Guild Wars 2

I’d say probably Shadow Fiend, because Rise! is just much more useful, and bone minions do a hell of a lot more damage than shadow fiend

More than likely… Bum bait

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Vydahr.4285:

Tobias.8632:

That’s odd because before Necro was a short range melee brawler with a focus on AoE and it’s been replaced by the revolutionary new Reaper who is a short range melee brawler with a focus on AoE.

You forget that base necro is awful in midfights (well, maybe not awful, but not very effective, either) and is much better on a side point, whereas Reaper thrives in team fights (especially if you use shouts)

Well, thrived. With the Blighter’s Boon nerf, not so much. Great on the offense for teamfights and they scale really well there, but now survival is difficult.

Death Magic builds would still be decent though, yes?

Tobias.8632:

That’s odd because before Necro was a short range melee brawler with a focus on AoE and it’s been replaced by the revolutionary new Reaper who is a short range melee brawler with a focus on AoE.

You forget that base necro is awful in midfights (well, maybe not awful, but not very effective, either) and is much better on a side point, whereas Reaper thrives in team fights (especially if you use shouts)

Just, you know, out of hypothetical curiosity…………. how many shambling horrors would it take to freeze a PvP match? Just for the sake of academic knowledge, of course

Gnat.9405:

Vydahr.4285:

Gnat.9405:

Vydahr.4285:

Gnat.9405:

Removing Might application from the table of interaction will probably balance the trait.

And make it entirely useless for a solo Reaper. The only boon we can spam is might

True enough, I was only considering the change in context of the nerf – group scenarios – thanks for the response. Honestly I don’t think limiting the boon types is the solution anyway, as there will always be controversy and disagreement as to what boons should or should not apply.

I don’t know, this whole thing seems heavy handed. I think we should have tried an ICD first. With the number of boons being pumped out, a proper throttle would go a long way.

I honestly think it should be something like “Gain 2% of life force per second whenever a condition is applied, or 160 health while in shroud” So we have an ICD but it also switches it to something necros are good at: applying conditions, even in power builds.

The numbers would probably need more adjusting, seeing as we just put out so many condis, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than making it dependent on boons. PLUS, it would then become an option for not only power builds, but tank and condi builds too (it would certainly give condi builds some much needed LF generation and survivability, while also making tanks very good at their job too)

The only potential problem I see with this is with the crazy amount of vuln we can apply. We’d be invincible with well siphoning and WoS, along with GS3.

That’s why an ICD would be needed, and maybe it would have to be “gain X LF/Health per stack of 5 condis” or something like that

Gnat.9405:

Vydahr.4285:

Gnat.9405:

Removing Might application from the table of interaction will probably balance the trait.

And make it entirely useless for a solo Reaper. The only boon we can spam is might

True enough, I was only considering the change in context of the nerf – group scenarios – thanks for the response. Honestly I don’t think limiting the boon types is the solution anyway, as there will always be controversy and disagreement as to what boons should or should not apply.

I don’t know, this whole thing seems heavy handed. I think we should have tried an ICD first. With the number of boons being pumped out, a proper throttle would go a long way.

I honestly think it should be something like “Gain 2% of life force per second whenever a condition is applied, or 160 health while in shroud” So we have an ICD but it also switches it to something necros are good at: applying conditions, even in power builds.

The numbers would probably need more adjusting, seeing as we just put out so many condis, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense than making it dependent on boons. PLUS, it would then become an option for not only power builds, but tank and condi builds too (it would certainly give condi builds some much needed LF generation and survivability, while also making tanks very good at their job too)

Gnat.9405:

Removing Might application from the table of interaction will probably balance the trait.

And make it entirely useless for a solo Reaper. The only boon we can spam is might

I don’t quite understand what the issue is…. You’re playing reaper. Build tanky, jump into a teamfight. They can’t see your slow attacks coming as well if you’re in the middle of a group. Take Rise!, go Death Magic/Soul Reaping/Reaper with Soldier ammy and Scrapper runes and have a blast

Halcyon.5340:

Hello, and please look around!

Superior Rune of the Reaper is quite… underwhelming.

Current Rune Set
(1): +25 Power
(2): +35 Toughness
(3): +50 Power <- It seems something is missing from here
(4): +65 Toughness
(5): +100 Power
(6): When executing a shout skill, chill nearby enemies for 1s (360 radius).

There seems to be a big balance patch before the official World PvP Tournament, so I want to pitch in my feedback now.

I feel the chill duration on the sixth slot is too short. As it is now, one could argue that the sixth slot bonus from Superior Rune of Grenth is actually a better alternative. With the Grenth rune, “Your Soul Is Mine!” will chill nearby enemies for 3.6s, and the Reaper doesn’t even need to activate two of its other shouts. Let’s say that the Reaper activated all five of its shouts to apply 5s of chill on nearby foes. This is still only a net gain of 1.4s of chill over the Grenth rune, and the cooldown on a few of the shouts are fairly long.

Here is my suggestion:

Suggested Rune Set

hide spoiler

(1): +25 Power
(2): +35 Vitality
(3): When executing a shout skill, chill nearby enemies for 1s (360 radius).
(4): +65 Vitality
(5): +100 Power
(6): +20% Chill Duration; -20% Condition duration applied to you.

The chill duration on the sixth bonus has great synergy with the Reaper’s chill skills, and I feel it would make the Greatsword’s auto-attack a bit more reliable. And, the reduced condition duration helps the rune wearer from being kited with CCs. Overall, I feel this rune set is good for both power-based and condition-based builds, and it’d put Superior Rune of the Reaper on the same level with Superior Rune of Strength and Superior Rune of Hoelbrak

My only suggestion would be to keep the toughness minor stat, as Reaper’s tend to be frontline and as a light armor profession, we need all the armor we can get

Fatalyz.7168:

shadowshark.7056:

…Why not make a trait that does something like "if attacking someone with ice on them gain life force. Could also put a cool down on it and I’d still be happy. That way ppl will get their life force inside shroud and also have quicker life force out of it….

You just described a trait that we already do have, called Chilling Victory.

Unfortunately, Chilling Victory is incredibly underpowered and not useful at all for, well… anything, really, but especially not for powering Blighter’s Boon

Shoe.5821:

The “death magic soldier reaper” is nowhere near scrapper level. Just compare Corrupter’s Fervor to Adaptive Armor, have a maddening laugh, then try to imagine that it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

while on first glance adaptive armor looks better, the difference is that adaptive armor requires a minimum of 5 seconds of continuous hits to max out.

corruptor’s ferver OTOH can hit maximum stacks just from fight-entry skills before you ever take a hit

the 300-500 toughness difference is annoying, though shrug

I had someone earlier ask me how I’m so durable as a reaper while we were fighting the cave troll hero challenge in Tangled Depths. Death Magic for the win (seriously though, the minors need work. 3 seconds of protection upon exit from shroud as a grandmaster minor? yeah, no)

How about we push harder for revamped Death Magic and actual healing through shroud…..

Ara.4569:

The “death magic soldier reaper” is nowhere near scrapper level. Just compare Corrupter’s Fervor to Adaptive Armor, have a maddening laugh, then try to imagine that it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s tough to learn a new profession after 3 years of necro, but think about how rewarding it will be. Ok, I also try to convince myself here.

Why in the unholy hell do scrappers get a better corrupter’s fervor? I think they need to really look at Death Magic and make it a truly tank line… Although, I still think the build is kitten decent (replace the fighter runes with (ugh) scrapper runes)

Scott Lockharte.3412:

Ragion.2831:

snip

The general gist of what i’ve gotten here is that you’ve had a bad experience playing Reaper and necromancer in general, and are generally fed up with all of our weaknesses that are part of playing ANY profession, so i’ll just stick to asking build information to improve your situation and say this:

Could you provide some technical information on what you’re running, you say you’ve played 20 different builds, and they all didn’t work for you, but are you talking about condi reaper, hybrid, power, tank, vampire? just saying generally our weaknesses suck (range/speed evade/cc) isn’t exactly explaining anything, and i can say my experiences as many others are completely different in play, (Winning outnumbered fights repeatedly)

Reaper is designed as a complete juggernaut and it works as that perfectly, it’s slow, unwieldy, and works thematically as well as mechanically as this “movie monster” they like to portray, It can one shot if it catches you, and keep on going, I haven’t seen anything so far that has made this a problem, and i want technical information on why you think it is a problem, and I’m not saying Reaper isn’t flawed in some ways, there’s a lot of things that need updating and overhauls still, but it works 99%. (Corruption skills, bleh)

Just look at a Death Magic Soldier build… High base power (little might generation, but meh) and ridiculous armor for a light armor class (Corrupter’s Fervor is basically a tank Reaper’s dream) Throw that into the middle of a team fight and watch chaos ensue. (The high base power is very helpful combined with Decimate Defenses and Death Perception, though obviously you won’t be hitting huge crits. Still, Reaper’s Onslaught messes things up reeeal good)

Hey, everyone. I know I’ve seen some definitely new skins in my wardrobe, but I was wondering if anyone has a for sure list of the new HoT armor? (And, potentially, how to get it)

Currently I’m running a Death Magic/Soul Reaping/Reaper build with soldier gear and scrapper runes (it hurts that scrapper runes are better and stings my reaper pride, but eh)

I can get (in PvP) up to 3300 armor and well over 2600 power flat (though that’s mostly in shroud,) though I don’t hit the hardest, I still can crit 100% in shroud given the right circumstances (1200/1200/2400 auto chain is fairly nice with Reaper’s Onslaught)

Bhawb.7408:

Trooper runes aren’t all that necessary now that Suffer is a hilarious amount of removal (though with both the removal is insane, removed over 500 conditions in a PvP match yesterday). Trooper is more for support with some selfish cleansing, whereas the Reaper runes were supposed to be thematic, they add chill, and they do so in a way that is a much better effective increase in chill duration, since 600 AoE chill is really difficult to remove.

The runes are fine I think. Yes there could have been other cool flavorful options, and I don’t think they’ll be required because there are a lot of good shout/chill/nonspecific runes, but I think they’re okay.

Wait, suffer is better now? I didn’t notice o.o

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Cam Ron.4170:

For staff I like The Crossing

Same here. The Crossing is a very Necro-y staff and has a very nice design. Deathwish isn’t bad either but it’s a little bit harder to match with an outfit.

For Sylvari I find that anything plant-like goes well with them, especially if you’re already wearing cultural armor. Try the Nightmare, Dreamthistle or T3 cultural Sylvari weapons!

~ My Necro with The Crossing

The only downside with Sylvari T3 weapons is that they have a bit too much blue to really match the black and green of my armor. Which is why I do like tribal weapons, because they look just as wild as my Sylvari

Aktium.9506:

Raz.1632:

they’re not really the martyr type.

Uh-huh.

The caveat there would be that Necromancers are willing to be martyrs, but they better get some pretty big personal benefit out of it

Well, here’s a fun question. In the opinion of the Necromancer forum, what weapons go best with a Sylvari in T3 cultural armor? Currently I’m running Tribal D/Wh and Staff, and I’ll be running with a Tribal GS come 10/23.

And this is the guy we’re working with:

Quells.2498:

yeah but force is 8 G Would Frailty be an alright substitute considering decimate defenses and target the weak? Would a stamina sigil or ice sigil ever be more useful?

Frailty would be alright, not so much the other two. If you’re running reaper you might as well double down on Hydro and Chilling

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Sigmoid.7082:

Caine.8204:

Cerbeius.7129:

So for PvE perspectives… Hydro and Force on GS seems the way to go?

Hydro and Fire would probably be better for power dps, if you want to maintain your chill.

Force > Fire. Always.

Only when you can guarantee hitting your attacks, which basically only means for PvE. It doesn’t take a whole lot of downtime for Fire to overtake Force for damage.

Force is also good for a tanky bruiser-style soldier build that has little to no critical hit chance. Nice bit of flat boost constantly

Edit: Though, really, it wouldn’t be bad for a Reaper to take both Hydro and Chilling sigils and give up Force (assuming a build like mine)

Thanks guys. I kinda figured Hydro would be better, but it was definitely helpful to ask

Sigmoid.7082:

Vydahr.4285:

Holl.3109:

Vydahr.4285:

This is my build if that helps. Though, it occurs to me, Bitter Chill should make Hydro sigils inflict vuln too, right?

That is correct!
AoE 3 sec chill, ~1.5k dmg, 3 stacks of vuln every 9 sec

Are the values really that high for Hydro sigils? kitten . Thought it was only 2 secs of chill and maybe 500 damage.

Also, @Bhawb: I think Hydro will probably be my choice, as I use staff as a point blank aoe weapon just as often as a ranged weapon (regardless of game mode)

Hydrodynamcy can crit and is effected by all damage modifiers. Those numbers are accurate and can be higher as well. Also its a base 2s chill but reaper has a baseline 20% chill duration so the chill lasts 2.4s anyways. can be higher depending on rune and sigil.

So is that number without critting? As in, say, a typical 2375 power build?

Holl.3109:

Vydahr.4285:

This is my build if that helps. Though, it occurs to me, Bitter Chill should make Hydro sigils inflict vuln too, right?

That is correct!
AoE 3 sec chill, ~1.5k dmg, 3 stacks of vuln every 9 sec

Are the values really that high for Hydro sigils? kitten . Thought it was only 2 secs of chill and maybe 500 damage.

Also, @Bhawb: I think Hydro will probably be my choice, as I use staff as a point blank aoe weapon just as often as a ranged weapon (regardless of game mode)

This is my build if that helps. Though, it occurs to me, Bitter Chill should make Hydro sigils inflict vuln too, right?

So… I’m at a bit of a loss with my Sigil choice for Reaper. I’ve used both Hydromancy and Chilling, and I like them both, but….

Does anyone have any numbers that show one being better than the other? Or at least a more fair comparison than I’ve managed

(Note: Currently I use GS/Staff as a Reaper)

nearlight.3064:

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

If vital persistance was made partially baseline, you could make a curses/spite cele reaper and destroy eles all day long. But besides the elementalist matchup that needs a specific synergy of traits and skills to work in our favor, reaper is much better than necromancer simply due to cleave and stability in teamfights alone.

Condi Curses/SR reaper should also have the upper hand for sure against elementalists/tempests, as well as heralds/chronomancers due to their lack of cleanse. I don’t really see much benefit to running zerk/marauder reaper builds due to their fragility and lack of active defense, meanwhile a soldier’s teamfight build (like bhawbs) will probably want to avoid doing anything besides tanking a node in a 1v1.

The biggest overall counter to reaper looking purely at 1v1s will be power ranger/Druid and dragonhunter due to the ranged DPS, and DH can also CC the reaper on a point quite well with traps. This however begs the question of the reaper’s on point prescence advantage. If the ranger/druid/DH stays at range and kites you from off-point the whole time they’ll eventually be able to beat you. If they go onto the point to try to contest it, then they’ll be at a disadvantage since reaper melee pressure far outdoes anything a ranger/druid can do in melee. DH will be able to handle it a bit better due to trap CC/pressure on a point and being able to burst with GS skills.

But besides that, your challenge in this scenario would be simply to survive and hold the point in the 1v1 until someone from your team comes to break the 1v1, and in most nodes you can LoS ranged damage to an extent without giving them an opportunity for a decap. You will have to watch out fro Dragon’s Maw decaps and LB4+ancient seeds decaps though. And of course in stronghold or WvW roaming, the range counter will probably feel a lot tougher to deal with where you don’t have the safety of the node advantage and as much LoS to depend on.

In teamfights, blighter’s boon with a boon spamming ally or two should give you plenty of incidental sustain. The real challenge there is to simply avoid being bursted at the start of the game.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the matter.

tl:dr-Reaper is disadvantaged against ranged, but capture point gameplay makes this less of an issue than it would be in something like WvW.

I use a similar Soldier build to Bhawb and I must say, it’s not really the beeest at capture point guarding. Good, but not great. However, it does do better at its intended purpose. That is, team fighting.. A Spite variation like mine actually really hurts the enemy team because you’re tanky enough to survive wading into the middle of the fight, but you put out so much vuln and self-might (NCSY is Grenth-sent for PvP teamfights) that you can really dissuade your opponents from pestering your team (I’ve found it also works better in Stronghold than in Conquest, because there’s more emphasis on group fights)

Aktium.9506:

gavyne.6847:

Not exactly accurate. YAAW’s 8 second weakness is pretty big deal for any builds that do not roll Curses. I rather enjoyed roaming in WvW with YAAW acting as stun breaker, weakness application, and instant might stacking which sets you up for a nice spike.

Weakening Shroud has better uptime on weakness and CPC is arguable better long duration weakness even if the self-weakness is worse than hitler and pol pot combined. A single long duration weakness stack is likely to just get cleansed before it does any good. The might is just superfluous. Now, if we could stack might to 50 I’d say it was a good skill. I would personally like to see the shout revamped. Quickness or something else we aren’t already good at getting would be nice.

gavyne.6847:

I don’t consider the other options superior, I consider them different and all viable. But YAAW is very viable to take as an utility slot. And like I said, especially so if you don’t run Curses.

Well, at least it’s not Suffer. I’ll give you that. I’m quite pleased with Reaper as a whole. My only complaints about it are some QoL stuff with Death’s Charge and Grasping Darkness. But shouts are incredibly lacklustre in comparison to the rest of the package. Trooper runes are not a valid reason as to why they should be as insubstantial as they are.

YAAW is actually really nice if you’re running Blighter’s Boon, as you can just about instantly get 50% plus LF back (plus, yeah, short duration might but if you happen to be just outside the range of the might stacks of your teammates, you’ll still be able to fight just as hard until the next might burst comes in

mazut.4296:

TheLastNobody.8319:

mazut.4296:

Halcyon.5340:

Reaper is going to be my new main, but I have a few concerns and suggestions.

Decimate Defense is actually too strong in the master tier. Consider lowering the critical chance from 2% to 1% per stack of Vulnerability (a total 25% critical chance if the target has 25 stacks of Vulnerability). Another option is to replace its position in the trait hierarchy with Reaper’s Onslaught while also toning down the effects of Reaper’s Onslaught (eg. keep the 15% attack speed, but reduce the recharge on reaper shroud skills from 5s to 2s). Please discuss this with the design team if they like my suggestion.

Soul Eater is a fun trait, but it’s clearly not viable. It almost seems like Soul Eater’s effects should be a baseline on greatsword skills. Consider making an entirely new master trait in its place or buff the Blood Magic life-stealing traits.

There’s a possibility that healing from Blighter’s Boon may be too strong. This trait may need more testing. On another note, I would not add an internal cooldown to this trait. Doing so would only break the versatility of this trait.

From a design point of view, I would move the increased chill duration from Cold Shoulder (GM minor) to Chilling Nova (Adept major). This would incentivize players to pick Chilling Nova if they are going for a chill build. As it is now, Reaper chill builds don’t even need Chilling Nova, because support for chill builds is already a baseline. I would like support for chills to be an option instead of a hand-out.

That’s all for today. I’ll continue to keep a focused analysis when I go over the other classes’ traits.

Is this a troll or you you died to many times to a reaper…

Ya know, normally I would agree or just say nothing, but I can see WHY he thinks this, the amount of vul we can apply and how quickly we can apply it is staggering in RS, even DS. Soul eater should revert back to giving all GS skills life steal, lots of Lifesteal, or an individual amount per skill.

Disagree about the cold shoulder duration, we need chill to last as long as possible since we don’t have much mobility to stick to a target with our GS. I would say though we probably wouldn’t mind a damage modifier on say…..chilling victory? .

BB, I do kinda sorta agree, but like he says NO. ICD! A slight adjustment on the healing values would be fine I think though to make it 1/2 to 3/4 that of altruistic healing.

I agree that all GS skills should steal life and I also agree that the Cold shoulders merge with Chilling nova make sense, but the rest…

Yeah, honestly, if BB’s healing were reduced at all, it’d be just about useless as a recovery mechanic. It gives, what, just over 100 health per boon? With a full stack of 25 might or whatever else, you only get about a 3k heal. Essentially, what anyone near an ele can get incidentally. But we have to work for it. If anything, it could use a slight buff, but, really, it’s good as is

Xae Isareth.1364:

^if PvP can handle the Warrior axe autoattack and necro’s dagger auto, I don’t see why it wouldnt be able to handle a buffed RS 1 because RS1 WITH Reaper’s Onslaught is about equivalent to those two.

I suppose RS might have a wider cleave but if there’s 3 people on you at once in sPvP, I really question what the heck is the other team doing, especially if the three people in question nicely arranged themselves into a perfect line for you to autoclave them down.

Well, see, it’s not so much what they’re doing as it is what you’re doing. A reaper makes a wonderful distraction for 2+ opponents

I would propose that Augury of Death should act like some of the Elementalist’s Arcane traits that give each attunement a different effect. It would likely mean that Augury would have to become Master tier, but, buffing each shout somehow in a way that specifically complements the shout would be fantastic.

For instance, maybe it would make YaaW also taunt or give you and allies Aegis for 5 seconds or something like that. You know. Buff up those shouts. Make them as good as they have the potential to be

That moment when you’re a reaper in a stronghold match and you hold off 4 enemy players at their gate long enough for your team to summon two mist champs and then you die in glorious martyrdom for your cause

TheLastNobody.8319:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Charblaze.6958:

Lemondish.3268:

We know of very few fights in the raids. Those that we do know about include mechanics that we’ve never seen before in GW2’s PvE content. The value of any profession in this content cannot be accurately predicted at this time.

But we do know our debuffs and control do nothing thanks to defiance bar invalidating half of our profession.

*On certain types of fights. His point is that we know nothing about the design of other raid encounters, so there’s no reason to dismay. Raising the point is fine, but raising pitchforks seems premature.

And if they promised the complexity of PvP in PvE, that’s their fault. They should design PvE with PvE in mind, not PvP, otherwise their fights are most likely going to be more susceptible to the silly AI-exploiting cheese strats that plagued my dungeon experience. There’s no reason to try to get the feel of PvP into PvE, and to try demonstrates a lack of understanding of the two (in my opinion).

The problem is though this is the first raid, and depending on how it goes, could be used as a template for other raids in the future. The whole soft trinity they want of damage, support, control is instead just all about damage and support because control is completely thrown out the window with the new defiance bar system. I love the idea behind it, but since they lumped every condition we have that would be useful behind that bar, we can’t do squat.

Yeah, CC (especially soft CC) really needs to work beyond the defiance bar. How useful would perma chill on the Vale Guardian be? Maybe make it so that only soft CC can affect raid bosses, that way you can’t just make them stay in one place indefinitely with immobilize

Cogbyrn.7283:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Reaper can certainly tank the vale guardian, one low damage hitting mob with slow movement speed, even my thief could tank vale guardian.

However when you have 5 bosses hitting you at once, or one boss doing 10K+ hits I doubt reaper/necro will hold up as a tank.

Everyone seems to only use the Vale Guardian when evaluating whether Reaper will get a slot in the raid, but when we start to discuss a role Reaper might be able to fill based on Vale Guardian, the boss is discarded for other theoretical mechanics that the Reaper might not be able to survive.

There’s absolutely no reason, at this time, to discard the possibility that a Reaper could serve as a tank at best, or perhaps an off-tank at least. To do otherwise would be an unhealthy stifling of the class. People need to be trying things, not ruling things out with rough napkin theory.

Reaper shines as a bruiser (soldier, off-tank, etc) so maybe we should play to that strength. We’ll never be highest dps, judging from everything that Anet has done and said (they do fear the reaper, apparently, so don’t want to buff it much- which is generally alright) and we’ll never be the most durable, either (at least in terms of active defense. We are one of the better hp sponges though) so really, in raids, our job is to live and keep attacking regardless of what else is happening, giving others space to breathe (makes me sad seeing all my squishy friends get down to low health :‘( so having a reaper or two is helpful as a distraction at the very least, and we still hit decently hard (with some banner support, I’ve seen around 12k crits stacks from RS 4 on a soldier build consistently against the Vale Guardian)

Gnat.9405:

Since they first announced the Reaper I knew that we would again be kitten on the group support. My suggestions: give Chilling Nova a component that allows allies to gain some type of benefit to allies for hitting a chilled foe, and allowing Chilling Victory to apply might to allies as well. Or better yet, let allies benefit from Decimate Defenses, giving them crit chance per vuln stack as well. Some of these traits are no brainers for group support, but were intentionally made selfish.

I would second making Decimate Defenses a group buff. As for range, though… Not sure how to balance that. Because the trait is already strong, let alone if it gave a few other people free 50% crit chance with full vuln stacks. It’d be our way of buffing group dps

Traveler. Because otherwise reaper is slow as all hell. Still keeps your power decent though

Atherakhia.4086:

Vydahr.4285:

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m not sure the sub 50% theory is even true. Gravedigger alone only does 15% more damage than dagger auto attack does. Dagger auto does 10% more damage than greatsword auto attack but also gives you access to horn off hand which effectively makes it a wash.

So that means you’ll be dagger auto with locust for the first 50% and swap to gravedigger for the remaining 50%? If you chose to go reaper at all?

Has anyone bothered to plot any of this in excel?

Actually, GS auto has higher power scaling, so theoretically, you could be doing higher DPS if you’re hitting with it (but, yeah…. hitting with it…..)

It’s true, Greatsword has higher coefficients so each attack hits harder. But remember there’s a time component in there too. So while each hit is harder, you hit far less often over time.

For example:

Dagger:
Attack 1: 0.9
Attack 2: 0.7
Attack 3: 1.2
TOTAL COEFF: 2.8
Time: 2.1s
DPS: 1.33

Greatsword:
Attack 1: 1.0
Attack 2: 1.2
Attack 3: 1.4
TOTAL COEFF: 3.6
Time: 3.0s
DPS: 1.2

That’s a difference of ~10% in favor of dagger.

In best scenario, though, GS wins. Because 1.33 × 2 (max dagger targets) = 2.66 dps, whereas 1.2 × 3 (gs max targets) = 3.6 dps

So, yeah. Right situation, GS hits like a kitten truck and does better dps in a group of enemies by far (not to mention all the skills are AoE, not just the AA)

Bhawb.7408:

style.6173:

Reaper is in a really good place right now. In raids, people will finally actually want a necro on their team as well.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest this is true so far.

The only thing that we’ve found so far is that Reaper could maybe find a place in raids, but so far it would only be as an “optional” spec

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m not sure the sub 50% theory is even true. Gravedigger alone only does 15% more damage than dagger auto attack does. Dagger auto does 10% more damage than greatsword auto attack but also gives you access to horn off hand which effectively makes it a wash.

So that means you’ll be dagger auto with locust for the first 50% and swap to gravedigger for the remaining 50%? If you chose to go reaper at all?

Has anyone bothered to plot any of this in excel?

Actually, GS auto has higher power scaling, so theoretically, you could be doing higher DPS if you’re hitting with it (but, yeah…. hitting with it…..)

Quick address to the “self-stacking 25 might is useless in group content” folks….. Blighter’s boon has no ICD and heals you even if you repeat stacks. As for how tough raids are or whatever else… I’m not sure if Reaper will for sure have a place, but it’s certainly an option. It does do good dps and has a few nice control options as well. And Reaper is also very sturdy (Plus, if you mess up and miss a circle or enrage the boss, you’ll still be up.. Not super relevant, but it was sad to see all those bodies…..)

So, yeah. We have our flaws. But I think we have potential in raids

Reaper wrecks face, in my humble opinion. But we were never intended to be a burst class (though Reaper does bring a fairly decent amount of burst.) A Necro/Reaper is supposed to be that guy in the front hitting like a truck and living through Grenth knows what nonsense there might be. We’re a sort of “off-tank” and, especially as reaper, we do that hybrid of damage and tanking beautifully. Keep that in mind when you’re thinking of our dps. Also, I’d venture to guess that out of the elites, Reaper actually does have some of the highest dps

Anchoku.8142:

For those who ran Reaper on both PvP and PvE, how do the two experiences compare?

I am curious to hear your feedback because greatsword, Shroud, and shouts favor 1vMany encounters whereas a lot of the typical Necro PvP weapons and utilities are more single target use; E.G., Signets, corrupt boon, most Spectral, and most weapons. Staff, wells, marks, CPC and Epi, and DS AoE.

My impression is that 1v1 or 1v2 should still favor Current Necromancer builds due to the type of encounters and I do not remember Arenanet touting Reaper as a PvP solution. From memory, the new specializations are meant to support the new content.

Reaper actually does pretty well in PvP, believe it or not. I would recommend taking a tanky amulet (Soldier for me) because of this: Reaper shines in team fights. You can hold a good portion of the enemy team at bay while your team tends to mist essence in stronghold, or captures points in conquest, or goes after lord in stronghold/foefire. As for PvE… Well. Reaper crashes through old content mobs (myself and a friend running tempest ran through CM story real quick to compare to previous runs and it went. just. beeeeautifully) and it does a hell of a number on new mobs as well (that same friend and a random ranger, I think, were tackling a champion Coztic and then I showed up as a reaper and the frog, well… .croaked)

10/10, would recommend playing as a PvE Boss

Jackalrat.5493:

Bhawb.7408:

GS is just fine in PvP, with it I can generate 100% LF in 4 ability casts and about 3s. 3-5 are all solid abilities, as is Gravedigger, its just the auto attack that is awful and I just don’t really use it much.

I’m pretty sure you don’t use it much because it’s not very good…It’s a popular opinion for a reason.

Who are you fighting such as that you’re actually landing GD in any reliable way? It’s so very easy to avoid.

Positioning and chaos in team fights, my friend. Also, GS auto isn’t totally terrible, each chain can hit for well over 1k against three people. Which isn’t awful. Just a bit slow.

But, frankly, I think there should be chill on each portion of the chain, and a slightly longer one on the last hit. Because as it stands, you can’t do anything really with that last hit or the chill attached to it

Bhawb.7408:

Actually takes 28 seconds of auto attacking, which is impossible without Vital Persistence (which still requires you to take less than 44% of your LF in damage over that time period), for Death Shroud, and around 17s for Reaper’s Shroud. Which just doesn’t happen, you need to use other abilities for utility, you lose LF, etc.

And this is why I ended up swapping in Traveler runes instead of Strength runes. Because You still get decent uptime for might from the extra boon duration, and speed increase and slight condi duration bump is nice as well. Yeah, 5% extra damage is nice, but Traveler just gives more utility. Still plenty of might, too

Frankly, the might stacking that high really only works in PvE where you can manage to auto attack that much without much problem

If Vital Persistence were baseline, I would absolutely run Spite/Reaper/Death Magic instead of Soul Reaping. Extra crit in shroud be kitten ed, I want more power and toughness in shroud but I don’t really want to give up Spite (It fuels Blighter’s Boon magnificently, plus has our only real damage modifier) but currently the only way to get Death Magic really in the build is to replace spite and we lose a lot of power that way with losing might stacking.

So, yeah. Please, please make VP baseline. Just about every Necro out there would love for that to happen. We’d actually see more varied builds, I think, if that were to happen. We’d still have spectral bunkers, of course, but other builds could be more interesting (also, side note….. Can someone please take a look at the useless Death Magic minors?)

H…. How is GS a glass cannon? From what I’ve seen and heard, Reaper’s who use GS are much tankier (Soldier or Valkyrie and occasionally Cavalier)

Wintermute.5408:

Meanwhile in ele’s forums :P Or any other for that matter

Guess it helps to be THE first designed advanced class

Worst to first, right?