Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Anchoku.8142:

My impression is that only Rise will be useful to a MM. Reaper is melee AoE. Minions mostly just target your (single) target. So, until they die, they do not do AoE and will keep switching to the mob of the second. They need leadership and focus. It is difficult for me to explain so I apologize if it sounds wierd or incomplete.

I actually think Rise! will see more use on non MMs than MMs. MM doesn’t really need the added tankiness, though it can use it, whereas a lot of our other builds could totally want it.

As for LF, not particularly hard to gain enough to jump in and out of RS if you’re using abilities right, especially Locust Swarm. Non-US MMs don’t need to stay in RS for long, at most you want enough time to use 2/4/5 in some order, and that doesn’t require a ton of LF to accomplish in a small fight since you’ll have Chilling Force giving LF. RS should be treated more like a weapon swap, at least for MM, than as a long-lasting measure.

Also, if Cleric isn’t healing you for enough, you aren’t doing it right. Each use of dagger is a massive heal, Consume Conditions is easily an 8k heal even if you aren’t cleansing many conditions, plus the incidental healing from minions, regeneration, Blighter’s Boon procs while in Death Shroud, sigils, etc. Cleric is more than enough self healing, though once again the most important part of Clerics has nothing to do with self healing and everything to do with keeping minions alive; a dead Flesh Golem is around 50% damage loss off all your minion DPS.

I was saying reaper mm doesn’the self heal enough with greatsword. If you want to heal minions, you’really much better off taking soul reaping instead of reaper for the death shroud cooldown so you can use beyond the veil and life from death more frequently. Conditions should never be a threat to an mm, especially with rise! Taking off condition stacks through necrotic corruption.

Grave digger giving cooldowns makes sense. When you’receive grave digger spamming, your longer cooldowns important GSM skills (death spiral and deathly grasp) both should be on cooldown, and you’Lloyd want them for your next target. I think the cool down part is fine and flavorful, it just needs to be boosted from 3% to 5%.

The siphoning portion however, isn’the really thematic nor good. The reaper relies on building up life force and staying in reaper shroud, so I think it should be changed to something that sounds similar to the trait while supporting GS life force build up.

Soul Eater: heal for the life force you generate with the great sword.
1% life force = 100 health (rounded down from the nearest percentage. 1.5% = 1%)

This makes sense thematically and gives the skills besides grave digger more value.

An alternative:
Soul Eater: greater sword attacks siphon health based inversely on how much life force you have:
0%= 200 health
25%= 150 health
50%=100 health
Ect

I’d honestly say remove the trait and make only half of it’s benefit baseline. Then give soul reaping another trait that boosts death shroud sustainability like:
(new) vital persistence: increase the bonus life force from vitality by 25%.
This would make death shroud beefier but not necessarily last longer, so it wouldn’t stack obscenely with other traits that extend deathshroud duration (unholy martyr for example).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I’m not sure you really understand why you take Blood Magic in a Reaper MM build.

Blood Magic is not taken for personal siphons, it is taken for keeping your minions alive as well as letting them provide you with a steady influx of health. Your personal Vampiric procs are not that important, though they do help. No, Blood Magic is all about the AoE healing you provide, and Soul Spiral Transfusion is sick.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQBdysJ0UD2XD4tJweDWmGsJvsKg0AoAEAi/gWhA-TZwZAAQZAA

This is probably the basis of the best Reaper MM build. Notice it avoids Soul Eater completely. Frankly, right now, ALL good Reaper builds avoid Soul Eater completely. The trait just doesn’t do much.

That’s the thing though, If you’re a minion master and you run reaper/blood magic/death magic, your reaper shroud gets torn through easily (life from death only procs if you exit DS manually, the same goes for beyond the veil). Not only that, but by running a blood magic build you will be targeted heavily, and that trait set doesn’t have much to offset that focus.

I found the most success using
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB-AZkA1g~
with soldier ammy and axe+focus/great sword

The flat damage reduction bonuses you get from cold shoulder, corruptor’s fervor, dark bond, and all the toughness you get makes it so you hardly take any damage (65% damage reduction before toughness, let alone condition damage mitigation which gets to 85%). It’s also incredibly easy to maintain 25 stacks of might on yourself and 25 stacks of vulnerability on the enemy most of the fight, especially whirling in an ice field. Then on top of your beefiness, it’s easy to up-keep retaliation which makes trading blows with you bad.

Mind you, my play style interferes with my use of the blood magic tree as I’m using axe+focus and GS. However the reaper trait line relies so heavily on chill, that only having focus as my source of chill doesn’t seem substantial enough, so I don’t want to use axe+focus/dagger+warhorn, and I hate double melee, so I won’t use dagger+warhorn/GS.

All in all though, if GS gave enough siphoning with soul eater, then there could be a more definitive and efficient ramp-up time for gathering life force, allowing you to utilize reaper shroud to heal yourself and minions while still being able to keep yourself alive outside of it.

The issue I find with cleric MM reaper, is that there simply isn’t enough self healing to keep yourself alive. It doesn’t matter if your minions are alive if you get downed from spike easily. I feel like a cleric’s MM, in their current iteration, is better off using base necro. The benefits from the soul reaping trait line (death shroud cooldown reduction, vital persistance, foot in the grave) greatly outweight the benefits of using reaper. by using soul reaping and unholy sanctuary, you can flash death shroud to heal and protect minions consistently while also getting mad siphoning to yourself to keep your health up, and unholy sanctuary will be there to catch you when you get spiked hard, allowing you to heal again.

I decided to try out MM reaper in BWE2 and I gotta say, it feels a lot more solid, but there is an issue with reaper as a whole.

Reaper as a trait line doesn’t play nice with blood magic. There simply isn’t enough sustain to make it work. The blood magic trait line requires many small hits and healing power scaling to function, and the reaper trait line relies heavily on chill application.

Now, the adept and grandmaster traits are fine. The issue lies in the one “linking” skill between reaper and blood magic, soul eater.

Soul eater doesn’t give enough siphoning to make the greatsword sustain you properly even in a heavily crowded fight. When you do successfully land an attack through all of the blinds, interrupts, dazes, and stuns; you only recover a very measly amount for the difficulty of the attack to land.

While you recover about 40% more health than a dagger attack, that simply doesn’t cut it when the dagger hits 8 times as often within the same time span. Soul Eater should siphon about 200% more than it currently does. Even this will still leave the dagger way ahead in siphoning sustain (especially with the dagger 2 skill) but it would give blood magic reapers more of a chance.

The cooldown reduction is also a bit on the low side when you hit with grave digger. It should at least reduce cooldown for all the other skills by 5% per hit with how hard it is to actually hit someone with the skill.

The main reason I argue that Soul Eater needs to siphon more, was that in my experience you got a LOT more sustain and survivability from running spite or soul reaping instead. Spite being the damage line, it shouldn’t out sustain blood magic, our dedicated sustain line. This doesn’t mean spite needs a nerf, but it does mean that blood magic doesn’t work well with reaper, which is why I think buffing soul eater could give it a good supplement.

Rise works really well, and I don’t really think it needs a change beyond maybe a 5 second cooldown reduction.

No, what Minions need is to not be destroyed by the MM transforming.

Seriously, I am so sick of being completely and utterly shut out of a match if the enemy has a single engineer or Mesmer. They just chase me around all game, moa me, and kitten all over me and there isn’t any counter play to it. I just get straight kittened.

how have so few of you seen fist of the north star jesus.

Ara.4569:

I don’t see MM becoming meta anytime soon.

MM will never be meta as long as MOA remains the hardest counter known to man (and so kittening common holy kitten. Literally every single engineer runs it just about, and at least half the mesmers if not more run signet of humility too). I’ve never seen a single skill counter an entire build in any videogame as hard as moa counters minion master.

It doesn’t help that both moa morphs can be done out of stealth and finish their cast animation before it hits, thus leading you to getting moa’d without any counter play in the game existing.

Necromantic corruption not only makes minions take conditions from their master, but also one another when they should only take conditions from the minion master himself. This is easy to reproduce by having anyone apply a single long condition to the Minion Master himself, and watching it bounce between minions. Using a condition with a very noticeable particle effect (such as chill or burning) helps too.

I noticed this when the enemy team captured tranquility while I was standing on the point. This is very easy to reproduce in this same manner and is very easy to see as the minions who are under the chill effect turn a blue color.

Bhawb.7408:

Cleric is THE best option by far, has been for a long time, made even more dominant in the specialization changes. It isn’t about the siphons, that is a tiny fraction of what Clerics does for you, it is for Transfusion, Life Siphon, regeneration, SoV or CC, and the large variety of other heals you can grab in the one build.

This is including dagger 2 siphon, which becomes a secondary healing skill on a 9 second cooldown (with quickening thirst).

This isn’t even including how the dynamic has changed. Now that minions function, players target them more than ever before now, and minions will aggressively get into AOEs. This makes the increased power of transfusion and your other siphons and heals all the more valuable.

Before when they afk’d a lot, I would argue you got a lot more out of unholy martyr and vitality for all the increased life force generation and death shroud health. Minions were largely ignored as targets and would often never be in the line of fire, thus making and aoe heals rather pointless on them.

This change has bolstered the MM greatly in PvP. Thanks to minions actually:
-transferring conditions
-sticking to targets
-siphoning health
-dealing damage
Properly (literally 90% of their mechanics rely on them attacking, only the active didn’t. ) even their active skills are more reliable because they stick close enough to the enemy to hit them with it.

Now that they function properly, clerics is definitely the way to go no questions asked.

They are a hell of a lot better now, this made more of an impact than I thought, it’s incredible!

Dreaming serpent.5197:

I’m still debating wurm over shadow fiend, mostly due to mlg stomps (3 second delay blind op) as well as the life force gain.

I just wanted to say, those MLG blind stomps are one of the most satisfying things in the game.

Rain.9213:

The minions aren’t there to do the work for you either like a regular minion master.

I really hate this statement because the exact opposite is true, and anyone who really plays MM extensively will be able to tell you that. As a minion master you’re supposed to do the work for your minions.

As a proper MM you make the enemy try to attack you, and lock them down when they try to engage anything else like your minions or allies. You set everything up so your minions can hammer the enemy. This is especially true with how their AI works.

Rain.9213:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJARWjc0QrN2XDe1A7NWoGMpAwAYYFHCHhtQqYQN4EA-TZBFwAy3fgwFAYxhAoaZAAPBAA

-You’re better off swapping unholy sanctuary for corruptor’s fervor.
-chilling force+blighter’s boon would be better for you than soul eater+reaper’s onslaught. Soul eater+reaper’s onslaught really needs blood magic to make the combo worth while.

it should honestly be split into team arena and solo arena. Fighting against pre-mades who coordinate their spikes against you with split second room for error to try and survive destroys any semblance of fun and just leaves an empty feeling of “why bother”?

1. Make the auto attack a chain and have it remove a boon at the end
2. Increase the damage of the 2 skill

3. Combine spiteful spirit and unholy fervor into one grand master trait.
Grand master: Spiteful spirit- Axe cooldown reduced by 20%, Axe damage is increased by 10% against vulnerable foes. When you enter death shroud, cast unholy feast (no cooldown).

4. Additionally, buffing focus would also help the axe by extension since they have lots of synergy.

Spiteful Talisman- Deal 5% increased damage to foes with no boons. Focus skills recharge 20% faster. Boons removed by Spinal shivers are instead corrupted.

Alternatively:
a new master trait in the now open master slot:
Spiteful Rend: Whenever a boon is removed, it is corrupted instead.

This would give the axe more power while also giving the focus 5 some much needed love. As of now the necromancer has the most access to boon corruption, and I’d like to see that theme expanded on as it fits perfectly within the necromancer design.

meow one twenty.4376:

striker.3704:

Cynz.9437:

also evade is not sustain, you can avoid some dmg yes, but evade doesn’t give any dmg mitigation nor heals

Evade IS damage mitigation, what are you talking about?

That is technically incorrect.

Evasion prevents oneself from taking damage.
Mitigation lowers the damage taken when hit; more fundamentally, mitigation increases the effective health of the user.

Not taking damage at all is ALWAYS more potent than lowering the damage you take (This is the fundamental reason necros aren’t really meta atm, they have no way of stopping massive spike that other classes can go invulnerable to avoid.) You could say it’s the single most potent form of damage mitigation right after being completely invulnerable.

If your build doesn’t run any chill, or you like fighting in the back line, reaper really isn’t for you.

Also, I feel like reaper doesn’t have any synergy with a corruptions focused condition damage necromancer.

Sagat.3285:

striker.3704:

Exciton.8942:

nomdeplums.5780:

Elementalist doesn’t need to be nerfed. Celestial amulet needs to be removed.

This may actually be the best option: remove celestial amulet.

Ele is basically designed as a class that can do pretty much everything. However, the celestial amulet boosted it to the level that ele can do everything too well.

It would be better to have everyone in sPvP to fit into a role that does limited amount of things. Then you focus on rotation and team coordination to achieve the maximum synergy. Builds like cele DD ele really trivializes rotation and coordination. Being able to do everything well makes the whole game mode feel shallow.

I actually completely agree with this. Celestial amulet dictates a lot of what is strong because of the sheer amount of stats it gives alone. With it gone, people’s builds will be more counter-able because they will have clear weaknesses instead of covering all options.

There is always a clear weakness and nothing ever cover all options it just depends on how common the counter is. Are boon hate and chill common?

Even if you run the maximum boon hate possible, d/d ele can re-apply therm faster and cleanse any chill application you can do with ease (at least for now, it might be different when reaper is at it’s full potential).

I’m specifically talking about things like “ok this warrior is probably running zerker, burst damage will take him down” or “ok that necro is running carrion, meaning his toughness is low, I should focus on hitting him with direct damage skills”. Celestial doesn’t really have a clear weakness to exploit.

This compounds with the fact that D/D eles “weakpoints” (mass boon application and mixed damage) can’t really be punished. They re-apply boons so easily it doesn’t matter, and their damage isn’t suffering in any area. Even if you completely out play them, they have a myriad of escape skills to disengage and heal up.

none of these are bad individually, but together it’s painful.

Cynz.9437:

also evade is not sustain, you can avoid some dmg yes, but evade doesn’t give any dmg mitigation nor heals

Evade IS damage mitigation, what are you talking about?

Exciton.8942:

nomdeplums.5780:

Elementalist doesn’t need to be nerfed. Celestial amulet needs to be removed.

This may actually be the best option: remove celestial amulet.

Ele is basically designed as a class that can do pretty much everything. However, the celestial amulet boosted it to the level that ele can do everything too well.

It would be better to have everyone in sPvP to fit into a role that does limited amount of things. Then you focus on rotation and team coordination to achieve the maximum synergy. Builds like cele DD ele really trivializes rotation and coordination. Being able to do everything well makes the whole game mode feel shallow.

I actually completely agree with this. Celestial amulet dictates a lot of what is strong because of the sheer amount of stats it gives alone. With it gone, people’s builds will be more counter-able because they will have clear weaknesses instead of covering all options.

Talyn Sneider.1825:

striker.3704:

Honestly D/D ele is so kittening bs that it kills all the fun in PvP for me. If the enemy team has 1-2 D/D eles and mine doesn’t I seriously consider just closing the game every time. It doesn’t matter how good you are with the absolutely bullkitten amounts of damage mitigation they have:
-incredible passive healing through signet of restoration
-massive amounts of blinds
-Lots of condition cleansing and stun breaks
-disengage out the wazzo
-10 stacks of stability available from one skill
-2-3 hard CC skills
-lots of burst healing from water attunement without even having to use the actual heal skill
-can just about permanently maintain vigor, regeneration, and protection. Boon hate has little to no effect at all since the boons are so easily brought back.

Lets not forget that the blinds, CC, water attuenment healibng are all AOE which help allies too

Jesus…all things u say here have always been a factor on ele before patch and even with all this it was falling out of meta…

Now stop saying every good thing the eles have is OP, it gets ridiculous fast and you consistantly do this in every thread.

Burning stacks are over the top and should be tone down on fire line, blind on burn is also over the top, resolve those issues and reevaluate.

Reading your posts is like reading OH GOD THIEFS ARE OP, THEY HAVE STEALTH AND ARE ABLE TO SPIKE NERF ALL REMOVES FUN…it gets old fast.

Just to remember we have the lesser health pool in the whole game, in case you forgot…

I have never complained abnout thiefs, anf I love how you haven’t refuted any of my points, you only throw out personal insults without any substance.

prove me wrong, you’re adding nothing to the thread otherwise.

Honestly D/D ele is so kittening bs that it kills all the fun in PvP for me. If the enemy team has 1-2 D/D eles and mine doesn’t I seriously consider just closing the game every time. It doesn’t matter how good you are with the absolutely bullkitten amounts of damage mitigation they have:
-incredible passive healing through signet of restoration
-massive amounts of blinds
-Lots of condition cleansing and stun breaks
-disengage out the wazzo
-10 stacks of stability available from one skill
-2-3 hard CC skills
-lots of burst healing from water attunement without even having to use the actual heal skill
-can just about permanently maintain vigor, regeneration, and protection. Boon hate has little to no effect at all since the boons are so easily brought back.

Lets not forget that the blinds, CC, water attuenment healibng are all AOE which help allies too

Burning is simply completely out of hand right now. My engineer isn’t even specced fully for pure burning damage and I can get 15k burn damage off of pistol 4 on my turret build.

Honestly mesmers aren’t bad.

D/D ele is the only thing that is just completely out of hand right now. The sustain, damage, CC, and mobility all wrapped up into one neat package is BS. D/D ele can literally fill every single role atm without having to sacrifice anything.

EremiteAngel.9765:

does anyone actually use focus?

if yes, wvw roaming or pvp or pve?

I use focus in PvP.

Both Focus skills are pretty A-OK for the most part. The only real issue is that they each seem to miss-match all their effects.

reaper’s touch: This skill should apply protection instead of regeneration.

Spinal shivers: This skill should corrupt boons instead of removing them (or hell, make the spiteful talisman trait cause spinal shivers to corrupt boons instead. That’d make the trait worth taking.)

Dagger is “DPS” in that it has one of the easiest to maintain constant streams of damage due to the speed of the auto attack chain.

Great sword however, should deal more damage when it’s kit is used properly (getting the chill on the auto attack, grave digger on low health foes, leeching bolts in the dark field, ect).

Considering it’s flat mitigation, it’s extremely potent. This also allows non-condition damage builds to utilize “Rise!” more effectively. Though it relies on the minions attacking, It’s fair to note that jagged horrors are rather responsive, so the same can be said of shambling horrors.

These minions will have a LOT of synergy with DM/BM/Reaper minion master builds, as the siphoning and redirection will have a large impact on the builds effectiveness. I can easily see more DM/BM/Reaper MMs running transfusion instead of unholy martyr once these new minions drop.

It is fair to note though, that and curses/DM/Reaper builds will have less access to bleeding by extension, thus this will nerf their damage.

Lily.1935:

Dark Bond was a really strong GW1 skill. It redirected 75% of all incoming damage from yourself to the closest minion. Though the skill wasn’t that good.

Speak for yourself, I used dark bond and infuse conditions on my fort aspenwood MM PvP build all the time. You’re basically unkillable once you get your minions going.

Esorono.1039:

nearlight.3064:

TheLastNobody.8319:

nearlight.3064:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And now we get minions that tank for you. I’m happy ^.^

What you talking about Willis?

Look at Robert Geesus’s Reaper Changes from beta feedback thread thats stickied above. Now “Rise!” is instant cast, unblockable, and instead of jagged horror’s, it now summons shambling horrors, which take 50% of the damage you receive to themselves, much like the mesmer skill, illusionary defender.

As for what a shambling horror is, its this:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shambling_Horror

….permission to squee captain?

Permission granted.

I think it could have some serious potential, since MM necro has been actually quite good these days when played by someone whose not a newb, but MM necro was always kinda weak in teamfights since the minions could be cleaved down while the necro could be focusfired without worry of them using spectral armor or whatnot. Now with rise, they’ll get tons of minion uptime and passive defense in larger fights, which I hope turns out to be good.

It will depend on how much health the shambling horrors have compared to jagged horrors, as they’ll still lose health each second making it more of a teamfight oriented minion skill.

How they work will make or break the skill.

Based on Robert’s wording, it seems like dark bond is a buff that is placed on you when the shambling horror lands an attack (much like how all the current minion effects rely on the minion landing an attack.) If the buff only lasts 2-3 seconds it might be a bit on the weak side, but if it’s 4-5 seconds then we’ll be in business.

There’s also the matter of if the buff is between all of them, if the buff works on them individually, and if individually, does it stack?

Honestly, this relies pretty heavily on minion AI functioning properly. While jagged horrors have am history of functioning better than the other minions, if these guys afk, then it’s gonna hamper the effectiveness of them even more.

I cannot wait to use the new “Rise!”, that change looks sweet!

nearlight.3064:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And now we get minions that tank for you. I’m happy ^.^

What you talking about Willis?

Look at Robert Geesus’s Reaper Changes from beta feedback thread thats stickied above. Now “Rise!” is instant cast, unblockable, and instead of jagged horror’s, it now summons shambling horrors, which take 50% of the damage you receive to themselves, much like the mesmer skill, illusionary defender.

As for what a shambling horror is, its this:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shambling_Horror

Holy kitten that’s awesome! If that sticks I cannot WAIT to use “Rise!” in the next BWE!

Considering the flesh golem is an elite ability, I think the flesh golem’s charge should be a leap finisher. All the aura’s he can gain from it would synergize immensely with how he simply runs into the enemy and eats damage.

The flesh Golem isn’t really a bad elite skill, but I feel like he needs that little bit of extra oomph when compared to the other elites.

Malchior.5732:

Jski.6180:

Malchior.5732:

OtakuDFifty.2965:

The “hate” seems to revolve around “if it can’t replace PvP metas it’s trash.” That’s a problem with all the class boards here, so kindly ignore it.

It can’t replace Cele D/D, but it also can’t do anything better.
It can’t replace Staff in PvE, but it also can’t do anything better.
It can’t make Scepter a more viable option either.

So what does it do exactly?

Other then being tempest cele d/d giving more ability for d/d ele to simply get away for free with -100% duration to soft cc war 2.0 hehe.
Tempest not a dps but it is support so if you need more of a support staff it dose.
Scepter is as pure dmg wepon so why is that an issue?

Scepter isn’t pure damage, but whatever; it doesn’t provide ANYTHING for Scepter players.

Well actually, it provides scepter players with additional truly mid-range spells and AOE CC effects (which are super helpful if the enemy tries to focus you). I find the warhorn to be the perfect compliment to my fresh air zerker build.

I worked pretty darn hard to get my 30ish points in the hall of monuments in GW1, and apparently my account was one of the ones labeled as “bug abusing” and had all my stuff taken away. The thing is, I didn’t even have the god walking amongst mere mortals title! So why on earth was all my stuff taken away?

reaper’s shroud is fantastic and seems to work perfectly fine, greatsword seems to need a little work though (listing them as skills 1-5)
1: the auto chain does too little damage per attack. Even with power primary gear a LARGE number of builds out sustain the damage.
2: Gravedigger needs a damage increase, it should also cooldown 100% instead of 80%
3: Death spiral is a great skill, I don’t think it needs a change.
4. Nightfall does it’s job, no changes really needed.
5.Dark grasp could use a slightly longer range

As for the soul eater trait: the 3% per enemy hit with grave digger should be changed to 5% cooldown reduction per enemy hit.

Rise! actually has some pretty decent synergy for Death magic/blood magic/reaper combo as it procs blood bond very easily, the cooldown is pretty long though at base.

Robert Gee.9246:

Reaper Shroud skills all work underwater. Shout skills don’t for this BWE but I’d like to eventually get them working for a future one (and for expansion release).

awesome! I hope someday this extends to flesh golem as well (though at least the elite shout won’t kill all my minions underwater.).

I don’t see anything besides reaper getting projectile blocking. The only reason RS2 got projectile blocking, was probably because death’s charge is supposed to be part of the “unstoppable” factor in reaper.

Reminds me a lot of flesh golem charge in a way.

I don’t understand why gravedigger was nerfed. It already did less DPS than dagger auto attack with 100% cooldown, why give us a clunky second waiting period between? There’s literally nothing you can do with that time.

I certainly do appreciate the response. The clarity is important and does a lot more for my opinion of how it’s being looked at than complete silence.

I do wish we got patch notes a lot like how GW1 patch notes were. When skills were re-balanced, there was normally an explanation with each of them like “we felt that lingering curse had too much presence in jade quarry, so we reduced the degen slightly for PvP.”

The big issue I think a lot of players have, is that we don’t understand why things like chilling darkness were nerfed, yet dagger/dagger ele remains untouched after all this time. Explanations behind changes (in the patch notes) would really help players understand why certain balance changes happen.

gonna test reaper elite spec in PvP.

I’m wondering if pet/minion/summon mechanics will be improved in HoT. There are a large number of issues with them that need to be corrected:

-Summons being killed by transformations (this is at it’s worst for necromancers) Giving 2 classes the ability to put all the utilities on multiple specs on cooldown.
-AI in general (atttacking targets, following targets properly, bugging out and afking, ect)
-AI not avoiding AOEs (they did in GW1, why has this changed?)
ect

A lot of this is amplified by the fact that engineer’s new elite spec looks like it’s going to have drones. I love classes with summons and pets (spirit weapons, minion master, turret engineer, ranger, ect) so I’ll be really happy. However, if they don’t address these issues, then the new elite spec will fall flat on it’s face before even putting it’s feet on the ground.

brannigan.9831:

striker.3704:

Pnutz.9135:

Are engi, necro, and ranger bad in the current meta or something? I want to play a range class, so with ele and mesmer out of the windows, those are what I was looking at.

Engineer requires some serious finger acrobatics. Engineers have some of the most versatile traits, utilities, and combinations I’ve ever seen. However, you can get a lot of the same power with less effort on other classes.

Necromancer suffers from a number of issues with a number of builds (well cooldowns, minion AI being poop, wonky signets, lack of stability, ect). Necromancer can be good, but every single build they have is lacking just a little something.

Ranger suffers from pet AI and the same deal as necro. All of their builds lack in different areas.

In regards to OP, the most common are D/D eles, Mesmers, followed by burning guardians and thiefs.

Burning Guardians are not close to the third most popular class/build. At least in rated pvp most of the guardians I have seen have gone back to bunker and there are still more medi guardians then burning guardians. All guardians can inflict a fair amount of burning dont just look at some burning in the damage log and say Burning Guardian. I rarely see a torch off hand guardian in rated pvp. Unless you see that not a burning guardian.

The vast majority of guardians I run into in PvP (in the last 3 weeks) are in fact consecration burning guardians with sword+torch and great sword. After the ones I listed, the most common things I see (in no particular order) are:
GS/hammer warriors
elixer engineers
venom thiefs
power rangers
signet necros
Power necros

the rest of the builds after these guys are non existent or once in a blue moon. Off the top of my head I’ve only ever seen 2 spirit weapon guardians, 1 deceptions thief, 3 scepter fresh air eles, 2 staff eles, and an assortment of other builds. I’ve never seen a single condition damage ranger in PvP in the entire 3 years I’ve been playing.

Pnutz.9135:

Are engi, necro, and ranger bad in the current meta or something? I want to play a range class, so with ele and mesmer out of the windows, those are what I was looking at.

Engineer requires some serious finger acrobatics. Engineers have some of the most versatile traits, utilities, and combinations I’ve ever seen. However, you can get a lot of the same power with less effort on other classes.

Necromancer suffers from a number of issues with a number of builds (well cooldowns, minion AI being poop, wonky signets, lack of stability, ect). Necromancer can be good, but every single build they have is lacking just a little something.

Ranger suffers from pet AI and the same deal as necro. All of their builds lack in different areas.

In regards to OP, the most common are D/D eles, Mesmers, followed by burning guardians and thiefs.

Brokensunday.4098:

hm axe could use a 20% damage buff and 1 apply cripple and torment no vulne
axe 2 wirl finisher

We don’t need a THIRD ranged condition damage weapon.

style.6173:

striker.3704:

Minions in GW1 would at times have issues with responsiveness in PvP as well. I played a lot of fort aspenwood as an MM, and there were a couple of specific corners where all your minions could get stuck.

The difference in GW2 is that minions are much more valuable since this game has a much more action oriented combat system where your minions abilities and attacks can have a big impact on how well the fight goes for you. There simply is no excuse for bone minions to idle behind you when the enemy you need them next to is far in front of you, or for your elite skill (flesh golem) to idle next to you while you’re downed when his attacks would let you rally.

Minion AI simply needs to be more responsive for PvP. Reverting the AI back to it’s release version for PvP exclusively might help tremendously.

Whenever an AI (ie minimal skill)

You need to play the game to add to the discussion.

Minions in GW1 would at times have issues with responsiveness in PvP as well. I played a lot of fort aspenwood as an MM, and there were a couple of specific corners where all your minions could get stuck.

The difference in GW2 is that minions are much more valuable since this game has a much more action oriented combat system where your minions abilities and attacks can have a big impact on how well the fight goes for you. There simply is no excuse for bone minions to idle behind you when the enemy you need them next to is far in front of you, or for your elite skill (flesh golem) to idle next to you while you’re downed when his attacks would let you rally.

Minion AI simply needs to be more responsive for PvP. Reverting the AI back to it’s release version for PvP exclusively might help tremendously.

Nerfing cold shoulder like that is ridiculous, why do they keep nerfing reaper before release? I’m willing to be that dragon hunter got nothing but buffs between now and it’s reveal.

Bhawb.7408:

I wouldn’t run Axe or Focus in an MM build over Dagger and either WH or Dagger offhand. You lose a lot of damage, healing, and immobilize for CC chaining, and for OH you lose either a source of bleeds for Blood Bond + condition removal or CC + massive LF generation and swiftness. A/F just doesn’t make up for it, focus 5 is too long of a cast to be useful, so all you really get is a ranged AA and Axe 3/Focus 4, which don’t compare to how much D/WH or D give you.

You’re right, I do lose a lot of damage (dagger auto) and healing (dagger 2) by taking Axe over dagger mainhand. However I like having a ranged option, and I really detest staff. That (and having made frostfang for my necro) is why I’m trying to make axe work here. Also, since I’ll have Greatsword in swap, I’ll still have a “high damage option” even if it’s left in it’s current state (which I foresee them buffing the coefficients).

On the offhand, this is where it’s more of a grey area. Dagger would make sense with it’s ranged abilities, weakness application, and blinds. However, the condition transfer can almost be considered a waste since minions take a lot of conditions off of me. That said, especially against burn guardians and cele eles, removing those massive burning stacks that get through the minion removal is paramount. Dropping focus, especially without the spite tree, for dagger might be an excellent idea.

Bhawb.7408:

The real test will be if Greatsword and double melee will work, if not you’d probably go A/D + D/WH.

I think reapers using double melee will be very effective. Especially if they use speed of shadows and relentless pursuit. However the traits to make that work are spread too thin for a minion master to really utilize that type of setup, which would work better for a spite/SR/reaper.

For a minion master, I feel locking down an enemy is more important than keeping up with them. This maximizes the time your minions can wail on the enemy. Dagger has that in the form of an immobilize, However you won’t have the speed in an MM build to really keep up with any ranged classes (played properly) to be a threat. Thus I feel like a ranged option is a necessity.

Bhawb.7408:

It’ll be really interesting to see how much sustain Reaper brings, it could possibly replace Blood Magic for non-clerics builds, though I’m not sure how viable they will be without the ability to keep minions alive. I’m guessing DM/BM/R could be good, and either Spite or SR to replace BM could work if more selfish Soldier builds are supported by the new traits.

While BM brings transfusion and siphoning for minions, transfusion gets interrupted frequently in this mantra mesmer and cele ele meta. The best way to keep minions alive is to pressure the enemy enough for them to not attack them.

I actually run soldier’s gear on my DM/BM/Spite minion master build. Siphoning is strong at a base, and doesn’t really scale all that well with healing power unless you’re running a vampiric wells build (well of blood scales fantastically with healing power). Soldier’s MMs can easily utilize BM.

For SR to be able to replace BM in this build, Reaper shroud 1 would need to have quite the sustainable life force generation.

Spite however, has potential for competing with BM in this case thanks to blighter’s boon. Looking at it now, If I wanted to have plenty of sustain running Axe+focus with greatsword, using http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQBfANYBuQ~ would be rather ideal. You’d be generating a lot of might, which would all proc blighter’s boon. In fact, I’d very much like to try out this build to see if it would give the sustain I’m looking for.

Now, A death nova reaper is something else I’m curious about. I feel like it would end up being a sort of hybrid of blind necro and condi necro, looking something like this:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQC5APUBqg~
using scepter+dagger and GS
utilities: (optional heal skill choice), “Rise!”, bone minions, shadow fiend, lich form
Assuming that the chill damage from deathly chill is the damage per second, this will generate damage from nearly every skill off your bar, and make the shadow fiend’s blink a lot more useful. You will also deal plenty of AOE pressure from both the chilling novas and death novas. Deathly swarm will now also potentially chill up to 3 foes at once (assuming it treats a single toss as 1 pulse).

Zenith.7301:

Also remove retal from it, retal is useless as a boon, especially in PvE. Give it something useful like vigor or fury per opponent hit.

Everything about unholy feast and the focus skill spinal shivers is bad for PvE and great for PvP. This isn’t so much a fault of the weapon as PvE encounters not being designed properly (lack of enemies using boons, no need to cripple enemies, ect). Retaliation is in the same boat. It’s a great boon, PvE just needs to keep up.

StAllerdyce.3941:

Honestly, I think there’s a fundamental issue with how slow the GS will be. If the damage is below dagger, you will rarely see it in PvP (and the focus on chill makes me think they were hoping reaper would be good at this…ignoring all the other problems with Chill and melee-reaper in an environment where enemies will, y’know, move), but if it’s higher than dagger, you will never see dagger in PvE…except maybe for building life force. We’ll get a better idea with the final numbers. Either way, one weapon will be blown out of the water.

Reaper greatsword should be higher damage than dagger because it has a greater risk-reward.

Dagger has one thing the GS won’t be able to replace, and that is a secondary healing skill on 2. Dagger will always be king when it comes to a siphoning focused style of build.

I wanna theory craft some MM Reaper builds with ya’ll. This is focused on PvP (or WvWvW) types of discussion.

As of now, I run axe+focus and dagger+warhorn as a minion master (using http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQDWAS4AXw~) . I heavily utilize siphoning from dagger+warhorn to keep my health up, while axe+focus gives me retaliation, regeneration, and vulnerability to allow me to win out even more in a trade of blows. The speed from quickening thirst helps me keep up with enemies to ensure I drop them.

The one I was looking into using was:
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQDWAR4Btw~
using axe+focus and greatsword
However, I have some concerns looking at trying to fit reaper into this build:
1. I won’t have the increased speed from quickening thirst
-Could this be considered offset by relentless pursuit?
2. I won’t have the dagger 2 skill to act as a secondary healing skill
-I want to supplement this with soul eater, but will the increased killing power, chill, and ample access to leeching bolt whirl finishers offset the lowered siphoning?
3. I won’t be able to bring all the traits to make axe more effective, which will greatly reduce my retaliation up-keep and boon hate.
-Does the 15% damage reduction from cold shoulder potentially offset the retaliation pressure?
4. Since I won’t be using a dagger, my only options for a blood magic adept are blood bond and ritual of life, neither of which really fit into this build.
-Do I take blood bond and hope jagged horrors+dodge bleeds proc the trait? Or should I instead take ritual of life even though it doesn’t do much of anything for me?