Locking down bjarl and husk are incrediby easy without double sanctuary. It doesnt make much difference. And as said earlier. If its difficult to enforce then it becomes a bit of an issue.
Dunno why people wanted trait resetting banned in the first place. The biggest culprit was double WoR. But lets be honest was that really such a big deal?
I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.
Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested. http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r
What about the minors?
I dont really think theres anything wrong with the minors other than maybe adding a bonus 10-20% damage to chilled foes somewhere. But that doesnt have to be on a minor. And that just comes under the category of necro/reaper lacks damage modifiers and damage. So they either need to buff base damage or give us more/better damage mod traits somewhere.
I think most people are in agreement Reaper is too slow and does too little damage. Greatsword is unimpressive. Shouts are also rather uninspired especially against fewer foes. RS is really fun and pretty close to being good. It just needs some numbers tweaks but feel wise its there.
Heres the feedback i wrote and passed along through Miku to the devs if anyones interested. http://pastebin.com/az4WCN6r
Scary how similar some of the suggestions are to the pastebin i wrote. I was probably a bit more generous with buffing stuff but then i was primarily looking at PvE balance and closely commenting on damage numbers.
I really like your second suggestion for greatsword auto-attack. Didnt consider that for the chill duration problem.
Could we get a link to that? I’m curious to see what numbers you came up with.
It was just feedback based on the numbers already posted.
Scary how similar some of the suggestions are to the pastebin i wrote. I was probably a bit more generous with buffing stuff but then i was primarily looking at PvE balance and closely commenting on damage numbers.
I really like your second suggestion for greatsword auto-attack. Didnt consider that for the chill duration problem.
Tooltip damage varies depending on your power. So using damage numbers like the ones on the wiki doesnt make much sense. Its best to use the coefficients. As they are always constant.
These are current coefficients. Id suggest tweaking your feedback to reflect coefficients. Or at least list the power you have with these tooltips.
I still disagree with your coefficients, and actually the link of OP agrees with my values. It is a very small difference, but I don’t see the point of carrying weird numbers instead of the actual round ones.
Because you can compare skills directly without worrying about stat differences between builds/classes. Its standard theory crafting practise to use the coefficients. You can also get a rough estimation of dps by using coefficients per second. And then simply multiply that by weapon strength, power, damage mods and crit mod and divide by armour for actual dps. Its basically the the base number. So noone needs to calculate the coefficient from tool tips just to calculate damage at a different power. It skips a step.
Maybe im just being anal. But i find it a lot easier to see the damage difference when its in coefficient or coefficient per second (cps) form. I believe it also makes more sense to the devs because thats the number they actually have in their system which they change to tweak damage. (Would love to be corrected if im wrong on this)
Tooltip damage varies depending on your power. So using damage numbers like the ones on the wiki doesnt make much sense. Its best to use the coefficients. As they are always constant.
The one thing i did discover was that reaper makes the heat room in thaumanova ridiculously easy on scale 50.
Ohh? Charge through it? or are there more tricks? ( don’t know the normal necro tricks, teach me senpai!)
Pretty much. Basically just flesh wurm then dodge spam > RS and spam charge. You shouldnt need to heal (cast mine with agony so i got nothing xD). I didnt even take Shroud skill cooldowns trait and didnt have full lifeforce and still made it no problem.
Well yeah we could recommend every single class technically. But i decided to just point out the main fast ones which arent too difficult to do. Engi and guard are decent as well. :P
Theres a really simple solution. Dont spam it. Press it once. If you have a delay, pressing it more than once wont make you enter shroud faster. Seriously its a learn to play issue.
I agree with the op. Please remove the 1 sec cool down on RS.
It also needs its after cast removed and radius increased. Its far too easily interrupted and it doesnt hit very reliably. Id make it pulse more frequently for the same total duration as well.
Duo’d arah p2 with a friend playing revenant. On top of it being so slow it wasnt fun. I also found myself constantly interrupting attacks just to dodge. The damage was pathetic. I tried to stick with it. Then we got to lupi. It was a total disaster. The slow casts caused all sorts of problems with managing dodges and actually doing damage.
So i ended up going back to classic dagger focus + warhorn. I thought this would be better because RS2 actually blocks projectiles so i can use it for some lupi auto-attacks. Then i discovered how much of a troll skill it was. And felt as if the kill would have gone a lot faster if i had just been playing regular necro because i wouldnt have messed up shroud cooldowns. Losing Dark Path and Tainted shackles is actually quite a big deal. And the headache slow casts are just frustrating and unfun.
Also i started off in the dungeon using the heal shout. Then i discovered that without blood magic the heal potential and sustain was atrocious when i needed it (inquest adds at abom). I immediately dropped the one shout i thought might have some use in PvE. Turns out that was wishful thinking on my part. You are better off just not using a heal or going for something else rather than using that heal.
Also chill uptime on bosses where you actually need to dodge and use proper rotations is basically non existant. The chill nerfs were seriously unjustified.
So because of the massive cast times in RS ive been interrupting my own skills so much. Especially if i get hit and knocked out of RS. It cancels the cast. Can we just allow channels to continue properly?
idk why ppl say the reaper is bad honestly I haven’t had any issues with it, there is such a thing as you can’t learn how to play a class right away in just a couple of minutes or an hour, the reaper is a learning curve some catch on right away and know exactly how to use it and kick butt and have 0 issues with it. I know I don’t see any issue with the current Reaper to me it feels smooth and fine if you know how to use it right.
This isnt about learning. This is a numbers and feeling issue. It feels too slow to be fun. And it feels far too weak for how slow it is. And the numbers prove that that is completely true.
They specifically said that GS would be slow but hit harder to compensate. This is not true currently.
Shout feedback. They are still bad. Biggest thing to point out. Executioner’s Scythe in RS is far superior to Cttb. There is literally no reason to run that shout with its cast time. Especially when we have a stun on a 30 second cooldown with a shorter cast time and more damage. The stability on Cttb doesnt help. Because 10 seconds of stab after a 2 second cast does not make any sense what so ever.
Also something i noticed. IF we dont hit any targets we dont even get a single effect from shouts. Surely we should get the base amount?
Totally agree. It should work like warriors sword 2. So it locks to a target when you have a target. But it works as it does now when you dont have a target.
I was talking about against a test dummy in HotM lol.
And RS auto attack is about 2.3-2.4 seconds repeatable. total coefficient per second is just over 1.1. Which is really really weak. Its only very slightly stronger than GS auto attack. These numbers are far far below what dagger has. And RS barely does more than regular DS (surely the gap should be a bit bigger considering melee and risk)
From a PvE perspective its all bad. The numbers are still pathetic. Especially with the atrocious cast times. Im glad aftercasts arent a major problem as well though (1 redeeming gold star for that). I honestly cant see myself dropping a trait line for this right now. We are better off staying with dagger and lich form and keeping blood magic.
But i just didnt enjoy GS at all. Its so slow and slugglish it feels as if im lagging 100% of the time (im not). The damage numbers are still very very weak. Whats the point in playing something so slow that its unfun but it doesnt even pack a real punch?
RS is nice and fluid and fast. But RS 2 is kind okittenward with its functionality. Id really like to be able to actually control where i end up. So making it lock to a target if you have one would be the best solution. It should still work as it does currently when used without a target though (think of warrior sword 2). RS auto-attack is maybe on the weak side damage wise. And lifeforce feels like its draining too fast even when auto-attacking only and using vital persistence (is this a bug?).
Heres the coefficients of all skills. As you can see they havent actually been changed since initial speculative calculations from the stream. Which means our early feedback that damage would be too low was ignored. And it turned out to be true.
Also. Chilling force. I remember there was a few people saying this would be broken because of blighters boon. I said if blighters becomes overpowered because of this then blighters boon should be rebalanced. Not the trait which is average on its own. It seems that was ignored as well. Blighters Boon was left untouched and Chilling force got butchered for 1v1s and boss fights. It was also doubly nerfed by all the chill reduction in the game. Its much harder to get permanent chill now. So why should we have chilling force still suffering for it?
the group lifesteal is about equal to a personal 5% modifier. But with soul reaping you get extended lich form which is great for burst and better vuln application with RS. However as reaper stands currently you wont be using it at all. The numbers are very low.
Dagger auto does high damage. Its necro itself which does low damage. In other words necro has much less damage modifiers than other classes. But the dagger auto attack has some of the highest coefficient per seconds of any auto-attack in game currently.
I dont think we have much to worry about. I suspect GS is going to be weak when foes are above 50%. And if not it will be better to do a dagger + greatsword rotation until 50% where you can start spamming gravedigger. The bigger question is will RS auto-attack out damage dagger. Because thats what we should be worrying about. Then again it might be better for us if it did. Even if it makes the playstyle boring and renders dagger useless.
Yeah the problem is they have to be very careful with that. People will be outraged and they will destroy something thats fun about ele. And in PvE its only meteor shower and ice storm that are broken for damage. Glyph of storms is an elite level utility but its not broken. Its better than pretty much all elites and regular utilities in the game.
Stealth and portal are the two most important types of utility in records. And enough reflects to deal with all encounters (can be semi done with eles). Which is why we dont have 5 ele parties. If stealth and portal wasnt so great you would have 4/5 ele parties.
Banners are nice. But if we were running 4+ eles then we wouldnt actually need warrior. Phalanx would be pointless because 4+ staff eles can sustain enough might easily even without wasting time with might prestacking. And the damage contribution banners and empower allies gives is outweighed by an extra meteor shower + glyph of storms etc. When you have 2 eles phalanx really helps. That and 2 eles is all you need to melt bosses assuming buffs are properly covered.
Currently record compositions are decided as follows: “We need 2 eles. Take a warrior as well. Can portal and timewarp save us time?” If yes take a mesmer. “Will stealth save us time?” Take engi/thief/mesmer depending on amount required and other factors. Then you have things like “will aegis and stab speed us up some more?” If yes then drop the warrior and take a guard. Or “do we actually need phalanx for fast engages?” If no then drop the warrior for an ele.
The answer is always yes to will portal and stealth speed you up. But you dont always need a thief for that. For example see latest HotW records. Eles and a mesmer are the backbones of records. The rest are interchangeable. No amount of damage will make necro one of those options unless it outclasses icebow + meteor shower + glyph of storms. But that would be beyond broken. So as Bhawb said PvE needs to change and we need some of our core issues rectified to bring us on par with other classes.
He was just pointing out that you can get more power with death magic. Because your post sounded like you were just going for as high power as possible.
Have to remember that even if they do listen it doesnt mean they will act on the suggestions. Which i suspect has been the main issue in the past. Hopefully things are different this time because of HoT.
I have notes on things to improve with both axe and scepter as well as a note about skills that we could add projectile blocking to (incidentally RS 2 blocks projectiles because of a suggestion I read here). These are changes I’d like to get to and see happen, but right now iteration on Reaper and Chronomancer are probably going to take priority over that once the beta finishes.
This is the most encouraging thing ive seen since release. I hope we can see more stuff like this. Because with very simple changes like this you can address a lot of our core issues very easily.
Thanks for the response Robert. I know if i was in your shoes i probably wouldnt want to speak to the masses too much either. Its a difficult position to be in.
Doesnt matter how long you’ve played. If you dont have an open mind you will be stuck with the same delusions forever. Expanding to other classes is the biggest eye opener you can get in this game. I would suggest you do the same. But since you have played since release you probably have right?
Patience only lasts so long. Weve been consistantly disappointed for 3 years now. Reaper finally looked like an improvement despite not addressing any core issues. Then they basically nerf everything good about it before it gets released. Can you really blame us? We may be jumping the gun a bit. But it doesnt look promising with the cast times and ICD’s. I will be scrutinising the damage numbers and cast times in the beta.
Its seriously worrying. I originally thought id be playing Reaper even if it is still bad. But if this is the kind of stuff we have to deal with forever then i really am going to finally give up on the class. And thats not a threat. I really dont want to give up. But anet is making it very hard to not move on to the better classes. I already main an ele for fractals and dungeons. Dont make me drop the necro for literally everything else.
A little comment for the devs. You have said you are trying to make the elite specs fun. Because that is ultimately what will make it a success. But this is an MMO. We play with other people and we cant avoid that. A big part of what makes an MMO fun is being useful to your groupmates. Please seriously consider this and start changing necro so it actually fits in the combat system you have designed. The combat works so well with the other classes. But the necro just doesnt have the things that define combat in this game (active defence, combos and group interaction). Its not fun being unwanted and useless. Make it fun please.
It didnt need an ICD. There are better solutions to balance things without resorting to ICD’s. But thats something anet seems to avoid trying on the necro. They dont seem to have a problem with removing ICD’s elsewhere though (fresh air).
Oh so they completely ignored the suggestion to avoid putting ICD’s on everything? Glad to see they are consistent with limiting the necro completely. /s
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(ok ok, even playing an engi isn’t easy!