Guild Wars 2

nekretaal.6485:

Sigmoid.7082:

nekretaal.6485:

The reaper is going to have big life force generation problems.

reapers actually generate more lf than base necro by a large amount.

snip

Here is why i think you are wrong:

I know you are wrong about GS because GS #3 , Deathspiral generates 2% lf per strike for a total of 12%.

You dont have to take shouts.

And especially on point (3). Depending on set up and if combined with chilling force reaper will generate a ton of might. Each stack of might you generate outside of shroud equates to 1% extra lf. Considering you can generate so much might as a reaper just because of this trait alone you will have more lf than base necro.

You seem to pin chill generation to the GS which is a mistake because there are lots of ways for getting chill on your enemy, just GS has easy access but by no means makes other ways useless. Here are a few combos you can do with just chilling force and blighters boon. :

• Using a staff you can use #3 to generate chill. Each mark after this will not only be striking a chilled target but will also generate might. every target you hit after dropping staff #3 will generate an extra 2% lf. This gives the potential for staff marks to generate up to 10% lf after #3 has been used. Combined with soul makrs you can gain up to 26% life force. Far more than now.

• Using a great-sword with hydromancy as a swap there is potential to aoe chill. use #3 afterwards. because it hits 3 targets 6 times as well as generates upto 12% lf on its own you have the potential for this single skill to generate up to 48% lf.

• numerous combos with chilling nova in itself striking targets and applyig/extending chill. This has the potential to grant an extra up to18% lf every 10s.

As well as the standard GS auto granting chill and comboing with itself, granting potentially up to 18% lf for the chain. Also dagger can benefit since we have many ways to chill targets outside of GS. The dagger combo can generate up to 24% lf.

There are several several more combos as well. No matter how you look at it reaper will generate way more lf than necro does now, it will also allow you to start any pvp match with lf from gaining boons from an prebuffing.Besides that they have access to all the lf generation a necro has. There is no way a reaper wont generate more lf than base necro because of these two traits. Also there is the potential to stall out in shroud longer because reapers shroud #1.3 generates lf.

Signet of Vampirism ICDs removed.

Would be too strong. Not sure if they have the tech but ICD per target would be better.

Ragion.2831:

I dont know why this just occured to me.. the “Chilled to the bone” skill is really bad, monumentally bad actually. It can miss.

Our elites are summons and transformations so no chance of a misfire unless interrupted, and even then it goes on partial CD but this new elite has a 2 second cast time which is complete BS because during that time anyone can blind us which means the skill will miss and go into full CD. Someone please tell me i am mistaken, please tell me Anet didnt just give us a useless Elite.

I wouldnt say its useless. Can be a game changer if you land it. Other elite skills can also miss or be made useless if you use them at the wrong time so no reason why this shouldn’t be any different.

nekretaal.6485:

The reaper is going to have big life force generation problems.

reapers actually generate more lf than base necro by a large amount.

I dont see how this is seen as fine by anet but chilling dark just got nerfed…their ideas for balance baffle me.

Your validation is that it wouldnt take a lot to change and that you would think it would make the classes better. My argument , which i apparently didnt have, is that the idea is short sighted because the opening post references 3 particular scenarios and doesnt factor in how the class as well as the class system would have to change to balance such a simple change as changing hp pool.

Every trait and ability on a class is balanced with the hp pool taken into account. You would have to not only change how some abilities function but also how they interact with other abilities on the class itself but also how it interacts with all the other classes in the game. You would also have to change the values on essentially everything the class does to account for its new survivability. Nerf heals, change cooldowns, remove or add trait interaction etc etc. And again this wouldnt be just on the one class but you would have to look at everything else it may turn out just a combo of a select classes can do everything extremely well when together.

They literally just reworked the traits and still have balancing to do on that, are now expanding the functionality of classes with elite specs ( which would have to be taken back to the drawing board because ), and so much more. Its a small change but it have effect on everything. It would literally be unwise from anets point of view to have to re-balance so much than just shave and sharpen what they are already working with.

Now we can sit here, go over every trait and value in the entire game and come up with ideas but anet would have to allocate resources to changing and redesigning everything, hours of work, hours of testing hours of balancing and redesign. The reason people are replying with a huge slew of changes and just stating the idea is bad is because they can see the stupidly large amount of work it would be. It is literally something unfeasible and unwise to do from a player and anet point of view. Also it would mean instead of shaving stuff everything going back to the drawing board and a delay to the expansion and all that is planned.

tl;dr
The idea isnt bad per se , its just unrealistic or unfeasible to implement.

manveruppd.7601:

Sigmoid.7082:

It initially starts going 400 odd damage but you can see the only condition on the wurm is chill and when it’s below 50% it takes 6-700 damage a second just from chill being on it. So unless they changed it to on application, which would be completely stupid, its damage over time.

It does look like chill is doing 647dps in that video, but that’s from months ago: they might have changed it by now. If it really is damage per second rather than on-application, I seriously cannot think of any reasonable explanation for the Chilling Darkness nerf!

I already stated unless it has been changed so that part is irrelevant. Because there was potential for a few skill combos to add around 20s of aoe chill over 5s as well as Max vulnerability. Also if they were to add a blast finish into any weapon, with the amount of dark fields we have there would be even more aoe chill.

I can see why it has been changed but again its only to balance for the reaper. They should have to kill something for the base class just so reaper is balance. It’s dhuumfire all over. Bad with life blast but great with reaper shroud #1. It makes this trait useless against groups and in general. They needed to find a different way of balancing it but anet doesn’t seem to be great at that for necro.

It was read but it still doesn’t stop the idea from being bad or needing to much re-evaluation of the entire class and the class system. Also your post only reference two specific builds for 2 classes and one specific match up for the other.

I don’t think you are seeing the bigger picture here. It would be better for anet to work with what they have and what they are adding than have to allocate more resources to redesign and change the three classes and potentially more just to balance out the change in HP pool.

This idea is bad because t would remove effectively 18k HP from necromancers and would also make elementalists and mesmers impossible strong. Would require to much re-evaluation to how a class is set to function.

It would break reaper potentially stacking aoe burn with their auuto. Fixes one thing and breaks another.

Did they fix stab corrupting into fear. seem to be getting so many more fears somehow?

Only thing i can think of about this change is they did it in preparation for giving axe a blast finisher on #3 because of all out dark fields the aoe blind + chill.

Chilling Nova is instant damage based on power. Deathly chill causes chill to work exactly like terror by at a lower amount of damage. It can clearly be seen that it is a damage over time effect in the part of the video where he is fighting the wurm.

It initially starts going 400 odd damage but you can see the only condition on the wurm is chill and when it’s below 50% it takes 6-700 damage a second just from chill being on it. So unless they changed it to on application, which would be completely stupid, its damage over time.

In fact it’s going to need to change because it loses its synergy with nightfall because of the change and the ways to apply long chills or aoe chills are limited for necro. It does about as much damage as old burning.

Plague form + chilling dark + bitter chill stacked high amounts of vulnerability but again anet didn’t adjust for well of darkness. Only reason that skill has a high cooldown was because of the trait. No other reason to have it now unless they drop the cooldown loads!!!

I would be happy if they
A) upped the duration of he chill caused and
B) lowered the cooldown on well of darkness so its not useless.

If the traits stay as they are the LF generation between dagger ad GS i small and GS actually wins out because of better synergy with itself, taits and target numbers. Also more self sufficient.

Damage wise the only GS isnt that bad . Overall IMO only the auto attack needs its damage increased by around 5~7%. Everything else is relatively fine with GS and reaper in general. Its well designed and works well with what necros already have.

Couple of things people may not see.

• reaper in general and in particular GS has a lot of LF generation.
  Reason being blighters boon, chilling force and innate chill synergy because of gs auto. Using a dagger on a chilled target the auto chain will grant you 18% LF. Because of GS innate ability to chill well the auto chain can land you 18% LF. This is all *1.2 if you take soul reaping for gluttony. Higher if you use #3 on GS and higher still with other trait synergies and target numbers.

• “reaper has a bad heal”
  Because of the changes to heals it actually ends up one of the shortest cooldown and fastest cast heals we have. Not to mention it grants you LF and strikes the target.Its comparatively not bad.

• “Reaper has bad sustain”
  Reaper actually has more sustain than other specs because of blighters boon and chilling force synergy along with if you take spite and grant yourself a ton of might. In shroud reapers can use their auto to generate LF as well, stacks with LF from chilling force so can stall out in shroud for cooldowns longer. Also blighters boon heals for hp when in shroud and every swing of your auto with spite minor #1 will grant you might and this , ATM, 133 hp. Combine this with spites huge might generation, the chill field on #5 and while to spread chill and highs to gain might etc you can gain back a ton of hp, even more if you take blood magic with it.

Last point to keep the post short, an literally go on forever on the theory craft on what we have been shown, is a pve point. Reapers can drop unyielding blast for bitter chill. Not only will it cause your auto to apply aoe vulnerability it has synergies in shroud. It makes applying vuln to group of trash or clumped enemies extremely easy. Take chilling nova and with skill+trait synergy you can alomst instantly bring a group of mobs to 15~25 vuln without trying. single taget or longer fights you can take unyielding for better sustain vuln instead of instant burst. Can also take zerk gear and dhuumfire. max might and curses will end up doing just under 2k burns a tick in burns to up to 3 targets.

What reaper lacks is damage right now and a way to deal with movement skills because of the movement change ( again i dont see it as being a huge deal but others do ). Once that gets fixed then reaper will be fine with what we have been shown for those who like that play style.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Sigmoid.7082:

In the video yeah its being cast as fast as possible. It’s aftercast is huge because of the second spin before you land. I’m sure they designed the skill to have two hits instead of the one it has now because 1) second spin , 2) in the initial video you can hear and see it strikes twice.

By the time we see it again I almost expect it to either hit twice or have a different animation.

I don’t think it is, since there is a notable period between any animation at all as well as the skillbar icon not flashing for some time in between.

At 12:30 is where it is cast twice yeah there is a bit of a gap between casts. About 0.1s but that’s not the bit I timed. Watch the fight at 43:40 and you can see 1) the skill doesn’t stop flashing as its being cast 3 times and you can see clearly when it’s being pressed for the next cast. It’s still very slow.

In the video yeah its being cast as fast as possible. It’s aftercast is huge because of the second spin before you land. I’m sure they designed the skill to have two hits instead of the one it has now because 1) second spin , 2) in the initial video you can hear and see it strikes twice.

By the time we see it again I almost expect it to either hit twice or have a different animation.

Dagger auto > Grave digger spam because it takes to long to cast. Dagger auto is 2.1s
From the video, the bit where he did 3 grave diggers in a row took around 5.4s. Still 1.8s a cast.

Sheer coeff per unit time dagger still wins out, in 2.1s daggers done 2.8 where gs spam has an average of ~2.3 over 2.1s. Its only worth to flash shroud for exe scyth off cooldown. Literally GS and shroud only win out damage wise when you have more than 2 targets at the current coeffs we have been shown.

From what i gather dagger is better in all situations when there are 2 targets or less and you have more than 82% crit chance because shrouds 100% crit chance increases damage without fail.

Arche.7326:

Can we get a post where we post the predicted coefficients and base damage numbers are posted so that we may get all Reaper feedback collected in one place? Mainly asking spoj and Bhawb as you are a bit more expirienced with these things than I. Or have I missed such a post?

• Base power for wiki numbers is 1951. ( matched BiP tooltip damage )
• GS weapon strength is 1047.
• Damage formula : (Weapon strength * power *coeff / armour)
• tooltips use heavy armour for their numbers. Has base 2600.
• Damage coeff = ( tooltip * 2600 ) / ( 1951*1047)

can use that to get the coeffs of pretty much all the skills from the wiki for reapers. also FYI there is no such thing as “Base damage” because damage is a function of variables and has no start point unlike condition damage and healing.

I got bored and made a base spread sheet of what sort of realistic damage numbers you can get out of the coeffs we have been shown.
Gs – multiply by your crit damage

1. : 2k*2, 2.4k
2. : 4.8k
3. : 2k
4. : 1.7k ticks
5. : 2.4k

Reaper Shroud – assumed 100% critical chance in shroud and 220% crit damage.

1. : 2.7k *2, 5.2k
2. : 4.4k
3. : 12.1k
4. : 6.6k/8.8k/11k

Bear in mind all those numbers are above 50% hp so no close to death and are all on targets with 2600 armour. Also these are all damage mods you can get yourself, it doesnt include banners. All in all its not incredibly strong.

I did miss 5% damage mod from spiteful talisman but not massive change. We really lack % damage mods.

Mug, cloak and dagger, backstab combo has s total damage coefficient of somewhere around 5.

The reaper auto attack chain has a total damage coefficient of 2.4. It’s not as strong. It’s even weaker than the dagger auto attack chain just hits more targets. Lastly the full reaper auto chain skill takes 2.5s without the trait or 2.1s with it due to after cast and animation time.

Stop worrying OP.

NeXeD.3042:

Quite a while? Only as long as that one fear works… then it’s back to having stab…. so I guess if you spammed signet s…. but then your spamming signets…. and your not even Garuntee it’s stab that gets corrupted…..

it would just go back to how it was before the patch where we could actually corrupt stability…. still nowhere near as effective as it was before skills pulsed stab…. the stab pulsing was a huge nerf to terrormancers.

Im just going to disagree with you as my opinion differs on how effective it is vs pulsing stab

NeXeD.3042:

How would it screw pulsing stab skills? I literally just explained how it would be useless agaisnt pulsing stab skills.

Most pulsing stab skills go on a 3s interval. Fixing how corruptions work would actually let you extend your fear chain much longer than usual because applying stab doesnt break stun. As most pulsing stab skills are transformations you lose access to your utility skills and stun breaks. It ensures that you can shut down any pulsing stab for quite a while. Lastly because it removes the whole stack it means allies can get in on the cc effects making dealing with certain skills and transformations much easier as a whole.

NeXeD.3042:

With the way some of the skills work corrupting stab is useless even if we could, corrupt stab for fear yay! Wait nope it got reapplied within .01 seconds…. wasted corrupt useless fear….. great….

People will moan so much they will nerf SoS to one boon converted per use. Calling it now. Can totally screw over anyone using any pulsing stab skill or make long/high stab skills ( armour of earth, dolyak signet )

Luke.4562:

You fail to realize they’re all Gates to a single effect.
Also, what will you get from Beyond the Veil? 10-12% crit chance?
Do you mean to go into Shroud to get that 20% crit chance to land Plague Sending in between 5 seconds?
You are saying that Powerbuilds will rather go into curses for maybe 30% crit chances in 5 seconds instead than going for 50% assured in Soul Reaping line?

Are you joking?

- plays power build with no soul reaping and does fine -
Soul reaping is over rated.

Also @Nexed:
Spiteful Renewal: condition removal gated by %life? Useless.
Bitter Chill? Reaper stuff, useless in other builds.
Unholy Fervoer: Useless. only cause axe is bad
Spiteful Spirit: I won’t be vulgar. only cause axe is bad
Terrifying Descent… is like all fall damage traits but may have use in new wvw map
Plague Sending is gated by Crit chance, so no use in noncrit builds.
Chilling Darkness: PVP Reaper Stuff. No meta.
Master of Corruption: I won’t be vulgar.
Path of Corruption: totally overshadowed by Terror.
Parasitic Contagion: Just interesting with Terror (first gate), doesn’t heal under DS (bug or work as intended?), useless. needs to work in shroud to be fine.
Lingering Curse: Awesome for Scepter damage, a pity it’s Overshadowed by Weakening Shroud.

You move at the same speed but the animation takes 3s instead of 2s so you actually end up moving further. Same with quickness. It takes 1.6s so you actually don’t go as far.

Heck in in pvp with zerk ammy life blase does 1132 with dagger below 600 units and 1300 damage with staff below 600 units.

Bottom line: Roles and playstyles have to come from builds, and not from classes.

As long as classes have inherent differences is class design and functionality there wont be equality. Some classes ,because of design, are going to inherently be better at some things than others. Its literally part of the design of the game.

Some classes have weaknesses and shortcomings by design because the game is balanced around 5v5 and its meant to e if you cant do something or your classes is inherently bad at it that someone else on another class that may be better at that aspect of the game by design can cover you for it.

If you are roaming by yourself in a roaming build regardless of what because you are just one person on one class you will suffer the shortcomings of that class or build because of design. You may have the best roaming build your class can offer but doesnt stop others doing better at you than it on another class just because they are that class. Nobody should be able to do everything just as well as everyone else just because they want to.

Death shroud skills #1, #2 and #3 use main hand weapon damage and #4 and #5 use off hand weapon damage.
The reason staff does more damage over all is because it has higher weapon damage compared to a 1h weapon as well as much higher than off hand weapons. It makes all ds skills better because it technically counts as main and offhand.

Exotic staff has an average 96 higher weapon damage than dagger and 200 more than a war horn. Damage is Wd*coeff*power/armour so you can see why it does more damage.

bhagwad.4281:

Roe.3679:

So what you’ve been doing is forcing necro into a roaming role even though it’s been known for years to have weaknesses in that area, and then complaining when better roaming classes have an advantage. This is the definition of forcing a round peg into a square hole, and you’re complaining that it’s not fitting.

Again, he’s complaining that being good or bad in roaming should be a function of your build, not your class.

Some classes have to be innately better at something than other classes else there would be no reason at all to have more than one class in the game. Sure you can spec for something build wise but doesnt mean you are going to be as effective at it as another class built to do the same thing. Sure you could argue that “play your way, you build” but we know for a fact each class has a design and a designed role/philosophy behind it.

“Pulses 4 seconds of stability to you and nearby allies every 10 seconds while in DS (240 radius).”
Doesnt belong. in curses. Doesnt fit the line.

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

life from death with speed of shadows is a 2~3k heal on a 7s cooldown. Cant beat it really. Great team support. Throw is a transfusion and in those 3s you can heal ~9k* to your allies.

*or 7K with zerker gear and can kill your enemies.

You wont ever heal for 7k in zerker gear.
using the two skills in a zerker amulet you net around 3800 (747+9*336) healing opposed to around 9k ( 2547+9*697) healing in clerics amulet. Its far more then 2k healing lost. Also your regen you get from a dodge roll ticks on you and allies for 299 instead of 154.

life from death with speed of shadows is a 2~3k heal on a 7s cooldown. Cant beat it really. Great team support. Throw is a transfusion and in those 3s you can heal ~9k to your allies.

Unyielding blast + rending shroud would be massive uptime on extremely high stacks of vulnerability in an aoe because of reaper shroud auto. Also works well if you take decimate defences as a reaper trait. Reaper and spite work very well together.

The entire spite line is to do with getting stronger the weaker you make your enemy so all the HP gated things fit as well as the vulnerability and boon removal/conversion.

SANAFABICH.9342:

Cerbeius.7129:

May Grenth lead you through the shadows.

Ha! Thanks.
I’m also looking for that trait in which after you revived a fallen player or NPC, you also automatically summoned a mark that gave them extra health.

It’s in the adept tier of blood magic the only change to it is that it casts the well at the start of the res ontead of the end so when you go to res somek e you heal for 4-8k depending on healing power. Also benefits from the well trait in GM so it can also grant you protection and leech hp.

Bhawb.7408:

Azure.8670:

Interesting enough I think a range increase would be vital as is stands. It almost would be worth taking if it was 900 or 1000 range as the weapon is currently imo. However I agree with everything else you’ve stated

Axe would still be an objectively bad weapon at 900 range, though technically stronger (I take it even as it is now, that’s how awful our weapon situation is atm). People do need to realize however that a 900 range axe will always be weaker attack for attack than a 600 range axe, because that extra 300 range is included in the “power budget”.

Axe already does the damage of a 900 range weapon its just weird it’s not 900 range. Suggestions and reasons I said earlier in the thread would fit perfectly fine because of the kit we have.

1. power scaling to 0.85, 900 range
2. whirl finish , 900 range
3. blast finish

Anet seems worried about to much support but that would only come with coordinating with your team for fields we don’t have. All the fields we so have result in offensive things that we already have besides chaos armour once every 45(36)s.

Elodium.7263:

You use Signets of suffering but yet you use no signets.

Plague sending and blood bond.

As it stands its in the same tier as chilling force and decimate defences. It will never be taken over those two unless the cooldown reduction is per target hit and it carries over into shroud.

Al Masone.1274:

More finishers
900 range, at 600 you may as well go melee with daggers. With that range there would be some kind of death dance, where you try to stay away from the enemy when using the axe, then go closer with death shroud, then back again.
Not sure about the damage, I would keep it as it is, BUT get some cleave, 3 targets pls (maybe with the secondary targets taking reduced damage, better than nothing)
And how about skill 3 applying chill instead of cripple? The devs said that chill fits well to the necro style. 2 chills, if we include focus, may sound like a lot, but since we have so few gapclosers, it would just support the “you can’t escape me” feel. Though in the end they’ll escape anyway

Because cleaving more than 2 targets and applying a lot of chill is exactly what reaper and GS are for.

Necros have always been able to reach 60-80k HP because of shroud having an innate -50% reduction of damage. It’s nothing new just was never specced for before.

Necros have extremely high outgoing heals. Necros can have one of the highest healing powers out there because of last rights. Anywhere from 1200 to 2075.

You can literally cast transfusion then drop out of death shroud and heal your team for about 50-80% of their HP.

Also its a beast as ressing because people don’t bleed out as well as you can necro Jesus people through walls and stuff. Preventing stomps and the like.

Salamander.2504:

I’ll just quote another user in a different thread, who I think made a reasonable suggestion to modify axe:

Sigmoid.7082:

All it needs is damage coefficient changed from 0.7 to 0.85, range on #1 and #2 increased from 600 to 900, and #2 be a whirl finish and #3 be a blast.

I woukd like to add people only focus on the blast finisher for might and water. The reason I feel the blast and whirl would be fine is because of the fields we have access to. Dark, light and ethereal.

All wells besides the heal are dark fields. This would actually give us more access to blind and make taking chilling dark a little more worth it. Aoe chill and potential vulnerability. Blasting the heal would grant retaliation to your team or allowing you to blast Swall for chaos armour. Allowing again more blind and chill with chilling dark, potential confusion from it for condi builds and we have criple anyways. Also this combo as a way to gain boons we already have access to so nothing new. ( regen, protection and swiftness). Chaos armour also fits the "we want to get hit thing. Also CpC for even more weakness uptime. This change for #3 would also make spiteful spirit a competitor for GM as at the moment its kind of weak.

Whirl wise it would allow use for leeching bolts, condi clense bolts as well as confusion and poison bolts. All of these things fit necromancers perfectly well. Spreading conditions, leeching health or providing an extremely low amount of team condi removal support which we already do.

Either run the signet or well. Sigent is especially decent with clerics and high weakness uptime since it negates a lot of damage. It allows you to attack into people and come out with a net gain of health.

Dawdler.8521:

Sigmoid.7082:

It’s actually entirely possible just highly unlikely. Unholy martyr+shrouded removal+ vital precitance = 4% lf gain every 3s as long as conditions are right. Again unlikely but not impossible.

4% every 3s doesnt help when enemies take 20% off every second you know.

You said it was impossible and like it said its not impossible because mathematically it can but like I said its highly unlikely to happen. Regardless of situation it does result in you being in shroud longer.

All it needs is damage coefficient changed from 0.7 to 0.85, range on #1 and #2 increased from 600 to 900, and #2 be a whirl finish and #3 be a blast.

Already running this build but different ammy and a few different utilities. Same as the build I posted ages ago when they first announced the changes. People were to upset about CC changes to actually give me any feedback or ideas though.

The build trait wise had some extreme synergy and because of the siphons, blood bond and innate tankiness you don’t die fast. Don’t miss the soul reaping line at all. Something to note as well I believe the signet heal and its corruption can’t miss like thebohet signets. When the corruption of stability is fixed it will be even stronger.

Forsaker.9213:

Sigmoid.7082:

Because of all the might and vulnerability you can get some insane life blasts off. Between 4 and 10k at its very best.

10k lf? Are we still in pvp??

It’s entirely possible in PvP to hit 10k with life blast just by the time you manage to ramp up enough people would already be dead. More likely though is hitting for like 5-7k with it.

Same way its mathematically possible to to hit 3.5k sigil of air, 2.7k sigil of fire and crit spinal shovers for 9k.

Because of all the might and vulnerability you can get some insane life blasts off. Between 4 and 10k at its very best.