On a DS build, which one is better: Dagger or Traited Axe?
Dagger so you can take chill of death, which is one of the main traits that holds power necro together.
No one forces you to take Axe Training with the axe though.
Traited axe for the DS build will no longer be a thing once the spec changes come in. So that one advocated use for axe is going.
Considering how much negative feeback they got on both axe and Axe Training, I’m pretty sure they will at least change the trait again.
The auto attack is lower than scepter for power damage.
I don’t want to defend the axe’s auto attack, but that’s not true.
On topic, dagger (or scepter) have better auto attacks but the axe has better skills 2-3.
So the real question is: how often do you auto attack?
A longer duration with LC isn’t an issue on its own. A longer CC duration that also piles damage on top of other condis and forces you to stun break or die is a problem. LC really only has issues in combination with Terror, but that only matters as they are now. Changes to either could assuage that.
100% on LC is an issue on its own.
Regardless, I’m not opposed to lowering Terror’s damage if that’s what it takes to make it a minor trait, but its damage really isn’t that much to begin with.
Like you said, it piles damage on top of other conditions. But you might as well run a power build with Lingering Curse and use Doom for 3 seconds and 2 Life Blasts or Infusing Terror followed by 2 Grave Diggers. With a power build these attacks would probably do somewhere between 6-8k damage in PvP. And that is still nowhere near the amount of damage other classes can do when following up on their stuns, like mesmers or thieves, perma immobilized by rangers, even hammer warriors with soldier amulets can do more damage with their stun rotation, and engineers can 100→zero people if they trap them with slick shoes.
So really, the long fear stuns and chills are a problem, but their damage isn’t by a long shot.
I think some of the things people suggested (like Terror being baseline) are really OP. Terror + Lingering Curse + Deathly Chill = no thanks.
Only if Lingering Curse keeps its 100% duration, which I’m rather sure it will not.
Also, the problem with chill and fear durations being doubled wouldn’t be the extra damage from Terror and Deathly Chill but the longer CCs, and that you would get with Lingering Curse anyway. Just another perfect example why LC would screw over our entire balance.
Changing your utility skills might help.
Your only boon strip is Chill of Death and you could probably use an additional cleanse, so maybe try Well of Power and/or Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption.
You could also move 4 points from Spite to Curses for Banshee’s Wail and Path of Corruption.
Add spec to that and see the results change.
I agree.
if we extend this to HOT’s spec Reaper Shroud, I think not many Reapers if any will agree with starting with reduced LF like 50% or 25% LF.
It’s way too early to make this assumption.
I think starting with 0% is fair. It’s the neutral state of your class.
0% life force is our natural state?
Even if you didn’t say “your class”, you just completely outed yourself as someone who’s never played necro before.
Just fyi, since lf doesn’t degenerate out of Death Shroud there is no natural state.
Should there be one? Maybe yes, but it should at least be 20%.
Take Soul Comprahension. Who likes that trait? I’d even take Reincarnator over this, any day. Devs on stream had major problem explaining why does it even exist.
Major problems: “necros need at least one on-death trait” -_-
It’s quite funny actually, I can still remember the devs saying back then (before they changed Reanimator and Protection of the Horde) that they are really taking their time to work out proper minor traits for Death Magic. As in, we’re going to do it right this time! Soul Comprehension – lol fail.
On the other hand, we have a lot of traits that are pretty mandatory to take. Terror. Last Gasp. Vital Persistence.
The devs did say on stream that some traits (on other classes) are being made baseline because they were mandatory picks.
On a side note, I think there are some types of traits that shouldn’t be part of the discussion here. Like traits that trigger skills, it just wouldn’t make sense to have these baseline. Or cd reductions and damage modifiers. There are always going to be mastery traits so when people want a cd reduction baseline they don’t actually want the trait removed but a generally lower cd, so a buff to the skill really, instead of a specific trait for the sake of freeing up a mandatory pick for alternative options.
This is true. Good players can defeat a full LF necro.
*a bad full LF necro.
Equal skill, no chance.
There’s really no general formula because every fight is different, every opponent reacts differently to marks and you will use marks differently depending on what kind of build you have.
Appart from the obvious – when to apply poison/chill, when to use a condi transfer, when to fear/interrupt – the only advice I can give you is to pay more attention to how you can combo marks with other skills rather than trying to make them work on their own.
it is a Vampire build
…
or stack power that gives me more healing power?
You want more power so you have more power.
Besides the fact that you don’t need defensive stats in PvE at all, the scaling of vamp traits with healing power is almost non-existent.
whats yall opinion on Soul Marks being made baseline?
That trait should be a choice since its making the marks do something else and improves staff as a weapon. greater marks is just size and making them unblockable…
What? How does increased radius and unblockable not fit the description “marks do something else and improve the weapon”?
Generating life force on marks makes much more sense as a baseline feature, except it would be nice if it’s not a static 3% when triggerd but something like 1% per hit.
Other than that I think we need more traits moved to minor than having them baseline entirely, like Terror getting merged with Target the Weak and Reaper’s Precision getting merged with Furious Demise. And some trait in Death Magic could replace Soul Comprehension.
for corruption there not will be a trait
Master of Corruption will be merged with Toxic Landing.
Yes I know and i think 100% is faceroll . But nothing in the game block you for doing that
Except your opponent if they don’t want to fight you with full life force.
I simply stated " play to win " then everyone came with " the point of dueling "
When you have an arranged duel there are no mission objectives or capture points at stake. Just 2 people who agree to fight.
What if one of them is a mesmer and defeats the other player with moa morph? Sure, in pvp that’s a legit kill, but there really is no point in using that skill in a duel. The same applies to starting with 100% lf as necro. You can do it, but it’s pointless.
I think you might be the first person who uses Quickening Thirst.
the tactic is to go with scepter, never auto with ( too much low damage, too much slow) it
I agree on the slow part but not using the auto attack defeats the whole purpose of having a scepter in the first place, which also makes Lingering Curse an odd choice considering the only conditions not on auto attack are on Grasping Dead.
Anyway, there are a lot of weird things going on here. Condi necro without a staff is about as rare of a sight as a unicorn. But even stranger than that is only having dagger as an off hand weapon on both sets.
Generally there’s nothing wrong with picking whatever gear you like in open world PvE, and sinister is actually a decent choice for necros.
But this build in WvW, I don’t even know where to start. It looks like it has the potential of getting outplayed by a supply dolyak. :P
Seriously though, what’s your experience with this build so far? Does it work for you?
If not, the best advice I can give you is change your weapons and move those points away from Blood Magic.
Geez do you even read ?
If it’s because of english mistakes then I apologize , but wow , you guys really don’t get it
We’ve read what you said and we understand all of it. It’s just that you’re not making sense so we called you out on it. There’s no reason to get so agitated about it.
If you need to learn how to fight with 100% LF then you need to learn how to play Necro. There is no reason to start a duel with 100% LF, if those are the kinds of “duels” you want you might as well roam and kill underlevels.
Do you realise when I said " If you want to get better you have to duel a necro in full life force " the necro is not supposed to be you right . My english may be terrible but I never said " If you want to get better AS a necro you have to fight with full life force "
If you want to get better against necros you need to fight good players. There’s no point practicing against a bad necro with full life force.
And once you get a good necro as sparring partner I guarantee you will not win a single fight if they start with 100% lf. So really, what’s the point..?
Also, what you don’t get is that arranged dueling is not just about training but showing your opponent respect and common courtesey. Of course this isn’t something that the game or Anet can control or regulate, but you bow before you start, you don’t stomp (in WvW), you chat and give feedback… there are a lot of things that you just do because you’re a decent human being. And one of those things is: you give your opponent a fair chance, that includes lowering your life force to a reasonable amount.
Why does it have to be an official game mode to matter? GvG’s and dungeon speedruns aren’t official ways to play the game either but they still matter.
Not in the eyes of Anet bro . I don’t want you to think that " I don’t care about thoses " or anything . I like all the things you listed . But i think GvG and speedruns are far more popular than duels .
There are a million things in this game that people do without there being a seperate game mode for it.
Out of the three things you’ve mentioned I’d argue that dungeon speed runs are done the most simply because the PvE population is a lot higher than in WvW and PvP. And I’m very sure there’s a ton more dueling than GvGs because 20 vs 20 is a lot more difficult to organize than casually dropping by the Obsidian Sanctum at any time you want.
Speaking of which, the Obsidian Sanctum arena wasn’t always in the game.
GvGs and duels used to take place behind the windmills in the south of borderland maps. And originally OS was part of Eternal Battlegrounds.
After Anet patched in the arena they seperated the Obsidian Sanctum from Eternal Battlegrounds, gave it its own access via the WvW UI, and they even removed the Bloodlust borderland buffs’ affect on the OS map.
So yeah, there’s no “official” game mode, probably because they have different priorities, but the addition of the OS arena with its own waypoint and removed bloodlust stacks was solely done to give players a space to duke it out.
We have different opinions , but I think " duel " is just something who is really hypocrite.
The irony here is that throughout your entire post you’ve actually argued that you’re dueling for practice, but you should also try to win at all cost…?
This really sums it up, there’s not much more to say on the matter:
100% Life Force should be an automatic win against anything pretty much, at which point you should probably ask yourself not if it’s fair, but why you are dueling in the first place?
- You won’t get respect for winning, just like someone who runs Moa or precasts traps on a ranger.
- You aren’t really practicing anything since the duel will be a faceroll.
If you are fine with winning unquestionably for the sake of winning, albeit with questionable means, then go ahead and do it. But I see no real reason for it. As a lot of people have mentioned having around 20-50% LF is deemed fair by most people and winning with that would garner a lot of more respect from your opponents.
Am I missing something here, is there a trick to deal with conditions in DS?
You could precast Well of Power before going into DS if you anicipate getting a lot of conditions. There’s Sigil of Purity and Generosity, you could trait for Shrouded Removal, or some even less viable options like minions drawing conditions or landing projectiles through light fields after going into DS, or maybe you’re lucky enough to have someone step on your Putrid Mark while you’re in Shroud.
Other than that your only option is to let your life force absorb it.
On the upside, in HoT we’ll get an improved on-hit version of Spiteful Renewal that also removes a condition.
(edited by flow.6043)
Holl’s coming duel against Chaos Archangel.
When/where?
On topic, all of this would be so much less complicated if our life force would reset to something like ~25% out of combat.
The simple fact is with high healing power and no restrictions, one could achieve a 450+ tick SoV, plus a 300 tick Unholy Sanctuary, plus a 300 tick Regeneration, plus 300ish (scaling?) now and then healing from Blighers’ Boon (which helps with LF gain too). That would be 1050-1350 health ticks while in RS while being hit and gaining boons. Not counting any siphons, possible siphon cleave with RS AA and third party healing.
…
SoV passive + Unholy Sanctuary, that’s still 750 × 4 or 5 seconds = 3000-3750 healing every DS/RS pop. Without using the active and assuming you’re hit every second over 30 seconds, that’s 13500 healing from SoV alone and about 3000 from Unholy Sanctuary for 16500 healing without actually using any healing skills or regeneration.
First of all, you can’t get that much healing power, not in PvP anyway.
And even if it was possible, what you’re calculating here is the most rediculous outlier of the worst build ever.
Just imagine a Power Reaper using just Soul Reaping or Blood Magic, Death Magic and Reaper traits with power, healing and toughness stats. Then add in decimate defenses for crit chance. You would have a walking tank with crazy effective healing (25% possible damage reduction from Putrid Defense and Cold Shoulder alone, while 33% reduction from exiting DS, and then added toughness/DS reduction). As long as you maintained about 25%-50% LF gain every 7-10 seconds and/or stayed in DS more than 4-5 seconds, you would have the equivalent of a full heal every 10 seconds (or 7 with Speed of Shadows) while taking no damage to normal health for the same time periods. All while criting almost on par with DPS builds w/o ferocity if you also maintain vulnerability stacks.
Yeah… no.
This might look good to you on paper, but this build sucks and you would die just as easily as other necros. And your damage would be nothing compared to zerker builds, you don’t have the same power, no ferocity and all you get to boost crit chance is 2% for vuln but you don’t have Spite. You’d actually be better off taking another master Reaper trait instead.
Anyway, all you’re doing here is trying to dump as much as possible into healing in Shroud. Even if that build wasn’t terrible and if it was actually producing the results you’re imagining it would, why shouldn’t this kind of investment be rewarded? Why shouldn’t the one class that really has nothing but high hp to defend themselves get the best healing if they choose to give up that much damage for it?
But I could see letting Signet Mastery allow us to maintain passive while in DS/RS, like Written in Stone.
I don’t think this fix should be tied to a trait.
P.S. I see people say Necro takes half damage while in DS, is this true.
The original assumption was that our life force pool is 120% of our regular hp. Then (sept 2013) we got an actual number on our lf bar which revealed that overflowing damage to our regular health pool would substract the correct amount of damage from our life force as well. And that just makes it more likely that we have a damage reduction in DS rather than an incorrectly displayed number on our lf bar. But essentially you might as well assume that whatever number of life force you see is actually double.
If Mark of Evasion heals you, all Regeneration boons should heal you.
Naturally.
Pretty sure people who have been saying no to “all healing in death shroud” but have been advocating siphons have been saying “all traits that heal you and Regeneration”
I believe there’s quite a big spread of where people draw the line.
In your case, that would exclude our main healing skills, dark field finishers, food, sigils, runes and other sources of ally healing.
So my question would then be, why allow traits + 1 boon (even if it comes from someone else) but non of the above? Doesn’t your choice of gear or food buffs contribute just as much to your build as a healing trait? Would you really allow Soul Spiral to have one type of combo field that it just doesn’t work with? And why should healing skills other than Consume Conditions not get a chance to reach their full potential when them not working in Shroud is the main reason why they aren’t used by any type of build?
Also, you know my position on ally healing, there’s just no reason to discriminate against necros in this way when every other class has no such restriction when they use their (superior) defensive mechanics, in addition to having better sustain than us in the first place.
Personally, and not to speak for anyone else, I’d take a significant drop in total LF (upward 20%) if they unrestricted healing so I could be properly supported by allies and all of my mechanics work in unison. Even if they had to rework some of the leeches or toy with the numbers so allowing it wasn’t OP. I just want the class to stop having so many hidden rules and allow us to play with the full unique potential Necromancer has. It has the ability to be a greatly unique class in terms of fighting with and fighting against, but it gets held back by fear of being “OP” when the answer is simple. Design first, balance second…
I completely agree.
And one of the things they need to fix is that 50% damage reduction in DS. So once they do that they’d have to rebalance our life force pool anyway.
This is not just a question of whether or not this specific skill is going to work in our Shrouds, but it rather ties into the whole debate about how Death Shroud conflicts with a lot of our skills and traits.
Although, Signet of Vampirism is definitely a nice example to showcase some gray-areas in regards to how some people only want to see a few traits to work in DS/RS, as opposed to the only solution that really makes sense: unrestricted access to all sources of healing.
First of all, Vamp Signet is a signet, and currently the necro is the only class that doesn’t get permanent access to their signet’s passive effects. This is a big issue, a design flaw, and there is no reason why our class mechanic should have this type of restriction.
Secondly, Vamp signet is a healing skill.
Now, I know there are some people who think anything beyond just vampiric traits would be outragiously overpowered. They couldn’t be more wrong of course, but for the sake of the argument let’s pretend we have the same opinion on the matter and then assume that we’re getting a “signets’ passives work in Shrouds”-fix for all signets.
The big question: What would this mean for healing in general if this included the passive of Vamp Signet? Shouldn’t the same privelege be extended to its active as well? What about Blood Fiend or Well of Blood? If so, would this include the traited Well of Blood from Ritual of Life? If this trait is allowed, how about other healing traits like Spiteful Renewal, Signet Mastery and Parasitic Contagion? What about traits that give you regeneration like Full of Life or Mark of Evasion? If Mark of Evasion is allowed to heal you in Shroud with regeneration, what about a regular Mark of Blood? What about regeneration applied by allies? What about other sources of healing applied by allies? What about other weapon skills that trigger finishers with dark fields, like a Necrotic Grasp that lands a hit after you go into Shroud? What about the Reaper’s whirl finisher, Soul Spiral? What about sigils, runes or food buffs?
Anyway, no healing in Shroud means one defensive mechanic stands in conflict with another, that is just bad design, nothing more. And drawing the line somewhere between nothing and unrestricted healing in Shroud makes no sense if you really think it through because it would inevitably create double standards.
Allowing all sources of healing to work through Shrouds is really the only consequent thing to do here, so allowing Signet of Vampirism to work with RS/DS would just be a side product of this general fix to our core mechanic.
Well it’s not all passive considering you need to poison your opponent first.
And to be fair, 400 toughness can amount to more than 10% damage reduction.
But still, Putrid Defense > Dark Armor.
I’m not saying I can literally channel infinitely but it’s so close that arguing about it seems pretty unnecessary.
I don’t believe you.
Also, since this discussion is about Dark Armor, how many opponents attack you while you’re channeling Life Siphon or Ghastly Claws? Of course it happens occasionally, but it’s nowhere near worth traiting for a thoughness buff in those situations, especially when your opponent might interrupt those channeled skills.
I think channel abilities are better than untargeted because obviously untargeted attacks don’t have any certainty that they’ll hit whereas if a channel starts before stealth barring dodge it will hit…
channeled still has the advantage
Let’s get clear on one thing first: targeted skills don’t work againt stealthed opponents at all, they need to be cast before your target goes into stealth. And that is not an upside to targeted skills because the same applies to untargeted, but untargeted skills simply don’t have any of those timing restrictions.
Also, usually you can tell if untergeted skills hit, like marks being triggered, gaining retaliation on Unholy Feast or generating life force with Locust Swarm.
Anyway, I get why you feel those skills work well against thieves or mesmers but that doesn’t make them any better against those opponents than other skills. And especially in those fights they are not worth picking Dark Armor.
Just replace Reaper’s Precision with a lower version of Parasitic Contagion that work im DS 7-8%
Like any other healing skill or trait, Parasitic Contagion should work through DS anyway. Also, that trait is not an option for PvE.
But yes, Reaper’s Precision really needs to be replaced with…well, anything else.
This is the real culprit here.
I personally certainly never thought of this because I never really considered the exact trait choices PvE condi builds might want, especially if WH wasn’t taken, and this is a clear issue.
I believe it was mentioned several times in the original feedback thread.
3 condi traits but no power trait in grandmaster, Lingering Curse gets nerfed for PvE and no real PvE condi option in master tier.
James, this was the one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Report-PvP-Forum-Specialist-Report/
But i want to go Condi… so banshees wail is out of question…
Just fyi, the Locust Swarm of a traited warhorn can do more bleeding with Barbed Precision than the dagger’s Enfeebling Blood. So it really is a viable option for condi builds in PvE.
But yeah, being forced to take a weapon because there’s no other viable trait is lame.
Or do you think the 100% condition cap will be removed too?
I think it’s more likely that Lingering Curse will not actually go live with this rediculous duration increase.
why you not haz some cavalier love?
Valkyrie has more power, and thus does more damage, while the vitality is effectively 1.6x stronger on the Necro than on other classes because of death shroud scaling.
I just remembered, there’s no vitality on Valkyrie in PvP…
Anyway, it’s definitely more than just 1.6x better. There’s that 50% damage reduction in DS, that alone would make that a factor of 2.2. It gets even more if you factor in the +15% base lf pool we’re going to have, plus maybe another 15% with Soul Reaping.
Also, the percentage based regen on life force gives vitality a different dynamic than how other classes have to balance toughness and healing power in addition to that.
celestial build, the best mix for defense and offense. you can look at ele…
That’s the problem, you can’t compare ele to necro regarding celestial builds.
The only way celestial could provide a better defense/offense-ratio than carrion is if Blood Magic gets some incredibly good synnergy with healing power. If not: vitality > rest.
With the Spite/SR/Reaper build you’re planning to run you’ll be less tanky either way. Also, with those specializations you’re losing way too much damage if you’re not going full power. Every zerker build has access to the same poison you mentioned, so the difference is really just Dhuumfire and that is just no where near the extra direct damage you’d get with a power amulet and Deathly Perception.
it won’t.. carrion doesnt provide neither toughness nor healing power which both are needed to go in melee range.
Wrong. If you’re melee in Reaper’s Shroud all you need is good life force regen, and that happens to scale with vitality.
your direct damage will also be weak because you don’t have the base precision/crit damage of celestial
Since you get a lot of crit chance through traits, the only question here is: can celestial’s ferocity compensate for having less power than carrion? I doubt it.
And then carrion just has a ton more condition damage. So you either have a build that puts out enough condition pressure to make it worth going with carrion, or you’re more on the power side and you’ll go with valkyrie.
Celestial’s only selling point is defense, so unless there’s going to be some huge synnergy between healing power and Blood Magic there’s no way celestial will beat other prefixes for necros.
furthermore greatsword is a power weapon, why would you ever play this with carrion
And that makes it better for celestial how?
Also, who says you need to have a GS with Reaper?
if you make use of dhuumfire, reapers might and blighter’s boon -> celestial
Carrion will still be a lot better than celestial, even (or especially) with that trait combo.
The only redeeming factor for celestial could be the rework of Blood Magic, but that really depends on how well it’s going to scale with healing power and how much healing you get out of it in the first place. If you don’t get a substantial amount of healing more (no, Bligther’s is not enough) then you’ll just be less tanky and do less damage at the same time.
On topic: yes, Valkyrie will easily be better than Berserker, in PvP/WvW anyway.
… as it stands I can constantly channel between the three skills I mentioned.
That might almost be true if the cooldown of Life Transfer was below 15 seconds and weapon swap didn’t have a cooldown at all, not to mention that channeled skills are more easily interrupted than Consume Conditions.
I remember I originally made the build to counter stealth since I just need to start the channel each time before the opponent disappears and stay in range
Since that only applies to Ghastly Claws and Life Siphon, how are these two targeted skills better against stealthed opponents when you could just use untargeted skills instead? And how does Dark Armor help you in that case when being attacked would actually reveal your opponent?
Anyway, that trait is weak, just be glad you’ll get to use Putrid Defense instead.
12s spec walk compared to 3s slick shoes is a tad different.
To be fair, it’s 3 sec skill duration and 3 sec oil slick duration, so if an engi dumps his entire load on you it’s actually 6 seconds of being perma-knockdowned.
I could also see Spectral Armor absorbing projectiles shot at you, while Spectral Walk could cause the trail left by your movement with the skill active to reflect projectiles. Spectral skills in general outside of Spectral Grasp feel as though they could have a reflect/block component.
TRON Deathcycle – I like it. Make it block movement, too.
That would be a genuinely hilarious way to stop people from escaping, although would be pretty abusing in WvW zergs.
Yeah, it would be terrible if an ultra cheese skill like that existed in this game!
I’ve waited a while until I could make up my mind about this change.
First of all, I couldn’t care less about the animation. Granted, I doesn’t look that terrible on charr, but it wouldn’t make a difference to me if I waved pink flowers around, although mainly because I try to avoid the auto attack as much as possible.
That being said, this shift of the first hit towards the end of the animation is a nerf even if the time of the whole chain is the same.
Because: the few times you actually use the auto attack is either if
1. you have to fill the time between cooldowns
or
2. you want to get rid of blind or aegis.
@1:
Quite often the time you have to fill between the cds of other skills is less than half a second. That means since the patch whenever I’m in a situation where I would’ve been able to get a hit off between cds I couldn’t because the single hit I used to be able to land before just didn’t make it in time.
This huge delay until something finally happens made this already weak auto attack even worse.
@2:
No need to explain much here, “cleansing” blindness or getting rid of aegis not only takes forever but due to the big wind up it’s even better telegraphed for opponents to avoid.
You would think that this can’t be that big of a deal, but I was actually surprised myself how annoying it is to have this delay here when fighting thieves or guardians.
Basically, the only two things the auto attack was good for don’t work properly anymore.
And one more thing to note:
Even if people did animation cancel with this skill (which no one did anyway), it would’ve in no way made the axe auto attack strong.
So instead of this “fix” to animation canceling they could’ve just made the auto attack twice as fast baseline. One could argue that in this case the vuln application would have to be adjusted, but seeing how well the Reaper with Spite will be able to stack vuln the axe wouldn’t even be worth mentioning with three times faster stacking.
(edited by flow.6043)
I don’t think so, it won’t be any more mandatory than it is now, besides not every Reaper will run a condition build. Also, there’s no reason to be concerned about chilled application. Most chill skills are already aoe and you get an ice field with whirl finishers and a leap for frost aura, and there will be Chilling Nova which is pretty much a mini chill-epidemic.
Transfers just copy the duration of any condition that is being transfered, everything else is the same as if the caster had applied those conditions himself. That means the caster’s condition damage is applied to transfered conditions and of course traits like Terror or Deathly Chill.
As for minions, most of their stats don’t scale with the necro’s at all, but condition duration always has so it stands to reason that condition damage will as well.
For the record, Gates, your report topics mostly line up with my last two, so I think the double whammy will be particularly helpful to them. I’m not discussing minions so much, and am more focusing on the traits and their synergies and where the issues are there. That said my next report is heavily focused on the Reaper, so that will be relevant as well.
I just want to say in light of all the work you did, and Robert Gee even mentioning the community’s feedback on stream, you deserve a round of applaus and a cookie.
/hands-over-special-necro-cookie
Sorry, didn’t mean to exclude you xD
Spoj already stepped in to extend our gratitude to you as well.
I like your style, especially your Shroud timings during those duels in the end.
wp
The tooltips from the livestream disagree with you:
http://i.imgur.com/hoUDwYQ.jpg
Right, my bad…
My suggestion: 3 stacks of stability for 3 seconds on Tainted Shackles.
I think with Infusing Terror we’re long past the “necro shouldn’t have too much stability” debate, especially if you can get Foot in the Grave in addition to that.
And Tainted Shackles is a long cooldown skill anyway. Plus, it would give some nice synnergy with the skill itself if the stability covered the time when torment is applied until the immobilized hits in the end.
Imo this would not be the biggest buff, but just enough to make pure core specs not feel bad about themselves for not picking the Reaper.If you want it to stand against reaper, I’m not sure giving it the same advantages is the best way to go. I would rather see a buff to whatever already separates them.
For example, DS is ranged. If the main projectile were flipped to increase damage with distance instead of proximity, and the teleport changed from a closer to an escape, it would better synergize with fear while keeping you out of melee to help extend shroud time. These easy changes would give it stronger contrast against the melee RS, letting them each contribute to different play styles.
I get that, and putting a stronger emphasis on ranged attacks with DS is fine, but something like pusling stability for 8 seconds vs no stability at all is just too big of a difference to simply ignore or compensate with offensive features instead.
And keep in mind that with DS you’re almost as much a melee brawler as the Reaper. You have skills in DS that are more effective at closer range and you have Tainted Shackles which is entirely limited to 600 range. Also, when you’re fighting for capture points you sort of have to stay in close range of your opponents anyway, not to mention that most other classes have an easier time catching up with you than you being able to keep them at a safe distance.
I’d like to agree with this and add another suggestion…As of now, it seems that reaper seems to benefit much more from Dhuumfire, Unyielding Blast, and Reaper’s Might due to the low cast time of the Auto Attack in Reaper’s Shroud.
The tooltip of Life Reap (the 3 hit in the aa chain) say it’s the only one that works with Life Blast traits. So Reaper would actually be a little slower but maybe gets more effective with the 5 target aoe?
Another thing I wasn’t sure about, does Infusing Terror inflict 2 sec aoe fear and then Terrify an additional 1 sec aoe, so basically two aoe stuns in one skill? Or was the tooltip wrong and you just get the fear on Terrify?
Read every post so far guys! My report is basically done, but I’m going to hold on to it for now until when I go to bed tonight (So like 10-12 hours from now). If you have any last thoughts that should make it into the report, now’s the time!
I just want to say in light of all the work you did, and Robert Gee even mentioning the community’s feedback on stream, you deserve a round of applaus and a cookie.
/hands-over-special-necro-cookie
There’s one more thing I had in mind for the feedback:
In regards to Reaper vs core necro:
The new Reaper’s Shroud really is a wonderful mix of all the things a necro could dream of. The ice field and finishers combined with the chill synnergy of the Reaper specialization, the faster attack rate, the scaling defense, the pulsing stability… it basically puts the regular Death Shroud to shame in almost every single way.
The advantages of DS: range, torment, immobilized. That’s pretty much it.
So the way I see it, the current versions of both Shrouds doesn’t really make core specs vs Reaper a fair choice. Instead people will think: which core can I afford to drop for Reaper? Or any approach to creating a new build will be: Reaper and which other two core specs?
I don’t know if it’s intended that the elite specialization overshadows the others by this much. But in this case it seems unintentional, because it’s not like the core spezializations will be worse by themselves but rather any combination of 3 core specs means you can’t have Reaper’s Shroud.
So, solution: Death Shroud should get something that makes it able to keep up with RS.
And my biggest concern here is not any possible synnergy with vamp traits or chill application, as has been discussed at length already.
But the real game changer for the Reaper will be Infusing Terror, that pusling stability.
3 sec stability, 1 pulse per second, 8 sec duration. It’s not just the general stability uptime you can have with this skill, but the biggest advantage here is having a safe stomp (and rez) on a relatively low cooldown.
This is absolutely huge for necros in PvP because up to now the inability to provide safe stomps in team fights (except when you sacrifice an elite or make some weird Wurm/SpecWalk juke combo) has been one of our biggest issues.
My suggestion: 3 stacks of stability for 3 seconds on Tainted Shackles.
I think with Infusing Terror we’re long past the “necro shouldn’t have too much stability” debate, especially if you can get Foot in the Grave in addition to that.
And Tainted Shackles is a long cooldown skill anyway. Plus, it would give some nice synnergy with the skill itself if the stability covered the time when torment is applied until the immobilized hits in the end.
Imo this would not be the biggest buff, but just enough to make pure core specs not feel bad about themselves for not picking the Reaper.
Are people not planning to take spiteful talisman in pve?
I’m sure some people will use GS + X/warhorn.
Also i dont think its a bad idea to have two different vuln traits in the same tier. Having both in seperate tiers is probably over kill on the vuln if you were to take both (they can be kept strong if they cannot be combined).
The opportunity costs for using 2 trait slots for vuln stacking are rather high though.
So the fact that you can combine them to stack faster or higher doesn’t mean that each trait shouldn’t be strong on its own.
And having them in the same tier means you make a choice of which is more suitable for your build. For example. If you are spending a lot of time in DS then you will take death shiver. However if you plan to apply a lot of chill or want to get that vuln whenever you burst with chill of death then you obviously want bitter chill instead.
This choice still remains if those traits aren’t in the same tier.
So imo this is more a question of which type of build should be able to pick which alternative if either of those builds feel they’d be overstacking with both vuln traits combined. Obviously there’s synnergy between Bitter Chill and Chill of Death, and for Shroud heavier builds you get to pick Death Shiver and Reaper’s Might.
…
This is rather awful for a number of reasons. Obviously it is a very significant nerf to PvP builds, it also kills the synergy that Death Shiver and Bitter Chill had, it removes the double-boon removal, kills Axe/DS builds, and there are multiple traits that just aren’t in the right tier. It is way worse than the current setup is.
I wouldn’t say Death Shiver and Bitter Chill have synnergy, but it would be weird to have two vulnerability traits and Signet Mastery competing for the same slot.
I can see why spoj wants more damage modifiers and have them line up with other PvE traits, but would freeing up Spiteful Talisman really make that much of a difference? Not that moving some traits around is a bad idea in general, but I perhaps they should instead look at the idea of reviving our current Target the Weak (with some extra features) for gm Curses.
… did you actually read the comment?
In DS heal on hit, 180 power and 180 movement speed all with effects functional for hybrid builds that tend to use what weapons? Exactly, axe and scepter, thus even when popped those parts would remain AND axe would get its bonus damage with currently known version of the trait.
Are we still talking about guild wars?
Any yes, I read your post, you want Signet Mastery to make signets’ passives work in DS – that should be a basic fix for the entire class, not something that is tied to a trait. And then you want more cripple instead of healing, that is just worse. We can perma cripple easily already, just take axe + warhorn + flesh golem. What we don’t have is enough healing, so just be glad that you can get an occasional Locust Signet auto proc.
As for the second im not even going to bother giving it thought since you clearly dont get what grandmaster and competing with CtD means for a traits power requirement.
k
Signet Mastery (reworked to be signets retain passive instead of activate SoL when low, so that it would have synergy with DS that keeps signet passives working in it and that activating a signet causes aoe cripple for every signet on CD)
That would be so much worse.
Also, signets should work in DS without having to trait for it, that’s just one of the core issues that should be fixed.
And fyi, they said they are going to rework our signets so maybe wait until we see what we actually get.
Then you lose chill of death + bitter chill synergy.
And death shiver is good as it is. I dont think its a good idea to give passive chills.
Thats the point, as for passive chills, they are better than passive vuln, also more interesting for gameplay AND at odds with a 20% under 50% hp bonus damage.
Or better yet, once per second you’re pusling aoe Corrupt Boon and aoe Signet of Spite!
Seriously though, chill would be too strong for this trait, and it’s not like the Reaper will have a shortage of chilled anyway.
i knew at least that the addition of stability was not recent
But it really is (and always has been) just a single second of stability to cover the cast time of your stunbreak.
Although I’m not sure why stunbreaks just got 1 stack of stability…
well thanks for the info on it at least guys and maybe ANET should consider adding a stability pulse to well of power.
This has been suggested countless times already.
But apparently necros aren’t supposed to have a lot of access to stability.
Perhaps the addition of the Reaper’s Infusing Terror (3 sec stab, pulsing, 8 sec duration, 20 sec cd untraited) could make them reconsider their position in regards to Well of Power.
In fact, Stability to this skill is fairly recent.
June 25th, 2013. ;P
That is only like two dozen months. Practically yesterday.
Actually yes, in anet-patch-time it was but the blink of an eye.
In fact, Stability to this skill is fairly recent.
June 25th, 2013. ;P
And instead of them balancing around the chance of a well + Axe 2 + WH 5 (best case scenario possibilities) they can just have them stream at a reliable and beneficial pace.
I like how you’ve listed those skills as best case scenario when the whole discussion about vamp trait balance started because you’ll be able to heal through Reaper’s Shroud.
Really, if well + axe2 + Locust Swarm were so good with Blood Magic then everyone would be using that already. The only thing that will change is that those siphons will work through Shroud, so that makes your best case wells + Shroud skills + Locust Swarm. It’s really not that different, especially when the siphon values stay as low as they are now.