I’ve yet to see a warrior solo anything better than a guardian or ranger. And a good necromancer can decimate any warrior in PvP. But your call. Hope you find warrior to your liking.
Are you kidding me? Any good warrior kills me in PvP. They just CC me to death with their god kitten hammer. This will only be worse with this new specialization.
stability/stunbreak…
those hammer CC’s have very EASY tells (their animations are obvious)
Save your dodges. for when they start their CC rotation. Apply pressure to force them into popping their stances. Auto attack / kite away (don’t blow your burst / condi bomb rotation) while they are in their stances. Once stances are down. Continue your pressure rotation. Win.
i’m gonna say this here and many people might not believe me but reaper > berserker.
the primal burst skills on berserker are basically trash. they look awesome and have cool effects but in the end they are mechanically inferior to the normal burst skills.
while reaper builds on necros and makes them better berserker doesn’t do that. it changes the warrior in a way that is different but not really better.
one of the examples are combustive shot, it’s power came from covering a whole pvp point, forcing you to stand in the fire if you wanted to keep the point.
the new combustive shot fires a row of smaller fields in which you don’t have to stand if you don’t want to.
flurry was an immob, good for setting up burst or keeping enemies from jumping allies. the new one just fires burning bolts and destroys projectiles. all in all interesting but better than the normal one?
another good example is primal burst earthshaker. the normal one stuns the foe for a couple of seconds, so you can follow up with backbreaker. the new one pushes them back, out of range for your backbreaker.
it might look shiny and all but it’s not as good as some of you might think (except that master trait, that one is really good).
But a Berserker spec retains all the original burst skills and allows you to use new ones that only cost 10 Adrenaline instead of 30 for best effect.
Going into Berserker mode has a cd, therefore the trait has a cd (which is longer than either of the shrouds).
Unholy sanctuary has a 30’second cooldown though. Warrior trait ends Berserk but berserk only has like a 15 second cooldown and provides a burst of survivability regardless of time spent (since berserk instantly generates full 10 adrenaline), it technically provides much better clutch survivability and with half the Cd.
I want to say that they are different enough to not be compared, but in practice they really can be similar. Every 15 seconds a Warrior can prevent death by entering Berserker, much like Unholy Sanctuary at 30 seconds intervals, except they would get 4.5k health for an immediate health drop and we would get maybe 1.7k if anything?
Perhaps you just like big numbers more than I do. It looks like you are comparing damage instead of DPS, which is what really matters. If you decrease the cycle time by 50% (100% boost to DPS) then cut damage by 25% you are giving the attack a 50% increase to DPS. That’s a bit insane of a request on an already viable skill, not even counting the 100% faster Vuln qnd Might stacking.
Cast time should be halved to .5 second cast +.2 after cast (effective .7, doubling the cast speed from 1.4 seconds.) while reducing damage by 40%, resulting in significantly lower burst damage, but a higher sustained output. The “super slow at everything” niche is dated, and slow, hard hits can remain a Lich Form niche that you can opt into.
40% reduction is too much more like 25% dmage reduction and all will be balanced
40% damage reduction while reducing the cast time to .7, versus 1.4 seconds is a net DPS increase of 20%.
(100%- 40%)x2 = 120%, plus reliability. I’m not sure if Life Blast needs a 50% dps boost, unless you’re suggesting a smaller cast time reduction too, which sort of defeats the purpose. The overall goal is to increase reliability of Necromancer skills and somewhat “normalize” DS and RS.
on a full bezerker geat lf hits for around 4-5 using protect 33% damage reduction skill hits around 2k to 2.5k add that the 40% damage reduction you say and each hit will be around 1k using protect and around 1.5k normal sound terrible even on a .7 sec cast is bad dagger will tripple its damage overall if not more even staff 1 thats why i say 25%
edit: is better if the skill cast .7 and be reduced by 20 to 25% still hit good in power and will be a constant dps not as high as dagger
That’s not even napkin math. The information is out there, if you want people to take you seriously then do it properly.
Completely support Bhawbs suggestion. No idea why people think it would hurt any type of build. Its a buff in certain aspects or it has no effect. It does not nerf anything except for your ability to get big numbers. But what truly matters is DPS which would be identical with the suggested change.
also evade is not sustain, you can avoid some dmg yes, but evade doesn’t give any dmg mitigation nor heals
Evade IS damage mitigation, what are you talking about?
That is technically incorrect.
Evasion prevents oneself from taking damage.
Mitigation lowers the damage taken when hit; more fundamentally, mitigation increases the effective health of the user.
Not taking damage at all is ALWAYS more potent than lowering the damage you take (This is the fundamental reason necros aren’t really meta atm, they have no way of stopping massive spike that other classes can go invulnerable to avoid.) You could say it’s the single most potent form of damage mitigation right after being completely invulnerable.
Necromancers are off topic for our discussion.
Damage mitigation is a principle where damage taken is reduced.
Evades/Blocks/Invulns prevent damage from being inflicted and thus damage cannot be mitigated since it is never used.
They are technically different since Evades/Blocks/Invulns prevent the damage formula from even being applied. They are practically similar because they all function to keep the user alive during a fight in a defensive manner.
also evade is not sustain, you can avoid some dmg yes, but evade doesn’t give any dmg mitigation nor heals
Evade IS damage mitigation, what are you talking about?
That is technically incorrect.
Evasion prevents oneself from taking damage.
Mitigation lowers the damage taken when hit; more fundamentally, mitigation increases the effective health of the user.
Yuck, no. Best case balancing issues. Please no conditional skills.
Anyways, although axe rips a boon on 3, the dedicated boon hate skill should be focus. Hopefully anet will someday tweak focus 5 in such a way that it can rip boons on a fairly quick cast and cooldown,
Boon spam by every class has exponentially expanded and anet needs to tweak focus to catch up.
I know just the way to do that. Let’s give it 1500 range.
I just tried getting lots of stacks sending them back to the elementalist with a necromancer.
They just remove them. Elementalists need a little less condition removal spam.
So it’s not even something that can be countered to be turned against the elementalist.
I have the same problem but it’s just build based. If you can pile enough other conditions on them their chance to clear the Burning goes down.
Not really when they can take out 3 every 2 seconds.
And if they can’t, well, someone is doing the impossible around here.
And when burning is the 7th condition to be cleansed it has already done its job. Necro is a soft counter, not a hard counter. You have to work for it still.
I agree that Ele could use less condi clear, even moreso I think they should at least have to put effort into condi clearing.
Removing Stealth from Mesmer would fix a lot of things, this belongs to Thief just like Aegis belongs to Guardian, and then it would stop being a faceroll class in any game mode…
actually i think mes do need stealth, just not as much as they have it atm
adjustment to PU and pledge would be better choice, imo
^ This, what PU needs is to just have it reverted back to what it was pre-patch, 50% stealth increase. There was no reason to buff it to 100%.
It was a weird thing to buff. Did anyone even ask for it?
With DS 1 being so slow, and with all the CC, evades, invuls, blocks and reflects, I find I’m hardly ever able to get off some actual hits with the Death Shroud auto attack.
I have a choice between taking Curses and SR. Curses has so many “instant” effects, that I feel much more effective. Instant weakness application, instant condi transfers, instant bleeds etc. Whenever I theorycraft with soul reaping and think how much damage I can do with 50% critical chance in DS, I only have to play it for a match or two to see how little I actually get to use it.
Successfully getting off DS 4 in a team fight is a real miracle.
In this fast paced environment, everyone wants skills with low cast times, and evade frames. Does anyone else find DS 1 to be underwhelming?
DS 1 – can be paired with CC’s to ensure hit. Common use is DS 1 then DS 3 while “projectile” is en route. If they run out of dodges it does some decent damage.
DS 2 – useful for 3 situations: enemy using block/reflects, gap closing, Ele switched out of water attunement.
DS 4 – break line of sight or target the most likely CC’er and use DS 3 to buy a couple seconds, it goes through all objects.
50% crit rate also impacts Wells that were cast before entering Shroud.
They all have their uses, but really they are predictable.
I still think this is solveable by more dynamic enemy design.
There’s much more to talk about but for this part in particular I am going to say I agree 100%; however, that can only happen for HoT and future expansions. Unless things have changed, they didn’t plan on updating the core game.
Even with more dynamic combat it doesnt instantly make all the current standards for exclusion any less valid. All it does is introduce a few more requirements to a composition. But most classes are designed in such a way that they have all these tools they could possibly need at their disposal either freely or with simple weapon and trait swaps. So even with more dynamic content it doesnt necessarily mean necro will get any more popular unless it gets additional tools to keep up with the others.
In short. Even with more dynamic combat necro would still need competative dps, more active defence and a greater range of utility such as projectile defence and combo finishers. So the problem isnt really going to be solved. Thats just wishful thinking.
Even in the case of boonhate it wouldnt solve the issue because we already have decent boonhate on classes like mesmer and thief.
It would work if they catered it specifically to things Reaper/Necro has more of than other classes: Chill and Fear.
Let’s think of a Defiance-type bar that regenerates. Let’s say that this enemy has a 90% damage mitigation while the Defiance-type bar is up. Chill can decrease the speed at which it regenerates and Fear can make it go down faster than other CC sources, maybe something like… X seconds of Fear equates to X seconds of bar degeneration at a rate of Y.
Anyways, I think that’s a somewhat unfair way to go when they could just increase the max DPS a Necro could do (and please make our max DPS more complicated than Dagger 111111 or GS 222222).
I still think this is solveable by more dynamic enemy design.
There’s much more to talk about but for this part in particular I am going to say I agree 100%; however, that can only happen for HoT and future expansions. Unless things have changed, they didn’t plan on updating the core game.
Its only two target cleave. No need to revert it. Just like theres no need to revert thief dagger even though they have sword.
And yes dagger is our dps weapon. Its our only current melee weapon. And by design melee weapons do more damage than ranged which is why it has our best auto attack on it. There is also a common trend among all classes that most one handed melee dps weapons have good auto attacks but two handed melee dps weapons have bad autos and good burst skills. This trend seems to be continuing for Reaper.
It has high auto attack damage, which is nice but that is only auto attack damage. If all other profession’s rotations were just auto attacking, then it would be very powerful.
Other professions don’t have utility skills that hit as hard as Wells do, though, nor do they get a second health bar as their profession mechanic to help with defense.
Are we even playing the same game? Lightning Hammer hits supremely harder than wells do as does frost bow. Same goes for engineer kits. Hell, thieves can hit backstabds every 5 seconds for far more damage than our 30+ sec cd wells do.
Please, pvp people, refrain from commenting on DPS. You people have no clue and assume Burst=DPS.
THing is Necro doesn’t bring much to the table in PVE outside their damage.
That is an entirely separate issue. If any changes need to be made, it’s to emphasize each profession’s differences and give everyone different ways not shine, not to homogenize everyone by turning us into identical DPS machines.
In a game with no tanks or healers, the most important utility a class can bring is DPS or some tool that enables the group’s DPS to be higher.
No, boon strip or chill won’t fulfill that role, sorry. All that matters in PvE is damage. You kill the mob before it kills you and you gain rewards as efficiently as possible.
Introducing differences in DPS dooms the class to marginalization in the format, which it has suffered for the last 3 years.
Another +1
There are few things as quantifiable as DPS and it not only can, but should be used for comparisons. And for the people who say that Necro has good “sustain,” no. Just no. It has EASY sustain, because it’s autoattack based.
PS: im not saying EU>NA, im just explaining why NA looks weak competitively (in ESLs)
You want to know what I see?
I’ll use a basketball analogy.
I see professional teams in the Western Conference losing a LOT to the best team in the Western Conference, let’s just say the La Lakers of 2001.
The Eastern Conference has four top teams let’s say "The Bucks, The Sixers, Random Team A and Random Team B… and they are all around the same skill level so there is a lot of back and fourth.
Is the Eastern Conference stronger or more competitive that the Western Conference?
Just as pro teams have all-star games, maybe we could somehow get a GvG all-star game going once everything is settled.
Other professions don’t have utility skills that hit as hard as Wells do, though, nor do they get a second health bar as their profession mechanic to help with defense.
Other professions don’t get locked out of said utility skills when using their profession mechanic. Plus they get blocks/invulnerabilities/Vigor/evade frames to help with defense.
Of course. My point was that direct 1-to-1 comparisons don’t give an accurate picture of the issue.
Direct 1-to-1 comparisons do give an accurate picture when you are talking about optimum DPS, which is more or less what he was talking about with autoattack rotations versus other rotations.
Listing builds saying they can beat an Ele doesn’t make it true. What 1v1 video between 2 capable players would indicate that a power longbow ranger would even tickle a d/d ele in a 1v1?
Trap ranger that will destroy every class that attempts to kill you except anything that has potent condi remover or condi back at your face skills. Hok.
Like I said, those are builds that I can beat an ele with
I beat an Ele while I was on the phone pressing 111111111 and didn’t move a single step, I’m not going to go out telling everyone Ele’s are fine because I beat an Ele who was most likely not playing their best.
Skill 3 – Scrap the whole thing. Send out a green skull that nomnom’s on each of your enemy’s conditions. For every condition your enemy has the skull takes a bite out of your enemy, nom intervals are every 1/2 second. Each nom causes direct damage and 1 stack of bleeding on your target. Each nom grants you 2% Life Force. This skill behaves in a similar way to Ranger’s “Hunter’s Call” and is not a channel skill.
On the other side of things Unholy Sanctuary directly conflicts with the single button on/off use. Without a listed cooldown it’s hard to tell when Unholy Sanctuary will trigger, so sometimes you don’t expect it to trigger but it does right before your click F1. The result is a Shroud flash and you die.
Then it’s a correct reaction from you. Bot trait should be changed. And I don’t buy it either, because you can anticipate more or less when the trait will trigger. It’s not like you get hit by a ghost for 20k. Putting a 1s cd is not the best solution to the problem.
I already suggested F1 for entering Shroud and F2 for exiting. It appeases to both crowds and is a simple change. As for Unholy Sanctuary does the recharge decrease from Speed of Shadows or does it decrease by Vital Persistence? Can it reset before Shroud is recharged? Unless you can answer those specifically and give me quantities you can’t really anticipate when exactly it will work, except “the first time.” Also, 20k? I can come out of shroud, heal for 7k so I have about 8k health, then last for 10 seconds and have 1k health until my Shroud can be used, but then do I press it and risk double click or wait for it to trigger on it’s own?
Control yourself and stop limiting other people’s options only because you are too lazy to get some skill.
Spoj++ for fighting for necros’ freedom
On the other side of things Unholy Sanctuary directly conflicts with the single button on/off use. Without a listed cooldown it’s hard to tell when Unholy Sanctuary will trigger, so sometimes you don’t expect it to trigger but it does right before your click F1. The result is a Shroud flash and you die.
That build is made to hold points until help comes. Ironically the dd eles did the same jobs, but with less deaths, and they have great mobility to boot. This isn’t a knock on Nos at all, he did all he could given the toolset available to him, and he played well and made some great moves during the final. My problem is with the necro class and how they (devs and some players) think necros are so great at being tanky. When the tournament showed necros were getting destroyed left & right.
It’s a little more specific than that I think.
A good Necro prevents an enemy Ele from camping your home node.
Just about as useful as a Bunker Guardian in 1v1, not nearly as good in 2v1, but has the ability to kill while at it. Bunker Guard is a waste in 1v1’s anyway and is best with his/her teammates around.
Doesn’t use Invulns for bunkering, which means you can camp a node without losing it purely from being defensive.
Plague is a great way to tank a node BUT it’s usually a great distraction for a losing fight. Use it and your teammates can leave to the next node while you hold out for 20 seconds. You’re a Necro, not like you were going to be able to run away anyway.
I like Rise. The other ones are kinda meh. The Elite shout takes too long to cast, but it’s effective if you don’t get interrupted. Come to think of it, they all do. Shouldn’t shouts be instant by their very nature? I think I’d put Suffer back on my bar if it was insta-cast.
A 40 second condi removal and a stunbreak can make the 120 second cooldown elite useless.
In a 5 man teamfight five condi removals and five stunbreaks could be used to remove half the effects of one skill. That is absolutely a trade I’ll take.
Or your elite could be countered by one traited tidal surge or one blind.
Whaaaaat. Who could blind you when you have a 2 second cast time??
I would take a more reliable pull, with a longer effective range against running targets, that still Chills enemies, over a 5% LF nerf any day. Life Force generation is so easy now, and if you make the Spectral skills good enough to take Spectral Mastery that 5% comes right back and you can get 15% Life Force and 6 seconds Chill every 24 seconds. Remember, you don’t get any Life Force if the attack misses.
to take that spectral mastery aswell dont forget you would be giving up vital persistence and would miss out on 50% slower draining LF
Fully aware. I think they need to incentivize spec’ing into Spectral Mastery.
got nothing to do with smart enough or not, especially when you play on a mechanical red switch keyboard it can happen that you press it too fast and it activates twice. every other (pvp) game i know of has a 1s cd on such toggles, even here the revenant upkeep skills have. it’s called failsafe.
Improving your reading comprehension will help. I suggest F1 to enter Shroud and F2 to exit Shroud. This way people smart enough to use Shroud for instant effects and people who have double clicking problems both benefit. You dont want skilled players to lose out because of other people making mistakes.
I think Gravedigger will be just fine considering it’s a 5-target Backstab, it might not be amazing at single targets but for PvP that’s pretty useful. It also looks like Nightfall might somewhat hide the animation from CttB, which would probably be used before it anyway.
Can someone test to see if Reaper’s Onslaught increases attack speed of Wells and Dagger 5 while in Reaper’s Shroud?
I expect it to function similarly to malicious sorcery, the mesmer trait that makes scepter 15% attacks faster , which only applies the attack speed bonus to the autoattack portion of the weapon, hence condi mesmers take ineptitude instead.
As for reaper’s onslaught, I only expect it to work for the autoattack, and maybe the other skills if we’re lucky. I don’t see it making wells tick faster at all though, since the 15% attack bonus seems to only effect an individual skill(s?).
I don’t know why you say that. For mesmers, malicious sorcery increases the attack speed of ALL skills, including off-hand, utilities and even for some reason stomping (maybe even rezzing, I don’t remember for sure). The stomping (and rez) is likely a bug though. But I strongly expect that ALL reaper’s shroud skills will be affected, and the leap would probably be faster too but same distance.
Ah, this is exactly what I’m talking about! It could play a big part in usurping dagger auto for PvE DPS.
I think Gravedigger will be just fine considering it’s a 5-target Backstab, it might not be amazing at single targets but for PvP that’s pretty useful. It also looks like Nightfall might somewhat hide the animation from CttB, which would probably be used before it anyway.
Can someone test to see if Reaper’s Onslaught increases attack speed of Wells and Dagger 5 while in Reaper’s Shroud?
I expect it to function similarly to malicious sorcery, the mesmer trait that makes scepter 15% attacks faster , which only applies the attack speed bonus to the autoattack portion of the weapon, hence condi mesmers take ineptitude instead.
As for reaper’s onslaught, I only expect it to work for the autoattack, and maybe the other skills if we’re lucky. I don’t see it making wells tick faster at all though, since the 15% attack bonus seems to only effect an individual skill(s?).
I will feel cheated and lied to if it only effects Reapers shroud 1.
I gather onslaught would increase how quickly you use your shroud skills and how fast the cast. Any persistent effects like wells will still tick at their normal rate.
15% off shroud #1, #4 and #5 is actually a pretty huge deal. Not sure how it will interact with shroud #2 though as that’s a leap.
I’m expecting the same thing, but with the ambiguity of “attack faster in Reapers shroud” I’m curious. It all depends on how they programmed the speed boost.
I would love if Gravedigger + Axe + Reapers Shroud rotations gave us a new best DPS rotation. I want a rotation. I’m tired of 11111111111111111111111111111111.
With some little buffs I could see a…
GS: 1 + 1 + 2
Weapon Swap
Axe: 2
Reapers Shroud 1 + 1 + 1 + 4
Exit Shroud
Axe: 2
GS: 1 + 1 + 2
etc. outdoing dagger finally.
