Guild Wars 2

Cleric’s death/blood/reaper MM is really strong. Best feeling minion master build I’ve played since this game released.

The death spiral animation clips through the ground pretty badly. Not only that, but the dark energy as a whole is very hard to see. I think the dark energy should be tighter on the sword during the beginning of the animation, and then shoot forward for the lunge.

Other than that, reaper feels very good to me. Soul eater still feels very clunky to me with the life steal on grave digger. I think it should also give life force on hit.

Bhawb.7408:

striker.3704:

I can’tell really think of any point in PvE where Moa morph is used at all on players. We also don’the see any minion master enemies.

All transforms kill minions. This not only means Lich/Plague (pre change), and Moa, but also any of the transforms that are used in PvE to do various things to the player. The problem there is Necromancer minions are uniquely mobile with no duration, meaning a transformed Necromancer that is meant to not be able to attack at all can have a swarm of minions that deal with mobs for them.

However, now that they can make exceptions Moa should just be included alongside Plague/Lich, and leave the PvE issues to PvE.

yeah I understand all that, I thought the person I was quoting was saying moa had presence in PvE, which it doesn’t as far as I’m aware.

Robert said they wanted to discuss changing moa to not kill minions because it affected other classes. However this interaction only impacts engineers/mesmers fighting minion master necromancers in a PvP environment. In it’s current state, it simply has too strong an impact on the minion master necromancer.

ronpierce.2760:

HaxTester.9816:

Maybe instead of flat out destroying minions, it will deal some damage instead? Then afterwards, we spam the kitten out of staff 2 to try to heal our minions lol. ^^;;

I’d rather them all turn into tiny baby moas for the duration and just not attack.

But then, that’s have to go for all pet classes, right now, MM are the only pet class that gets screwed over by this transformation decision. Most likely because they last until killed, so it affects their PvE stuff more.

It wouldn’t make me so angry though if we weren’t the only ones that get hit by this, in terms of PvP, where it really makes a difference.

I can’tell really think of any point in PvE where Moa morph is used at all on players. We also don’the see any minion master enemies.

As a basic concept true hard counters should never exist within a video game like GW2 as far as PvP is concerned. The only thing it accomplishes is locking a build entirely out of higher end PvP as no amount of skill will make the build competitive.

The only kinds of counters that should exist, are soft counters. Boon hate cele necro vs d/d ele, high AOE/cleave vs MM necro, ect. This laves room for counter play and for player interaction to be fun and engaging. There’s nothing fun or engaging about hitting a button and auto winning a fight, or being moa’d and auto losing the fight.

I’m glad to hear that the normal halloween items are being slowly rolled out, I was worried I wouldn’t see the grenth mask. I look forward to the new items we will get!

Bhawb.7408:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Give this a blast finisher and you can bet it will see use.

This is what they should have done to Unholy Feast anyway. We need a few finishers on our base profession.

This right here is very true. I found that part of the reason reaper felt so good to use, was that I could actually utilize combo fields with the great sword and reaper shroud. Base necromancer really needs more access to finishers to truly do well.

a whirl finisher on axe 2, blast on axe 3, projectile on focus 4, would all be good.

Robert Gee.9246:

As for the animation on axe 1, it was changed because of an exploit with cancel casting that allowed players to get significantly more damage from the skill by continually canceling it. At the time I tried to just adjust the original animation so we could keep it but due to its construction that ended up not being feasible. The resulting animation looked extremely choppy and didn’t sync well across races. You are always welcome to make suggestions on alternate animations you’d like to see, but going back to the original animation at this point is extremely unlikely.

Thank you for the clear direction on how we can help ya’ll come up with alternate solutions.

The problem with the current animation (at least for human male necromancers) is that the swing arcs are too smooth with what the animation seems like it’s trying to portray. It makes it look like the necromancer is either trying to throw the axe, or isn’t actually trying to hurt someone.

I think the easiest solution would be to improve the existing animation by giving it more life. Right now the animation doesn’t have the same fervor present in the old axe animation or the dagger auto attack. A simple way to fix this is to speed up the first swing initially, and have the character halt at the end of the arc (as if he’s actually lodged the axe into something) then have the second “swing” do a very forceful pullback, as if he’s tearing whatever he lodged the axe into open. This would give the existing animation more life.

The best way to imagine this, would be as if the necromancer was doing it in an axe murderer fashion. He swings the axe in a very exaggerated overhead arc, stops as if he lodged the axe into his target, then pulls it backwards as if to tear whatever he landed the axe into open.

Whatever ya’ll decide to do or go with, please make sure the hit animation matches the swing arc used. It looks really weird when you swing the axe vertically but see a horizontal hit animation.

Robert Gee.9246:

ronpierce.2760:

What about moa form?

Moa specifically will still destroy them. When we decided on these changes we felt that the behavior of Moa vs pets was one that needed more discussion. We didn’t feel comfortable changing this behavior for this patch as it affects more classes than just necromancer.

Lich and Plague form was more of a clear cut issue of “hey, let’s not punish minion masters for pressing their elite”.

Considering only engineer and mesmer can Moa you, and that this particular interaction only exists in PvP, AND that it is the hardest counter to a build in the game, I think it’s pretty obvious it’s an issue. Especially since it means Moa counters every necromancer elite because of this.

Reaper is designed to be in shroud as long as possible. If you reduce the ability to stay in shroud for extended periods, you effectively shoot reaper in the foot.

Rifle let’s you kite. It can also be used in any build, while hammer requires you to take the scrapper line which might not benefit you.

Just my thing

15 characters

We aren’t allowed to use healing skills in DS at a base no matter what, so that is one issue already. We also have a number of utility skills we can’t use in DS, such as spectral, so allowing us to use utilities would be a nightmare functionality wise.

However, seeing utility cooldowns in DS would be a fantastic QOL change.

DS is reactive as you can use it even when stunned. The cooldown doesn’t need changing. On top of that, there are many DS traits that activate on entering DS and don’t have cooldowns that would all need balancing if that changed.

Erindriel.2351:

Hi. I’ve not so long ago come back to the game, playing on and off since open beta. I’ve mostly spent my time playing SPvP, and while it’s the best PvP I’ve ever seen in an MMO I’ve started to notice some patterns. Namely, Necros and Mesmers — when played well — seem to be invincible.

Necro: They seem to be quite squishy at the start, however, once they get to about 50% they pop their endless green bar and start sh*tting damage / conditions while taking none themselves. Even things like rampage aren’t enough to get through it. What can one do to deal with that?

I need advice!

I’m a necromancer main, so I’ll try to give you advice on that.
-Try to dodge the skills that generate life force. This requires you to know which ones do, but they all have a few things in common. They all have long wind up animations, and they all are easy to see visually.

-if the necromancer turns a transparent green, only hit once or twice with a singular hard swing. They generate life force for being hit repeatedly in this state.

-rampage should destroy necromancers if you use it properly. They have no escape skills and cannot outrun you.

-if you’re running GS/hammer you should be able to disengage easily. Take advantage of that if you’re losing an engagement.

-don’the let the fight drag out. Try to burst down the necromancer. If you let him generate life force, that’s the equivalent of letting him heal and puts you more behind as time goes on.

Nerfing vital persistence isn’t the way to go. Necromancer isn’t OP with vital persistence.

it works on minions. 72hp out of 10k~ health really isn’t gonna show up any time soon. I’ve tested it before and it works fine, it only heals the minions when they siphon with the aura though.

You’re honestly better off running life from death with a cleric’s minion build anyways.

You can trait shroud to support your minions
death magic/blood magic/soul reaping
DM: minion minor and master traits, and take unholy sanctuary
BM: Your choice of prefereance with the minor, but I take dagger cooldown, heal AOE when leaving deathshroud, transfusion
SR: trait that reduces DS cooldown, vital persistence, foot in the grave

I agree that the fact that the number of ele’s deciding the match is completely ridiculous. It’s killed my desire to PvP entirely until fixed. Even shoutbow warriors and mantra mesmer were more fun to fight.

Aktium.9506:

striker.3704:

So, what is it? It has an asuran gate, and what appears to be some capture points, but i’ve never gotten over there or seen anyone over there.

There used to be a deep lake there with 3 golems in it for testing underwater combat skills. It was removed when they removed the Raid on the Capricorn map from PvP and announced that they would stop supporting underwater content.

No like, if you look behind you when you enter heart of the mists (relative to the default spawn location) behind those really tall ruins you can climb with a bonfire on top. There’s a small location that you can see in the distance but not reach. It even shoes up as geography on your map if you open it up.

While cele ele is in a league of it’so own, a change like this would do more harm than good. While I hate to say it, if you really are concerned about your ladder position, your best option is simply roll cele ele. Since everyone has access to everything in hotm, there’s no reason not roll it.

So, what is it? It has an asuran gate, and what appears to be some capture points, but i’ve never gotten over there or seen anyone over there.

I only anticipate 1 balance patch between now and the release of the expansion. There is at least a 2 month period between balance changes. We also need to consider that balance changes were made in preparation of certain elite spec skills (chilling darkness).

mazut.4296:

Bhawb.7408:

All minions should be 3/4s cast anyway, but Wurm isn’t meant to be used as an unplanned escape, you are supposed to use it as a pre-planned one before entering combat.

Yes, Wurm its personal one way “mesmer portal”.
My idea is when you use the wurm you switch places. The wurm burrow and emerge at your previous location and either knock down enemies or single pulse of big damage and poison field. On top of that it keeps its single target slow range attack untill it dies. On death explodes(not traited) and deal damage and again place poison field.
Alternatively it switch place and immediately explode dealing damage, knock down and leave poison field.

Both of those concepts would be a nerf. The first makes it so that if your.wurm isn’the killed by the enemy you have no escape. The second removes the only effective deterrent from people rushing down the wurm.

Bhawb.7408:

Same issue, changing design is going to cost them time to do model/texture, animations, etc. Even if they just stole the rigging of an existing mob and just painted over the model, it still takes them some time that they probably don’t want to use on something that is an extremely minor problem that shows up fairly rarely.

Its not an issue of being unable to do it, but unwilling to allocate resources. Don’t get me wrong, I’d really like it, but I don’t see it happening before we get an underwater rework in general.

I’m with bhawb on this one. Underwater has been put on the back burner, and I don’t see it being touched until an expansion focused on underwater combat is released.

Vital persistence should be baseline. The issue isn’t so much that it dominates that tier, but that it makes soul reaping mandatory to most builds in PvP.

I said disengage, not escape. It isn’t a traditional port, it is a minion skill first and a defensive port second. Also no other port skill gives life force and attacks your enemies for you.

Dagger main hand is good, dagger off hand is fine for condition builds.
Staff has plenty of utility, best ranged option for a soul reaping build.
Axe and scepter are being looked into.
Focus offhand honestly isn’t bad for PvP, it will pair well with reaper.

Honestly, only scepter and axe are truly hurting and we already know they’re being looked into.

Bhawb.7408:

Vunter.6245:

I don’t need another explanation on why the shout lost stability, but it would be nice to know why stability keeps getting overlooked or forgot about in terms of incorporating effective stabo into the class..

You mean like how Reaper got an amazing baseline source of stability, plus a fairly large amount on an elite? So far the big changes we’ve been getting haven’t at all overlooked our lack of stability, but since we haven’t seen a change to our base skills in ages they can’t really address it yet on our base profession.

The only issue with stability on our base class, is that we really don’t have access to it beyond a well and a singular trait. Reaper has good access to it.

Honestly, if doom gAve you single stack of stability when you cast it, it would go a very long way.

nekretaal.6485:

Does Moa destroy Rise and Lich minions?

No it doesn’t. Rise!, lich, death nova, and rune of the lich minions don’t get destroyed by transformations as they don’t have chain skills.

Scepter 1 should apply torment instead of cripple. Scepter 3 should extend the duration of all conditions currently on the enemy when it hits. Hell, make the grandmaster scepter trait change scepter 3 to do this.
Axe 1 should be changed to a chain. Have the final hit apply weakness.

Axe 2 should scale it’s damage based on the number of vulnerability stacks on the enemy, or scale it’s life force generation.
Merge Unholy fervor into spiteful spirit, remove spiteful spirit’s internal cooldown. Axe no longer gets a bonus 10% damage against vulnerable foes. Spiteful spirit gains an additional effect:
Spiteful spirit: additionally, retaliation now deals it’s damage in a small AoE around the source that hit you.

Right now spiteful spirit is honestly pretty bad as a grand master trait, especially if you aren’t running Unholy fervor. There’s no real reason to make them require one another so much yet keep them seperate. The change to the small AoE is to make it more thematic with GW1 spiteful spirit, but to also make the retaliation more effective in general as a deterint from “pile on the necromancer and cc him in a corner” parties.

New master trait in that line:
Cracked armor: if you strike an enemy with 10 or more stacks of vulnerability apply cracked armor to them for 5 seconds. (30 second cooldown).
Cracked armor (debuff): reduce toughness by 300.
While the numbers probably need adjustments, having the bonus damage from vulnerability limited only to axe is hampering. By making it it’s own trait we can have a little fun with it. The reason it’s gated behind vulnerability. . . Well actually there are many:
-thematic with spite (kick them while they are down)
-flavorful in skill functionality (weakening an enemies armor with vulnerability until you break it)
-limits what setups can use it effectively, preventing from being a staple trait like vital persistence.

Thematically, I honestly think Unholy feast should corrupt boons into vulnerability thematically, but that’s just me.

Honestly, there are a million and one ways axe and focus can be fixed up with the new mechanics introduced.

The flesh wurm Is just fine. It’s a defensive skill you pre-place near a point to add additional damage while you fight and provides a disengage if you end up needing one. If you’re running death nova, it also punishes your enemy for meleeing it by giving them poison and weakness. The skill even gives you life force when you teleport, making it easier for you to shroud if the enemy chases. At worst even if the enemy is ready to port after you to give chase or someone waits next to the Wurm for you, you’re still making them spend time trying to get you, and every second you buy counts.

All in all the skill does a lot of things, not even mentioning that it let’s you teleport up to specific ledges making it that much harder for the enemy to follow you or even let you get up to a better position a lot more quickly, it will even attack a player well outside of your range if you target them and attack.

The Wurm does a lot of things and is honestly pretty kitten good. It’s a stun break that is heavily geared towards Minion masters though, in other builds you’d be better off with spectral armor or something.

If you’re looking for an “oh kitten I need to get out!” Skill, necromancer isn’t the class for you.

Necromancer in PvP has presence, but I wouldn’t consider it strong. The main reason it has presence is to counter one OP build with one particular counter build. Even then the odds aren’the in it’s favor. There are some core issues with core necromancer that need to be addressed first:
-reliance on soul reaping
-scepter and axe desperately need that re-work (2 main hand weapons being considered bad is a Massive limiter)
-certain traits need some real adjusting (spiteful spirit, Consume Conditions applying blind with Master of corruptions, ect )
-certain utilities have been in dire need of being looked into for a long time now (well of darkness 40 second cooldown, signet of undeath, blood fiend not leeching quite enough, ect)

Beyond that, the necromancer also is currently really hampered by D/D ele ironically. If you don’t run the counter build, then the match can be a living hell as you can’t escape the ele but can’t kill him either. Once D/D is put in it’s place and axe+scepter get fixed up, we will see where necromancer sits. Right now too many of our builds rely on those weapons to really say anything right now.

Ara.4569:

Shroud has every aspect of a transform but isn’t considered one (still has the related bugs though, because why not), while lich/plague really are. So much for coherence.

Shroud and transformations don’t actually do the same things to your character. Shroud acts as more of an overlay, while transformations change your character as a baseline to another set of stats and such. That’s why you hear the weapon swap sound when transforming but not when entering shroud. There’s also a large number of reasons across other areas of the game for as to why transformations kill minions.

Pregnantman.8259:

Simply put, what will happen to Blood Magic in PvP after Reaper comes? With Blighter’s Boon, Reaper can put out seemingly higher sustain and higher damage than Blood Magic can hope to achieve (with 0 healing power investment mind you), and that leaves only Transfusion going for Blood Magic – likely will not be enough to compete with Reaper/Spite/Soul Reaping power comps.

I love Blood Magic, and so far it has done wonders in my Crusader Spite/Soul Reaping/Blood build – but I am afraid it will be obsolete.

Blood magic gives a LOT more AoE healing and party sustain style support (last rite, ritual of life, and of course transfution) while also having better synergy with dagger 2 and healing power. Cleric style MM builds will still use it as well as vampirism builds and well builds.

Blighter’s Boon does not give as much sustain as the vampiric comboes, especially if you use dagger/warhorn. Blighter’s Boon is at best supplementary sustain for builds focused on building might for damage.

As another comparison, between vampirism and vampirism aura, that’s an additional 100ish damage and 100ish health per hit, which is more of a total health difference created that 1% life force or 135 health.

Mind you, on a power necromancer without healing power, yeah reaper will be better. Minion masters, corruption necromancers, signet necromancers, and we’ll necromancers can all make good use of the tree without healing power.

Puck.9612:

striker.3704:

The only issue is taunt working through dodge. With how core a mechanic dodging is, nothing in PvP should go through it. Only PvE enemies should have skills that work through dodge.

Taunt really isn’the that different from stun or fear otherwise.

I guarantee 90% of the people complaining here would still be qq’ing even if it didn’t go through dodge. For some reason they choose to ignore the slow moving pet meandering towards them and then complain about the “insta cast”.

If they are paying that little attention to the pet the dodge will only save them if they are randomly dodging and get lucky.

I think it’s more that, in order to win the fight you have to go past the pet to get to the ranger, so avoiding the taunt entirely really isn’the possible. It needs to be instant cast with how pets work (I main MM I would know) but I can understand the frslustration. The lack of available counter play is obnoxious.

GW2 originally had this type of system back when living story was first introduced. However hitches when adjusting mechanics prevented this from panning out. From a developer point of view by not saying anything about schedual they aren’t potentially digging their own backlash grave.

Also, adjusting balance too frequently can prevent us from truly seeing what is actually strong and what isn’t. Pacing out changes allows people to really settle into what’she consistently strong instead of the short lived flavor of the month that people haven’the adjusted too.

Minion Masters were pretty popular when the huge trait system change hit. If they got nerfed within a month, then that would have been terrible because in time it turned out the build wasn’the really all that powerful. People simply hadn’the adjusted to it yet.

I believe the fighting game term for this is “match up knowledge”.

This was changed to try to make.conditions more reliable in the chance of benefitting from their effect. The same goes for buffs. It also was changed like this to prevent certain powerful boons/conditions from being untouchable if played properly. In a weird way this randomness makes the mechanics more consistent.

The only thing is, condition removal is a lot more common than Boon hate, so we only really see it from the condition removal end.

Everyone already has literal finishers as a base. It makes sense for necromancer and thief’s to have skills that are good against downed foes (to an extent warriors too), but I don’t think the other classes should. It especially wouldn’t make seneed on a guardian, ele, or engineer. I’d say the only one who.it would make any.semblance of sense on is ranger using rifle:
put down: fire a powerful shot from your rifle, knocking down foes. Deals more damage the lower a foes health is, and even more if they are downed. 100 range.

A little macabre but it’s all I can think of.

The only issue is taunt working through dodge. With how core a mechanic dodging is, nothing in PvP should go through it. Only PvE enemies should have skills that work through dodge.

Taunt really isn’the that different from stun or fear otherwise.

Perfectly equal ttk values across the board is impossible given the different situations and mechanics available in GW2. There is more to a fight than damage and damage mitigation.

The type of balancing you’really presenting would only work in games that are turn based or in games using the hard trinity like WoW.

azyume.6321:

striker.3704:

D/D ele can literally do everything and then some. It has no weakness and only 1 psuedo counter build. The psuedo counter build doesn’t even win consistently enough against to even call it a counter build really.

A smart player would take into account their own strengths, weaknesses, the enemies strengths and weaknesses, and adjust their play accordingly. D/D ele has no weakness, so they never have to adjust the way they play.

Ok I have to ask. How a weapon set makes a profession OP? D/D isn’t OP, it has weakness, have only one ranged attack which can be reflected. Long range weapons have advantage over it.

Now if you are talking about builds, that’s completely different.

Yeah when I say D/D i’my talking about the offending build. I was also talking about build concepts in general.

Though GW2 is designed in a way where everyone can do everything but varying flavors, nobody should be able to do everything really well at the same time. That’s the reason we have to use am my stats in PvP to begin with. This is also why the soft trinity exists. If you want to build to bunker cool, but you can’t also have high mobility and damage as well.

Let me give an example with MM necromancer bunker:
-high sustain (lots of healing and siphoning, good condition removal, ect)
-durable (high health and toughness)
-good single target damage (can take down or chase away a lot of builds)

These are all base strengths of the basic death/blood trait combination. It also has base weaknesses too:
-poor AoE damage, weak to AoE damage
-no escape skills, 1 disengagement skill
-has no way of mitigating targeted pressure by 2+ players (reaper potentially can change this)

None of the above weaknesses can be corrected by adding any trait lines in without using a completely different build. This is a good thing. Regardless of minor differences in trait line prefferences, if you see a player running a particular type of build, you should be able to say without a doubt what their weakness is.

Cele D/D doesn’the really follow suit. It covers it’s options extremely well. Let’s talk about the two things that appear to be it’seems only lacking points:
-Short range
The cele ele doesn’the really need to be concerned with long range pressure. The lightning aura and fire aura let it outright stop a lot of damage for a minimum of 5 seconds between the two. The rest of the time it can passively heal back a lot of the damage with lightning whip or actively with water attunement. By this point it’seems won as far as the point goes. Let alone it’seems ability to close that gap regardless of terrain.

-Boon hate
Boon hate is the reason signet necromancer is seen as a counter build. However cele ele reapplies boons so easily, and clenses conditions from corrupted boons so easily, it’s more of a minor annoyance really.

By no means do I think.everything on D/D should be nerfed, but it needs to pick an identity and stick with it.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Salamander.2504:

Ragnarox.9601:

Awww you underpowerd d/d cele ele poor thing you ;( I wish I can buff you but I can’t.

He’s not asking for d/d cele ele buffs, he’s asking for more ele build diversity—ele’s are funneled into the d/d spec because everything else is much worse.

More build diversity=ele’s are happy.
Fewer d/d eles=community is happy.
Everyone wins.

I will say that I’ve been seeing some rather good staff and s/f ele’s popping up recently, but from what I understand the traits (2/3 traitlines) and utilities are largely the same from the meta cele build, which does underscore the OP’s point.

It would be nice…but remember, there are other professions in the same boat. Thieves have even less build diversity than eles, for example. They need to increase build diversity for many professions, not just ele.

Necromancer is in the same boat too. We pretty much have that one signets build, and that’s about it.

I love my MM build, but it will never be viable in a competitive sense until things like moan killing all minions is addressed.

It’s true ele is kinda funneled into D/D, but off the top of my head they still have at least the bunker staff build.

It seems to me that the core issue with ele is that too much of the sustain is funneled into traits instead of the weapons. While fresh air scepter ele might be true to it’s GW1 roots, it doesn’the synergies well with the trait lines it would need to take to survive.

Hell, ele in general has a large number of issues. I’might a necromancer main, but I can make builds utilizing many different trait line mix and matches a lot easier with necromancer than ele.

A long time ago the transformations killing minions was going to be looked into, but then they slapped those “these forms kill all minions” tags on the skills and called it a day. When only mesmer had access to moa it honestly still wasn’t that big a deal.

However, now that both engineer and mesmer have access to moa, and both of them can do it from stealth, it’s extremely bothersome in some matches.

A minion master getting moa’d is, as far as I know, the only instance in the game where another player can put your entire skillbar on cooldown, not to mention FULL cooldown. It’s plain silly and really cripples the spec from being anything other than “solo que PvP fun” as it is the hardest counter to any build I have ever seen in the game. Yes, even more so that stone heart in my opinion.

I don’t mind our own transformations killing our minions as they are designed for other specs really, but moa killing minions stinks.

From what I’ve learned though, the reason this kills minions is that it breaks the “chain” skill link minions all have. It’s apparently extremely difficult to work around this functioning in this manner. I don’t expect a change any time soon.

ronpierce.2760:

striker.3704:

All the changes seem pretty good. I liked the cooldown being tied to grave digger more, and wanted to simply see a value change, but this works out nicely too. All in all looks very good. Especially the change to Rise!

The grave digger set up had some logical issues, being that usually when you could use it most, you were less likely to want to use your other skills.

Personally, I much prefer this. I wish there was less leeching on Reaper and more mix of boon removal/condition removal though. Like Boon rip on Grave Digger with trait or Condition consumption on Augury of Death when you shout (consuming conditions to heal you). Both would be more useful than minor siphons, personally.

I disagree. In any situation where you would want to spam grave digger, your other skills that were important to get off cooldown for the next engagement were on cooldown, and you wouldn’t want to use them instead of grave digger in those situations anyway.

I agree with you on the other point. However, atm blood magic and reaper don’t play nicely together, so more leeching helps remedy that.

All the changes seem pretty good. I liked the cooldown being tied to grave digger more, and wanted to simply see a value change, but this works out nicely too. All in all looks very good. Especially the change to Rise!

Focus 4: now applies protection instead of regeneration.
Focus 5: spiteful talisman trait changed to also include: spinal shivers now corrupts boons instead of removing them.

Those two alone should do it.

Dagger auto gives plenty of life force, which is a much more consistent and better source than axe 2.

D/D ele can literally do everything and then some. It has no weakness and only 1 psuedo counter build. The psuedo counter build doesn’t even win consistently enough against to even call it a counter build really.

A smart player would take into account their own strengths, weaknesses, the enemies strengths and weaknesses, and adjust their play accordingly. D/D ele has no weakness, so they never have to adjust the way they play.

I don’t see necros needing a nerf in any area. They already nerfed many of our traits in preparation for reaper (chilling darkness) I see no reason to nerf us further.