Guild Wars 2

There’s 0 reason to nerf dagger, because while dagger is the preferred weapon for necros, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t do that good dps compared to other classes.

Be glad we didn’t get the guardian treatment, they got an elite most guardians won’t take. Or the thief treatment, where their elite doesn’t change their position in WvW because it didn’t boost their weakness (lack of aoe’s and group utilities).

Reapers actually made this class play different, and moved us away from relying on dagger auto attack and death shroud auto for our largest dps. It also gave us a small bit of mobility, more access to stab, blind, vuln, chill, pull, stuns…overall more buttons to cycle through, more skills to utilize, and more combos to connect. I’m not sure how anybody could be upset about Reapers. Reapers offer a more engaging gameplay that’s more than just an immobile B-52 bomber that necros are currently.

I’d rather they don’t change plague. It’s already one of the most useful, clutch, and widely used elite for the necromancer class. I do like the idea of adding a #4 option and make it a condi transfer (#4 is usually our condi transfer too so it fits).

In ZvZ, Well of Corruption & Well of Suffering are must have’s. 3rd is usually Spectral Wall, unless I want to troll & pin snipe, then I’d load Corrupt Boons. Spectral Wall because it grants protection, has unlimited target for its duration, and can strip stab. Plus the combo field is nice if your guild raid utilizes it. When you have a handful of necros laying spectral walls down properly, you could strip the enemy frontline of their stab completely when they leap in.

If you’re talking about solo roaming WvW, I usually go either with a signet build or spectral. Wells are quite useless in solo roaming.

Necros have been owning engies since forever. Unless the tide changes with the scrapper, I wouldn’t worry about it. Engies are known as the class with gadgets, mobility, and fun stuff. I don’t mind seeing engies getting more love. Let’s wait and see how things go.

Extrema.9184:

gavyne.6847:

If you try to play Reaper frontline in WvW ZvZ, you’ll die a lot. Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, reflects, escapes, etc.. to survive the heat like other frontline classes. However, if you play your reaper like a mid-line reaper, you’ll do just fine.

That was what i kinda expected though, being able to play frontline like i do with my warrior now Why else give necro’s a GS with 130 range :/

But i’m gonna take your suggestions and try that next beta weekend and see how that goes. Can you make a suggestion what kind of gear i should be running ?

Still looking forward to play a GS Reaper, just need some adjustment i guess

I ran zerker + valk and did pretty well. Good bombs, hard hits, very good cleave damage, and enough lifeforce to sustain through heated melee range battles. People don’t realize necros already do play within 600 range, such as anytime you go in for deathshroud 5 + 4, or when you use Dark Path to push into the melee train for an aoe chill. Reapers simply do the 600 range much better than current meta necros, with added mobility & survivability to boot.

You could try to hang with frontline by tanking up, pvt gear all the way. You just need to get out of heat before things get bad. Reapers are tanky for sure, but being frontline melee requires you to be more than tanky. My experiences show Reapers are most effective a step behind frontline melee. When cc & well bombs start dropping on the melee train, guardians have shelter & renewed focus, warriors have endured pain, resistance, and various leaps to get out of way. Reapers simply lack those blocks, invulns, and reliable escapes. I mean it’d be better if Death’s Charge got rid of immob, but it doesn’t. That’s why by playing smart, by being a step behind melee train where all cc & bombs will be dropping, you could do better.

As for GS, it’s very difficult to execute GS skills in ZvZ. Nobody stands around to let Nightfall blind them for more than a pulse. GS 5 pull is unreliable in the first place, most of the frontline you’re trying to pull will have stab/invulns up anyway. The extended range of Death Spiral will help, but you’ll find it hard to land gravedigger in ZvZ unless you’re cleaving through downies. This leaves you to camp in Reaper shroud, which has better mobility and range, including your own stab. But RS will burn out real quick if you hang with frontline melee, which means once you’re out of reaper shroud, you’re left with an extremely immobile greatsword.

Honestly I saw a guildy try the full tanky route to roll with the melee train and he was dying left & right, while I almost never died throughout the whole beta weekend in ZvZ. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but based on what I’ve seen, it’s still better to play midline and be a step behind melee train. If you do that, you’ll bomb as hard as meta wellmancer, while having the added perks of reaper shroud such as increased mobility, lifeforce regen, sustain, aoe melee cleave, vuln/chill application, and stab. Good exchange imo, you just need to alter how you play.

If you try to play Reaper frontline in WvW ZvZ, you’ll die a lot. Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, reflects, escapes, etc.. to survive the heat like other frontline classes. However, if you play your reaper like a mid-line reaper, you’ll do just fine.

What’s midline? You build yourself like a power reaper, load double wells, bomb like a standard current meta wellmancer. You play a patient game, and when zergs clash (they always do), you go in and do your reaper thing. RS 3-2-5-4, switch to GS and cleave it up, own downies, and RS 2 to leap back out of heat when it gets too hot. Then you lay your wells & marks again, and wait for the next opportunity. You’ll do most of ZvZ using staff for ranged hazing, which you do right now anyway during the pirate ship phase.

Reapers are rugged and do very well around 600 range. Key is to leap in and do your thing after your opponents have laid their well bombs on your frontline. You can’t eat the well bombs like guardians & warriors can. So you just have to pace yourself and learn when to leap in and when to leap out. It’s very doable, just takes practice as it’s a different playstyle than what we’re used to currently.

I Geelieve! Thank you Robert Gee, another around of well thought-out, reasonable changes. Reapers get to stay fun woot!

Before people freak out about any of the changes (or changes that didn’t happen), please remember there’s going to be another BWE. So take these changes, run with it during BWE3, and give more feedback.

Commanders ask for GWEN (plus 2-3 Mesmers) when they’re having to face a much larger blob, or when they’re rolling 20-25’ish players. When you have less people on you, the classes people play matter more because there are only so many spots available. You need a solid frontline while having big enough bombs to bust opponent’s melee train. But when you’re rolling a 40+ blob, you have enough GWEN that you can let people play whatever they want, you can have dedicated pick teams if you want, it won’t matter as much.

So it’s important to note the difference when talking about WvW ZvZ. Commanders are usually not picky unless they’re facing superior numbers. In which case I think they’re right in asking people to switch out to GWEN, because GWEN is currently the best at fighting superior numbers.

I’m all for Anet giving other classes more to fit in WvW ZvZ better. But what are you willing to sacrifice in exchange? Necros have zero mobility, escapes, evades, stealth, blocks, invulns, so they get the big aoe bombs. Fair exchange, they’re like the B52 bombers, good at bombing, but kinda sucks when it comes to tricks and such. Perhaps they can give thieves a more rugged build, one that lacks stealth and escapes? But then that wouldn’t play like a thief. How did Daredevil play in WvW btw, anybody try it over the beta weekend?

Didn’t vanish, they unstickied it. So yes I think a new update thread is coming, maybe tomorrow?

Is this for PvE or PvP? You might be able to stay above 90% hp in PvE. But in WvW I couldn’t keep above 90% hp often so strength runes made more sense.

Mistform with vamp runes reset ele’s downstate hp to 80%.

Nikkinella.8254:

If they nerfed condis, you’d see more roamers. its just not as fun as it used to be with everyone running no skill cheese builds now. When all you see when roaming are PU mesmers, p/d thieves, burn guards and engis, and perplexity necros, it doesnt exactly scream “super fun time”.

+1. As if condi cheese isn’t bad enough, a lot of these people stick in packs of 3-5. So when you’re trying to fight someone, thinking what the hay you’ll put up a fight and see how it goes. Then 2-3 of their pocket stealth buddies pop on you. You quickly realize how lame roaming is.

I mean seriously, if I’m in a group with someone, and they’re having a nice 1v1. I wouldn’t jump in and ruin the fight.

Well staff isn’t just an offensive or defensive weapon, it’s kind of an all around ranged option for necros in PvP. There’s something about marks that are more reliable and hits a large aoe area than single target projectiles such as dark path, focus 4 & 5, dagger 4, etc.

If you want to reliably transfer condi’s, putrid mark is your best bet, and it actually does good damage to boot. Not to mention it’s 1200 range, much needed when you’re being kited by many classes that will want to kite you.

Fear mark is your best ranged aoe fear option, this is big because it’s an aoe interrupt. And if you take Reaper, fear also chills, so it’s your 1200 range aoe fear + chill. See 2 people trying to revived a downie? Fear mark. See 3 people trying to stomp your friend? Fear mark and revive. Your group just had a great brawl and enemies are low, they’re kiting away trying to heal up and restack, fear mark and you pretty much screw up their plan.

When you’re getting kited and you have no lifeforce to shroud up to use dark path or doom to close gap, staff auto is your best bet to gain lifeforce. Of course when traited properly you can gain lifeforce with all marks. Nothing worse for a necro to be starved of lifeforce.

Of course there’s also this psychological effect where people don’t like to stand in red circles, because it’s hard to tell what they’re going to be stepping into. Necros with staff often lay staff 2 on refresh to always keep the ground marked up. It helps deter stealthers and helps you see where a veiled push happens. It also forces players to burn dodges when they don’t need to, works sometimes so you can setup for better finishing kills.

Lastly if you go Reaper, you’re already extremely strong under 600 range. You want staff to assist you when someone’s trying to play keep away, and honestly that’s what they’ll need to do if they want to survive.

Staff can seem lackluster, but it really is more useful than some think. Of course a lot of the things are situational. But I’d like to be prepared and have these 1200 range options than not. I should mention that a lot of what’s talked about about pro/con with staff have to do with how you’re traited and spec’ed. If you don’t take Soul Marks trait, and probably skipped Soul Reaping altogether, you most definitely won’t like staff. Whenever I run without Soul Marks, I find my marks blocked all too often to be useful.

Also worth noting is that I find staff having good synergy with reaper, even though they’re words apart in terms of range. Staff gives a reaper two aoe fear options, one close range and one 1200 range, that’s two aoe interrupt options. Staff got great access to chill, staff 3 and fear mark. And lastly the condi transfer issue, running a reaper people are likely to want to kite you, staff gives you that ranged aoe condi transfer + good damage to boot. I really enjoyed my beta weekend reaper running soul marks along with staff to be honest.

spoj is our resident PvE necro master, understandably he sees staff as a weak weapon. Just wanting to note that the OP is talking PvP specifically.

Good lord we sure are nitpicking today. I actually agree this probably won’t happen but forums are filled with hopes and wishes anyway. People take things so personal.

Range/lifeforce > condi transfer > fear mark > chill/poison

Helps you against thieves that you know will come in close to pop you.

I agree staff feels weak when going up against a heavy class like war/guard, because they do little to nothing to them. But it has its uses against other classes.

Um to clarify, I was talking about traited 25% much like Quickening Thirst was to dagger wielders. I thought I was clear in agreeing with the op with regards to tagging the 25% onto Relentless Pursuit while wielding greatsword.

I was gonna suggest a 25% base run for wielding greatsword, I would support this. It’s painful to use greatsword because you lose mobility and swiftness options. Dagger users can take Blood Magic and get 25% base run speed. Other weapon options most already do take warhorn, so there’s swiftness.

I’m fine with not having swiftness but 25% base run speed would really help greatsword users. Oh yeah signet of locust is such a waste of an utility slot, I hate to have to equip it while using a greatsword build.

Chaba.5410:

gavyne, how is it possible for the game to promote the fights, increase the willingness of players to perform a long siege, without nerfing defense too much and turning into a ktrain?

Can start by promoting the “fights” part. Defenders have it rough in this game because of how ground marks work, and how aoe’s extend beyond walls range. Anybody attempting to get line of sight to cast down from the walls get insta gibbed. Anybody attempting to use a cannon or oil gets insta gibbed. Anybody not insta gibbed is insta pulled…and killed. This game is very anti-defenders.

So what Anet has done is to gift players with annoying arrow carts, door trebs, and such to compensate. Unfortunately all they’ve done is to turn the game into siege wars during these long sieges, where players are more annoyed than having fun. With majority of the defenders & attackers doing pretty much nothing while they sit and watch the siege war go on for however long it takes. Defenders can’t do anything other than rain arrow carts or run trebs. Attackers can’t do much of anything other than run around dodging red circles, dying, rinse & repeat until one side has the will & numbers to break through.

I have no solution, as this game is designed differently. They would have to change the core design of the game so attackers can’t instagib defenders on the walls or defenders using stationery sieges such as cannons & oil. Allow people a chance to fight rather than sit inside raining arrow carts and waiting for the walls to go down. Like I said, DAOC promoted fights both in and out of keeps. Here, it’s way too much siege wars. That and skill lag once you do clash inside, so the promise of a fight often are ruined by not being able to use your skills. Oh and all the while you’re trying to have player vs player battles, you’re getting rained on by ac’s, cata’s, trebs, etc.. That last stand lord room defense we saw in DAOC? Don’t work here, you’ll get rained on by ac’s, cata, bals, trebs, etc..

I can stomach it, for 1 long siege, maybe. But your average gamers and casual gamers, they likely won’t make it through 1 long siege. Which is why WvW has turned into a niche for the enthusiasts rather than the casuals.

Long sieges are draining on people’s patience, focus, and interest. Yes it feels good to finally bust a waypointed, heavily defended T3 keep. The payoff that our commanders promises us for spending this much time is the eventual fights (or bags) inside once we break through. Most people are not keen on spending so much time grinding supplies down, trying to damage walls/gates while being farmed by hundreds of arrowcarts, treb shots, etc.. and the long boring resupply runs while getting picked off by gankers.

Speaking as someone who spends a lot of time playing, the last thing I want to do after a long siege is another long siege. If I find that there are no fights to be had outside of siege infested areas, there’s a good chance I’ll logoff after 1 long siege. You as game developers need to make sure there’s more than just dealing with siege and annoying things ingame (I find eotm-style turrets and side distractions annoying while attempting to fight players). People like fights, and often fights are the incentives for players to even attempt these long sieges in the first place.

And as OP mentioned above, casual players don’t have the patience, will, interest, or often they simply don’t have the time to join in on a long siege. So they often will skip these sieges altogether if they see a heavily defended keep where defenders are not willing to come out to play. You most definitely lose casual players if WvW is designed around long sieges. Just put yourself in their shoes, if you have 1 hour to play, do you want to stand there and watch siege wars? No, you want to kill people and play your class.

Back in DAOC days, we always told Mythic that the fun part to sieging keeps & towers isn’t really the siege aspect of it. The fun part is the actual fighting that occurs after we break through, and it became every men/women for themselves inside the courtyard. For defenders the fun part wasn’t to siege camp. The fun part was coming out to fight, giving it all once they’re in the courtyard, or making a last stand at the lord room.

To fix eles they need to nerf burn. Nerfing burn will affect multiple classes. I wouldn’t worry about direct necro nerfs, I don’t see that coming. Everybody knows dd eles are the most ridiculous thing right now, it’s no secret, they can’t hide under the “omg reapers are op” or “omg heralds are op” threads.

Also they would either fix or nerf vamp runes, because right now it’s broken and creates very unbalanced pvp matches.

You add burn + broken vamp runes, you see why eles are the most broken class ingame at the moment.

Weird, the cele signet Reaper I was testing for roaming kept plenty of condis on my targets. Without even trying, targets I’m on always have large stacks of vuln, poison, chill, blind every 8 seconds or less, fear (which applies chill also), and I didn’t even take Dhuumfire which I should have. That would’ve been easily large stacks of burn application. I also didn’t take signet of spite either, nor ran Curses, which you can take if you want plague sending & weakness uptime.

You don’t need to be a full on condimancer to apply condi with reaper. And reapers transfer condi just as well as base necro, and that really is the strength of necros anyway more than condi application generated from necros themselves.

I do suspect though those that prefer more of a caster style, slower combat to enjoy base necro better. While those looking for better melee options and faster combat will likely enjoy reapers.

Dawdler.8521:

Tobias Steele.2071:

Or you know, swapping to a viable build. When I see a mm necro in wvw I time myself to see how long they last. Very rarely goes for longer than 20-30 seconds so I’m not surprised he didn’t run.
Note: I also run a necro.

“Viable” is relative. I can duel most roamers I meet and often go 1v2 (I have gone 1v3 in a T2 camp and still lasted a minute lol). Its a safe and very fast way to cap camps without using wells (which arent so good in duels). Compared to roamer classes, other necros is the worst kind of enemy I meet due to heavy AoE (I mean who doesnt have the staff?). I have better luck killing thieves.

Either way, it doesnt change the fact that thief stealth beat out mesmer stealth by far.

I don’t think that poster realizes mm necro is one of the better build options necros have at solo roaming. At least for now until Reaper’s released. Yes it’s that sad for the state of necros. There’s a reason why most roaming gankers are thieves, mesmers, and dd eles.

This whole necros having 2nd hp bar bs is just rubbish as we all know it’s near impossible to gain lifeforce against thieves that you barely can see for a second. With mesmers at least you have a chance, although you get hurt more, but you get to see them when they pop out to do their burst rotation. Cancer condi thieves just load you up while stay hidden most of the fight. Oh and before anybody says plague sending, in order for plague sending to work, you need to be able to hit and crit the target.

There’s way too much stealth in this game, not sure what Anet was thinking when they gifted more stealth during trait revamp patch.

Reaper’s too good and too fun to skip for me. It took me awhile to get used to not having lifeblast & non-los lifetransfer. But the amount of mobility, survivability, stab, cc’s, blind, fast lifeforce regen, in-shroud heals, and hard hitting melee cleaves are just too much to pass up.

Yes gravedigger is hard to connect. Yes GS 5 pull isn’t reliable in its current iteration. But honestly lifeblast isn’t that much better. Necros not taking reaper will be knocked around like a ragdoll like we have been for the longest time, getting interrupted whenever you’re trying to use lifeblast or other shroud skills. And before you know it, your lifeforce is gone and you haven’t really connected too many lifeblasts.

I’m so glad I can move away from dagger auto & death shroud auto with Reaper…FINALLY. Thank Gee. I mean seriously, having fought necros on my reaper over the weekend, I can’t believe how long we’ve been playing such a b-rated class. Since BWE2 ended, I feel so slow, so immobile, so useless, so lacking lifeforce regen, so vulnerable to cc’s and knockbacks/downs. I get ganked while running to my raid in WvW, where as over the weekend my reaper was doing the ganking. I can’t believe we put up with such a crappy class design for so long. The expansion can’t come any sooner, I need my reaper back.

I think it’s fine the way it is. There are people that already don’t take vital persistence and they swear it works fine. I personally always take it, plus I do like other traits in soul reaping, such as Death Perception, or even Dhuumfire is now a viable and in some cases preferred choice for Reapers. I’d much rather they don’t mess up balance, or start chopping things elsewhere in exchange for giving us vital persistence baseline.

Balance is a touchy thing. I kind of like where Reaper is at currently. Obviously Death Shroud is the weaker of the two forms, and I do believe baseline necro could use some help.

Problem with playing Reaper with the frontline is that when things get bad, and things always get bad when well bombs & cc’s start dropping, Reapers lack the invulns, blocks, evades, teleports/leaps, etc.. to survive the heat. So to play a Reaper frontline, you have to get out of dodge before well bombs & cc’s start dropping. In doing so, you lose out on dps and kind of miss the point of rolling with the melee train. This is assuming you’re fighting competent zerg groups, not just 1 pushing them.

If you’re ok with being the melee with least defensive abilities, then ok. Soldiers is your best bet, you want to be as tanky as possible without sacrificing power.

Alternative route which is what I prefer, is to play a mid-line necro. Gear up zerker + valk, mostly zerker but you slot enough vitality to hit 20k’ish lifeforce. You’ll end up with just as much power and almost as much ferocity as a current meta wellmancer. Load double wells, drop the wells as commanders call them. Then leap in and chop things up when you see an opportunity to do so, because we all know zergs in WvW inevitably clash. The extra lifeforce will help you out when you leap in and get within melee range to dish some pain. And Reapers wearing zerker + valk can dish some serious melee cleave damage.

Hope this helps, cheers.

Just the ability to see cooldowns on skill 6-10 would save me a lot of deaths. Don’t need to use them, but I hate popping out of shroud 5 seconds before consume condition is ready.

I love it, don’t change it

In the meantime while nitpicking about Reapers being good, anybody else see this berserker video? https://youtu.be/rG9-7XynxhY

Yeah…

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

Even Helseth posted on reddit, saying that having passive sustain as amazing as this on a DPS class is a bad design decision and it needs to be toned down if we want a healthy game. So it is not like only bad players with l2p issues are seeing the current iteration of Reaper as an issue.

Um with all the reaper talk, have we forgotten the true FOTM d/d eles? Talk about sustain and dps without the need to receive boons from other classes, because they generate their own massive amounts of boons.

I think people crying foul about reapers need to step back and stop using getting killed as an excuse to cry nerf over a beta weekend. It’s amazing how long dd eles have been the most overpowered class and somehow they’re sliding under the radar now that people are focusing on reapers for some strange reasons. I should mention that Reapers die just as easy when focused, the Nos-state will live on. Being “tanky” is only a term used when Reaper isn’t being focused during team brawls. Have we forgotten Reapers still don’t have invulns, blocks, evades, stealth, and escapes?

Until tournaments stop being won by stacking enough eles, I think people should chill a bit with calling for reaper nerfs.

Freezaen.5124:

Am I the only one who had no issues whatsoever with Grasping Darkness? I hate to say learn to play, but the Reaper is awesome at the moment (worked quite well in ranked PvP).

PvP is a different beast, people have to stay on point to score, therefore stay within your range for skills like Grasping Darkness to work. In WvW however, people don’t stick around within your grasp.

For me I’m using it for interrupt more than a pull, because the pull aspect of it is unreliable. I’d say 8 times out of 10, when the skill connects, it pulls people down rather than to you as the skill advertises. I’m fine with using it as an interrupt because that’s like having a warhorn 4 within GS. But to suggest Grasping Darkness is a reliable way to gap close is just ill advised.

If it pulled people to you often, I can see that, there’s your small range closer. But most of the times it simply pulls people down and interrupts their cast. So while the interrupt is great, you’re still having to catch up to someone who’s out of your GS skills reach. At the moment you’d need to pop RS2 to close gaps, but even that, due to the landing delay, it’s also unreliable.

I’ll post my feedback here since people are making 10 different feedback threads. Hopefully Robert Gee can find time to flip through them all. For me I play strictly in WvW, both in ZvZ/GvG and a bit solo roaming. I never liked to solo roam on necros before, but Reapers have made solo roaming fun. So thank you Robert Gee, you’ve made me a believer. Honestly Reapers are just so much more interactive and fun to play. I’m having a hard time going back to standard necros now.

General Feelings:

-Solo roaming in WvW, Reapers have great sustain and do very well against melee oriented classes. But against ranged kiters, this includes condi thieves, it’s still a struggle. This I’m perfectly ok with, believe it or not. I know there needs to be a balance. You’ve made Reapers hard to deal with up close, as they should be with their lack of mobility, escapes, stealth, blocks, and invulns. Finally necros have a sustain option that’s more fun to play than dagger aa/warhorn + deathshroud. I’m cycling through skills, RS, and weapons like crazy, and that’s a good thing! Greatsword is actually a viable choice now (not as a replacement to dagger/wh, but an alternate choice).

-WvW ZvZ, Reapers are somewhat limited here, but not in a bad way. Taking Reaper Shroud over Death Shroud, we lose out on ranged options like lifeblast and ranged fear, and non-los lifestransfer. But what we gain is even better sustain than ever before, heals without the need to take blood magic, much better lifeforce regen, mobility, and some hard hitting melee range options. It’s a good trade off, but will take time to adjust to it. Staff is a must because ranged hazing is over 60% of the gameplay in ZvZ, and you can still be a Reaper while taking double wells to bomb for your raid. Greatsword feels extremely limited due to the range issues, I have a really hard time hitting people with it, and GS5 pull is unreliable.

Issues I’d like to see fixed/addressed:

-Grasping Darkness. It’s just not reliable. Most of the time targets do not get pulled to you, but rather they get pulled down. Rest of the time the pull will miss. This is something where when it works, it’s glorious and you want to cheer loudly. But most of the time it doesn’t work. Please consider making this an aoe pull so it no longer requires frontal cone, this will make it more reliable. This option is in case you can’t fix the pulls where people get pulled down rather than to you, aoe would at least make the act of pulling/interrupt work better. But if you can fix the pull so people actually get pulled to you rather than just tripping on spot, then great. Remember we are sacrificing all mobility options when taking Greatsword. Pulling people to us and keeping them close was advertised as a key design philosophy for Reapers. So the pull has to work well.

-Death Spiral, please consider extending the range of Death Spiral a bit further. Just a tad. It’s not an overpowered skill by any means, but it’s a skill that will allow us to combo with other skills. Combos make more interesting & interactive gameplay.

-Death’s Charge, as have been mentioned by many, is buggy. Right now without a target, it could charge in random directions. Sometimes it would charge forward, but face your character backwards after it lands. It’s so random, I’ve actually fell off a bridge once due to it. Aside from the bug, please smooth out the animation so there’s no pause on landing. The half a second delay at start, plus a second pause on landing is causing us the distance. I’ve tested this by running along side someone in a straight line. The animation delays are making it so I would start the charge next to someone, and would land exactly next to the same person. This means someone running on foot is gaining the same distance and at the same speed as a “charge”, which should not be the case. This landing pause is causing us to lose stick on people in PvP as well, effectively allowing them to be kiting outside of our melee range right after we leap.

-Chilled to the bone! elite, I found out the hard way that this elite can be blocked. Casted it on a group of players, and saw 5 “blocked” messages popup. It made me cry. Also fought players with seed turrets, Chilled to the bone hit the turrets instead of the 2 players I was fighting, caused me a death. It would be nice if this skill can prioritize player targets in PvP/WvW. It would be even better if this skill can be made unblockable, especially given how I get absolutely no benefit if I don’t hit people with it. If you can’t do either of the above suggestions, then please consider lowering the cast time and the cooldown. This is a lackluster elite as it stands.

-You are all weaklings!, please consider making this an insta cast, seeing how this is a stun breaker. I have it loaded all weekend long, I wanted to like it. But looking back, I had a hard time using it due to the cast time on it. It should be insta cast like Suffer.

-Blighter’s Boon is awesome, but it seems to be required if you use Greatsword. Without Blighter’s Boon, while using GS, I found myself starved of lifeforce. This seems to be an innate issue with GS. GS should have an easier time gaining lifeforce. I want to say to also allow Nightfall to give us lifeforce. Nightfall can act like locust swarm, if people get hit by the pulse, allow it to give us some lifeforce.

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All in all, Reaper is almost there! I hated Greatsword during BWE1, but after the new changes thanks to Robert Gee, I actually liked GS after using it all weekend. The key word about Reaper to me is “fun”, it’s simply fun to play the Reaper as it plays so much different than any traditional necro builds. It’s a very interactive, engaging, fast combat style, which suits GW2 very well. This is awesome. When adjusting values, please remember the fun factor and don’t ruin the fun in it. We are finally no longer tied to using dagger auto attack & deathshroud auto for big attacks (thank Gee). Reapers allow us to cycle through multiple skills, weapons, and forms to be competitive while having fun doing so. Keep reapers fun please.

Here are the videos from beta weekend 2, I based my feedback off them.

Solo WvW Roaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIbKDwTOMIs
WvW ZvZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H21dE7Mmtug

I accept that when dueling in WvW, I may get rolled over by a zerg or get fights ruined by an add or two. It’s part of life in WvW, so I don’t bother complaining about it. I don’t interrupt other people’s 1v1’s, unless I see a second jump in.

Oh yeah and if a server is getting hammered hard and the map is queued, and the commander is asking people to leave so others can join, I have no problems either joining up with the zerg or leaving the map. At which time rolling over duelers is all game, because you’re taking up spots from those who are willing to help the server out.

Anyways, WvW is fluid, I wish fights don’t get interrupted as often but it is what it is. No need to rage over it.

Same feeling as when BWE1 ended… I dread going back to the ‘ol boring necro. Oh well at least the expansion isn’t too far away. Reapers have taken necros to a whole new level of fun.

At the very least they need to make GS5 pull work better. The pull was supposed to be key to keeping people close to the necros. If pull can’t be made better, then they need something else to compensate. Because the whole design idea to Reapers & necros have been about pulling and keeping people close. In exchange for that we lose mobility, escapes, and a lot of invuln/block/evade options that other classes get.

Yeah GS just doesn’t work well in PvP, unless you’re playing against bad players or people who don’t understand Reaper moves yet. A lot of talks about how powerful Reapers are at the moment, but it’s only due to people not understanding the skills & moves. Once people realize they shouldn’t stand there while under 50% hp and tank a reaper spamming Gravedigger on them, people will realize the damage Reapers do really aren’t all that.

Reapers to me are more about sustain & mobility that necros never had. It was hard enough trying to lifeblast people with a 1200 range homing missile, and people here are trying to say a 170 range attack that takes a second and half to execute is gonna make necros the supermen?

Reapers are good, they make cele signet necros better. But they aren’t some super duper dps machines that some make them out to be right now.

Sure thing, make us less tanky. But in exchange give us mobility & block/evades/invulns. Fair exchange since necros are nothing without being tanky.

What class/build? Don’t talk about something without giving examples of your class/build.

Make sure you read this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Reaper-Changes-for-Next-BWE

And yes it’s intended. If you have someone on target, it’ll stop at the target. If you don’t have a target, it’ll leap forward and past like before.

My thought is that GS3 Death Spiral, should be a 600 leap. The lack of mobility and gap closer while using GS/Reaper can be frustrating at times. GS5 is totally unreliable. It’s the best thing ever when it works, but it makes you rage when it doesn’t work, or when it only pulls the target down rather than towards you.

Lack of gap closer makes GS really lackluster to use in PvP/WvW. I’ve been using GS in WvW all weekend so far, and I find myself not using GS because whoever I’m trying to hit is almost always out of range.

GS is PvE worthy, not quite PvP worthy. Players don’t stand there and let you cleave on them with slow GS attacks. But npc’s do.

I run a mix of zerk + valk yeah, seems to be best of both worlds. I slot enough valk to reach roughly 20k lifeforce, as extra lifeforce is needed when running Reaper. And I still have over 30% crit. You don’t need to be using either/or, mixing both and achieving a comfortable stats set is likely your best bet.

This ability can be blocked, I used it and watched 5 block message popup on my screen and almost cried. This long cast, 2 min elite skill, needs to be unblockable. Or reduce cd and/or cast time on it.

Pretty much after seeing 5 blocked messages, I took it off and reloaded plague. It’s useless if a 2 min, long cast elite can be completely useless. Especially given I get nothing out of it for using it if I don’t hit people.

Bhawb.7408:

All pulls are buggy, nothing that can be done about that without a fix to pulling in general.

Yup, which is why I’ve always said the design idea for necros/reapers to “pull” enemies to us just doesn’t work. It sounds great on paper, but it doesn’t work due to limitations to the mechanics and how buggy pulls are.

Time to put that design idea aside and perhaps give us the mobility we need, since pulling people to us doesn’t work well.

I don’t mean to make my thread “the” consolidated thread lol.

Folks, please consolidate feedback into one thread. I know everybody wants to create their own feedback thread. But it makes it harder for Robert Gee to read them when they’re spread everywhere. Please consolidate feedback to make it easier for the devs to collect data and feedback. This is to make sure feedback is read, so win/win for everybody.

And no, I have no idea which thread to be marked as “the” feedback thread. There are already 5+ feedback threads, some already on the 2nd page.

This skill is still terrible because it doesn’t pull like it’s advertised. When it works, it’s glorious, and it interrupts. When it doesn’t work, I just want to rage. I mean the whole idea to this slow, immobile monster is so we get to pull and keep people within our melee range. If the pull isn’t reliable, then the whole design idea is moot.

As-is, other classes have too easy of a time kiting. Yes we seem to be doing “well” but I attribute it to people not really understanding Reapers or knowing Reaper/GS combat animations.

If they keep animation and landing pause as-is, then they should extend to 900 range. Otherwise if they smooth out the animation and landing pause, then I’m ok with 600 range.

Something’s not working right when this “charge” goes at the same speed as someone running along side of you. Test it yourself, run next to someone in a straight line, use Death’s Charge, and you’ll land exactly right next to the same person. That’s not much of a charge when you “leap” as fast as someone running on foot. I first noticed this when I was wanting to catch up to my raid as I was falling a bit behind. Used Death’s Charge on every refresh and I simply wasn’t catching up or gaining at all. So I tested it with someone running straight and was surprised at the result.

So either smooth out animation and landing pause so we actually get a bit of distance gain with this charge. Or extend it to 900 range so we actually do end up gaining maybe 200 range upon landing.

Tooltip is the same, it was 600 before, it’s 600 now. But I do feel it choppers shorter distance, but probably has to do with how buggy it is. And that weird landing pause just bugs me.