Guild Wars 2

manveruppd.7601:

I don’t normally do this – I know that comparing skills or traits from different professions one-to-one is a pointless exercise, because different professions have different strengths and weaknesses. But in this particular instance I couldn’t resist

The Berzerker Major trait gives them both Death Shroud and unholy sanctuary.

Its totally fair to compare the two professions now.

It’s. noob weapon that you get when you create a character and throw away once you can get your hands on anything better.

Tell me I’m wrong.

I don’t think many berzerkers will be scared of horror movie monsters with their new death shroud + unholy sanctuary trait.

He’ll, last beta I wasn’t too scared of charging right at the reaper with s/S + shout bow.

Too bad there’s no “Berzerker Barrage”. (Marvel vs Capcom reference)

Tasao.4623:

It underlines the core problem with Necro and Reaper for me: It’s designed with more limitations than other professions but no payoffs for those limitations.
.

Greatsword Damage even with buffs looking far too small ATM.

That master trait:

Did Berzerkers just get a better Death Shroud?

Then there’s the weakness of the fear condition itself.

Already less useful than a stun because you have to chase (and your minions which root on attack won’t hit), it’s really easy to remove. Weapon swapping with traits, stun breaks, zero cast condition removals all rid the condition. Thieves can port across the map to get out of danger while feared.

The taunt effect is well designed and removes most of the problems that fear has. Taunted enemies can’t retarget or pull gimmicks to avoid the effet without having to break stun. It’s just a lot stronger. Already the Pvp forums are complaining that they have to break stuns to break taunt.

Taunt > Fear

Tobias.8632:

If you gave necro fire fields and blast finishers, it would just turn it into an elementalist or guardian.

If I wanted to play an elementalist, I would play an elementalist.

Triple trouble is a joke, however there is a space for conditionmancers, there’s like one set of problematic mobs that spawn that are only vulnerable to conditions. Sounds like

Necromancers aren’t good at damaging condition application either. They are terrible and mostly unwanted on that event.

As for fields & finishers: they shouldn’t get fire fields, but there is no excuse for anet making the Necromancer’s finishers so unwieldy to use. The class probably should get a straightforward blast finisher on a weapon.

Focus 4: Reaper’s touch.

This isn’t a strong skill. The damage is terrible if you aren’t melee (because you don’t get bounce damage), and the damage in melee is outclassed by, say, Warhorn 5.

The projectile suffers from all slow projectile issues. (The focus also nerfs your damage in shroud).

Focus 5

Cast time is too long. Cooldown is too long. Basically it suffers from best case balancing issues. Conditional bonus damage is a bad idea that has to go.

It would be nice if the reaper had a decently long ranged chill on a weapon, on a short cast and cooldown, so that the reaper could use the chill to try to catch up to the kiting enemy.

Corrosive Poison Cloud

Is just really weak. Not QoL issues, it just weak.

I should probably start a thread on terrible necromancer themed rune sets. It’s not all bad news, because nightmare runes are actually good. But:

why lifesteal runes don’t work in shroud (Runes of Vmpirism)
Why would you take a jagged horror (Runes of the lich) when you can get a Rock dog and bonus damage on all of your skills on the same Cooldown?
What is the point of a skill that death nova’s yourself when you die (Runes of the afflicted)?

An instant condition transfer shout isn’t a terrible, but Suffer just looked like messy garbage once Plague Signet got a 30 second cool down and a signet trait buff. Right now Suffer looks like a tweak of the stronger skill.

Instant cast is really strong in this game, so there’s a place for suffer. If the chill duration (3+0.6 seconds) is long enough then the skill is useable.

Things to test:

(1). Is the chill long enough? It might not be
(2) If you use shout condition remove runes, does the rune effect or the skill effect take place first
(3) If you can’t hit anything with Suffer and there is nobody to transfer to, do the conditions get removed?

Replacing the chill with fear is a troll suggestion. On reapers, fear chills!

It’s a shame that you didn’t get this video out slightly earlier. If you did then you could have taken credit for the fact that anet took like 90% of your suggestions and put them into the next beta.

Aww, you don’t want to get that achieve from crafting and tomes of knowledge?

Cheater

Lornars Pass is the biggest

Increase the damage coefficient on all skills, blast finisher on 3.

Axe (and scepter and focus) need to stand on their own as weapons now that the reaper doesn’t have life blast. If this doesn’t happen, Reaper will suck. (staff can’t do everything).

Axe (and focus and scepter) can’t function effectively as damage weapons because they nerf shroud damage (and a trait to get shroud wielding an axe back to 100% normal isn’t a fix). Axe and focus should be utility weapons with useable damage, and scepter should be a ranged condition weapon.

Honestly, and I main necro but I play enough thief to give an informed opinion,

You shouldn’t be 1v1 necromancer.

Or anybody else.

Right now thief is in sorry shape and the OPness of short bow 5 is carrying the class.

Concentrate on +1 fights. This means that you gank down already damaged enemies that are engaging your tanker teammates.

Also, you concentrate on decapping and capturing empty points and getting back to the main fight as quickly as possible.

Learn to disengage as quickly as possible once an opponent turn its attention to you. I’m still not great at this so I take instant invisibility in one of my utility slots.

Learn all of the z-axis teleport spots which speeds up your land speed 100%.

Lily.1935:

Ragion.2831:

As usual Anet is over doing it with the skill negatives. If damage is being redirected to the minion, what is the entire point of it losing hp every second?.

To prevent you from having an army of 100 minions. Though they could just put a hard cap on that and call it a day… It seems like the entire skill is just bad imo. MMs already have high survivability I don’t understand the point of this skill.

There is a hard cap on minions.

These minions get damage redirected to them, naturally health degen, and disappear after 30 seconds. Thats overdoing it.

Just fix axe and focus (and scepter).

I would loved to play a short ranged character who can go into melee for burst.

Let’s put it this way:

I’m more concerned by the fact that warriors can remove fear every 5 seconds just by weapon swapping (you cant even retarget while taunted) than I am that their cleansing ire will be easier to use (it’s already very easy to use)

I think some of the posters in this thread need to take off the training wheels and start playing without vital persistence.

It’s doable.

Necromancers aren’t condition users anymore.

Maybe this should be in the engineer or guardian forum.

(sarc)

Does it still have the facing & Line of sight issues causing the skill to fail, do nothing, and go on full cool down?

If you want the 25% move speed, then you want either locust signet or quickening thirst.

Quickening thirst is the best: it works in and out of shroud. I think it’s the trait that you want after reading your complaint about signet of the locust. Every necromancer build can use a dagger. Dagger Offhand is good, dagger main is the class’ best weapon.

Speed of Shadows is just bad for speed. Think about it: you are in shroud 33% of the time or less, and zero % of the time when you need pure traveling land speed.

You take Speed of Shadows for the Death Shroud recharge reduction.

Somebody found a vid of whirl combo not resulting in lifesteal heal in shroud.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Life-Leeching-and-Reaper-Shroud

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.

Yes.

Death shroud is a good ranged option, and the Reaper has no good ranged options on weapons, leaving it one dimensional melee instead of a balanced character.

Greatsword is no defense glass cannon, shouts compete for space on a crowded utility bar, the elite has too long cool down. So the question isn’t “what do you give up to get reaper,” but really is “what does the reaper give you.”. And the answer is more damage in melee range, but not enough to be top tier and with none of the scaling defenses that classes need to have to survive melee combat.

Not enough chill.

OP wants to run celestial amulet, which means he needs might stacks or it hits like a wet noodle. The Strength runes help a little, but he doesn’t have might stacks from signets or siphoned power and is trying to make celestial/might stacks work with just might on hitting chilled enemies.

Sigmoid.7082:

so in OP’s build not using any chill duration you have the following

• Chilling scythe – 2.4s
• Nightfall + chilling dark – 2.4s on a 20s cooldown
• Reapers Grasp 4.8s on a 30s cooldown
• Suffer – 3.6s on a 19.5 to 30s cooldown
• Chilled to the bone – 9.6s on a 78 to 120s cooldown
• Hydromancy- 2.4s on a 9s swap but weapon swap for some reason works on entering RS :/
• Chilblains – 4.8s on a 16s cooldown
• Reapers mark + Shivers of dread – 3.6s on a 32s cooldown
• Deaths charge+Vital presistance + chilling dark – 2.4s on kitten cooldown
• Terrify – 3.6s on a ~17s cooldown
• executioners scythe – 1.8s~9s on a 25.5s cooldown
• corrupting resistance – 3s
• Ice field from RS#5 + RS#4 – 12 chilling bolts at 1.2s of chill each.

how is that not a lot of chill please tell me?? If you took grenth/ice runes or had a sigil of chilling those durations only get longer, even the auto attack would theoretically keep up 100% chill uptime.

This is not enough chill because we had almost all of that same chill last week, and enemies weren’t chilled!

The only buffs since then are half a second on GS autoattack and a tweak to GS5 (still tiny range, sidesteppable, hard to aim, & longish cool down).

It’s not enough chill because OP has to chill an enemy and then hit that same enemy in melee to get might stacks. Necromancer / Reaper skills have aftercasts. Enemies have clears and plenty of time to clear, Reaper attacks are slow, and Everybody who has an immobilize reduction trait runs that trait (immobilize is OP, and these immobilize duration reduction traits affect chill too).

While a theory crafter can say “that’s a lot of chill,” 13 pennies doesnt equal a quarter.

& chill that doesnt hit Doesn’t count. The chill on autoattack isn’t 100% uptime, and it’s highly telegraphed on GS1 #3. The elite has long cast/too long cool down, the chilling darkness fields are tiny. I’m not sure you can count on RS2 working. Chill from staff has follow up attack issues. Terrify has tiny range and a 28 second cool down (and I’m not even sure the fear/chill on terrify will get used most of the time).

Frankly, I’m not 100% convinced that there’s enough chill even with chill runes.

Other than hydromancy swaps and zero cast “suffer” chill, OP is going to have a hard time counting on hitting chilled enemies to generate enough might to not hit like a wet noodle.

I think he’s got to find a different amulet/rune combo, or drop soul Reaping for spite.

It’s pretty obvious that a karma nerf/functionality change is coming.

It’s not time to panic and buy up shards, sun beads and food with all your remaining karma just yet… But just remember what happened with glory.

Glory generation was turned off for six months and I’d you still had some left, it was gone. Use it or lose it.

Samiri.6439:

A little OT, but what to use Karma for anyway, I have 300.000 and dont know what to spend it on

Buy your drunk achievement for 10 AP.

Buy up all the rare karma weapons & armors.
Buy up food ingredients, sun beads, & obsidian shards.
Use the karma converter once a day.
Convert your karma to gold by buying Orrian boxes or using the mystic forge.

If you are greatsword, you can take zero crit chance and run sigil of intelligence.

Because the greatsword is so slow that’s like 30% uptime of 100% crit!

Jury’s still out

I just want to add that while focus has bursty damage oriented skills, the focus also nerfs your damage in shroud.

Its’s been a while since the math was shared here on the forum, but I think the nerf to damage from focus is even greater than the nerf you take by using that some of the other off hands.

Focus is a literally damage weapon that nerfs your damage.

This doesn’t make too much of a difference for Death Shroud (4 & 5 are not high damage oriented skills), but it is very much a big deal for Reaper shroud (4 & 5 are a big part of your damage rotation).

That’s a shame.

On paper focus looks ok for Reaper: vulnerability (decimate defenses), chill (many traits), boon rips, 2 boon stacks (blighter’s boon), damage skills, life force, & range.

But in the real world the boon rips and chill are on a cast that is too long to use, the big damage is not there in the real world because of conditional requirements outside of your control, & the range is nonexistent. Plus you take a damage nerf in shroud.

The death magic condition removal trait shrouded removal is strong here, since guards don’t have a big variety of conditions.

Elementalists are a different story. If you can’t keep might off the elementalist, you’re dead because the burns keep coming.

Focus is terrible.

I think it was designed as a spike tool. You hit an opponent with #5 to remove an enemy’s defense, and follow up with team damage & your own big damage hit from focus 4 stacks a lot of vulnerability.

But it doesn’t work. Team spiking isn’t a thing in GW2, especially for the necromancer who does not have the scaling defenses to survive a team fight.

Focus 4 is odd. A 1500 range melee skill. The bounce range is tiny, and the damage without bounces pathetic. You have to use it in melee or its not worth the cast. Also the projectile speed is easily sidestepped. So if you were thinking this is a ranged skill, forget it.

It is a pale shadow of higher damage, faster projectile, lower cooldown Mesmer mirror blade, which provides its own bounce. Thats a good skill. Focus 4 is not a good skill.

I’m looking forward to trying out “ghetto mirror blade” with zero cast “rise” providing the bounce, but I think I’ll find that the damage is unimpressive & the projectile too easily sidestepped

Then there is the regeneration on bounce. Why this boon? Sources of healing that do not work in shroud are offensive.

Focus 5 has too slow of a cast time to use. It’s too much cast time for too little effect. Also it has best case balancing issues with the x3 bonus damage. The skill deserves that cooldown with that damage, but optimal circumstances don’t exist most of the time.

Ironically, as bad a focus 5 is, the trait chilling darkness that casts it instantly is too strong when all of the bonus damage hits & should be nerfed. It’s so strong that our downed state damage got nerfed. Now our traited downed state damage is worse than engineer unless you get a triple proc.

I suggest the following changes

Focus 4, faster projectile & far less cooldown. Vigor or Fury replaces regeneration on bounce

Focus 5, Instead of giving out bonus damage and three boon rips, you get 2 boon corruptions. (So no bonus damage). Also drop one second of chill. In return the cast time goes down to .75 and the cooldown goes down to 12.

Together, this changes the focus from a tool to spike down the enemy in a team fight into a spammy tool that can control the battlefield. Without the emphasis of the weapon on the triple damage, you can use the focus in non zerker builds too. And as the boon corruptions keep coming, the focus trait for bonus damage against foes with no boons starts to make sense.

Please anet fix axe and focus (and scepter). Every Reaper build should not be forced into staff because the other options are garbage. Staff can’t do everything, and it shouldn’t be trying to do everything.

I’m pretty sure that there’s still not enough chill for chilling force to be a meaningful source of might generation, and enough to support celestial amulet and strength runes.

You’ll want new runes and probably also a new amulet.

I wonder if you Shouldn’t try Grenth runes for the chill proc and chill on heal. If there’s not too much (nore than you need) chill with Grenth tunes, then there’s not enough chill. If the healing shout with trait and runes isn’t good enough, then it’s not good enough.

As for sigils, swap sigils are the way to go now that anet is testing “shroud triggers on swap sigils.”. Hydromancy is more chill & energy is more dodges.

Finally, get soul marks for your staff already. Staff has to do too much already, and you aren’t even running decimate defenses, so the vulnerability isn’t there.

Yikes! A three second AoE immobilize on soaring devastation is nuts.

Increase the damage if you must, but please no immobilizes over 2 seconds.

The best way is to play the Trading Post.

Since you are restricted in the amount of time you can play, you can use this to your advantage with the trading post.

Example: the price of silk has a predictable high and low price that it hits every day. If you put buy orders in at the low price, you can get this silk and use it to craft ascended mats every day for a quick small profit.

If you look hard, there are plenty of other markets where you can buy items below current prices and/or sell items higher than current prices. Nobody will give these away on a public forum, so you have to find these out for yourself.

Gw2spidy.com and gw2tp.com are your friends here. If you can loot up the best markets when you can’t play, you’ll be able to make the most of your limited time.

Muchacho.2390:

For solo play the lifeforce gain from this trait is actually not that good since we dont have much boons outside of Shroud. I think its real strength comes from also taking spite and be able to heal a decent amount in shroud.

I actually tested Runes of Altruism with Blighters boon.

(Might and fury on heal, and the shout heal can go down to 13 seconds Traited). It’s not enough lifeforce to matter

Honestly the minions look awful, but that doesn’t mean the skill is bad.

The minions are melee and presumably are rooted when they attack, which means that they will never hit anything in Pvp / WvW. The dark bond effect requires them to hit something, but that wolnt happen so its irrelevant, except for maybe pvE. In addition the minions naturally health degen, and disappear after 30 seconds, which is a pretty short time.

Since the reaper is probably melee, these guys are probably getting cleaved down too.

But the saving grace is instant cast. The skill will probably not get random dodged, and at least will probably hit and do something now.

That means at a minimum you will probably get a death nova proc and some life force as long as the minion actually dies. That’s not worthless.

You can also use the instant cast to turn focus 4 into a crappy version of mirror blade, bouncing off the minion. That’s nice because the skill isn’t strictly melee with this combo. (Focus is still too bad to use, but could get a buff someday).

I don’t like the trait.

This trait seems to be anet’s alternative to just letting us heal in Death/Reaper shroud.

As such, it becomes necessary crutch to take in Pvp/WvW situations and thus kills build diversity. Reapers Onslaught could be godly, doesn’t matter.

Since we know anet best case balances, they will think doubly hard about every boon they decide to give us. This could mean future nerfs to needed boon generation. This could mean that the might generation that the class needs to become viable never arrives. This coud be why we’ve got no boon generation trait line.

Then there are odd boon interactions. RS3 proc blighter’s boon 8 times if you don’t use the fear every 28 seconds. If anet decides we don’t need a 1k heal from the skill, then the stability could get tweak nerfed.

Then there’s just the incongruity with how every other class works in the game, eg water field blasting after a melee push which still wouldn’t do anything for the necromancer.

Would rather just have healing in shroud.

And what about greatsword, which has terrible life force generation (it’s almost all on one hard to land slow skill). I don’t like how you are forced into traits just to get your weapon to not be a total liability.

I prefer they go in the opposite direction, keep GS life force low and make GS the ultimate Glass Cannon. The Icebow of weapons.

Not really in favor of this idea.

We’ve got too many enter/exit shroud procs and they are mostly underpowered because of best case balancing (they are balanced on cool down of death shroud but death shroud is gated by cool down and by life force).

Also, anet is being cautious with chill. Chill isn’t really strong (make a permanent chill ranger and see for yourself), but one people still think its strong. I’d rather have chill on skills that are generally useful even without the chill, so tweaking chill in/out of the meta doesn’t kill the class.

Extra chill on GS1 is a good start. Is it enough chill? We’ll see. The greatsword is very glass cannon right now, with it’s only non damage skills very weak.

Significant cast time and Cooldown reductions on focus 5 would help a lot too. If they have to remove the bonus damage to give us that, that’s fine with me.

Finally, the Reaper’s chill on fear minor trait is really weak, given limited access to fear. Would it be better to just baseline put fear on RS3 and rework the minor entirely?

This is the best profession forum.

The number crunchers here will let everybody know right away whether the GS numbers are correct, tow low, or too high.

But it looks like most of the reaper only concerns were at least addressed.

Kudo’s for communication.

I hope they raffle again. Last year the raffle was the main factor in preventing the Halloween content from “dying” due to poor rewards.

I keep making that point in the axe & focus threads (it should do more damage if it nerfs my shroud damage), but haven’t been able to convince anybody.

Muchacho.2390:

nekretaal.6485:

Wow that’s sad then. I’ll correct.

Fine but i am still not convinced that soul eater should be in the list at all, since it only applies to gs not our shroud.

I had assumed wrongly that the trait was like Axe mastery / Unholy fervor where the weapon buff affected the shroud too.

I suppose the trait should go off the list as a possible source of healing in shroud, but the trait is confusing because it doesn’t work like similar traits.

NeXeD.3042:

You sure leeching bolts doesn’t heal through shroud? When I was playing reaper over the weekend I could have sworn it was healing

I looked for green numbers to pop up after using it and never saw any. I’m fairly sure it didn’t heal but I’ll correct if I turn out to be wrong.

Wow that’s sad then. I’ll correct.

I still don’t like the idea that I have to take 4-5 traits just to have a shroud that is competitive with what other class’ weapons do without any traits.

Maybe we could get something interesting instead of just a numbers increase.

This Thread is created with the intent of Identifing what sources of healing work Or don’t work in Death Shroud or reaper Shoud. What sources of healing in shroud actually work is confusing and illogical and there are new threads created about this every weak.

I’m sure that I’ve missed some sources of healing or made some mistakes. If this is the case, point it out and I’ll edit the post.

Healing in Shroud
—————-

1. Necromancer Skills
Skills that give you Regeneration in shroud do not heal you, skills that siphon health have inconsistent Rules. Interestingly, the Necromancer has the most Regeneration on weapon skills of any class, but these skills don’t heal you in shroud.

Signet of Vampirism. active siphoning Effect HEALS in Shroud
Blood Fiend siphoning attacks do not heal in shroud

Mark of Blood does not heal in shroud
Well of Blood does not heal in shroud
Well of Power cannot heal you in shroud
Reaper’s Touch does not heal you in shroud

2. Necromancer Traits
Some healing traits heal you in shroud. Some dont. The traits that heal you in shroud are mostly siphons located in Blood Magic, but not all Blood magic healing traits or even blood magic siphon traits heal you in shroud

Spiteful Renewal. does not heal in shroud
Parasitic Contagion does not heal in shroud
Mark of Evasion does not heal in shroud
Ritual of Life does not heal in shroud
Transfusion does not heal in shroud
(Edit). Blood Bond does not heal in shroud
(edit) Soul Eater does not heal in shroud, actually (edit2) it provides no bonuses at all to your shroud while you are wielding a greatsword

Unholy Sanctuary HEALS in shroud
Vampiric does heal
Vampiric Presence HEALS in shoud
Vampiruc Rituals. HEALS in shroud
Blighter’s Boon. Heals in shroud

3. Healing From Allies
Healing from allies does not work in shroud, whether direct healing, the regeneration boon, or combo field interaction. The exception is that an allied necromancer with Vampiric Presence gives you a buff that will let you siphon health in shroud regardless of whether you have Blood magic equipped

4. Combo Fields
Interactions with Combo fields will not heal you. The necromancer doesn’t have any finishers, but I didn’t notice any healing from reaper shroud finishers in the beta.

Leap through water field Does not heal
Whirl through water field “Healing Bolts” Does not heal
Whirl through Dark Field “Leeching Bolts” Does not heal

5. Runes
Runes will not heal you in shroud regardless of whether the heal is a direct heal, a siphon, or the Regeneration boon

Superior Rune of Vampirism. Will not heal you in shroud
Superior Rune of Dwayna Will not heal you.
Superior Rune of Lyssa Will not heal you
Superior Rune of the Dolyak Will not heal you

6. Sigils
Sigils will not heal you in Shroud regardless of whether the heal is the regeneration boon, lifesteal, or a direct heal

Superior Sigil of Water will not heal
Superior Sigil of Luck will not heal
Superior Sigil of Blood will not heal
superior sigil of Leeching will not heal
Superior Sigil of Restoration will not heal
Superior Sigil of Renewal will not heal

7. Food
Effects from Food will not heal you in shroud, whether direct healing effects, heal on pric effects or lifesteal effects

One of us should create the " healing in Death shroud mega thread" and list all of the sources of healing and which work and which don’t work.

Healing in Death Shroud is confusing and illogical.

GummiBear.2756:

and then everyone will hord up on tomes and instaunlock every single masteries a few minutes after HoT is released… That is beyond stupid

Tomes are from dailies and from Pvp. Players who put in time ought to get an advantage, & players who Pvp shouldn’t be left far behind.

False.

Life force on staff is terribad, even traited. Axe has life force on 2 and can be paired with focus for additional lifeforce, or even Warhorn for a lot of additional lifeforce.