Guild Wars 2

I just wish the last part of the AA chain would also be 1/2 seconds, or alternatively grant ~1 stack of stability or sth so it won’t be interrupted every friggin time. I really don’t think it should be slower than friggin’ HAMMERS, and if they still decide to do that, it should at least be “slow and unstoppable”. Well, gravedigger could need 1 stack of stab too, but that would make it way too strong, i get that.

Nemesis.8593:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ok no I made a mistake. He’s doing the 14.7k without using the icebow himself. He’s doing it while the team is using icebow.

The point here would be that with a shorter fight (because of icebow), he spend more time as a percentage of the fight either in lich form or DS where he does more damage. In longer fight (without icebow) he spend almost the same amount of time in lich form and DS, but since the first last longer he need to auto-attack for more time dropping his overall dps.

Also in the first fight i was at only 8K because i had weakness on, and i knew most people would not spot this… and like i said, and you’ve saw… Timewarp dropped on me out of the blue… it was one of my first test runs, i didn’t get the timing of my Lich Form right.
These two aspects combined influences the outcome by miles… from 8K to 12K… very big difference…
I didn’t even think i will use the footage… but then i thought… uuuu… yesssss i know what this is for… Why else would i post footage which would discredit me… when i have so much better footage already ready.

“Pretty much what everyone expected… right ?” screen goes black… and you hear my voice in the darkness

Without Icebow in party and not debuffed i go to 12K… over 44 seconds.
With Icebow in party i go to 14.7k… over 27 seconds…

Because i spent a higher % of the fight under Timewarp while in Lich Form, which is like the definition of bursting.
So yeah… the “first side-effect” of Icebow, it makes your DPS even higher then you already think it is"… mark my words carefully…

PS: Didn’t knew my video got posted here as well, going to read through your comments and answer some of you… right after i eat something since i just woke up.

All i have to say for now… is that the original video was 37 minutes long, and i wanted to say a lot more stuff… so i had a part of it removed but i will add everything together in part II.
I know there are some parts here… that don’t fully make sense… but it does further help me because it fuels the controversy, which attracts attention… all preparation for part II, which will be at least 2 times more brutal.

You guys will one day thank me for this…

One thing though: Using Lich form makes this non-repeatable in the given timeframe and thus , by your own definition “burst”, not “sustained DPS”. Question is, was the Warriors ~11k repeatable? I’d assume so. Although if you take around 2 minutes to the next boss this becomes pretty much irellevant. Looking forward to part 2!

CCLegion.5936:

It’s a 5 target 2 second AoE almost complete disable since it places an effect called Reaper’s Frost instead of a stun onto the target, making it unbreakable by stun breaks. In addition, it’s the second longest base chill application in the game while being one of the few if not the only one above 3s that hits multiple targets. If used with some people around you, it also gives you quite a bit of stability.
And all of this on a cooldown that can be as low as 78s traited when you use it in the situations it is intended for. I’d argue that it’s strong enough already and further buffing it would put it firmly into the overpowered skills category.

Nope. They need to reduce the base CD of most of the shouts by a lot and then change augury of death.

Lemondish.3268:

Shiki.7148

Agreeing with everything you’ve said, especially changing things like Deaths Charge to GTAOE.

What I’D add : GS 3 just doesn’t feel impactfull atm. It is good LF generation against 3 targets, but against 2 or less, it is worse than GS auto, and the damage isn’t even medicore, it is plain bad. Making it dash a very short distance, increasing the LF generation against less targets or increasing the damage would be great.

I’d also love RS #5 to get more damage , as currently it underperforms Gravedigger even if the target has below 25% HP. Also it should finish downed players instantly in PvP (like thief elite), but increase the cooldown of it to 60 or more seconds IF you use it to finish. It is called “Executioners Scythe” after all.

As for Nightfall… following the Reaper around would be really awesome.

I still think the CDR traits should reduce the CD by a base and then a little more when meeting the cuirrent conditions.

Deathly chill changing chill into “frost” which works like chill (maybe minus the attackslow) and is treated as chill for all purpose, but stacking in intensity would be cream on a cupcake, but that is most likely not doable without major coding so… (I can still dream, right? )

All of the above is just my personal opinion , so do not hate on me please ^^

GS3 doesn’t feel impactful? How can that be? It provides 12 stacks of Vuln, which counts as 24% extra crit with Decimate Defenses. It is the single most important ability for many GS builds, I would think.

Well here is the thing: They gave massive vuln spam to so many elite specs and base professions that this vuln literally doesn’t matter. Also, get this: you can keep up 25 selfmight and 25 vuln on 3 targets with RS auto alone . While dealing pretty good damage, meaning the 1s casttime usually is a waste if you have a single other class in the group having access to a good amount of vuln. This is all for PvE mind you.

One more thing for PvE : Make “Chilled to the Bone!” usable underwater please. Like, why are the other shouts usable but not CttB?! I really want a second elite thats usable under water, and this time nobody can make any excuses about “there is no animation for it” (Flesh Golem) or “it would look ridiculous and immersion breaking” (Lich).

Can we make this the official thread? In some of the other forums a red has already merged the feedbackthreads into one, but seems RG is otherwise occupied.

Sholef.6580:

Reaper feels way better than it did during BWE1. Just a few more tweaks and this could be the melee monster we all wanted.

Skills
GS2: Gravedigger Something feels weird about how this skill gets queued. I’ve had instances where I activated Gravedigger and had a significant delay in having it actually trigger. In some instances, I would activate Gravedigger, have it not trigger, mash the button for it, attempt to use another attack only to have Gravedigger trigger twice, the first time hitting the enemy (very low health, thus killing it) and the second time completely wiffing the attack and wasting a cooldown because I was not expecting it.

GS5: Grasping Darkness does not feel solid. I am not confident in the power’s ability to actually perform as advertised and drag the enemies to me when triggered. Much like Spectral Grasp, enemies get caught on terrain and fall down but are not pulled to me or end up being missed entirely when the attack occurs nowhere near them. I would very much like it if Grasping Darkness was made a GTAOE like the Warrior’s whirlwind attack.

GS4: Nightfall I like not being rooted by Nightfall, but I don’t agree with making it drop at your feet like a mine. Dropping at your feet seems to imply that it’s an anti pursuit tool, but this clearly goes against the Reaper’s theme as being the one pursuing and punishing. Shouldn’t Nightfall’s dark field continue to follow the Reaper like a Berserker’s Flames of War fire field? Or if it’s intended to be a pre-emptive strike tool to blind and cripple a target as you close in on it, shouldn’t it be GTAOE instead of a static PBAOE?

RS2: Death’s Charge As others have noted, targeting with RS2 is buggy and inconsistent. A spinning scythe does not a helicopter make. That was not how I wanted to end my time in Verdant Brink. I think that Death’s Charge is also a good candidate for conversion to a GTAOE like Whirlwind and Deflecting Shot. That way it could be used as both a closer/pursuit ability as well as a means to rapidly reposition (ie: flanking or retreating). Ground targeting would make the ability more consistent as well as giving the player more overall control of how their abilities are executed and how they are used.

Heal: Your Soul is Mine! The heal coefficient is still too low. It is moderately useful to supplement life force generation, but unless the healing is improved or the cooldown is reduced to ridiculously spammable levels, this shout is utterly useless at providing any form of healing whatsoever. My suggestion: increase healing coefficient with a bonus healing given when life force is low. This makes it extremely dangerous to corner a Reaper, as at any moment they could turn on you and go back to slaying.

Elite: Chilled to the Bone! The ability is cool as hell (huehuehue) and synergizes with trigger on elite traits such as Krait Runes. As it is, the cooldown is too kitten long for what it does. 120s is far too long for mediocre elite damage, a 2 second stun, and 12s of stability. Either reduce the cooldown to ~90s with the ability to trait down its cooldown to ~72s like other 90s skills or give it more special properties such as leaving an ice field or giving the reaper and allies within the shout radius frost armor, etc.

Other Notes
Greatsword Hits like a freight train and handles a hell of a lot better than it did during BWE1. Not being rooted for any of the abilities makes the Reaper control a lot better and feel more responsive overall. GS3 feels a lot more consistent now that its hitbox is synced up with the actual animation.

Synergy From both a flavor standpoint and a gameplay standpoint, Reaper is looking better than ever. Pairing up with a Herald running naturalistic resonance, a might-stacking shroud knight with fury and swiftness can be absolutely devastating against groups. I spent hours this afternoon gleefully slaughtering mordrem in both Verdant Brink and SW with my guildmates. Fighting hordes felt fantastic. I never felt hopelessly overmatched no matter the number of enemies arrayed against me because it always felt like with proper play and good reflexes I could carve up every modrem in front of me and still have might stacks left over to punch Mordremoth in the mouth. I love this class and I look forward to seeing it tweaked to perfection so I can slay like a boss in the live build of GW2.

GTAOE Abilities? GS3,4,5 and RS2 all could potentially be converted to using GTAOE targeting in the same manner as the Warrior’s greatsword whirlwind attack. While this may be more difficult to code, it will make the abilities more consistent and allow for creative tactics to be used such as skillshotting invisible enemies using the drill, launching an opening strike against a distant target with Nightfall, grappling that sneaky thief or mesmer with grasping darkness, or using Death’s Charge to close gaps and rapidly reposition.

Agreeing with everything you’ve said, especially changing things like Deaths Charge to GTAOE.

What I’D add : GS 3 just doesn’t feel impactfull atm. It is good LF generation against 3 targets, but against 2 or less, it is worse than GS auto, and the damage isn’t even medicore, it is plain bad. Making it dash a very short distance, increasing the LF generation against less targets or increasing the damage would be great.

I’d also love RS #5 to get more damage , as currently it underperforms Gravedigger even if the target has below 25% HP. Also it should finish downed players instantly in PvP (like thief elite), but increase the cooldown of it to 60 or more seconds IF you use it to finish. It is called “Executioners Scythe” after all.

As for Nightfall… following the Reaper around would be really awesome.

I still think the CDR traits should reduce the CD by a base and then a little more when meeting the cuirrent conditions.

Deathly chill changing chill into “frost” which works like chill (maybe minus the attackslow) and is treated as chill for all purpose, but stacking in intensity would be cream on a cupcake, but that is most likely not doable without major coding so… (I can still dream, right? )

All of the above is just my personal opinion , so do not hate on me please ^^

I still think the trait should turn chill into a intensity stacking condition (name it “Frost” or or sth.), that works like chill (actually, maybe removing the attackslow), counts as chill regarding reaper traits and other classes traits that remove/reduce movement impairing conditions, but , as said, is intensity instead of duration stacking. That would also hold the “balance” in itself already : good damage, but very low duration. (And as mentioned possibly only reducing MS).

Arantheal.7396:

Nemesis.8593:

Demandred.7930:

Nemesis.8593:

If this gentlemen can get it, so can the rest of you…

I took a very big chunk out of this video, the initial size was 37 minutes… that chunk along more things will be in part 2… and now that i have your attention… ohhhh… part II…

It’s going to be beeeaaauuuutiful

Hey Nemesis,

It could be interesting to estimate the indirect dps by group support. Any chance, you could do some dps calculations for class X with and without the support from warrior? As a setup, I propose the same team with war and necro, and compare the kill times on 5+ runs or so? By considering kill time, the variable performances of the four others average out, which should yield better estimates on the indirect dps. Tbh, I think you made your point about direct dps already clear two years ago. I think that quantifying the indirect dps is necessary for an objective comparison. You intentionally made this a war vs necro thing to provoke people, you cheeky person :p Looking forward to your next vid! I’m planning to patreon you btw. There, I said it.

It’s the first time i try to speak in “the language of the internet” and the results unbelievable…

What you are asking is possible yet irrelevant, i can not say more without spoiling part II…
All i can say right now is that you are asking the wrong questions, i will answer the right questions in part II…

It’s true… warrior is used as a buffer + DPS not as pure DPS, but… buffer for who though ?…
There is such a thing as too many buffs (because of the buff cap) otherwise all parties will have… idk… 5 warriors ?… SO… shouldn’t warriors be glad to see the necromancer, the high DPSer ?…

Why aren’t they ?… Because Icebow exploiting does 10x BURST-DPS then any other class… and it just so happens that most of the fights are over in that period, and the BURST-DPS doesn’t have time to fall short…
Now… should the monsters have 10x more HP ?… or should the Icebow be fixed ?… (which is already a confirmed change for HoT btw)

Another delusional idea is that necromancer not only doesn’t bring any buffs to the party, but also has LOWER DPS, then a warrior who also brings support… that’s why necromancers get kicked… LOW DPS + NO SUPPORT

No my friends… i bring the damage + debuffing, you bring the support + damage = balance, as soon as Icebow is gone…

That is all i can say for now without spoiling part II… if you think part I was controversial… ohhhhh just you wait.
Thank you for your support on the matter.

By your logic, deleting icebow from the game would make necro the natural 2nd choice, judging from personal dps.
And that’s exactly where you are wrong.
Engineer out-dmg necros on sinister builds.
Thiefs out-dmg necros
Elementalists out-dmg necros even without icebow.
Guardians do so as well as DPS warris.

Explain me, why would we run a class that gets out-dmg by so many & brings no unique group-buffs?

edit:
And if there is debuffing needed for a boss, you rather bring a mesmer with nullfield instead of thief, so you still have stealth-skips & gain additional reflects.

edit2:

I really have no idea how the upcoming raid-content will look like, but it’s hard to believe that it will change much for the necros situation, especially since reaper seems to be a pure personal dps-buff, not addressing the issue with the class at all. I guess it becomes interesting if a boss-mechanic ever requires chill-spam.

Reaper has vuln spam, for one. Too bad they gave vulnspam to basically anything. However, do NOT underestimate the partywide damage increase (+a little extra sustain) of blood magic’s Vampiric Aura. This is a unique partywide “buff” for Necromancers. Necros also bring lots of weakness if needed, and, if raids contain eg. bosses with adds that need to be killed ASAP (maybe because they heal the boss etc.), Epidemic will reduce the time to shred those adds by a significant amount. And if the bosses spam condis, plague signet/unholy martyr + a lot of transfers can help constantly getting rid of them partywide aswell as putting more pressure on the boss. It all depends how they design the content (well, and if Icebow cannot shred those thing before they can even enter those phases…).

Try jumping right before using it, that seems to be a temporary fix (at least i haven’t had it bug out on me using that, I’ll test some more right now.

Edit: Just had a case where it still bugged out. kitten .- I just wish theyd made it a cone targeted thing like Warrior or FireGS. I thinbk the problem is the skill also trying to leap to the nearest enemy even when not targeted, which is total bullcrap.

Muchacho.2390:

arenta.2953:

and shroud seems fun, though i kinda wish shroud 2: Death’s charge, was a leap. as its something necro lacks (not required, but it would be nice as currently death’s charge gets stuck on stuff…a bug?)

Pretty sure it is already a leap finsisher.

Jup it is. I didn’t actually look whether or not it is working thoiugh, I’ll brb, checking now.

EDIT : Yep it works.

Silverkey.2078:

Zetsumei.4975:

Anchoku.8142:

chill seems completely ineffectual. the damage added is fine but the actual condition hardly seems to make a difference.

Did they increase the deathly chill damage?

They doubled it

They still should make the trait change chill into sth different, like “frost” , which is like chill except it stacks in intensity and deals damage. That way they could add meaningful damage to chill while having the decreased duration as the downside,

CastIron.7364:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Any1 else hacing trouble with Death’s Charge with no target selected? For me the character decides to turn the opposite direction at the end of the charge.

That happens to me too. Plus sometimes my character decides to jump either right or left when I don’t have a target.

Jup, experianced the same. Never had it if i jumped right before activating it though, might be a bug with recording the direction your last target was or sth. stupid like that.

Thing is: Even IF you guys do 13k DPS on Warrior instead of 11 (in what, which you admitted yourself, was a unrealistic fight), then it still is lower as the ranged 14k DPS from Nemesis’ Necro one. Ranged means , in theory, a more stable DPS uptime, meaning his example wasn’t as cherrypicked as you claim it was. Well, except if you call "taking a fight that doesn’t only last 5 seconds thx to icebow, when the whole point of the video was that the reason warrior DPS is “higher” is because the fights are so short it is still essentially “burst” " cherrypicking the fight. Imagine this: If Anet actually freaking fix’d Icebow, that would be the type of fights you get. Which, again, was the godkitten point of the video. Warriors still bring way more grouputility to the fight, however, and the results may differ if the warrior took a completely selfish spec, and nobody says anything against that. But in that “specific” scenario : nearly 100% DPS uptime of both warrior and Necro, in a fight not shortended by exploiting Icebow, the Necromancers damage is on par or even slightly higher than a warriors.

I do ackknowledge calling “whirling against the wall” an exploit was stupid though.

spoj.9672:

Ill give more in depth feedback once the weekend is over. But first impressions of the changes are good. Reaper now compared to last beta is like night and day.

Although right off the bat ive noticed one problem. New gravedigger is much better. I still think its too clunky. But damage wise its now decent. However its become better damage than executioner scythe even when foes are below 25% health. I dont think this is right. Executioner scythe needs to have a big impact. I would make the 25% damage at least equal with gravedigger and maybe buff the chill or icefield duration or stun slightly to make it an impactful skill again.

Or make Exec Scythe instantly finish a downed player (but increase the cd if you used it for that).

Sicarius.4639:

Probably spagetti code holding things up, trying a bunch of different directions and things until something sticks. It’s not like we need solid direction or anything, I mean our standard trees have always been perfectly optimal and haven’t had traits all over the place…

If it has anything to do with the pet and getting that AI to respond, then that will be what’s holding it all up, bet it’s a nightmare, at least they’ll find out how bad pets really are.

I seriously wonder why Ranger pets are still so bad, I mean even our Necro minions got fix’d after 3 years… If they can get that daisy plucking Golem to attack and work as intended, why not your pets? (And yes, I am perfectly aware that they should have fix’d your pets before minions even if i hated those dumb kittens, because your entire profession mechanic relies on them… So no need to bash me for “always crying about Necro when Ranger is in a worse state”, k?)

Muchacho.2390:

Shiki.7148:

Question: Can you actually stomp in shroud now without using that “press stomp a few ms after pressing shroud” “exploit” ? Because i not, you won’t be able to safe stomp with infusing terror because after leaving shroud the stab doesn’t cover you for the full channel.

Yes you can stomp in shroud just fine apart from the fact that entering/leaving interrupts all actions…

Meaning if you are low on LF dpsing down your shroud will interrupt the stomp even if you have stability.

Well then. I still think Executioners Scythe should insta finish downed players (and get an increased CD if doing so) though.

I hate Mai trin but only because there is nothing you can do, no chalklenge you can do to stop the barrages early. Imho during artillery phase there should be some way (like having all 5 people standing on specific tiles/interact with things at the same time while being under fire) to cut that one short.

Also the Thaumonova fight is really fun somehow X)

I’ll try playing dungeons as a Reaper, as I really do not want to spoil myself the new map stuff. Aswell as maybe hopping into a few sPvP matches.

The thing is if they just added a 1 second per target icd for Frostbow hits, normal bosses might live longer than 5 second also…

Question: Can you actually stomp in shroud now without using that “press stomp a few ms after pressing shroud” “exploit” ? Because i not, you won’t be able to safe stomp with infusing terror because after leaving shroud the stab doesn’t cover you for the full channel.

Bhawb.7408:

Haven’t taken Nemesis all that serious since he tried to proclaim that we out damaged Warrior. I’d love to see a “Nike reacts” video to this though, dude is going to blow a casket when he sees this.

Out DPS, yes, outburst, no. Again proven by numbers. And the real point was that since line-casted icebow does around 10 times more DPS/Burst than anything else in the game, DPS measurements are pointless from the get-go.

Son of Urza.1692:

I believe blind was mentioned as well (as a soft CC effect that they might have damage breakbars). Would certainly make it less useless against bosses.

I’m pretty sure blind was supposed to do that anyway, when they first talked about the Wyvern fight. They might have changed their mind 3 times since then, though.

nearlight.3064:

nekretaal.6485:

We could even ask players on what specifically to test now.

(1) Does reaper shroud still melt off super quick
(2) Can you hit anybody who is good with your slow and telegraphed skills (especially daredevils)
(3) Is Greatsword 5 still impossibly bad
(4) is greatsword 4 still tiny
(5) Does RS 2 work now?
(6) Is Reaper Damage good enough considering that you are a limited mobility glass cannon who can’t easily self buff without long ramp up time
(6a) How does Reaper damage compare to other class damage
(7) Do dhuumfire builds work? <my guess is no because reaper shroud melts too fast>
(8) Are any of the shouts worthwhile?
(9) Do you see anything unique in the class that will get the class a spot in a 10 person raid
(10) Can a reaper take down a break bar? Or are those I win buttons against the reaper
(11) can you get chill to actually stick on enemies long enough for it to let you get to attack?
(12) Does Reaper’s Onslaught work?
(12a) The numbers coefficients say that Reaper shroud auto is poor damage, is this true in game?

Just thought I’d answer some of these that are obvious.
8. I’d say the heal shout is probably viable with the changes. Hopefully rise will be viable on MM builds, while the others could fulfill niche slot skills on power-bruiser builds that can’t take spite for the signet spam. Shouts are probably better than untrained signets.
9. There’s transfusion, vamp aura, and epidemic.
10. I don’t think it matters much considering that the only break bars we have so far are earth overload and crystalline hibernation, which are mainly defensive skills. The earth overload is being buffed with its damage, but it’ll still be pretty low. In general breakbeats are designed so that focus fire in a teamfight has to break them, unless you play specific Mesmer builds designed for that niche task.

Everything else I’m mostly optimistic about, but this is a good frame of reference to keep in mind. I’d just suggest keeping build ideas open. To me, much of the reaper’s kit is designed to make a teamfight oriented bruiser build, not a squishy condi bomber or slow glass cannon,

To add to #10 : They are currently looking into making cripple and chill damage breakbars. Depending on how much, yes Reaper will be able too, and that might possibly also earn the spot on a Raid… Or would if Mesmers couldn’t daze/stun about as much as a reaper chills.

nekretaal.6485:

Bosses needs to be able to burst through projectile blocks/reflects too. With 10 people in a raid, it could be trivial to chain reflects.

They could have skills like Necro Axe #1 and #2 (only, y’know, actually good).

flow.6043:

Lately I’ve been checking out my death log in pvp more frequently because eles and guardians inflict rediculous amounts of burning damage and it’s fun (or sad) to see those high numbers.
Why am I posting this on the necro forum? I’m pretty sure the highest of burns are recorded in the death breakdowns of necros because their primary defense is face-tanking!
So I’m asking the community: What’s your burning high score?

I can only present a humble ~61k, screenshot taken today, most of it came from a guardian. And in this match I was using a rampager amulet, so I’m sure a lot of you will be able to surpass this number if you have more vitality in your build than I did.

Actully you should propably look for the highest burns elsewhere… maybe at someone that was stupid enough to load a Necro full of burning and got it send back into their face and then died from it.

Rym.1469:

http://www.twitch.tv/rym69

Hey,

Yesterday I was streaming Q&A introduction session for the new players. Now I stream something I’m way more familiar with.

I will do my best to give everyone watching basic introduction to how does the PvP work, how most common maps are played in general and how to prepare yourself to PvP. I saw many new players who were having hard time in PvP for the first time, because game currently does rather poor job on introducing new players.

I highly recommend visiting:

• http://qqmore.net/ – This site will give you all the basic and some advanced knowledge about PvP.

• http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki – vault of commonly used builds

Next I’m going to focus on the Necromancer profession and try to teach interested how does the profession in PvP work, how to create your own working build for PvP or personalize existing one to your needs.

After that I’m going to be playing Necromancer PvP myself with tons of various builds, builds viewers draft for me in chat and so on.

Come hang out if you like!

Cheers,

Rym

---

Repost from reddit, maybe someone’s interested.

I missed the streams, but i wanted to watch them later and well… the complete first half has been muted :/ This twitch.

Starknight.3759:

So its because im new.
Thing is i like to devote myself to one character not play 5 of them,especially not warriors and such,i like mages..so i guess ill take this elementalist and say good bye to my necro.I honestly hoped reaper will change that problem for me.

You can always open an “all welcome” group yoiurself, it tends to fill pretty quickly if you are on a server with a lot of people. I just join groups that don’T have “no necro”, “x k ap” or “speed run” in the name and usually have no problem. I have been kicked for having less than 2k AP though…funny because I most likely play longer than any of the elitists that kicked me (I started the minute the 3 day headstart went live X) ) I just never bothered to afk farm like a lot of those elitists, or level 10 characters to 80 etc.

Cecilia.5179:

Necromancer forums are weird… A few weeks ago, Cele Signet Necro was the main reason we felt that we don’t need very many buffs, but now we have a thread where everyone is admitting that it isn’t that great. Poor Gee probably doesn’t know what to think of this.

Though even then we said that the reason Signet Necro was good was that the other condi classes were so often used and op Seriously though, I said it then and i say it again now : Being basically a “mirror” for conditions, aswell as being able to corrupt a massive amount of boons is perfectly fine, IF they would actually let the damage of transferred condis scale with either your or the opponents condi damage (whichever is higher). That way you would even “reflect” the low damage bleeds etc that come from a power class with good damage if opting for condi gear, but still the more than decent condi-counter in cele etc. gear that the build is currently.

Although you have to keep in mind that there might very well be a stat-set coming in HoT that fits the Signet Necro a lot more than Cele.

If it wouldn’t take ages with my net, I’d record my animation. Maybe human females are bugged like sylvari females were… Or maybe it is just male Sylvaris… Oh well. If it still isn’t solved tomorrow I’ll post a 10s video of this.

Hm. This is on male Sylvari btw. Weird. And i swear yesterday i also did that crappy animation…

did they change the Axe #1 animation over night? I’m pretty sure yesterday afternoon it was still the one-motion awkward looking one, and today my character makes a full swipe and then snaps the axe back (meaning a two part animation), that, imho, doesn’t look half bad.

A guildie of mine also says it is definitly different. Can someone confirm/deconfirm?

I bet it is placebo but i SWEAR my axe animation before that f2p release patch thing yesterday looked slightly different. Now i make a full swing and then draw the axe back in a short snap instead of the one-motion weirdness i looked at yesterday… was my animation just glitched or did they in fact slightly tweak it? The way it looks currently on my sylvari isn’t actually that bad.

I heard another rumour that said getting level 80 and every hero-challenge in existance should be enough (if you didn’t craft legendaries and had to spend points for one of the gifts, i guess).

PopeUrban.2578:

Pockets.3201:

PopeUrban.2578:

What generally distinguishes bleed from burning is the duration vs. damage. Burn is a high damage low duration condition, while bleed is intended to be a high duration, lower damage DPS condition.

The way stuff has been balanced since the beginning doesn’t exactly reinforce this any more, but if you were going to give it a special mechanic I’d focus on the duration rather than the damage. like, in stead of bleed amplifying the stacks of its own damage, have bleed applications increase in duration for existing stacks, or naturally increase in duration on application if the target’s HP is lower or something.

Problem with that is, outside of bosses and champs, duration increase isn’t that useful. Most things just don’t live that long.

Would be better to have an effect that is useful no matter what you are fighting.

Which is why bleed builds are not a good choice for certain content. There’s nothing really wrong with that. Not every build is geared for every type of thing. You wouldn’t take your PvE build to PvP would you?

Bleed is never a good choice over burn, that is the real problem. To actually deal the same DPS as with burning, you need to keep up 5-6 times the burn stacks at all times. Or your fight will just last 5-6 times as long. This is because the burn users can upkeep around 7-8 stacks of burn at all times (ignoring spikes), so it really does not matter that bleeding ticks for longer ; you’d have to keep up ~40 to 48 stacks of bleed by yourself to account for a single dedicated burn user; and as we all know keeping that many bleeding stacks by yourself just is not possible. Ergo burning is better then bleeding in any scenario, and thus should be changed.

Also at the guys coming with the vulnerability reasoning : OP’s suggestion just boosts the bleeding damage by 1%, nothing else. So, no, it isn’t like vuln. Sad thing is, even then bleeding would be subpar to burning.

My personal idea: ~5 stacks of bleeding become one stack of “heavy bleeding” (name subject to change X) ) , which then deals a lot more damage per tick.

The problem with any buff to bleeding though is, that the professions that can “spam” burning also have a pretty good access to bleeding…

Sigmoid.7082:

Shiki.7148:

Bhawb.7408:

Shiki.7148:

The problem is the % based traits. 66% + 34% from food is STILL 100% reduction. no matter the length of chill.

Except then you have 20% chill duration, which means it is only 80% reduction. If you have your own condition duration food, or condition duration from runes, the other person needs more than 100% reduction to actually make themselves immune.

So basically they make it 100% – 20%? I was sure it would either apply reduction first : 0s + 20% still 0, or apply the increase first : 6s + 20%, then -100%, still 0…

Most traits are -33%, then they can take -40% food and then maybe a rune that gives another -20% so thats like -93%.
Condition durations either + or – only ever work on the base duration. So for instance on a reaper with grenth runes, chilling sigil and +40% food you would end up with 110% condition duration.

Example skill with 10s chill would look like :10s-9.3s +11s =11.7s.

Sure, what i meant is i thought if one had 100% duration increase and the other had 100% decrease, that in the end it would equal 0s of that condition; because either the condition duration would be reduced to 0 and increasing 0 by 100% is still 0, or it would be doubled but no matter the damage – 100% is still 0. But the way they apparently handle it is to calculate increase vs decrease FIRST (basically in the above situation 100% increase – 100% decrease = 0 % to/off the condition. So if it was 50 decrease and 100% increase it would and as 100% – 50% = +50% duration, not “double the duration then cut in half” or “cut in half then double”.

Endless Truth.3074:

Considering it does damage even if used in the right field you will be reveled afterwards, so it a great way to proc reveled training other than pointless in smoke fields. (unless u hit no target).

Daredevil i believe seems focused on giving thieves a more active defense rather than passive (stealth) which is in this case evasion.

Sword energizes with the evasion and mobility aspect

and both sword and pistol benefit from the interrupt trait if the trait has no cooldown even better. but the weaknesses are still going to be there for s/p (stands still to pistol whip) & p/p (single target R.I.P ricochet)

d/p & d/d are trendy not superior to s/p i assume you were mostly talking about pvp when you made your statement.

the final numbers on damage since damage is meta atm will determine the mass viability particualrly on Impacting Disruption & Driven Fortitude.

the damage on dodge also gives a way to deal damage while waiting or initiative to recover

Wrong, Karl confirmed the staff and dodge leaps work like heartseeker so you deal damage then stealth.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I can imagine a few ways that Necros become core to Raid runs.

1. Large numbers of boons burst out on the target. Mesmer boon removal is great for sustained removal of one or two boons constantly getting reapplied, but Necromancers do far better against large quantities that are more infrequent.

2. Seperation is key. We already know that raid groups will get split up, but if you have someone needing to go solo some objective, who better than a Necro? We are by far the most self-sufficient profession for buffs and can handle decent pressure from enemies. Necros alone can hit their max damage without going total glass cannon thanks to not really needing Precision.

3. Enemies rip boons. Necros and Thieves are the least reliant on boons.

4. People are expected to go down. Necros do make fantastic rez-bots and healers without interfering with combo fields attempting to provide a different benefit.

5. Mobs with high condition damage output. Sure, your team could remove the conditions, but a Necro can turn the enemies’ spike against them, drastically shortening the time you are fighting and the number of cleanses your team needs.

6. Direct-Damage resitant boss-adds (like some of the stuff in Triple Trouble) that need to be taken down quickly because the boss is immune and/or healing while they are alive (did someone say epidemic?).

Tim.6450:

nekretaal.6485:

If you have to take 3-4 traits, including 2 grandmasters and all you get is dagger/Warhorn DPS, that sucks.

I’m not sure if you need to take 3-4 traits but I do aggree with the sentiment reaper shroud #1 should have dps close to dagger untraited. More targets vs better life force regen seems like a fair trade off.

I’m pretty sure you only need one trait, and that is the one increasing Reaper Shroud AS. Dhuumfire burning is bonus damage, and you can stack 25 vuln and 25 selfmight and sustain them by yourself really easy on multiple targets.

Bhawb.7408:

Shiki.7148:

The problem is the % based traits. 66% + 34% from food is STILL 100% reduction. no matter the length of chill.

Except then you have 20% chill duration, which means it is only 80% reduction. If you have your own condition duration food, or condition duration from runes, the other person needs more than 100% reduction to actually make themselves immune.

So basically they make it 100% – 20%? I was sure it would either apply reduction first : 0s + 20% still 0, or apply the increase first : 6s + 20%, then -100%, still 0…

Test.8734:

Aramil.9503:

Is it true that people are boycotting this because it is overpriced?

No, people are simply not buying because it’s overpriced.

HoT will come with:

• Only 4 new PvE maps. This is almost nothing.
• Only 2 new armor skins per weight, plus legendary armor. This is less than the number of outfits they have released in the Gem Store since they announced HoT.
• Only 5 new weapon skins. Again, they have released more skins in the Gem Store than this.
• Only 3 new legendary weapons. Because ArenaNet says they will add more “soon” (last time they said that, it was more than 2 years ago and we’re still waiting)
• Only part of a single raid. They will release more “soon” (current bets say in 2017)

Really, it’s DLC-worth content. The kind of thing people would pay at most $10 for.

Don’t buy it right now. Wait, and, considering how starved for money ArenaNet is (free to play game, rushing to release an obviously unfinished “expansion”), they will reduce the price as soon as the poor reviews start pouring in.

You missed : New elite specs, new class, mastery system, the massive size of the “only 4 maps”, updates to fractals (both level and apparently mapwise), Raid having 3 wings, all the free updates like living story that will be included in that price. Do you know what people usually get charged 10$ for? 1 new character (only changes appearance and voiceacting), 2 new weapons, 1 new set of perks (Payday 2), set of like 4 skins, or even buying very little cash shop currency that gets you ~5 times a 0.01% chance at a permanent item with p2w stats (S4 League, A.V.A. , GunZ…. And about every other F2P game with a non-cosmetic-only cashshop. Geez.

Danikat.8537:

Mattargul.9235:

Seriously?! Considering GW2 has NOT MONTHLY FEE and HASN’T CHARGED FOR ALL THE CONTENT UPDATES SINCE RELEASE, you are really going to quibble over this? Seriously!?!?

Yes, but you’re not being charged for what they chose to release for free before making the expansion, you’re being charged for what’s in the expansion so that’s what the decision should be based on.

Even then the price is fair, at most 10$ too much. But the free updates actually factor in as Living Story, possible new maps, fractals, raids etc. will be for the possessors of HoT. Of course you could wait till that happens and buy it then for cheaper, but I’m pretty content with what we get at release anyway… and considerring you’D have payed 300+$ for playing WoW, FF14 RR etc., or maybe wasted 1k +$ on gambling in f2p/p2w games, I think 50$ is a ok (and i think you can get a key somewhere for 40$).

I, personally, got the 99$ version, because I wanted to support them, and again, it is way less than what I’d have “wasted” on eg. WoW.

nekretaal.6485:

The Reaper has a chill duration increase on a minor trait.

This is a big advantage. If you have a 2 second chill, the minor trait will add 0.4, whereas something like dogged march will only subtract 0.66. So, your two second chill will last almost 2 seconds.

The only thing that needs to be done is increase all chill duration on both necromancer and reaper across the board. Staff 3 chilblains isn’t even noticeable, but focus 5 and Death shroud 2 are. Chill is still overrated as a condition by ANET’s balancers.

The problem is the % based traits. 66% + 34% from food is STILL 100% reduction. no matter the length of chill.

Agemnon.4608:

Keep in mind that necros have lifesteal wells. That means they do damage and heal with the same move.

I’m blown away by how people say necro is the worst but they have minions, lifesteal, conditions, wells, and other goodies.

Closest thing we have to lifesteal are the shadow refuge fields we put over the close ranged people fighting champions or world bosses to heal them as shadow refuges creates a lifesteal combo with projectiles.

Three things : No active (and scaling) defenses. No escapes. No gapclosers.

Oh and our lifesteal is crap compared to warriors who have all the above.

Funny, on our forums the question is “Does DD hardcounter Reaper?”. Because Reapers are f’ing slow and easily interrupted, and you deal that 2k damage delayed skill each time you interrupt (if you choose the trait), and with the interrupting daggers you can increase the CD of 3 of our already pretty high CD skills… And we will most likely never ever hit you due to your dodgespam and us being, again, really slow.

maddoctor.2738:

Kimyrielle.3826:

Sicarius.4639:

What would be the reward here? We’re already going in with top level stuff…

I -hope- it’s just a set of weapon skins, like the Fractal set. Or a mini or two.

If they add raiding-based gear progression to this game, I’d gain 25GB of hard drive space real quick, at least.

There won’t be another gear tier added to the game, at least in HoT, but probably for the rest of the game’s lifetime, so don’t worry about gear progression. They may add something like Agony though (I hope not) to limit how much you can play and what you can do.

The thing I’d have no problems with if they use Mastery points for this type of content. So players cannot access it when they first go to HoT but they first need to earn some specific mastery points before playing. This would mean players won’t rush to it, before first understanding the new HoT mechanics.

They could even make multiple paths and hinder some of them not by dialogue choice in the beginning but by needing a specific mastery to progress that way.

Killyox.3950:

No.

Why it “should” be? What makes you special that you should have it instead? Nothing.

Uhm… rather than warrior? Definitly. Maybe both, but a Reapers essence is collecting souls. Meaning a direct finisher fits it way better than the “oh we so stronk we kill onehit” explanation of the OP. Also we already have a skill that this would be perfect on, but maybe increase the CD by 20 seconds if it is used to finish someone. Warrior has more than enough ways to not get interrupted in their normal stomping. Necro pretty much has none because they won’t allow us to stomp while in deathshroud for soem random reason.

Actually i think the DD shouldn’t have such a skill either, because they are about the safest stompers around. Go invis, stomp, profit.

Forumbug /15 charr daredevils

arenta.2953:

Treetoptrickster.4205:

Finishers on Dodges

or

Can’t contain fanboyism

food for reaper

or

Reaper wants munchies

Don’t you mean the other way round? Like

Will eat Reapers

or

Reaper for Breakfast.

Because Reaper is slow as hell, DD has a kittenton of interrupts and a trait that increases the Necros already long CD’s if they are successfully interrupted. Oh and you have condi cleanse (meaning chill, too) on dodge if you so choose.

Krysard.1364:

Muchacho.2390:

ronpierce.2760:

Arche.7326:

I think he means PvP finisher, as in it instantly kills of downed enemeis. Personaly I love the idea, but it would be too strong on a 30 second cooldown. I do however think that the >25% bonus should apply to downed targets, which I forgot to test during the last BWE.

Personally, I do think it’d have been fantastic if it stomped. I mean, necromancers are already one of the worst “stompers”, so this would be kittening sweeeeet. But if they did it they’d probably kill the Cooldown… so meh. :/

Maybe if they could make it conditional.

Something like if executioners sycthe is used as a stomp, it has x seconds extra cooldown. The x should be big enough to make it a hard choice.

For example increasing the cd to 60s, a little bit like how works RtL. Nice idea there

Have to agree, this would be GREAT. And you also can not use Exec scythe to finish of the fight itself if you want to use it to finish, which means a lot of burst being gone.

Sorry but if at all it should be on Reaper. Because it fits the Reaper thematic to a T. And Reaper even has a skill called “Executioners Scythe”, aswell as Necros being about the worst stompers in GW2.

Bhawb.7408:

Finisher in what sense? It can’t be a combo finisher, it already leaves a field, and it already is an execution, it deals more damage than backstab under 25%.

I seriously think this should have the instakill on downed players instead of the daredevils elite…but that would make it ultra op. It’s ultraop on daredevil too though.