Guild Wars 2

Jekkt.6045:

valk gives me no precision and is too squishy. 70% crit chance on celestial is insane damage.

I think you should try it before you knock it. 44% crit with fury should be enough considering it’s so much more power. Also with all that health and good access to protection, valk shouldn’t be squishy, I don’t feel squishy at all on carrion.

Jekkt.6045:

i dont need all in one build as i’m already killing d/d eles without much trouble. the reason you pick celestial on my build is not for the condi damage but for the mix of stats. you profit from everything except condi damage (well you have the burn). it’s a bit of a more tanky berserker and i’m usually sitting on 25 might in shiro with sword and the damage is very stronk :P

Well then usually its best to run something that isn’t condition damage. Crusader would be perfect if the toughness was split with vitality, but a crusader build, or valkyrie even with rolling mists with this trait spread would probably be a bit more optimized.

Yeah, in fact I think you should give it a try with valkyrie and see how that works.

Jekkt.6045:

gap closing with shiro.

and idk if it’s you or if it’s me but i’m more or less destroying everything with it. the only difficult matchup is burn guard and opponents with a lot of random ccs, hello there taunt.

Its just the focus fire struggles that make it difficult, and the lack of condi pressure. I mean celestial only works on elementalist because they can heal through half of their health, while doing high physical damage and burning in AoE. Part of it is because bonuses to burn, mightstacking, and physical DPS are all in one traitline, so they can afford to use their other traitlines for full out sustain. For necromancer celestial only works because of braindead easy and effective mightstacking and raw tankiness alone with death shroud and weakness spam.

With revenant, I don’t think this is the case. There isn’t a traitiline that gives might, physical, and condi dps all at once. 3 stacks of burn on a 15 second cooldown is great, but its not good enough. Its essentially as much burn uptime as incendiary poweder gives in its current state. The heals don’t scale well with healing power (since we get two). I just don’t think celestial works on revenant in its current state. If you go mallyx for more condition pressure, stacking might without either glint or shiro becomes much harder.

Unlike D/D ele, you really can’t have it all in one build.

Okay, so here’s the breakdown.

I didn’t like it. It felt worse than celestial engineer in its current, hopelessly bad state. Now don’t get me wrong, it does power based damage pretty well, but thats it. The burning from elemental burst is not enough condi pressure at all, while in general, the build is way too easy to lock down and kill.

However, I did feel as though your build got some things right, and overall the condition weakness wasn’t as bad as I had anticipated. I still wouldn’t 1v1 a condi build with it, but in teamfights, I felt like the invocation cleansing and generosity sigils was enough for incidental condis. If I got condi bombed though, it was all over, as it would be on most builds in this game.

So I decided to tweak things. I put on a soldier’s amulet and replaced sword/shield with hammer, and overall it ended up working much better. I felt like the kind of bruiser a celestial build usually is. I might also try replacing devastation with retribution for the protection injection rip-off trait to help with sustain a bit more, but overall I think this soldier’s build that uses shiro/glint as a basis is pretty good.

I still beleieve that my glint/mallyx carrion build is better though, but we’ll have to see.

Okay, I’ll try a few games with it,and I’ll give you my earnest opinion.

Jekkt.6045:

i have enough burning on elemental blast, it ticks for 1k/s lol.

mallyx is bad compared to shiro and glinth and axe is also inferior to shield right now. you won’t have enough sustain without it and i actually beat a mallyx shiro revenant without any problems.

I don’t think elemental blast is enough to be effective condi pressure when it’s relatively easy to avoid. But since we can actually test everything I’ll give your build a try, just to be sure. Could you please give me the exact traits, runes, and sigils?

Also, besides offhand axes difficulty working with terrain, it is our best offhand by far. I’ll run your build with axe over shield, because until shield gets addressed, it’s just not good. I do agree with you suggestions for shield 4 though, I merely believe that AoE aegis instead of blind would be a bit better.

I also worry about being eaten by condis without Mallyx. It’s a powerful stance, it just needs a stunbreak really badly.

I’m personally concerned by how little condition damage you have in your cele build. You should ideally be running offhand axe (our only truly hybrid weapon), as well as Mallyx to have good condi pressure and sustain versus conditions.

Personally I’m not convinced that celestial works as well on revenant as many people think, so I’ve adopted a carrion herald build that provides a condi bruiser playstyle. I don’t think celestial works very well because many aspects of revenant are specialized to the extreme, so building a true hybrid is more difficult than one might expect.

Kodiak.3281:

nearlight.3064:

Also, I think that giving chaotic release super speed to yourself would help tremendously with disengage.

Doesn’t work on yourself. Super speed only is given to allies not yourself.

As to the question, Shiro is the answer which is why Shiro/Malyx was so popular for smaller time engagements.

You misunderstand me. I’m suggesting that chaotic release should be changed to apply super speed to yourself as well as allies. All the years of playing necro have made me selfish.

fluidmonolith.3584:

I agree with many of these points. I do have a few disagreements, below:

I found Maniacal Persistence a useful alternative to Rolling Mists if you don’t want to go into Invocation.

I like the current implementation of Dismantle Fortifications. I have been using it with Momentary Pacification which, in theory , strips a lot of stability. I haven’t been happy with Momentary Pacification though. Many of our elites have a long cast time, and I’ve noticed the application of the daze is delayed even more, by around half a second or so after the elite cast finished. And, of course half of our elites are CCs better than daze, so Momentary Pacification is useless in many cases, except for stripping stability.

I don’t think that Charged Mists is necessarily bad, but it doesn’t seem worthy of a GM trait, and neither of the Invocation GM traits seem to compete with Rolling Mists.

Yeah, I mean shrouding mists is an okay idea for a defensive GM trait option in invocation.

I can agree with your argument with momentary pacification. I feel as though the idea is GM worthy, just not implemented very well as you have said.

My main issue with maniacal persistence is that rolling mists performs the same role so much better because this class can very easily maintain permanent fury. While maiancal persistence provides a crit substitute for non-invocation builds, I feel like the placement is poor since crit substitute builds don’t really get much out of the the other corruption traits as a whole imo. It also doesn’t provide enough Crits to proc rampant vex, and even if the other GM trots have issues as well, most condi builds are better off taking those.

I’m not going to argue with you about dismantle fortifications, as I genuinely feel being able to ignore stability on a medium cooldown provides better utility than stripping it when it’s easy for so many builds to have very high stacks.

I personally feel as though many of the revenant’s grandmaster traits aren’t build defining nor GM worthy.

The only traits that I do feel are GM worthy are: Momentary Pacification, Assassin’s Annihilation, Swift Termination, Rolling Mists, Shrouding Mists and Elder’s Force.

This is problematic because there are no GM worthy traits (in my opinion) in Corruption or Retribution, with only few viable options in other trees. So lets look at the GM traits that are underperforming and see what can be done to fix them.

Corruption

Diabolic Inferno: This trait simply doesn’t make enough of an impact. It would be much better if the amount of burn stacks was increased, and possibly the duration as well. Right now its not enough condi pressure to feel like a good GM trait.

Manaiacal Persistence: I think after the rework, this trait is much better, howeever compared to Rolling Mists in Invocation theres no reason to use this trait instead for crit substitute Soldiers/Crusaders/Valkyrie builds. I’d suggest adding more of the corruption theme to this trait in some way. Its a tough fit, but I just don’t think its very useful for a build that would go into corruption.

Pulsating Pestilence: This trait is almost in a good spot. I simply think it needs the 15% chance to trigger condition removed and changed to “copy conditions on nearby foes when struck when having 3 or more conditions on you”. This threshold would make the trait more consistently useful instead of triggering when you have no conditions on you and going on cooldown. I think its range should be increased to 360 as well.

Retribution

Empowering Vengeance: This trait is bad simply because revenant doesn’t have enough access to retaliation for this trait to be worthwhile. Yes theres the retal on dodge trait, and the Jalis heal, but thats it. I think it should add, “gain 3 seconds of retaliation when you use a legendary dwarf stance skill”, (similar to the resistance trait in corruption) to it, so it would allow you to get more consistent retal and might uptime.

Reflexive Summon: This trait is the only one I ever take because Its the only GM in retribution that ever does anything meaningful, and even then I feel like its still lacking for a GM trait. I’d change it into a more simply form of weakness application that has more overall uptime, but in its current form this trait isn’t bad, it just feels.. strange to use. I’d suggest reducing the hammer duration to 3 or 4 seconds and reducing the ICD to 10 seconds so it wouldn’t feel as limited by its cooldown.

Steadfast Rejuvenation: As we’ve learned from the necromancer’s signet of vampirism, being healed when youre being hit is no good when there is an ICD. I would honestly rework it to offer some form of passive healing every second, starting with a base of around 200 health per second and then scaling well with healing power, so it’d provide more reliable passive sustain.

Salvation

Natural Abundance: The fragments simply don’t last long enough, make them last much longer.

Selfless Amplification: This is okay for pure healing, but pure healing tends to be a bit bad, and the ventari stance in general is clunky for most builds to use. Its just a bit boring for a grandmaster trait and doesn’t define your build in any new or meaningful way, so I’d just rework it to a support based trait that does more than just raw healing.

Devastation

Dismantle Fortifications- I would make this trait let you CC through stability, any amount of stability, but it’d have a 30-40 second ICD to balance it appropriately. In its current form, its meaningless against anything besides Foot in the Grave Necromancers.

Invocation

Charged Mists: For most builds this trait seems a bit clunky to use due to the threshold. I’d change it so you’d gain 2 stacks of might upon using using 20 or more energy in a single skill.

Herald:

Soothing Bastion: This trait is only bad because Crystalline Hibernation is bad. Fix that skill (let us move while using and make the defiance bar sturdier) and it should be a good option. On the wiki it says that using a shield skill increases boon duration. Is this working? Since I can’t find it on the tooltip ingame.

Enhanced Bulwark: This trait is very good if you run retribution, but meaningless elsewhere. Add a function so that using Chaotic Release applies stability and super speed to yourself, and possibly some stability to allies as well.

Anyway, those are my feelings on the Revenant’s GM traits, the ones I didn’t describe are fine as they are, but I feel as though the majority of these traits aren’t build defining like they should be.

I also feel that chaotic release should really give the herald super speed as well. Herald is still very poor a disengaging and reliable super speed would help a lot without making it overpowered.

Also, I think that giving chaotic release super speed to yourself would help tremendously with disengage.

There’s a a lot of variation based on your playstyle, but enhanced bulwark, shared empowerment, the resistance trait, and the protection on CC trait are all required.

For runes, either scavenging, forge, or Balthazar can work, while I like using geo/leeching sigils.

It does too much damage. Keep the CC, nerf the damage.

I personally think the best build is carrion herald. Glint Mallyx, mace/axe/sword. Herald, corruption, retribution.

Is basically the new spirit ranger, a condi bomber that brings lots of AoE protection to a team.

Shiro evades work, but since the best builds won’t take shiro, you’re best off using herald swiftness and protection and running away, and using unyielding anguish to block a choke.

I hope shield 5 gets reworked to let you move, then it’d be a great disengage tool.

Bhawb.7408:

I’ve played Cleric Reaper MM , Soldier Shout , haven’t been messing around with much else after I played with other builds last time around, and I’m a lot more busy with homework.

The Soldier build was a ton of fun though, you get just below 3400 armor while in Shroud with Corrupter’s Fervor up, 2800ish power while in Death Shroud before might, you generate a lot of Life Force due to all the boons in teamfights, and you aren’t worried about conditions at all. It is absurdly tanky, especially once you factor in allies giving you boons on top of your own, and can still hold its own in 1v1s.

I personally took blood magic and spite for my shoutreap build, but I’ll give this a try too since it looks more bunkery. I’ll miss the transfusion rezzes though.

Regarding mace, it’s strong as a condition weapon, but it’s slightly vulnerable to being kited. The weake power value son the autos track are the main reason that a celestial build isn’t ideal right now.

If you rose energy costs on the fire field, you’d have to reduce energy costs with Mallyx, since skills like pain absorption are necessary to survive a condi Burt and leave you with hardly any energy to fight back after.

I tried soldiers shout reaper which wasn’t that bad, as I’ve said before, having augury of death give shouts another functionality would help a lot.

I’ve also tried cleric minion reaper, and I felt it was very good overall, I just think the shambling horrors need their health and bleeding slightly rebalanced to be less vulnerable to something like a well that can kill them instantly.

Dojo.1867:

Ye right. Except it is no animation. I want to see you tell your team to stop the burst in time. We talk about instant 4 seconds here. Worst case you run in some cleave.

Your comment just shows that you don’t get why this is too good.

That’s wrong.

An icon for the infuse light skill will appear on their bar when they use it. That’s is more than enough of a tell to see the heal.

And let’s not forget that this skill is literally the revenants only true form of active defense that works to let it survive focus fire. If you need that heal, you end up having something as easy to focus s a neceromancer, but without the second health bar that lets it actually tank.

Well you’ll find out in the next month.

Personally in pvp, I find the ventari skills to be kinda bad (tablet micromanagement while having your face being crushed), but the glint skills to be really good. The whole point of revenant is to take the legend playstyle and specialize to the extreme with it, while glint is the only legend that seems to be good on any build since its support potential is really nice.

As it stands though Herald support is weak when it comes to rezzing, since radiant revival isn’t that great unless the enemy is dumping a poop ton of cleave. Ranger already has the nature spirit, so its already better at rezzing than the Herald.

I did write in another post that carrion mallyx/glint herald feels alot like the old spirit ranger, because it has so much AoE protection, a fair amount of burning and can 1v1 well and support in teamfights through boons. I’d argue that its better than the old spirit ranger in every category besides rezzing/healing.

I just thought that was an interesting comparison to make.

Looks like I’m late to the party for this argument.

Blighter’s boon is a very strong trait to be sure, but its a GM trait. They are supposed to be build defining, and they should provide a reason to take that traitline. Without blighter’s boon, there would be hardly any reason to take reaper at all.

If you gave it an ICD, you’d have to raise the life force generation to 3 or 4% and the healing to 500 for it to still be a GM worthy trait.

Anyway the bottom line is, learn how to play the game better. You only have yourself to blame for not using your CC and brain to kite the reaper into oblvion, since they are very weak to kiting. And trust me, there are more than enough ways to deal with chill on most classes.

After my testing today, I have concluded beyond a shadow of a doubt that Carrion revenant/herald is the best.

Why you may ask?

Its basically the new version of the old spirit ranger, but way better overall.

Run glint/mallyx and basically spam boons in teamfights while winning most 1v1s with ease. Mallyx gives you incredible dueling potential against condi classes, however since mallyx is really energy thristy, they can still beat you if they interrupt pain absorption or bait out the resistance. Necros are the other counter due to boon removal, but other than that, they handle skirmishes very well, while spamming boons in teamfights.

It feel similar to the old spirit ranger because the dueling potential is there, and it has so much AoE potential (+other boons) with overall good condition pressure. In fact the only thing the old spirit ranger did better than carrion herald is rezzing, but thats because of the elite spirit, while herald’s radiant revival is strong but very limited. Also with the right trait setup, it has nearly perma-stability, perma personal protection, and a good amount of dodges. Its still helpless to conditions when in glint mode and overall weak to focus fire, but I think it has a lot of potential (especially when ele gets nerfed, since herald could replace them for the boon support/1v1 everything role).

I tried celestial revenant, and while it was decent, carrion just had overall better damage while keeping the same level of utility. This is because mace’s power coefficients on the 1 and 2 skills are abysmal, while sword and staff have no condi pressure at all and you just use 3 off cooldown for mightstacking. Basically, rev doesn’t have a truly hybrid weaponset because most weapons are specialized in their niche to the max (offhand axe works as a hybrid based on its numbers, but its only an offhand). You also need to run traited shiro to stack might fast enough on your own, and I believe that takes away from too many other things. Maybe if some things get changed rebalanced celestial rev will be a thing, but in its current state, each of its facets are too specialized to make a hybrid spec worth it compared to necromancer or elementalist.

A zerker burst build with no condi clear is another option, but for more casual play. MH sword has amazing damage, but overall rev suffers from being outclassed by thief/mesmer burst builds, which also effectively counter it.

Finally I tried a soldier’s build (herald, retrib, invoc) with rolling mists, glint/jalis staff/hammer, and it wasn’t bad. It mainly suffers from jalis skills costing WAY too much energy for their measly effects, but the condi cleanse on the heal, and the invoc cleanse trait were needed to deal with condis at a rate slightly worse than a soldier’s engi with elixirs. Since perma fury is possible, I think this build could totally stand a chance, but only if Jalis was improved, the hammer is made less clunky, and if the build got slightly more condi cleanse.

As for what will be meta in HoT, Daredevil, Reaper, Chronomancer, and Herald all look amazing for what they do. They, and the base classes need some tweaking though, so its hard to say for sure what people will run. I’m mostly excited for ele nerfs, because it will make room for other bruisers that can support/cleave/1v1 very well but have lackluster mobility and no godmode sustain holding them back (ie, like herald, or likely what druid will turn out to be).

Yeah I agree that Mallyx has too high energy costs when they’re needed to survive a condi burst. I also hate that there’s no stunbreak in Mallyx, which can screw you over if you fight something like a taunt spam trap ranger, even though you should have the advantage.

Don’t forget to use axe 4 after they dodge in water to chill them and mess up their attunement recharge, it’s ele busting 101.

I’m still not entirely sure if celestial revenant is worth it to be honest, but I’m having good luck with dedicated condi based heralds.

I just have to say it, but double Moa is simply pure aids in a 1v1.

I thought I would place my thoughts in this thread, but please feel free to post here, so we can have 1 organized feedback thread.

Note that all of my suggestions deal with the class’s viability in PvP, not PvE or WvW.

Glint skills

Facets of Chaos: The upkeep cost is too high. I agree that it’s a powerful boon, but it costs so much to stack it when you consider that it only pulses every 3 seconds. I don’t believe that applying protection AoE for that duration when in boosted by f2 is a fair cost. 15 energy for 3 seconds of protection is too little. If you want to keep the pulsing intervals the same, I’d suggest lowering the cost to 3 energy as well.

The active chaotic release would also feel better if its cool down were lower, say 40 or 35 seconds.

Facet of Light: Regeneration as a boon is just weak, even with tons of healing power its outdone by the ele/warrior heal signets. In a build with 0 healing power, the upkeep skill is completely worthless. Either make it so the regeneration of this facet scales much higher with healing power, or let it apply its own non-boon buff that heals more than regeneration, perhaps 350 per second scaling to be bit higher with healing power. Raise upkeep cost to -2 to be a better cost for the extra healing over time.

The active skill infuse the light is fine as is, but since it doesn’t involve the use of healing power, it makes healing power arguably less useful for a herald, so that healing power usage needs to be made more meaningful elsewhere.

Elemental Blast: Change the skill so that the pulses happen in half a second instead of 1 second. Hoping that someone stands in the beautifully animated telegraphed AoE for 3 full seconds to get the full effect (especially for condition based heralds) is a bit too difficult in smaller fights.

Shield Skills:

Envoy of Exuberance: This skill is okay but feels a bit inconsequential. The protection and heal are nice, but it doesn’t really feel like I did anything meaningful with it as a defensive skill. If it applies aegis briefly as well, I think it would feel a lot better.

Crystalline Hibernation: as often said, needs to be reworked because the breakbar mechanic is too easy to break and abuse. Even if I go off point and LoS to try and use it for the heal, if anyone with any form CC, soft or otherwise follows me, they will break it almost instantly. Shield 5 is a good opportunity for a skill that could give you active defenses, but when it roots you and is easy to break, it ends up being a hindrance. For starters, let people move while using it so you can disengage with it or soak up damage, and change the break bar mechanic to make it feel fair to use against people that are focus firing you. This skill NEEDS to be our way of dealing with focus fire, otherwise, there is no reason to ever take shield over axe. For example, make it function like the Tempest’s earth overload in the last beta (not the current one), and let you use it as a disengage tool or a way to block coordinate bursts/focus fire. You can even raise its cooldown to compensate since this skill should function like a more techincal version of renewed focus or distortion.

Herald traits:
The stunbreak traits aren’t very good, they feel pretty meaningless considering how breaking stun as a revenant is clunky and requires other traits in other lines to be useful at all. Breaking stun for allies, as shown by the tempest generally isn’t as useful as it seems because it requires far too much coordination and communication in a split second to be effective, which is just unfriendly to use by anyone.

Radiant Revival: Lower the cooldown to 30 seconds (same as facet active) and give it +10% revival speed, since in its current form, Herald is a relatively bad at reviving people in pvp even with this trait, as it does nothing to stop stomps, only cleaving.

Hardening Persistence: This trait should be made to be more comparable to the necromancer’s corrupter’s fervor. Make it grant a -2% condition duration or condition damage per stack, and let the stacks have a duration so that they can persist a bit when you’re not using as many upkeep costs (for example have it so the stack will persist for 10 seconds after the upkeep skill that created it ends, yes the coding for this will be more complex, but the trait will be more meaningful to use). If you do take this suggestion, consider swapping it with bolster fortifications.

Shared Empowerment: Consider raising the base might duration from 5 seconds to 7 seconds, even with the facet of nature up, it feels a bit too weak.

Soothing Bastian: This trait is merely weak because the shield skill is weak, once again please let people move, and please rebalance the defiance bar to not be overly punishing to use.

Envoy of Sustenance: I would add -10% condition duration of conditions applied to you to this trait, just because herald is so incredibly weak to conditions on its own, that you’re forced to combo it with mallyx to survive. And while I’m personally okay with that, I think the playing field needs to be leveled so people can use both shiro and glint in a power build and not be punished completely by conditions (my hardening persistance suggestion deals with this as well).

Other than that Roy, I LOVE the Herald, and I think its what the revenant needed all along to tie everything together. All of the traits and skills I didn’t mention are fine as is, and I love the synergies the traits have with mallyx/corruption and retribution traits and shiro skills!

For base revenant in general, I merely feel that mace’s autoattack chain needs to be faster and hit with harder power damage, the mallyx utilities a bit too much energy (change pain absorption and unyielding anguish to 30 instead of 35), and that revenant needs another ranged option down the line, such as scepter perhaps. This is mainly because condition builds get 0 usage out of hammer, so its best to just use mace/axe/shield because no other mainhand weapon will do anything positive for you.

I can’t compent on Jalis or Ventari or the salvation traitline, since they aren’t really my playstyle and I’ve found other legends and traitlines to be more useful for me.

Well to be honest, I find Ventari a bit too clunky to ever get use out of.

I made a settlers condi bunker build with glint/Mallyx, that does amazing in 1v1s, and is a boon machine in teamfights. I might change settlers to rabid, celestial, or carrion though because healing power in my build doesn’t really feel like it goes the full mile with just regen and the retribution heal proc GM.

Just something to keep in mind.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Cynz.9437:

well every stolen spell supposed to help you to fight class you stole it from…. question is what counters revenants

How does Throw Gunk, Consume Plasma, Healing Seed and Whirling Axe counter their respective classes?

The steal is something from the class, rather than something that counter.

Consume plasma gives you stab to deal with mesmer interrupts, which were prepatch their only way to prolong the invetable hard counter of that matchup.

Healing seed gives condition removal, which is good against those cheeky trap rangers.

Whirling axe lets you spin to win, which lets be honest, is really fun, and throw gunk, is well…. gunk.

Byron.1902:

I’m not really sure on builds if you’re going the max dps PvE route, then maybe you are right and with damage you sacrifice cleanse. For WvW cleanse is insane. For sPvP it looks good for bunker, risk/reward and condi.

I’m looking at Mallyx/Glint, Mace/Axe – Hmr – Corruption, Invocation, Herald (on Cele) and it looks really, really strong.

Honestly, I think the whole class (regardless of fine tuning) has been very well designed. Its pretty much good at everything. Ventari is still a little bit clunky – Energy Expulsion needs to break stun on you and the fragments needs to persist on the floor for longer (more like Engi med kit drops).

I orignally tested out pretty much that build earlier, but with retribution instead of invocation to be tankier. Then I switched to a settler’s build with those legends using mace/axe/shield and its working really well as an all-purpose condi bunker, similar to a settler ranger but with more utility in teamfights.

My beef with celestial was that while I could stack might, the lack of hybridization for both sword and mace make it feel a bit odd when building a hybrid, since those weapons aren’t hybrid weapons at all, only offhand axe really is, so I felt like I couldn’t maintain that much condi pressure outside of mallyx. Also the hammer was blah, but its just an incredibly boring weapon to me.

Yeah with blighter’s boon, and chilling victory, and spite you will have no problem generating life force without soul reaping, its just that you can hardly stay in it because of the degeneration.

When I was trying to build a cele revenant in pvp earlier I ran into this issue. Sword and mace are both pushed into primarily power and condi roles respectively, so there isn’t a true hybrid option on any weapon. Mace sounds like a good hybrid weapon on paer, but its damage coefficients are just too low. It does have great condi pressure though, and I really enjoy the almost spammable fire field!

Well who made you the queen of the meaningless leaderboard?

I hate playing on skyhammer, spirit watch, and courtyard. I will bring my beta tested characters into ranked as much as I please so I don’t have to ruin my fun by playing on kittenty maps. And besides we’re doing this beta to collect and propose feedback for the new class and specializations. And what better place to do that, than in an actually somewhat competitive environment?

Speaking about pvp here, but I’m having great luck so far with a mace/axe mace/shield settlers revenant.

As a cleric MM reaper its so easy to keep shambling horrors alive if they enemy has poor AoE, to the point where I can get like 7 or 8 of them up forming an army of little kittens.

Blaine Tog.8304:

nearlight’s summary is pretty good, though he skipped over my favorite Utilities: Wells. Each Well skill is really strong under the right circumstances, but Well of Suffering is probably the most versatile since it hits so incredibly hard.

nearlight.3064:

-Blood Magic is our only form of support. It lets your attacks steal a small amount of health for extra sustain that scales with healing power. Transfusion lets shroud skill 4 teleport downed allies to you so you can revive them. With the skill flesh wurm, this trait is amazing since you can teleport your dead friend up cliffs where most attackers won’t be able to get you! (its really fun doing this). Other stand out traits let your allies siphon life a little bit, improve the warhorn, wells, or give more healing to allies. Its good for minion builds to help keep them alive.

Whoa, wait, how do you do that? That sounds amazing.

nearlight.3064:

Finally OH focus, is a clunky “burst weapon” that has no niche but odd synergy with axe, but as a full package, axe/focus fails. The 4 skill is a buggy hard to land burst skill and the 5 skill rips boons and does high damage, but has such a long cast time that its very dificult to land.

OH Focus gets a lot of flak but it can be amazing in very specific circumstances. In a 1-vs-1 scenario where you’re already in melee range, 4 is a massive, massive nuke that stacks up a large amount of vulnerability very quickly. 5’s casting time is indeed absurdly long, but stripping 3 boons at once can be fantastic.

It’s generally not as good as Warhorn, I’ll admit, but I’ve been having fun running D/W+D/F lately and I gotta say, it’s really nice having the backup nuke and boon stripping.

Regarding Wells:

They are certainly a viable option I believe that they’re not as good as other utilities. This is because much of the utility they bring is purely offensive as the two defensive wells and the well heal aren’t very good. Furthermore, the map determines their general usefulness. On forest and temple, your wells work well for AoE bombing the capture points since your wells are the exact size of the point. On legacy, this is not the case, so its easy for your wells to be avoided in a teamfight without forcing the team off the point, where on another map you get a “decap or they die” scenario with how much damage wells can do.

The main strength of wells in my opinion is burst down cleave. In a teamfight, even on legacy if someone on the other side goes down and everyone rushes over to rez them, slap a well down and watch the rezzes themselves take a ton of damage so they go down as well or take so much damage that overcommiting to a rez means that they will likely go down as well. You can use the same logic when an ally goes down, slap wells on their location to make a rez attempt much harder, if you trait for wells, you can also apply protection to your downed friend as well, that will protect them from cleave.

The other caveat is that glass power necro is very hard to play well because it can’t take advantage of vamp runes very well compared to thief/mes/engi and thief/mes burst and CC is so great that they can literally make you useless in a teamfight, let alone the hammer train. You can use wells in a soldier’s or crusader’s build to protect yourself from burst while still providing the same well utility, but with less damage, but death perception will help.

Thats my assessment of the pros and cons of wells.

Regarding transfusion ledge rezzes, you simply place the flesh wurm on a ledge, and blow up the wurm to teleport to it when a friend dies, then you go into shroud and use transfusion to pull them to you while the enemy team whispers you about how awesome you are. The best places to use this are at the mid point and henge for forest, but it can work at mid on on legacy and the side nodes on temple as well, and mid on khylo depending on where they go down. Keep in mind that the pull only has a 600 range radius, and your DS can’t be on cooldown for this to work. Generally this tactic isn’t even necessary unless your enemy has medi guard, GS war or engi levels of down cleave as pulling them out from under a stomp is usually good enough to get the rez unless they’re extremely on point.

About focus, yeah it works as a good offensive option for what it does, and the 4 skill can drop people if you can land it, its just a bit clunky to use and I feel that warhorn and OH dagger give better utility.

Yeah I’m not even a main ele, but one night I played games with my Mesmer friend post mantra nerf without voice comm for duo queuing and I played fire d/d ele. We literally won 16 games in a row that night, partially because I was able to 1v1 nearly anything, anywhere while doing so much burning and cleave and healing and condi cleansing in teamfights while disengaging from the few teamfights that we lost.

After that I realized that even for me, a novice ele who understands the basics, that this class was a little bit too broken, so I’m glad it’ll be brought into line.

PlatinumMember.5274:

Zenith.7301:

PlatinumMember.5274:

mulzi.8273:

I wish they would put the reaper shroud on F2 and let it share a cooldown with F1 shroud. That way a necro can decide which shroud to use on the fly. And since they would share the same cooldown, it wouldn’t make it OP…

Which will give the elite spec a significant advantage over the basic necromancer. This invalidates the concept of elite spec just being an alternate way of playing the necromancer. Not that I am against it, but it has to be said.

The idea that elite specs don’t replace core specs is deluded anyways. No mesmer will forego chronomancer since alacrity is good for the group.

No necromancer who actually wants to do DPS will forego reaper, GS power reaper will be by far the best spec.

Same goes for warrior, who get a plain DPS upgrade as does Daredevil. There are virtually no downsides to any specialization except Tempest, and the issue with Tempest is that how do you improve on a class that is already as almighty as the elementalist.

Specializations are meant as class progression. People need to abandon the idea that they’re optional.

I am not going to argue with you since it is ultimately a pointless argument. Arena net is probably going to do it if they feel it will lead to more box sales.

In any case, your argument only works for the chronomancer and not the other classes. And that argument only works because we haven’t had an extended amount of time playing with the elite spec. Two easy counterpoints, few ele is going to give up the basic ele to play tempest, the ones that do it probably are bad players. Very few Guardians will give up guards to play dragonhunter. Admittedly, it could be due to karl being the main designer for both of those classes but still.

I don’t think the Karl hate argument stands anymore because of daredevil. I originally was in the Karl bash camp but he did right with daredevil even if it is rehashed acrobatics/death blossom/leap finisher mechanics at play, you can’t deny that he didn’t make a good elite spec even if it is derivative.

Zenith.7301:

PlatinumMember.5274:

mulzi.8273:

I wish they would put the reaper shroud on F2 and let it share a cooldown with F1 shroud. That way a necro can decide which shroud to use on the fly. And since they would share the same cooldown, it wouldn’t make it OP…

Which will give the elite spec a significant advantage over the basic necromancer. This invalidates the concept of elite spec just being an alternate way of playing the necromancer. Not that I am against it, but it has to be said.

The idea that elite specs don’t replace core specs is deluded anyways. No mesmer will forego chronomancer since alacrity is good for the group.

No necromancer who actually wants to do DPS will forego reaper, GS power reaper will be by far the best spec.

Same goes for warrior, who get a plain DPS upgrade as does Daredevil. There are virtually no downsides to any specialization except Tempest, and the issue with Tempest is that how do you improve on a class that is already as almighty as the elementalist.

Specializations are meant as class progression. People need to abandon the idea that they’re optional.

I agree with this. And while zenith argues from a mainly ove perspective, this is so true for a pvp perspective as well.

Reaper gives you reliable stability uptime, which is too good to pass up in any pvp scenario imo, it just adds too much, while the other weapons, skills and traits also offer new things, but it’s easy enough to use old weapons and utilities with the new traits.

I am concerned that many elite specs will be a bit dependent on base trait lines. For example, I don’t like how mandatory soul reaping will be for non minion based reaper builds because vital persistence and dhuumfire are too great with it on nearly any build.

For other specs, things like chronomancer will nearly always be run because it gives Mesmer a new set of high skull cap abilities to push their skills to the limit. It only really lacks condition removal, which can be provided by inspiration or team support.

Tempest is bad because the traits are bad and are too focused on making the bad overloads less punishing to use. As it stands now, it will only see use of base ele Fire or arcane gets nerfed into oblivion, so you’d need to go into tempest to provide meaningful support or damage.

daredevil basically gives thieves acrobatics again in an arguably stronger form utility wise, and I’d argue it’s healthy for the class for allowing more than just D/P shadow arts to exist since dodge spam could replace stealth as a survival mechanic.

Berserker could open up condition focused or offensive hybrid builds for warrior that haven’t been very good lately, so they can do more than just cleave and rampage. Dragon hunter could give medi guards a new play style with longer range while keeping their huge cleave damage.

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

pepsis.5384:

Andlat Helsonr.1284:

I played quite a lot of soldier reaper last beta and, to be honest, there is not much difference from what you would usually run. Hoelbrack runes are pretty good to keep CC off of you, strength are great for might stacks, traveler let you stick to targets easier when in RS. I found my sustain/survivability to be good enough with soldier’s amu, so I did not go for defensive runes. Runes of the soldier are not worth it because you will not be running shouts, and you are much more valuable as a debuffer rather than as support.

Why wouldnt we run shout? They seem quite awesome, doing damage, giving buffs, debuffing the enemy and reducing CD based on # of targets hit. On paper at least they sound great

In PvP I value Relentless Pursuit higher as a trait since it allows us to stick to targets really tightly, so I do not believe that Augury of Death is worth taking in that spot. In addition, I can not see myself taking more than two shouts as my 6-10 skills, since I believe that we have much better options for those slots.

I am not saying that shouts are completely unviable and shout builds will not work, I just believe that the necromancer’s role of a heavy debuffer is really valuable and I do not believe that overcommiting to a shout support playstyle would be worth it. Of course, I could be completely wrong on that one, it really all depends on how the meta swings, but at least for the current PvP reality, signets and wells are really good utility options, and the shout heal is nothing special.

I plan on trying out a trooper rune shout build. Mainly this is to see if they could have potential use over a signet build which I have grown bored of in casual play. I do agree that augury of death needs to grant shouts a new type of functionality for shout builds to be viable.

Maybe having them just remove one boon on hit? Maybe have them apply a debuff AoE like more chill or weakness, or a boon like fury or might or even stability (hehehe). I think one of my main suggestions will be to add new functionality to this trait, as it’s somewhat lacking otherwise, although I understand Elbert’s choice to leave it as a control variable by which to gauge the effectiveness of the buffed/reworked shouts.

Oh goodie, I missed my one kittenING CHANCE to get belinda’s greatsword, so I could complete my holy trinity of canthan-themed gemstore skins for my reaper.

But noooooo, they just had to kittening have the GS skin up for sale for only one kittening day without notifying anyone in an easy way.

I’m honestly really kittened about this and I WANT MY GS.

-rant over, but this is bullkitten.

If you play the mantra of pain nuker builds you’re mostly immune to condis when your heal mantra is up, no cleanse mantra needed.

If you play power PU, you don’t even need condi clear because the only things that can really hit you hard (ie trap ranger traps on a point) you shouldn’t even be 1v1ing, and you can just disengage if you get condi bombed.

In pvp the meta snobs will all point you towards the cele signet build. Its a good build, but all you can really do with it is 1v1 eles and condi spam classes. It basically relies on boon corruption and weakness spam to get the job done, but the basic version can’t disengage very well from fights that get outnumbered.

After writing this, I realized I went a tad overboard with my advice so skip to the end to read my specific build suggestions, although they are kinda vague, but please reply here or message me in game if you ever have any questions or want to be spoon fed specific builds!

I’m a huge proponent of making your own builds, as long as you know what traits/skills/weapons are good, and which ones aren’kittens a pretty easy build to learn necro with though.

In particular, some things I find helpful when building a necro are some traits and skills (many that have been added since you last played this game).

Good Utilities:
Flesh Wurm is one of the best necromancer skills in my opinion. Yes its a minion, but its true strength is the teleport. This breaks stuns and can get you out of bad situations (which is huge in pvp). Yes thieves will still be able to close gaps, but besides that, its likely to save your life from focus fire or 1v2s most of time. You just have to have the foresight to place it beforehand.

Spectral Armor is what you should use if you don’t use wurm, but if your build isn’t too utility centric, you could easily take both. Its a stunbreak, protection, and can quickly fill up shroud.

In general though, it helps to design a build with utilities in mind and trait to make the most of those utilities and then take either or both of flesh wurm and spectral armor to round out your utilities.

Heal Skills:
Signet of Vampirism is an offensive heal skill that can do a lot of damage if used on a target being focused in a fight. However, unlike warrior/ele heal signets, the passive effect sucks, so you really need to use the active effect. I do not recommend taking this heal without traiting for signets, since the 35 second cooldown would simply be too high.

Consume Conditions- It used to be the best heal for necromancers, but it was reworked into a corruption skill so it applys self vulnerability for a few seconds. Its still a really great heal since it clears all condis on you, so I’d say this heal is the best heal to use if you don’t go for a signet based build.

Well of blood is niche, but okay if you trait wells, and the minion heal is just bad.

Elite Skills:
Lich is strong in a pure power build (but those builds are hard to play without thieves bursting you) but its fragile and basically puts a huge, “please kill me”, sign on you, so I don’t suggest using it even though its damage is high.

Flesh Golem is a decent skill with a good active, I generally only take it in a minion build

Plague is your go to elite otherwise. It turns you into a super tanky plague cloud and you can use it to secure stomps and rezzes if you time it during a cast. Spam the 2 skill to spam blind each second.

Weapons that work:
Dagger/Warhorn is our best weapon set. The dagger auto attack is really high, and the other skills provide extra healing and control, while warhorn gives you life force/swiftness/damage with the locust swarm and a good unblockable CC skill. Overall the weaponset is good because its LF generation is high.

Staff is okay for a ranged utility weapon on any build but can function as a damage weapon on condi builds. In pwoer builds it does no damage, but the AoE fear and condi transfer are good. If you take it, take the soul marks traits.

Off-hand dagger is a good weapon too, with two defensive skills (blind and condi transfer and weakness in AoE).

Other than that.. the necro weapons suck.

Axe is an odd ranged pwoer weapon with a horrible autoattack and an easy to dodge burst skill, but its last skill converts a boon to ao condition in AoE, so its not a bad choice overall in a power build as long as you don’t camp the auto attack. The necro dev at anet plans to change or even rework the axe in the near future to make it better.

Scepter (and usually OH dagger as a pair) is what you take for a condi build, however condi necro isn’t very good right now because the scepter sucks. It can’t stack condis very fast and its life force generation is among the poorest of any weapon.

Finally OH focus, is a clunky “burst weapon” that has no niche but odd synergy with axe, but as a full package, axe/focus fails. The 4 skill is a buggy hard to land burst skill and the 5 skill rips boons and does high damage, but has such a long cast time that its very dificult to land.

Death shroud:
Our class mechanic is so important to playing this class well. You have to learn how to manage your life force and cooldowns to play necro effectively. In general, the autoattack is slow but often hits very hard in power builds, the second skill (arguably our best skill) is a gap close that inflicts 5 seconds of chill and bleed, which is hard for your opponents to deal with. The 3 skill is an instant cast fear, so use it to interrupt important things like stomps/rezzes. The 4 skill is AoE damage and can be traited to revive and heal allies, while the 5 skill applies torment to help condi burst if you go that way.

Traits:

In general this is up to you but some general things to keep in mind are:

-Soul reaping is generally mandatory unless you run minions and even then many minion builds take it. The improvements to death shroud are very powerful. In particular, vital persitance and death perception (or foot in the grave for defensive builds) are great traits.

-Spite is really good for damage. A lot of the traits give you an easy way to self-stack might without thinking and corrupt or remove boons. In general you’ll always want to take chill of death in spite, while signets of suffering is amazing for a signet build and close to death is powerful for a damage oriented build.

-Blood Magic is our only form of support. It lets your attacks steal a small amount of health for extra sustain that scales with healing power. Transfusion lets shroud skill 4 teleport downed allies to you so you can revive them. With the skill flesh wurm, this trait is amazing since you can teleport your dead friend up cliffs where most attackers won’t be able to get you! (its really fun doing this). Other stand out traits let your allies siphon life a little bit, improve the warhorn, wells, or give more healing to allies. Its good for minion builds to help keep them alive.

-Death Magic is a traitline I only recommend if you’re building a minion necromancer, since flesh of the master and necromantic corruption are needed to make minions work well. The grandmaster trait though is a tossup, but I like corrupter’s fervor to make you tankier.

-Curses is a good line for debuffing and works best on hybrid or condition focused builds. The best traits in this line are weakening shroud to spam weakness (a powerful debuff), plague sending is good, and then either path of corruption or master of corruption can work, but master of corruption is only good if you are making a corruption build (in which case you take 2 or 3 of consume conditions, plague, and corrupt boon, the other corruptions SUCK).

Anyways I think this is a good introduction to building a necro in pvp. For a beginner, I recommend playing the “meta” celestial signet build, a soldier’s tanky power build (you can use signets, wells, or anything really as long as you take spite and soul reaping), or a cleric’s minion build (let the recently fixed minion AI do all the work while you heal them!)

lujate.5432:

Any new thoughts on this coming weekend?

I don’t WvW anymore really but with the GS/shout buffs maybe try to make a tanky frontliner with it since you’ll actually have a good cleave weapon and some of the shouts could be good there, like the boon-rip shout or suffer.

Oooh I didn’t even know that. That could help a looooooot.

Electro.4173:

I’d be all for cleave on the melee minions, but if that happens then they need to go and do that to ALL pets then. Ranger pets, Elementalist summons, Spirit Weapons, ect. Having just the necro minions do it would be out of place.

Yeah I can agree with that too. I mean I totally think that if engi drones turn out to me minion-esque then it would be something relevant to think about for all AI from here on out.

nekretaal.6485:

We could even ask players on what specifically to test now.

(1) Does reaper shroud still melt off super quick
(2) Can you hit anybody who is good with your slow and telegraphed skills (especially daredevils)
(3) Is Greatsword 5 still impossibly bad
(4) is greatsword 4 still tiny
(5) Does RS 2 work now?
(6) Is Reaper Damage good enough considering that you are a limited mobility glass cannon who can’t easily self buff without long ramp up time
(6a) How does Reaper damage compare to other class damage
(7) Do dhuumfire builds work? <my guess is no because reaper shroud melts too fast>
(8) Are any of the shouts worthwhile?
(9) Do you see anything unique in the class that will get the class a spot in a 10 person raid
(10) Can a reaper take down a break bar? Or are those I win buttons against the reaper
(11) can you get chill to actually stick on enemies long enough for it to let you get to attack?
(12) Does Reaper’s Onslaught work?
(12a) The numbers coefficients say that Reaper shroud auto is poor damage, is this true in game?

Just thought I’d answer some of these that are obvious.
8. I’d say the heal shout is probably viable with the changes. Hopefully rise will be viable on MM builds, while the others could fulfill niche slot skills on power-bruiser builds that can’t take spite for the signet spam. Shouts are probably better than untrained signets.
9. There’s transfusion, vamp aura, and epidemic.
10. I don’t think it matters much considering that the only break bars we have so far are earth overload and crystalline hibernation, which are mainly defensive skills. The earth overload is being buffed with its damage, but it’ll still be pretty low. In general breakbeats are designed so that focus fire in a teamfight has to break them, unless you play specific Mesmer builds designed for that niche task.

Everything else I’m mostly optimistic about, but this is a good frame of reference to keep in mind. I’d just suggest keeping build ideas open. To me, much of the reaper’s kit is designed to make a teamfight oriented bruiser build, not a squishy condi bomber or slow glass cannon,

If you trait into spite, strength and hoelbrak are logical choices. If you don’t go into spite, pack runes will give you better damage instead as they give you more precision and fury half of the time.

Bhawb.7408:

The fact that there are even enough enemies for the cleave to be a factor inherently means the MM is in a subpar situation. It just makes the skills much friendlier to PvE and non-MM builds in PvP, without actually making full MM builds stronger, since they don’t want to teamfight anyway.

It would still help the build in smaller fights like 2v2s. And even though it’s obvious that MM isnt a very good teamfighter to begin with, having cleave damage would help it there greatly. I mean I don’t believe a build is a truly viable build unless it can be good on both 1v1s and teamfights. The cleric MM builds that you promote have good support in teamfights but poor damage in teamfights because minions are single target and can die if your enemy has a lot of cleave pressure.

While it wouldn’t be a full fix, it would certainly help.

Ara.4569:

ronpierce.2760:

No way, where I come from, we worship Gee-sus.

Don’t get him wrong: necro minions got fixed after 3 years and the blood trait line is no longer a complete joke. Necro is in such a sorry state that it’s worthy of worship.

By the way, we were finally doing slightly better than ranger after 2 years of complete trash tier, but with the incoming dd ele nerf, it’s over.

I can see your point considering that D/D ele was heavily nerfed in the early meta of the game, which led to the spirit ranger era of 2013. Spirit ranger basically did what the current ele does now, but wasn’t nearly as OP as it now. But I don’t think that killing ele in pvp would be enough to spirit rangers to come back since spirits were nerfed into the ground for seemingly no reason (their procs aren’t good and they can never move around anymore). And since trap/survival builds can’t fulfill that support/utility niche that the old spirit ranger did, I think they’d be likely to come back as they can’t fulfill ele’s role anymore.