Guild Wars 2

Falcon.8713:

Axe -> 900 range / Scepter : less casting time on all skills & it’s fine

That would be awful. The reaper will be DoA if that’s all that changes.

^^. Necromancer won’t be a top tier complete character until it gets access to those things (not good access, just access), & tweaking vital persistence doesn’t change that.

Slowest of all classes isn’t slow enough for you?

ronpierce.2760:

Well I also want it because it makes death shroud that much less clunky. As a reaper, an ability can take up between 4 and 8% LF as opposed to 2-4%. Reaper especially notices frequent ability interruption due to life force draining, especially when under fire, it causes it more often. .

Getting knocked out of shroud should not give enemies a free interrupt. This should be fixed for shroud/lich/other transforms.

That’s the fix we need.

That’s how terror works. No reason for chill to be any different.

It’s not over centralizing, it’s over-rated.

It gets picked a lot because the other two options are reworked master of terror and Spectral Mastery.

Spectral mastery is better than vital persistence if you take 2 spectals and Lich (and it changes spectral walk into a wonderful skill).

The terror trait is subpar because fear is super weak as a CC and terror builds are dead.

Necromancer has enough life force to sit in death shroud for a long time even without vital persistence. Reaper doesn’t have enough life force to sit in reaper shroud even with vital persistence.

That’s the basic issue.

And it can be worked around.

For OP’s concern and for a whole bunch of other valid concerns, the Reaper is DOA dead on arrival unless it has valid anti kiting tools.

This means that ranged weapons axe, focus and scepter need to be improved massively, from being worthless to worthwhile weapons. (Staff and offhand dagger coud be looked at too).

The reaper is slow to move & slow to attack. Greatsword means that Warhorn is harder to fit in your build, meaning even swiftness is harder to apply.

The necromancer has proper anti kiting tools in Death shroud that the reaper will not have.

There is a red post saying axe will get looked at.

Really the Reaper isn’t a complete character unless it has options to swap to (so that it isn’t hard countered by anybody with a ranged weapon).

Hopefully scepter, focus and the other weapons get looked at too. (Even if they were once ok, they havent kept up with power creep, or they got gutted in the condition rebalance).

Does jumping block shouts?

I ask because I’m pretty sure that a ranger without stability blocked my “fear me” in a Pvp game yesterday three times. There do exist skills, even instant cast skills, that are avoided by jumping.

(Winning Keg brawl is totally about avoiding fumbles by jumping after you used your dodges).

There aren’t a lot of offensive shouts currently in the game to test this with, but if it turns out that you can block shouts just by jumping…. That’s a serious problem.

All expensive runes are up 10-40% in the last month.

The free to play players and the new revenants that people are going to make (along with last week’s even that generated zero gold or run supply for players) are driving the price up.

Eventually thing will go back to normal.

I have been playing with the Kodan Hammer that you can buy for 25 badges.

This is a chill specced hammer and it is so perfect with necromancer stuff. I want it so much.

Replace Gluttony with vital persistence and replace soul comprehension with gluttony.

I can live with that.

What does chill do to the legendary imbued shaman?

My server, borliss pass doesn’t have enough roamers.

Our core community is good at sticking with a queue blob or their guild. Roamers are killing us. The few roamers we’ve got can barely keep our own camps flipped & it’s killing us.

Not to mention that a home borderlands with 3 enemy controlled camps is just a green light for enemy commanders.

If you are a roamer and want to go where you’ll be appreciated. BP!

Blaine Tog.8304:

The Scepter scales best off pure Condition Damage builds. You can try to go hybrid if you want, but the relative gains are going to be fairly minor, and ultimately it’s pretty bad either way.

Wrong.

The Scepter scales best off of nothing! The power scaling is horrible & the condition scaling is horrible!

Maybe scepter scaled off conditions well in the past, but that’s not true anymore.

Maybe scepter is the best weapon for condition users, but that’s only because you get 2 weapons and there are only 2 mainhand weapons with damaging conditions.

(Much maligned Feast of corruption’s power scaling is the best scaling that the weapon has. The numbers back this up)

Scepter is hot garbage right now.

Mak a male human, sylvari or norn and then buy the Witch’s outfit (which shoud be on sale in the gemstore for most of October).

I’m concerned that the scrapper stomp bot, traited, is a secure stomp versus our terrible downed state even if the downed state is traited.

That’s pathetic.

I’m ok with this suggestion as long as 2 other things also happen.

1. Axe, focus, and scepter are all buffed to useable weapons
2. Every other overused weapon on other classes gets the same treatment (warrior longbow, elementalist offhand dagger and staff, guardian focus, engineer rifle, Mesmer greatsword…)

Tl;dr. I’m not in favor of this suggestion.

Axe / Dagger is a really fun Playstyle.

Lots of Weapon Swapping involved, almost like a mini engineer.

The problem is that axe just isn’t good, you really miss offhand dagger not having lifeforce, and the set nerfs your shroud damage.

Fixes would be nice.

120 shards is like 15 minutes of treasure hunt in the Silverwastes.

Exaggerating, but please complain about the Ectos or spirit shards instead.

This has been a public service announcement.

I don’t think the only things reapers need are reworks to scepter and axe.

They need other stuff too. (Is the GS supposed to be a glass cannon). (Is RS supposed to be low mid DPS and instantly melt). (What is Reaper’s PvE niche?). (What are shouts supposed to be doing, because they do not offer sustain, defense, support or offense). (The heal has a too long cast & the elite still has a too long cooldown) (The sources of chill Reaper has are all low duration & long cooldown. The chill theme isn’t working).

But

Yeah

Axe and scepter and focus being unusable is the biggest issue the reaper has right now

To be viable a build must carry a skirmishing weapon to deal with kiters. Staff will not cut it either. Life blast isn’t available to reapers. The issue has to be fixed or the specialization doesn’t work.

Does Moa destroy Rise and Lich minions?

Just Phantasmal Disencanter Rips 2 boons at range every 4.5 seconds at range and with 4 bounces.

Just that one skill is light years beyond anything necromancer has in terms of boon rip potential at range.

What about the Engineer Skill Throw Mine? Ranged, good damage, blast finisher, 17 seconds cooldown, removes 5 boons (if the boss is big). And has a tool belt skill that also removes Another 5 boons on a 17 second second cooldown.

Is dedicating a whole character to a boon removal necromancer really better than an engineer who can swap skills right before the one boss that needs to have a boon ripped?

Necromancer really is tops at nothing.

Honestly, just zero cast time on some of the minion actives is probably enough.

If you can cast taste of death with zero cast time, then you never have to worry about losing your heal (which you already cast) to stupid AI and AoE soup everywhere.

((Well maybe not never, because there is Death Shroud skill lockout and MoA to worry about, but zero cast time on the active goes a long way to making the skill useable).

Here is What OP should ask for: A trait that gives minions a “Block” charge similar to guardian focus 5.

Then minions would be able to run around forever in (most) pulsing fields without getting touched (this protects against Longbow F1, wells, symbols, but doesn’t work against weapon cleaving, meteor shower, icebow 4 or locust swarm).

You would actually have to target the minion and hit it with an attack before it died to AoE soup.

The other thing OP could ask for is a useful Runes of the Lich. Right now, it is the worst rune set in the game and could easily be buffed to pop a Lich 4 or a “Rise” without being OP (both of those are still worse than the privateer parrot).

But keep in mind that useable minions isn’t something that the community wants (maybe we want it but the overall community and the devs who listen to them don’t). The Pvp community will unleash holy nerfing hell on anything that makes minions semi commonly played.

Nothing a necromancer does is unique or better than what every other class can do.

The best hope is that the finalized damage on Greatsword comes in top tier high (It’s a highly telegraphed glass cannon that will never hit anybody good in Pvp), and the Reaper assumes a DPS role while the other professions provide the support that keeps the reaper alive.

PS Life steal isn’t a thing. It is two different things, damage and healing. Boon Corruption isn’t a thing, it is two different things, removal and application. Condition Transfer isn’t a thing, it is two things: self removal and application.

SmellTheJava.1520:

Is it worth the price?

Every Episode has about 2-3 hours of gameplay, and all of them, every single episode, have at least 1-2 cool/epic new boss fights.

So if you buy the full living story you are getting about 16-20 hours of solid single player gameplay.

The Episodes also let you start scavenger hunts for the bioluminescent armor, mawdrey backpiece, and Sinister Trinkets.

If any of that appeal o you, I think it’s worth the price, especially if you just convert gold and get it for free.

Save the Queen’s Gauntlet tickets and the or tune scraps. Rest is probably safe to delete.

They said they would bring it back. We’re getting 10 new Pvp reward tracks in HoT, so probably that’s how it’s obtained.

Well of Suffering, Spectral Wall, Spectral Walk. Plague for Zergplay.

The skill is useful in WvW and Courtyard.

In Pve it is junk (low damage). In Conquest it is junk (you just aren’t threatening, and the extra toughness hardly stalls for you).

But if Anet wants to break “WvW Pirate Ship Meta” then this is one of the skills they could buff.

submit to bugs forum

Axe, Focus and Scepter are dead right now.

Offhand Dagger may be dead right now, but nobody talks about it because it is more theoretically usable than the other three.

Staff is used by every necromancer due to lack of ranged options, but it is definitely not up to kiting duties on the reaper. Once people start Reapers and try to replace DS 1 with Staff one, the complaining will be real.

Greatsword might see use in pvE if it provides the best theoretical DPS, but the weapon is such a glass cannon. Trying to Spam Gravedigger on a strong PvE boss is asking to get yourself killed. Greatsword is too slow to use in Pvp.

Honestly, I think we are stuck using Dagger + Warhorn in most modes unless things are massively tweaked. Warhorn is maybe the biggest damage skill on the class, and the swiftness is essential. Dagger provides most of the DPS of Greatsword but with better utility and sustain (and it is the only weapon combo on the class with synergy with the blood line)

Muchacho.2390:

nekretaal.6485:

Spite is going to be a fairly mandatory line for reapers.

Only if you want to use blighters boon. I would guess a condition necro would take the damage on chll over bb.

Though i dont see why you would want to run condi over cele signet…

I think “Condi Reapers” will be reapers who take the cele amulet and either terror (curses) or Dhuumfire (Soul Reaping).

Pure condition necromancers are dead until the weapons get buffed or condition scaling on necromancer conditions improves.

The chill damage trait is terrible.

(1) Damage isn’t high enough
(2) your damage it will get overwritten by allied chills
(3) Chills are too short

Brujeria.7536:

Shivers of Dread feels so wasted, as reaper only has 1 native fear skill on its skillset. Staff and Spectral Wall could benefit as well, but why should i pick Spectral Wall as utility skill?.

Please merge Chilling Darkness onto shivers of dread. Adding one reaper native blind onto one reaper native fear doesn’t seem so OP for a grandmaster minor.

Plus the trait has been pre nerfed to work with reaper skills.

anduriell.6280:

ZDragon.3046:

anduriell.6280:

The changes look amazing , thanks Robert!!

But i still miss chill application on crit (33% chance?) because right now in game there is no way of a reliable source of chill and i think with the cast times of the GS t would be a great help.
A little changes in the minor traits would be good:

• Shivers of dread : apply slow (1 sec) on Foes you chill (1/2 sec ICD).
• Cold Shoulder: apply chill on crit 33% chance 2 seconds. Remove the longer chill duration,

This could make the landing of GS skills a bit easier and actually possible.
Also having a reliable source of chill will help to make the reduced damage from chilled foes actually be useful.
I think 1 second of slow plus 2 seconds of chill 1/3 of the time you crit is not much but helps.
To compare how much could a Reaper proc the minor BAreber precision in Curses proc bleedng the same way.

EWWW NO GET OUT WITH THAT!

leave the chill duration alone whats wrong with you lol. You say there is not enough chill in reaper. You are crazy and clearly dont play necro.

i do actually play necro.
My reasoning for asking for slow and more chill are those (Not having in mind reaper skills):

• We only have 2 weapon skills in LONG COOLDOWN that apply chill: staff and focus.
• GS does chill only with 2 skills: Chilling scyte (impossible to land) and Grasping darkness (30 CD).
• We only have ONE utility skill that chill outside of shouts. Spectral Grasp (30 secs CD).
• Suffer! is the only shout that apply chill aside from the elite. 30 secs CD
• Necro does not apply blind, i think in total it has 2 weapon skills that do.

GS skill have a very long cast for weapon skills and Reaper shourd is melee only so suffer stronger attrition than the DS, burning the LF really quick.
Even with the sigil (2 secs chill with 10 secs ICD) or runes (4 secs chill with 30 secs ICD) you could get at max around 10 secs of chill. 20% of that is 2 seconds more and that is not much and i’m talking about the best situation possible that it will never happen.

So although the reaper depends a lot in the chilled condition it only have few ways to apply it. Slow is thematically correct as the monsters in the movies seems to affect their pray making them slower in reaction also (When Jason walks around with the machete and people just stare as him is cutting he way thru for example).

Also It’s a way to get better survivability as slow ins an active defense, that also fits with the necro mechanics itself.

The difference with the mesmer would be in this case, mesme apply slow in ranged AoE while Reaper is mostly focused for melee and single target. The AoE chills from the shouts wouldn’t change much because it would be just 1 second of Slow to one target let’s not forget the ICD i’m proposing what mostly wouldn’t be advertised for the targets (for example the stun from the elite is 1 second longer than the hypothetical slow duration)

Otherwise i don’t see the GS being used much anywhere.

+1000

Reaper chill access is bad. In order to be decent, chill has to last long enough for you to engage a foe and then hit a foe.

A lot of access to 2 second chills doesn’t cut it.

Literally every chill that the reaper/necromancer has is 1-2 seconds too short, except maybe DS2.

While we’re at it, thief stolen chill is too short/inconsequential as well.

Is permanent chill uptime OP? No. Ranger has/had it. Elementalist has it. Necromancer has it.

Chill, even 100% uptime chill, doesn’t make a difference vs some classes, (Thieves are immune to chill), but it helps a lot against other classes. These are the classes that the Necromancer is supposed to be countering, but are only 50/50 !

As for Slow, that condition is a 100% copy of Faintheartedness which was a necromancer hex.

Curses Necromancers should be masters of slow (I made a suggestion in the other thread to put Slow on Scepter as part of reworked Lingering Curse).

Spite is going to be a fairly mandatory line for reapers.

You get a ton of might on RS auto and on attacks on below 50% enemies and this might is also your sustain because anet created Blighter’s boon instead of letting reapers heal in shroud.

Spite is the only line with any kind of real boon output.

If you want curses, drop soul reaping.

For zergplay.

You lose DS 1 which is most useful for ranging down siege, and you lose DS 4 which is great for tagging and applying pressure.

Greatsword doesnt add much and shouts are still bad.

But you Get Blighter’s boon for more healing, and you get RS3 for stability and RS4 for all sorts of field utility.

At the end of the day, Plague and wells are still your key skills & you have to decide whether it makes sense to trade blood utility or death survivability for a melee shroud with more healing.

So, You’re saying that you want vampiric effects to provide 100% benefit to all necromancer weapons and not just the dagger?

Free in the Gemstore

Yeah. Have all of your characters talk to the BL armorsmith (one near the bank in Divinity’s Reach) and if you were using it, it will be given back to you.

This is very similar to the previewed text that we misread and got all excited about.

The concern still remains: adding bonus duration from LC will result in unintended consequences, such as random fears and chills getting nerfed.

In any case, LC and scepter need serious looking at. The weapon became garbage tier in the condition rework.

Axe is one of the worst weapons in the game on any profession. Single target, low damage, low range, low utility.

Get used to Dagger.

But I note that you said you focus on Death Shroud Damage. Note that both axe and dagger will nerf your death shroud damage, so get used to swapping to staff before you enter death shroud.

Overall I had fun with the event, even if the event was clearly flawed.

I did daily runs + one extra run all four days and ended up with enough blooms to purchase toxic gloves and shoulders.

The secret stash loot boxes were RNG lotteries. In other words they were deeply unsatisfying for players who didn’t win vs RNG and didn’t get regular loot either. I got a dye during one of my runs. The increased drop rate during the event drove the dye price way down, but I listed the dye at 80 Gold anyways and maybe it will someday sell.

I would have liked some consistent loot during the event. But at least champ farming/scaling didn’t actively prevent events from completing.

I also would have liked the event to conclude with some sort of boss, like the scarlet invasions did, and I think this was a missed opportunity. Mordremoth doesn’t seem to have character that even scarlet had.

The lack of loot from blues and green did have a nice side benefit. It drove up prices to the point where stuff that had been on te TP for a while actually sold. I liked this. Halloween and Wintersday have this effect too. Driving up prices makes events feel rewarding. Anything that takes players out of Silverwastes chest farm is a good thing.

Finally, this even didn’t need to drop twisted Watchwork portal recipes. There were plenty of recipes on the TP and the recipe is useless unless zhaitaffy becomes cheap again.

I gambled that the toxic oils (the precision & condition duration ones) will someday become desired again. Picked up 3-4 stacks of 250 at 21.11 silver. Relisted them at 49.99 silver. Did I just make 200 gold (eventually) or did I just throw away 200 gold?

All in all, it was glad to see anet doing event again.

PS where were the achievements?

spoj.9672:

Also leaving shroud really needs to not interrupt any skills. Its really annoying starting the cast of executioner scythe or deaths charge only to run out of lifeforce and get rupted. Not sure why it was ever added. There wasnt really anything broken about DS skills carrying over outside of shroud was there?

Players were getting a nice transfusion heal by activating DS4 right when shroud was about to drop.

I don’t think that’s OP, and the cancel (which should be unnerfed for Lich Form too) was a harsh over nerf.

Condi Reaper isn’t a thing. With the awful scaling on scepter conditions, you have no business going conditions. Use Celestial amulet at most. Seriously, the condition damage scaling on all conditions except for burning is so low that it almost doesnt matter.

(Or even take Dhuumfire with Berzerker amulet because that’s a DPS boost and call yourself Condi if you must)

That said, the one OP thing that a Reaper can do is RS 4 in a Fire Field (elementalist level burn stacking).

Vital persistence is very overrated by this community.

It isn’t the must take trait everybody here seems to think it is. Spectral Mastey is pretty fantastic. Traited Spectral walk is fantastic. Traited Spectral Armor gives you great sustain, and Traited Lich is a useable elite that fills in gameplay gaps for your reaper.

The signet passive would be bad (but not worthless like it s now) if it worked out of combat.

Now that life force generation out of combat is a thing with blighters boon, there is no legit reason why this isn’t a buff that needs to happen.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Corrosive Poison Cloud needs some extra effect, and Projectile destruction seems like the best fit, both thematically and with the needs of the profession as a whole. It also turns CPC from an ignorable circle to a “you fight me here and on my terms” skill.

Well of Darkness… I don’t know what to do with that but it needs a major change.

Dark Fields went to school on the Short bus. Blasting a well of blind to get blind is a complete waste.

Dark fields being so bad is the reason that necromancer can’t use it’s biggest damage utilities in big damage PvE situations.

Dark field functionality needs to be looked at. Vampiric Aura resulting from leap through dark dies has been suggested.

Alternatively, put chilling darkness on a reaper minor, and put more finishers on base necromancer weapons.

This suggestion was made before and I supported it then.

But realize that signet of undeath was basically nerfed for bogus/theme reasons (his utility skill shouldnt be strong like my elite). This was a mistake. Game should be balanced on gameplay, not on theme.

We should get the reasonable cast time back. The necromancer already has a very crowded utility bar, depending on utilities for very basic things like finishers, fields, and stunbreaks so our utilities need to be very good if we are going to pass up basic needs to get them.

I think reapers are locked into spite. Reaper sustain is tied to blighters boon and the majority of boon generation is in the spite line.

Beyond that, I dont see why you can’t drop Soul Reaping, although one of the only damage modifier traits in the class is on soul reaping (and there’s not all that much to recommend for pve in blood/death/curses)

As for OP.

1) Epidemic is Junk. It requires multiple high HP enemies right next to each other to function, but at the same time the enemies have to be weak so that 2 enemies don’t = party wipe (otherwise parties will pull enemies one by one and your epidemic will not get used). This situation where epidemic is useful will literally never happen.

2) Boon removal best accomplished by Mesmer sword
3) this is not something necromancer does well.

But

4) you missed the lifesteal, & Ressing warp which could be useful.

Honestly, the best bet for a role in raids is hoping the damage numbers for reaper come in high/the best and that the reaper becomes a “good damage glass cannon but needs team support character”. If RS1 damage (too low) gets buffed, (GS might need another buff to 1 and 3) ths is a possibility.