Guild Wars 2

Rym.1469:

Couple points, spoj.

1. You can’t give first AA in chain Chill application. I’d abuse hell out of it, cancelling other parts of AA just for the spammable chill.

2. About Reaper’s Shroud Life Force generation – I think that by this point we all can agree that RS is stronger in most aspects than DS and we’re balanced for running Reaper. I still don’t like giving RS-exclusice goodies out when DS bites the dust. If Shroud needs more LF generation, this should be solved in Core profession, not just the Reaper by giving it more LF gain on AA. It already generates much more LF than DS.

3. RS Fear – keep it this way. It gives Stability and Fears in AoE. Let DS single target fear-only ability be better at least in interrupting by being instant.

1. Yeah i can agree with that. Thats why i suggest moving the lifeforce instead. But having chill on the middle and last hit could also work. My point was just to spread some of the stuff around.

2. DS doesnt really need more lifeforce. RS does. Its in melee and loses lifeforce a lot faster. Life transfer also seems to be better practically for maintaining life force than the RS auto attack is. Which is why i think the base numbers on RS auto need to be buffed slightly to compare with life transfer.

3. Yeah i can agree it shouldnt be as perfect for interrupting as Doom. But the cast is too long for the fear duration. One of them needs to be tweaked very slightly. 0.5 second cast or 1.5 second fear would be enough. It also only has a 360 radius so it would be fair to give it a slight cooldown/duration buff to make it that little bit more usable.

Yeah ill be redoing it after HoT comes out most likely. I should have used Bitter chill which would have increased the vuln uptime massively.

https://youtu.be/AmkVfz9pvS8

Faster than warrior! /s

I know i can probably save at least 2 mins with a revised build and proper rotation. But definitely not 4 minutes to get close to a warriors time.

https://youtu.be/AmkVfz9pvS8

Theres still a lot of problems with Reaper. But its mostly buggy and clunky skill activation rather than damage now. Gravedigger hits hard but its almost suicidal to spam that kitten in a solo.

Also less than 3k dps. Beat that Nemesis!

Sublimatio.6981:

Bug I’ve discovered: can’t use gs5 if you’re not facing a mob but staying still (normally the char would turn around after clicking the skill if you’re not moving)
this also applies to gs3

This explains why those 2 skills felt so awful, buggy and unresponsive during my bloom solo.

I just did a reaper solo which should be better than base necro. It took 8 mins. I didnt have ideal food and consumables but thats not going to save 4.5 mins and beat the warriors current best time.

Admittedly theres also a lot to improve and i could have used a more offensive build. But between bloom trolling and bad rng i gave up using soul reaping and used blood magic instead.

Forum specialists arent representative of arenanet. They are still entitled to their own opinions and are free to express them. And nemesis provides plenty of evidence in his own video to discredit himself.

You might not be able to do this in raids though.

Ergh they said they might do this. This is the worst move they could possibly have made. I had hoped they would realise that without even resorting to testing it on live.

The slow and cooldown increase is what gives chill huge potential in future content (lots of frequent abilities with cooldowns that can be affected by chill). It could potentially be a very poweful defensive debuff. It already saves necro some trouble on fights like lupi.

TheDevice.2751:

1. Somebody else used the dropped Ice bow.

Yes but that calculation was for Brazil’s warrior. So the icebow someone else used is irrelevant…. It has no effect on Brazil’s dps.

And the demonstration was horribly skewed in the necros favour. Anyone with half a brain cell can see that.

Anyway i dont want to discuss this. Im still trying to forget some of the cringe.

Ill give more in depth feedback once the weekend is over. But first impressions of the changes are good. Reaper now compared to last beta is like night and day.

Although right off the bat ive noticed one problem. New gravedigger is much better. I still think its too clunky. But damage wise its now decent. However its become better damage than executioner scythe even when foes are below 25% health. I dont think this is right. Executioner scythe needs to have a big impact. I would make the 25% damage at least equal with gravedigger and maybe buff the chill or icefield duration or stun slightly to make it an impactful skill again.

I recommend you avoid watching that video if you want to maintain your mental health. His bad math and “dps uptime” is contagious.

“Brazil had X dps with icebow and timwarp!”. No icebow was used in that clip. #logic

“Each party member is worth roughly 25% of the group’s DPS” Does that mean hes worth 0% and the other 4 do all the damage?

Video is full of embarrasing things like that.

Probably because they said dungeons should take 20-30 mins at release. Now they are done in less than 5. x)

I would remove BiP from your list if I were you. The new version of that skill is basically staff guard 2.0, only worse (or better depending on your perspective).

It would be too strong if it did both. So yeah im willing to bet its either or. Id rather it stay as is. We really dont need anymore breakbar destruction anyway. It would be overkill and result in chill being just as useless.

Batresh.3958:

Nemesis has made a “More likely Meta variant of the DS BUILD” (as you understand it) He said he will upload a video this week which features this build in some kind of… Meh gonna hold it a secret for now :>

I doubt its more optimised than the one in my dulfy guide (yes its different to old DS build because specs changed stuff). Unless he literally copied the same build.

I dont want to see chill effect breakbars. That will mean it doesnt work on bosses. As in it doesnt apply. It eats the breakbar then vanishes so no cooldown increase or movement reduction. Chill is a good condition and can make a huge difference in very niche situations. If anet properly balances enemy skill cool downs then chill can become a lot more beneficial in everyday PvE.

Those numbers i was referring to are exactly as Bhawb said. The average taken over 30 second repeatable periods. Yes icebow is huge burst so in real situations currently its even stronger. But in a sustained fight it is also a pretty huge boost to average dps.

Obviously if you go by dps on a second by second basis it would fluctuate drastically and wouldnt really show anything of value. So we deal with averages over 30 second periods, repeatable rotations or whatever is reasonable. Even if averages over long periods are pointless due to the current burst meta they still provide a good reference for comparison. Especially for future content that should in theory have longer encounters.

And to also further clarify those numbers are assuming all buffs etc and 2600 armour. Many bosses have more armour than that so it changes.

Shameless plug.

http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/class-guides-gw2/

EcoRI.9273:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3jdjtv/designing_challenging_content/cuoh8b6

“When bosses don’t die in 5 seconds, survivability and sustainability actually becomes a thing.”

Oh look dungeon requires no skills says a dev.(At least thats how I interpret that statement.)

Yeah except that comment falls flat when you realise necro has neither of those in PvE. Dont leave out the rest of the comment

“When bosses don’t die in 5 seconds, survivability and sustainability actually becomes a thing. Necros are in a fantastic place atm for raiding.”

Atherakhia.4086:

spoj.9672:

If they nerf icebow 4 by increasing its radius to be like meteor shower then reaper could compete for damage on small hitbox bosses. But the same can also be said for thief and LH ele. And pretty much every class. Although with new numbers reaper does look potentially like one of the higher end dps classes.

It is my understanding that even ignoring the elemental weapons, staff eles are still significantly above where other classes stand. Thief is the only one above them?

Perhaps Brazil or Nike will chime in on the official forums.

They are. But icebow is the main reason for the huge gap. I dont know current numbers since specs change. But previously it was staff ele 15k dps, thief about 14k? and engi about 13-14k (giving rough estimates because it changed so much, ele and thief were top and equal at one point) Others between 9k -12k. So its not that bad. With icebow ele spikes up massively to like 20k. And its a shared utility so its too valuable to pass up on currently. Every extra ele is 2 icebows.

ps. Brazil has never been one for numbers. Id say ive had more involvement in that department than him.

If they nerf icebow 4 by increasing its radius to be like meteor shower then reaper could compete for damage on small hitbox bosses. But the same can also be said for thief and LH ele. And pretty much every class. Although with new numbers reaper does look potentially like one of the higher end dps classes.

Well i suppose my fear that necro wouldnt have enough active defence for raids has been avoided. If they can do it internally then it cant be challening.

Whether buffs share to all 10 or not i guarantee it will be 2+ chronomancers.

“and damage mitigation for your profession will be vital to your success. "

As a passionate masochistic necro i feel its about time i bring up the lack of actual damage negation necros have once again. Seeing as it might be quite a big class exclusion culprit (not that we didnt already have that problem).

No thanks we need more regular CC’c. Fear is the weakest and most useless CC in the game.

Ill be honest the new sound has grown on me. The old horn was really annoying. And the fart doesnt seem as farty now. Maybe i just got used to it.

Slap a blast on it would be my suggestion. But i know the devs dont like that solution unless its another class.

Ironically its better than CttB on the reaper.

butch.8136:

Its been clarified on reddit.

By Colin:
“You can swap between each encounter in the raid, or after a failed run – you cannot change your build mid-encounter by hanging on the edge of the encounter and getting out of combat. We’ve disabled that.
I think either Larry misunderstood my response, or I misinterpreted his question.”

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3j4313/pax_prime_2015_guild_wars_2_is_never_getting_a/

Well this is a huge relief.

Build locking makes sense in PvP because you dont switch roles in PvP. Your objective is the same for the entire game. But raids are different. We have different encounters and we have been told that the mechanics vary greatly. If a raid was one boss then fair enough. But its not.

Silverkey.2078:

I will reiterate on this, but I believe when deciding for the first team comps and builds for raids, we should look at PvP builds and not PvE builds. PvP builds are versatile enough to sustain any possible opponent since we cannot switch builds in-fight. They are also generally more focused on surviving hard content than PvE builds.

And this is good, because while far from perfect, PvP class balance is much better than PvE balance.

Ok so 9 cele eles and a thief for raids? Sounds good.

Thought about a few more things that concern me.

Its as if they are creating artificial difficulty by making it so half the 10 man group has utilities that are useless for each encounter. When surely it would be better to make it so difficult that its challenging even if everyone has the optimal utilities and weapons for every encounter.

Also from a necro/reaper perspective. I have limited utility choice. And its not very valuable as it is. So it doesnt affect me as an individual too much. However as soon as you look at the entire group it becomes a different story. Each players utility choice becomes important because we have 10 players and locked builds (so 30 utilities). This could mean that theres no space for classes like necro and ranger who have poor utilities. Because we need each of those player slots to be bringing something of real value. Hence resulting in less diversity.

I can seriously picture raid groups having 3+ chronomancers. Whereas if build lock was disabled we might only need a maximum of 2 and then that opens up space for other classes.

Oh ok i assumed attaching stuff would count as well.

You can mail the gold if you are mutual friends. :P

Rising Dusk.2408:

I like build-lock a lot because it creates a very formalized “be ready before you enter” system. There’s no more changing things on the fly, and it forces more build formalization for the run. This is exactly the kind of planning stage that I want to exist for raids, whereas otherwise you could just bring an Elementalist (example) and switch his builds between events, now you have to plan a group for the entire wing and make sure you build such that you can handle the entire breadth of what is thrown at you. That’s good.

The thing is restrictions like these are never fun. And in reality their ownly purpose is to restrict and balance. Basically stopping us from using the tools to their maximum potential.

GW2 isnt an mmo where you have 100 skills available at once. Its one with a very limited choice. I seriously dont look forward to being stuck on the same skills for an entire raid. I get that preparing is a nice idea. But do we really need a restriction like this to create that feeling of be prepared as soon as you enter? I dont think so. Id be fine with build unlock checkpoints or something. Maybe that would be a decent compromise.

And like i said i dont believe this will create as much diversity as people imagine it would. The real fix to diversity is 10 man buff sharing, proper class balance and tailored encounter design.

The thing is gw2 pve is incredibly shallow without the simple ability to swap utilities and weapons on the fly. Sure locking traits is not so big a deal. But utility choice is a huge part of the game.

They have stated they want the content to force us to use all the tools in game. Well how can we do that if we are forced to pick the 3 best utilities and stick with those even if they are useless for 1/3 encounters? Yeah we have more players so we can spread the utility. But is that going to have the desired effect? It seems to me like it will result in things like guard, mesmer and ele stacking just to get all the best utility in one team.

So instead of a diverse team of all 9 classes we will have a team of doubles of the best. Simply because classes like mesmer and guardian have more than 3 really powerful utility skills which could be mandatory.

Im not sure i like the idea of build lock. That hurts some classes more than others. I think if they are trying to create diverse teams, using build locks would be a bad way to do it.

It might seem like it would force diversity. But in reality it would just make you pick the classes that dont suffer from having to swap between various spec lines and weapons to be effective.

And we are not going to be able to use everything at our disposal if we are locked into utilities.

I dont mind them build locking certain sections. But a complete build lock throughout the raid doesnt sit well with me.

for optimal burst you should be starting in earth/air. Fire and water should be the last attunements you swap to.

So earth > eruption> air > glyph > fire > lava font > meteor shower > water > icebow

You can add an ice spike in before the icebow if you want.

nightwulf.1986:

…That statement pretty much runs counter to what players who enjoy the current meta believe, which is that the combat and encounters cannot be improved on, effectively leaving necro out of favor in group comps for the foreseeable future. There’s a lot to this issue and I must admit that I personally feel that people who believe the current meta that excludes the necromancer is immovable are incredibly myopic.

You were making so much sense up until this point. I think you have a rather shallow and unfair view of some player groups.

nightwulf.1986:

How to tackle that issue can be approached from a number of directions, which may include simply giving necromancers blast finishers and invuln/evasion etc., but Anet is, as always, clandestine in their larger design goals. Where necros fit in group content is as much up in the air as they ever were prior to the announcement. Perhaps, in a post beta weekend followup, they’ll comment on this matter.

And then you made sense again. However we have been suggesting these simple small solutions for a very long time and nothing has been done.

Bhawb.7408:

They can make trash mobs not-skippable if they want, they could also make a boss situation where trash mobs are spawned en-masse and you’ll break off a few players to deal with them while the boss is killed. Not sure Reaper will do significantly better than others though, unless they did enough damage that Elementalist wouldn’t be able to deal with them without sacrificing a lot of damage.

This is like the only situation where necro could shine. Having good self buffing, decent damage, plenty of base durability and more AoE than something like warrior. But honestly thats such a niche situation and i really doubt it will show up in such a way that makes necro favourable.

Papish.5806:

Dadnir.5038:

Papish.5806:

edit: and by 1-2 shot mechanics i mean very quick and often one shot mechanics because if they hit hard enough to two shot us, but only hit that hard every 10sec, we can easily soak the dmg with our ds and build up lf betwee next hit, or let it hit our hp, and enter ds and heal up to full while ds soaks the small attacks in the meantime.

just my 2cents

If DS was this good, you wouldn’t see video of thieve/ele/gardian/warrior soling dungeon but video of necro doing it.

We arent refferring to current content, hence why i was talking about hypothetical mechanics…….All it would take is a hard hitting skill that is used often and unblockable(lets say it hits for about 30k) and suddenly necro is the best for that situation since we could soak the hit with our ds+hp pool and recover inbetween hits.

The reason we would be the best for that situation is, unless you have a class with a very short cd invuln and stack invuln classes and rotate them around in circles to soak the hits you would have to gear/spec defensively which the necro would not. As i said before, all hypothetical.

edit: Also, soloing dungeons as a necro is easy…just because you dont see vids doesnt mean its not possible/doesnt happen. The reason you dont see vids is because we dont do it the fastest and most of the ppl that post vids of it are trying to do it as fast as possible.

This is so wrong its unbelievable. We dont generate lifeforce fast enough even in optimal settings for this to work out. And if its every 10 seconds then you can just dodge. Other classes have more evades than us so they dont even need the invulns with attacks that infrequent.

Necro survivability is poor in PvE because we literally do not have any extra defence against big hits other than our base dodges and energy sigils. No matter how you design encounters necro will always be poor for survivability. Only small frequent negligible hits will favour necro. But not enough to make necro good. Especially when you have plenty of passive healing available through various sources and you have classes like warrior which are just as durable but have even better sustain and more active defence.

Well no matter how things settle i will most likely be using reaper when the first raid unlocks. And depending on who is involved in the main initial rT raid group there could be two necros. We can save our strategic optimising conclusions until then. Or at least once HoT is released and we can fully kitten the new elite specs and the type of encounters we get in HoT.

But that said the OP does raise a good point. Realistically we dont provide anything better than any other classes. And that includes boon strip, weakness and chill. So i only see necros being good if base durability and high self buffing becomes important. An example of something that would create this scenario is if a small break off group needs to distract a group of high damage dealing enemies that hit a bit too frequently for blind spam to work perfectly. So eles would be too squishy and would have to stay out and you would need slightly more durable self buffers (so they still deal really good damage) to take the front line and keep the enemies in place.

Well to put it simply the direct damage portion is low damage considering the cast time. Its one of those cases where auto attacking with anything would be stronger. Considering its a high cool down aoe burst skill it should actually have damage to reflect that surely? Life transfer has always been the perfect example of this pathetically too weak for its cast time state. RS#4 is only a very slight improvement. But not enough.

RS#4 is too weak for its duration. I can agree with that. The auto seems weak but i still think its fine considering the self buff potential and attack speed (with and without reapers onslaught).

Ok im a pretty pessimistic person. But this overblown negativity is seriously getting stupid. This announcement was the best possible outcome we could have realistically expected.

They confirmed raids were coming, that they are instanced, they are 10 man, they have exclusive rewards and they arent open world. And also that they plan to make them truly challenging.

The last point they cant prove until we get the content. So i dont know what you guys were expecting. This was a good day.

PvE: GS + D/F with warhorn for initial engage.

No idea because im waiting to see what new skins are available with HoT.

Even in PvE reapers chill access was terrible in the first beta. It was non existent while i was duoing the risen abom in arah p2 with a friend. The only time chill was up for a bit was after an executioners scythe. After that it dropped and you never saw it again. The dodging, moving and using other skills would interrupt the auto chain so you literally only had the one high cool down source of chill. And even if you got the final auto atk chain to hit the chill would last so little time it was negligible.

You had better and more reliable chill access just by spamming dark path on base necro. So yes Reaper chill needs a serious look at. But Robert mentioned that they are aware of that. So hopefully they will do enough. We will see next weekend though.