfully visible once people actually start to play the new specs.

I have been trying to make chillmancer work for the longest time, since it is a really nice concept. IN THEORY. In practical terms, there is not a single meta class that it shines against. This will I believe still be true for the reaper: being locked out of any long range damage/engage and not having very good condi removal I see a HUGE problem with being slowed and kited indefinitely.

But your chillmacer build almost surely doesn’t have the same synergy that a Reaper would, in that it’s also giving huge amounts of vulnerability, gaining might, and dealing AOE damage. Chillmancer sacrifices too much utility and damage for the chill to be viable, but with a Reaper it comes naturally and feeds into other traits.

As The Gates Assassin has pointed out, if they just give us generic boon support, it won’t matter because a guardian or ele will still do it better and we likely still won’t compete damage wise. What we needed is more necromancer specific support and utility, which we just got a lot of – or at least – a lot more than we ever had before.

Also I’m regards to getting nerfed, I think we have some potentially devastating traits right now that when a reaper does get a hold of someone without the condi clear or escapes necessary to get away, those people will get rekt. Then will come to the forum complaining about have chill and 20 stacks of vuln, fighting a reaper with 10 stacks of might after chill of death procced. Even though kiting, or focusing, or ranging a reaper should be easy enough to do.

Some people already think power necro is too strong, just wait until someone like that gets blown away by a reaper. The tears will flow.

Ezeriel.9574:

Roe, How are you going to fight a ranger? How are you going to fight a Dragon Knight? A shortbow thief? a condi thief? pistol engi? nades?

My longbow ranger uses chill and cripple runes… I can see it now. Reapers are cannon fodder.

You’re right, there can be some big weaknesses. But, honestly, most of those specs aren’t too dangerous for me now with a power necro, and this elite specialization will have a lot more synergy. But I feel like you should explore the traits a little more, there are a lot of threads right now talking about the different things going on. At first, I was having some of the same thoughts, but wow, there are some really huge combos for both power and condi.

But please, please don’t base any of your thoughts about this off of what random videos they decide to show. Scaled down random PVE gear and vs PvP amulet, and no numbers are final.

Also, yeah, bad Reapers will be bad, just like bad necros right not are really bad. You have to play to your class and Reaper will be no different. Unless you’re a d/d ele I suppose.

Ezeriel.9574:

Incredible how?

The demo for the Dragon Hunter has a guard killing the chieftain in like 3 seconds…. The demo for the Reaper has necro plodding along against level 71 pve trash….

…we’re screwed.

Oh, so you’re basing this off nothing meaningful. Good to know.

Ashur.6403:

Now that Terror won’t be a largest chunk of my damage I would much rather have Vital Persistence over Master of Terror.

This is what I plan on running
Staff and Scepter/Dagger
Carrion Amulet, Runes of the Nightmare, Sigils of Geomancy and Hydromancy.
Consume Conditions, Wurm, Spectral Walk, Corrupt Boon, Plague Form.

I’d even consider going “You are all Weaklings” if the might duration were slightly longer. Still 6s weakness and a stunbreak with a 25s cd isn’t terrible.

If these traits go live the way they are, it is going to be a slaughter.

Thanks for posting that build calculator.

This is what I’m looking at right now: http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQC5AWsBqg~

There’s so much chill there it’s unbelievable. AOE chill. Reduced damage from chilled enemies. Might when hitting chilled enemies and tons of AOE to take advantage. You could even run chill runes and chill sigils.

It would take some wind up but it would be so difficult to fight against once it got going. I think this is closer to the attrition we’ve always wanted. I can’t wait to start trying these builds out.

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

These combos hadn’t even occurred to me. Wow, that is some great sustain in death shroud. Not to mention shroud 1 generates life force as a baseline feature.

After the trait updates were announced about 4 weeks ago, I thought condimancer may be in a rough spot going forward. After seeing the Reaper, I think condimancer may see a dramatic evolution. Suddenly changes to Dhuumfire and Target the Weak make much more sense, and combined with other set ups, this could be a powerful spec.

Chill dealing what is likely condition damage is a real game changer for the Reaper trait line and condition necromancers. Anet deserves some credit for giving us access to another unique damaging condition. Coupled with Lingering Curses, you could have massive chill uptime on multiple players. (I know, Shoutbows exist).

Death Shroud was never really that friendly to condimancers; realitstically only 2 of the 5 skills were really valuable. Now every single skill on Shroud Knight, if properly traited, is valuable. Having someone in your face as a condimancer isn’t all bad anymore.

Another point is that a GS wielding power Reaper will only have the option of a single ranged weapon set, compared to 2 now (if you include DS as a weapon set). Using Scepter and Staff solves the ranged issue. Wurm and Spectral Walk still address the lack of mobility to some degree. And it seems that with the right spec, you can maintain respectable crit chance with improved life force gain over what we have right now, not to mention improved control with hardly any losses. Plague with chilling darkness could be one of the best elites, if not the best elite, in the game.

Every offhand also seems to have a place. If taking higher crit chance with vulnerability, focus can be a good choice with some vuln, chill, and boon strip. Dagger is an obvious choice, and warhorn offers more life force, swiftness, cover conditions and an interrupt.

Is anyone else with me in being more intrigued by condi Reaper?

I thought it seemed a little big myself. I want it to be big and menacing but not overboard.

spoj.9672:

He didnt explicitly confirm. But i would assume its condi damage.

This. It’s a condition, so scaling with condi makes sense. Plus there are not many more condi focused traits there.