Guild Wars 2

The nerf to vigor was justified, and reasonable. The lack of nerf to fire and air sigils is what makes this hard to take. If they nerfed fire and air, this change wouldn’t be a problem. Now I’m expecting burst wars 2 after this patch.

Dadnir.5038:

What you said is pretty long and, I’d say a bit to accurate. For me, what necro actually need it’s simple : reliability and synergy.

Reliablity :
- A lot of the necromancer’s skills don’t connect for a lot of reason or simply don’t work (These days I’m fed up to see that even against an immobile WB there are times where Life blast don’t connect. It’s a pain and they really need to rework the pathing of this skill).
- We have blast finisher that we can’t exploit even for very basic teamwork because we got absolutely no controle over them.
- Minion that stare into the void are also unreliable.
… etc.

Synergy :
- No usefull combo field
- Unreliable finisher
- Poor ability for usefull support
- New traits assuming that your team member will die around you
- No synergy with PvE environment (No boon to corrupt. I’m pointing it since it seem that it’s Anet answer to our rant about necro having no support.)

NB.: I should probably edit it as a signature but : Support and debuffing are 2 differents things. Never ever assume that you do some kind of support when you debuff yourself or a foe.

Yeah this pretty much nails it. I’d also put these things in the reliability list.

Reliability:
Flesh Wurm is the only skill that actually puts you out of harms way, but has to be precast. Spectral walk has to be preemptively cast. Spectral Armor doesn’t do anything against 3+ opponents in team fights. Well of Power doesn’t work fast enough. Foot in the grave again doesn’t actually prevent you from taking damage. Every other class has ways of completely preventing damage taken, through evasion, invulns, or disengages through ports.

Another big thing with reliability is cast times. All of our defense relies in us hitting our target, but due to slow cast times we have the hardest time actually hitting our target. If they aren’t gonna give us instants, skills that hit really fast are a must.

The last problem is our long cooldown times. Anet addressed it a little bit, but a lot of necros utilites have huge cooldowns. Well of Darkness in particular is sad when you consider glyph of storms, lightning hammer, thieves, and guards.

Laraley.7695:

I feel like many issues have not been addressed. Plenty of classes have skills that never get used. Or you have skills that are used but are seriously underpowered compared to other skills.

I really thought they would rework scepter on ele finally, the weapon is picked up only because of fresh air, but half of the skills are just so freaking bad.

Pretty much every class has this feeling with something. Thief p/p, necro axe/focus, ele scepter, mesmers scepter/offhand sword, warrior mace, guardian shield, and ranger warhorn. Maybe we could open a poll to get them to work on some of the weapons, and utilities.

edit: spoj beat me to it.

Anet needs to get it through their heads that classes that don’t provide a lot of boons, need to provide something unique. I’ve always felt necros should have 2-3 unique group buffs to make up for the fact that we don’t get many boons. They took a good step by giving us aoe vampiric, but it needs to scale with power if it’s going to be useful in pve.

choovanski.5462:

obviously warrior rifle

But what about the people who haven’t learned to dodge 3 years in? Rifle too op vs them.

Sunshine.5014:

I had a thread on overall Ele weapon skills in the signature

So mostly some fixes to some of the absurd cast times on scepter and staff (Ground target dragon’s tooth all day please).

Aenesthesia.1697:

Shikoba.6378:

Convince me there will not be another three years of “Let’s crap on the Necromancer” and that I should pre-order Heart of Thorns.

necros are the Starks of this game. There will be indeed crapping the necros so far as there’s anybody left playing one, and if there wasn’t, anet would still find a way to crap on necros some more.

Really awesome analogy lol, we even ascended to kinghood for a short time (dhummfire patch), before most of our family was killed (aka condition build nerfs). I still think a stark will end up with the throne, so maybe that is a sign we will get buffed really hard at some point (I can dream).

With the trait patch looking to be almost completed, I’m curious if the Anet Devs plan on doing a balance pass for the underused weapons and utilities now? Some of the weapons and utilities are just subpar compared to everything else. Figured it would be nice if their was a thread where people could point out some of the weak skills. For instance:

Necromancer Well of Darkness: This gets outshined by ele glyph of storms, thieves, engi smoke bomb, other necro wells (better area denial). Needs to be at most a 30 second recharge.

Mesmer Scepter 2, sword 4: You shouldn’t be able to dodge the effect on these skills when a mesmer uses them to successfully block. It should be block, instant effect applied otherwise they will never be good.

These are just a few examples, any thoughts on weak weapons or utilities that didn’t get addressed on this patch?

There will be another three years of “Let’s crap on the Necromancer,” and you should wait until this is fixed before spending any money on an expansion. That is unless you like the other classes.

Khristophoros.7194:

You’re assuming I’m bad at warrior. No, the criteria I judge this on is how well the character can compensate for my group making mistakes. The warrior doesn’t do it as well as the necro does. It even carries complete trash groups through fractals.

Recently I had a group wipe on bloomhunger when I was on my warrior and I managed to solo it, so I don’t think I’m bad at warrior. But it would have been much easier with my necro.

Listen dude, you can play your tank necro build all you want, you can think your doing good all you want, but the fact of the matter is toughness, healing power, vitality, and the idea of tanking are not needed in pve. Being good in pve means you provide offensive buffs, utility, and/or high damage, necros don’t do this, and are therefore bad in pve. Warriors on the other hand are good because they provide these things. You may have your opinions about what works, but in terms of finishing dungeons quickly every single class is better than necromancers currently. Since that is the criteria that everyone in this game uses to define good in pve, necros are bad in pve.

In wvw, necros are meta in zergs because they provide massive aoe damage, boon corruption, blind, and chill. They are at best average at roaming because they lack the ability to disengage, and are therefore sitting ducks when outnumbered or low on health.

In pvp, necros are bottom tier with rangers because they are slow, can’t hold a point, and die more easily than every other class when focused in team fights. This can be worked around with certain team compositions, but in general isn’t worth it, which is why you see very few necros in gw2 pvp tournaments.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

so with trait line specific stats getting removed we get compensation by base stat increase and gear stat increase. but i dont think that zerker gear will give so much precision/crit chance that u get the same crit chance like with 30/6 points in to the precision tree.
so i thought that maybe classes without good precision boosters need assassins gear again (or a lot more spotter rangers). there already are a lot of situations where assassin is a bit better than zerker so with these changes imo only 2 classes will be able to reach 100% during normal gameplay in full zerker: thief and necro.
so i see this as an indirect damage increase for necro as everybody else maybe has less damage because of the loss of power (and thief always was the king of dps)
what are ur thoughts? and if this wasnt clear enough-> PVE.

Well, it will be hard to say before Tuesday. Honestly though, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. Condition builds will become more effective in dungeons, but power builds will probably still be dominant. Since that’s the case, the classes with the best power scaling, and group buffs will win out (AKA, ele, thief, war, guard). Necros might be a little bit better because of aoe siphons, prot on wells, and weakness, but I doubt we will be any better than rangers or mesmers let alone eles and thieves.

NeuroMuse.1763:

I think a single dev is probably obsessed with the whole sacrifice mechanics from GW1 and wanted to see it have more play in GW2 along with condi transfers (which lock you into specific weapons/utilities/traits – goodbye diversity) nor are any of the skills even remotely powerful enough to warrant having a negative effect when other classes get superior options on lower cooldowns with 0 negative effects . ~_~

That’s kind of how I feel to be honest. Most of the other classes only got good things, very few nerfs anywhere, and a ton of buffs. Then I look at necros, for every buff their was a similar nerf. Also, doesn’t matter how good the traits are it won’t fix necros weapons. Axe 1 and 2 are terrible, until that changes no one will run it in pve, or pvp. Dagger has one dps skill and 2 relatively weak sustain skills (due to CDs and cast times not effects), it needs to have more of an identity. Scepter 3 needs to apply a condition because scepter will never be a power weapon without a complete redesign. Focus 5 has an awful cast time, and focus 4 needs to give an offensive buff to go with the vuln. To top it all off, necro weapon skills have a grand total of 2 finishers, and one combo field. If Life blast doesn’t deserve a 100% projectile finisher, no other skill in the game does.

I wouldn’t be going around saying how good something is compared to something else, the last time people did that it resulted in the current consume conditions nerf. This of course because ANET logic is not to buff the super weak things on our class, but to nerf the strong things. That way everything feels the same and you don’t realize how weak necro is till you play something else.

For the following reasons.

1) You didn’t increase build diversity by nerfing this. No one is going to use the 3 useless heal skills necros have until you buff them. The minion doesn’t stay alive, doesn’t attack, and doesn’t heal for that much (Good mms take CC). The well got a fat nerf to healing power scaling and has a massive cooldown requiring you to trait to make it remotely effective. Signet of Vampirism can be counterplayed far to easily by dodging the long animation, dodging/invuln when you get hit by it, or leaving the fight when you get hit by it. It’s passive also sucks in comparison to other classes signet heals. Basically, this has been necros only heal skill for a while, and it will remain this way

2) Consume conditions already had ample counterplay in the huge cast time, and relatively long CD. Now it has more because of the even longer CD, and the burst necros will be vulnerable to after using it. I don’t understand how you can nerf this, while withdraw, and shelter which have very little actual counterplay didn’t get touched.

3) The only builds that will take the CD reduction are PVE builds. Anyone who wants to have any impact on fights needs terror or POC in their build. The 8 aoe might stacks for 8 second, which should be for 15 seconds btw, and 27 second corrupt boon would be great, but without terror or POC you simply will never kill someone. It seems like you nerfed this skill just so people have to consider taking the corruption trait. People should want to take traits because they are good traits, not because they are necessary to make the classes skills useable.

Overall, this has been a very bad change, something that nerfs pretty much every necro build, and introduces no diversity. Along with that it is a direct nerf to a class that has sparsely been meta in pvp and didn’t need any nerfs, especially not to it’s very highly telegraphed heal skill.

PS: For real on blood is power, the might should be at least 12 seconds. It’s a way weaker version of empower, and no where close to the basic might stacking potential of eles and wars.

Xom.9264:

You should have a exotic armor set of zerk.

Do not invest in ascended armor until after the new traits are tested. The few stat points don’t matter anyway unless you are hardcore pve min/max…. and if thats your style playing the wrong class.

This. If you care this much level an ele and consider making ascended armor. Even then, your best off waiting till they change things because it’s pretty expensive. Meanwhile you can get exotic armor, weapons, and trinkets with a few days of dungeon running, or world bosses.

1) priority should be the bleeds. Staff and scepter aren’t exactly strong weapons, and the nerfs to them where completely unjustified.

2) The reason you shouldn’t just fix dhummfire is because staff and scepter should exist and be good options without dhummfire. Just fixing dhummfire fixes one build only. Having said that current dhummfire is really weak for a gm on base necro (looks to be stronger on Reaper). Maybe they will finally lower the full cast time (1 and 1/2 second), and damage on life blast.

3) Corrupt boon should be avoidable, so keeping the cast time is fair. I’d be all for increasing the cast 1/4 second if they made it convert all boons, or it prioritized stability. OP does bring up the point of instant defense though. There are just a few too many skills that instant apply boons, remove conditions, or deal damage for me. Anything over 3 or 4 instant cast skills on a build is too much imo.

4) Most of the revival utilities need to be reworked, rethought, or removed. Most of them are currently broken, and they fill up a useful skill slot.

5) Terror has been nerfed way too much since its release. It was an adept, now it will be GM with less damage. It was too strong at the beginning, but now the nerfs have gone overboard. The 17% damage needs to come back, and the trait needs another effect to be gm worthy.

6) Weakening shroud would be good if they brought back 1 bleed, and 1/2 the weakness uptime on no icd (4 seconds base). The max you’ll ever be going in and out of DS in pvp is realistically every 15 seconds even with 7 second cd on DS. Even then, the shroud animation is easily avoidable because their is an animation associated with the cloud.

NeXeD.3042:

We are about to be immune to conditions as reaper, give it a couple months

1) Reaper’s will not be immune to conditions. They will have a lot of resistance to soft cc if they spec for it, but that means you aren’t taking chilling nova. It also means your sacrificing damage, might duration, or stats to get all that percent reduction. This probably won’t be worth it because it isn’t now on warrior.

2) That is the specialization, the specialization should not be a patch to fix the problems with the base class. It should be an addition to it.

I don’t really want the buffs the OP asked for, but saying reaper will fix it is terrible logic as to why skills on the base class shouldn’t get buffed. As to the OP, I don’t think this really fits the theme of these skills, and it wouldn’t really make these skills any better against focus fire. I personally think spectral armor should be an invuln, and walk should be a double port like thieves shadow step. Something like:

Spectral Amor: Use spectral energies to absorb all damage and break stun. Invulnerable for 3 seconds, gain life force when struck.

Spectral Walk: Travel through the nether realm to the position, gain swiftness and break stun (900 range port).
Spectral Recall: Return to the previous location.

I’d also like to see the port of wurm changed to
Necrotic Traversal: Sacrifice your flesh wurm, teleport to it, and poison foes. Range (5000)

That way we would actually have skills to move us out of focus fire. Instead of break stun from focus fire and immediately get cc’d or immobilized. Until we get something like this, stability and sustain, or a bunch of dodge rolls the base necro class will never survive against focus fire and therefore continue to rarely be taken in tournament play.

sorrychief.2563:

I hope people don’t believe that, “jack of all trades master of none” thing. Engi can stack might, vuln, stealth just as well as any other class and provide rngesus projectile hate and condi cleanses.

It’s really sad to see you say this even after the guys above showed that this isn’t true. The fact of the matter is you can’t stack might as well as an ele or warrior, you can’t stack stealth as well as a thief, and you don’t provide nearly as much reflect as a guard or mes. You can keep blindly believing what you want, but that will never change the facts.

If you really believe you can do this, I challenge you to make a video. I expect you to upkeep 25 might, 25 vuln, stealth your group really quickly, and provide 100% uptime on reflects. Unless I’m misunderstanding that is what you claim engis can do.

Jekkt.6045:

now this comes nowhere near what other classes have

Yes, that’s the point. The 600 range leap needs to be 900 range. It has a full 1 second cast, that isn’t much faster than walking with swiftness. The pull will be nice, but again 600 range is not a lot. Also, no necro should take hoelbrek runes, they have a lot of condition removal already.

As I said, flesh wurm should be instant or portal range. 1/4 second is not good enough for a port stun break. It needs to be castable while stunned. Everything else you posted is about reaper, and not everyone will have that. Basically, even if reaper gave necros thief levels of mobility it still wouldn’t justify how weak the mobility on base necro is.

Cynz.9437:

actually rangers are pretty slow if they camp bow… so yes, my point actually works here :P

and yes, that is what i am saying about mesmers

If they camp bow, well thieves are pretty slow if they camp p/p too, but they don’t do that and a good ranger won’t camp bow. That’s the moving the goalpost logical fallacy.

What about guards? you think they would be OP with 25% movement speed signet? What about extra 300 range on sword 2 and gs 3.

Cynz.9437:

zapv.8051:

Cynz.9437:

Ask yourself: is mesmer or necro melee classes?

Necros are whatever range the people fighting them want because they can’t do much about it. Mesmers get the most benefit out of shatters in melee range, so yes I would say they are.

on paper they should be… cripple/chill/fears~

maybe mes does benefot from shatter in melee but if mesmer spends whole fight in melee, they get downed faster than own clones :P

On paper yes they have 3 ranged weapons (not sure if I should count axe), but rangers are mostly ranged, and have similar levels of cc yet aren’t nearly as slow. The point your trying to make doesn’t really work for this reason.

What you’ve basically said is that mesmers need a ton more mobility because they need to get into melee to deal damage and then get out to not die.

Cynz.9437:

i am not saying necros shouldn’t get more moblity, i am saying they would need to lose something for it as trade off because they weren’t designed to be mobile from begin with… and classes who are designed to be mobile are extremely squishy and/or have to sit in melee to be able to land high dmg (in both cases necro isn’t, you may argue with it all you want)

Your once again assuming we are looking for buffs to put them on par with thieves, warriors and eles, but we aren’t. Currently, necros mobility is like a 1 and we want to make it a 3 or 4, meanwhile thieves and warrs are 9s. They wouldn’t need to be nerfed at all for these small mobility buffs we are asking for. Also, necros need to be pretty close to melee range to deal a lot of damage, dagger, warhorn, Life blast (600 range or less for max damage), life transfer, tainted shackles, and axe are all relatively close. At the same time, it isn’t like necros do godlike damage, remember they are still the worst class in pve.

Cynz.9437:

Ask yourself: is mesmer or necro melee classes?

Necros are whatever range the people fighting them want because they can’t do much about it. Mesmers get the most benefit out of shatters in melee range, so yes I would say they are.

PowerBottom.5796:

no.

not every class needs to be a jack of all trades; it’s a teamgame!

jesus christ – this is getting embarrassing……

No, not every class needs to be a jack of all trades your right, but mobility is only one aspect of the game. It is also, as I explained in my first post, something that is ubiquitous in the game. I’m also not asking for all classes to have the same amount of mobility, I just see these three classes as overwhelmingly subpar in moving around maps, which is a major hindrance to basic gameplay.

Cynz.9437:

- “weakest defense” – excuse me, wat?… have you tried to play ele/thief/mesmer/ranger?
- necros don’t have to run zerker build only….. they shine at condis, why not run them?……

necros are anything but squishy and they do considerable dmg, they just happen to have different kind of moblity via keeping target chilled/crippled/CCd instead of porting to them…. it is all fine and good but conquest is about holding points and moving fast between them

necros are ok in team fights but due to lack of team support and stab they just get outshined by other profs
and obviously they can’t move around the map as fast as mesmers/eles/thieves etc.

my point is, imagine thief would have above 20k HP, second health bar, fears and elite with 1 shot AA while keeping all their moblity moves… that is what necro would be if they buffed their moblity

there is reason why mobile classes in this game are squishy (besides wars, which deal most dmg from melee and kind of need it)

Yes I have played all those classes and they all have way more defense than necros. You seem to think HP=defense, but then I’ll ask why don’t bosses live longer than classes when they clearly have way more HP. Thieves have the best defense in the game, this is obvious by the fact that good thieves rarely die. Necros have the worst defense because their is very little they can do against chain cc immobilize and burst. I’ve also played the necromancer class extensively, and am well aware that condition builds exist. Like all condition builds though, they are mostly irrelevant in a meta where shoutbow and medi guard exist.

Soft cc is not the same as mobility, soft cc can only be used in combat, and mobility can be used everywhere. Having a lot of soft cc does not mean a class should be devoid of a basic tool for traversing the many maps in the game. Again, squishy does not mean a class has little defense.

My point is, I’m not asking for thief levels of mobility on necros. That’s a terrible argument because giving necros a few buffs to mobility wouldn’t suddenly put them on par with thieves. You seem to not understand what I’m asking for, so let me explain it again.

I want necros, mesmers, and guards to get reasonable buffs to their mobility. Things like a 25% movement signet for mesmers, perma swiftness if they spec for it. Instant cast on necros blink, to make it like every other classes. Dark path having a faster travel time so classes can’t outrun it with swiftness. Guards having a little more range on their leap and port because they exist in melee just like warrs. All of these are not things that would put these classes mobility on par with the current kings of mobility, thief, war, and ele, but would make traversing maps, and rotating in pvp much more reasonable.

On another note, I’m getting really tired of people on this forum thinking someone is inexperienced just because they disagree with them. Until someone has shown otherwise, please treat others as if they are aware of game mechanics.

Auldon.1972:

That said, I don’t think necros are as weak as the OP is suggesting.

While at the same time being far far far weaker than all the people who can’t beat a power necro think.

Cynz.9437:

mesmers got ports that are unaffected by changes so actually they got indirect buff a bit

necro is designed to be rather slow, surely they could use some moblity buff but they would have to lose some defensive and/or offensive power imo

The changes aren’t a buff or a nerf to leap skills, so mesmers didnt get a buff.

Necros have the weakest defence in the entire game, so definitely can’t take from there. Their offense is also not nearly as good as people think, the damage isn’t any better than any other classes zerker builds (actual dps), it just all comes at once with the COD proc. I would be ok with them nerfing chill of death (proc on interrupt, longer CD), maybe lower the damage and cast time of life blast, but the dps is actually pretty poor.

Also, my point was that these classes need buffs to mobility without any kind of nerfs to compensate. Their mobility just needs to be better just to keep up with other classes. Also note I’m not advocating for all of the buffs I listed, just 1 or 2 buffs would be fine.

Darksteel.8412:

snip

Well its the same thing for every other class, every medi guard is hammer now, every thief is d/p, every ele is d/d, every engi is cele rifle, every mesmer is shatter. Also, it has nothing to do with warriors not being in the meta. If my main was in the meta I would be advocating for buffs to classes that weren’t in the meta first, and builds that weren’t second (That’s the difference between you and me, I’m looking for balance not to be an overlord). Many warrior players seem to have this ego that every one of their builds should be meta, even though there are classes that have barely been represented in competitive pvp at all (aka necros for less than two months, and rangers for less than a year).

If I had to make a list of classes I think should be out of the meta first this would be it:

1) Thief (been meta since day 1)
2) Guard (^)
3,4,5) Ele, Warr and Engi (all had similar time in meta from what I remember)
6) Mes
7) Ranger
8) Necro

I honestly think scepter could be better for backlining on a power build than either power weapon. It has a nice big aoe, and it’s 900 range. It almost wins out right there.

Darksteel.8412:

zapv.8051:

Darksteel.8412:

Loud yelling

Your being biased, emotional, and dishonest. Please stop. You keep saying only one warrior build is viable. If you mean in tournaments then their is only 6 builds across all classes that are viable, so having one of those 6 on your class is great. If your talking in general gameplay, warriors have more builds that perform well in unranked and ranked than any other class, so your just wrong. Either way please stop being a forum warrior, take a minute to step back and realize this is just a game.

hmmhmm, that’s why all I see is what are known as the good pvp guilds roll just 1 warrior and it’s always a shoutbow…even if they have 2 warriors, they are both shoutbow like 99-100% of the time for the past idk, 6+months?

So 20% of every team is your class and you think something is wrong? Meanwhile, there is 1-2 necros and 1-2 rangers in all of NA and EUs competitive scene. I get that you don’t like shoutbow, but saying warriors are weak is just blatantly false. Warriors have more builds that are almost meta than any other class in the game, and if you removed all the current meta builds from the game warriors would almost certainly still be in the meta.

P.S. double reply

It’s a nerf out of combat to everyone, but in combat it’s a big buff to classes with a bunch of leaps because kiting will be far less effective on them. It’s also a big buff to disengage on warrior, ele (FGS), and ranger.

Just wondering, vulnerability will now effect condition damage, what about all the other damage modifiers (i.e. bolt to the heart, close to death, executioner)?

Dear Anet,

Whether it be rotating in conquest, finishing maps in open world, racing through a dungeon, storming back to a fight after dieing in wvw, or chasing someone, mobility is essential. With the upcoming changes, several classes lack of mobility really stand out:

Guardians mobility has gotten a little better, but one 600 range leap, teleports that require targets, and no 25% movement speed anywhere are just not enough to keep up with other classes.

Mesmers similarly need access to 25% movement speed bonus outside the specialization and more swiftness. The leaps they have could also use a range increase (sword to 900, staff to 600).

Necromancers are probably the worst. While they have access to swiftness and 25% movement speed bonuses, they lack any real gap closer or teleport. Wurm needs to either be instant or be a selfish version of portal, Spectral Walk needs a port at the beginning to be on par with thieves shadowstep, Dark path can literally be outran so it needs 3X travel velocity, and/or the new Death’s Charge needs to be 900 range to go with the huge 1 second cast.

I don’t expect these classes to be faster than thieves, eles, or warriors who are clearly designed to be the fastest, but right now far too much effort goes into simple map travel. With the upcoming changes to leap skills, it will be far too easy to disengage from these classes that lack serious mobility. While this is partly by design, combat will be extremely stale for people on these classes if they can never actually kill anyone and that’s something I know you don’t want to see happen.

Best Regards,
Zap

Darksteel.8412:

Loud yelling

Your being biased, emotional, and dishonest. Please stop. You keep saying only one warrior build is viable. If you mean in tournaments then their is only 6 builds across all classes that are viable, so having one of those 6 on your class is great. If your talking in general gameplay, warriors have more builds that perform well in unranked and ranked than any other class, so your just wrong. Either way please stop being a forum warrior, take a minute to step back and realize this is just a game.

Yea the 2 skill needs work for sure. A cast time reduction would be fine, but it’s still a channeled skill on a duelist, assassin type weapon (high single target damage, 2 targets isn’t cleave). Making the life siphon an aoe wouldn’t fit the role of the weapon. It should just be a normal cast skill, or it needs to have a way higher reward (i.e. damage on par with auto). Channeled single target skills are really lackluster in this game because they are way to easy to interrupt, and you almost never get the full effect.

The point of making greatsword slow was to put big fat damage modifiers on everything, and make it large risk even larger reward gameplay as far as I can tell. To explain, I will introduce two concepts. One is called pure effectiveness and the other is called realistic effectiveness. Pure effectiveness is a measure of how strong a skill is assuming it gets used in the most optimal way (hits 5 targets, allies all standing in healing rings, etc). Realistic effectiveness is a measure of how strong a skill is taking into account all variables like cast time, number of targets required to meet peak damage, how often the skill lands, etc. In a perfect game, every single skill’s realistic effectiveness, or at least the mean of all skills realistic effectiveness on a given class would be the same.

What anet wants to do with reaper is give a very large pure effectiveness, while having the same realistic effectiveness against human players. This isn’t as simple as it may seem because the relationship between relative effectiveness and pure effectiveness will be pretty complicated (also the actual measure of effectiveness could be complicated). What all this tells us is that a skill with a 1 second cast needs to have more than double the effectiveness of a skill with a half second cast because the half second cast skill has less risk. Thus, you get slow cast time skills with huge pure effectiveness, but the same realistic effectiveness and you’ve brought diversity in the amount of risk reward for all builds, while maintaining balance.

Note: Not saying Anet does it this way, but it gets the point across.

Zefrost.3425:

Axe really does need an identity – it’s identity seems like it was supposed to be team based. Scepter is condition, dagger is power and/or life siphon (which never took off). Axe #3 is clearly “team based” because you get retaliation that scales up with more opponents (which you shouldn’t be fighting multiple opponents unless you’re in a team fight). Axe #2 is whatever but axe #1 is vulnerability which scales for allies.

I think just giving axe #1 cleave and increased damage would fix it, honestly. This has been my favourite weapon to fight with since ever but axe #1 sucks so bad. Maybe give protection or weakness on axe #3 as well as retaliation and cripple? Or give it a stun or a blast finisher, I don’t care.

Do anything to axe, at all.

Just don’t force me into greatsword >.> I like using off-hand dagger for condition removal.

I have to disagree, staff is supposed to be the team support weapon, aoe on every skill. Aoe regen, aoe cc for peels, aoe chill and poison, and 4 used to be a condition transfer from allies (should be again, but not as strong). Axe already fits the role of ranged power weapon it is just terrible at it, mainly cause it’s 600 range. Cripple to help kite, vuln for burst set up, and a burst skill.
The first change that should happen is a buff to 900 range. That automatically gives it a place as a ranged power weapon which nothing fills currently. Then, the auto needs to get reworked and the damage on 2 needs to go up a little. Also, we will be getting 10 short range aoe skills on reaper, probably don’t need anymore.

Axe needs to be turned into a real ranged weapon, we now have a serious cleave option in RS and GS and a melee-short range option in dagger. We don’t need more of the same, we do need something that hits decently hard from 900 range. Axe is the perfect candidate for this.

As I’m sure many of you know, diamond skin is lame. It is quite useless sometimes, and OP other times. I would like to see it changed to effect the attunement eles are currently in. Something like:

Diamond Skin: You are immune to specific conditions depending on your attunement (Won’t be applied if your in that attunement, if already applied their effects won’t work, but the conditions won’t be removed).

Fire: Burning and torment

Water: Chill and vuln

Air: Blinds, and confusion

Earth: Cripple and weakness

Something like this would be way cooler than what it is now, while still having counterplay.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

This thread isn’t even about reapers. It’s about Chill and about how much it hinders the elementalist over every other class.

I know the thread is about eles, that’s why it annoys me that someone brings up a specialization that isn’t done, whose performance in actual game settings we know nothing about.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Reapers theme is chilling, thus they’re going to have a large amount of chill regardless of what you say, the theme of the class is chilling so that is what they’re going to be doing. Damage is irrelevant, throw a reaper into a +1 and that Elementalist is as good as done. Chill affects Elementalists more than any other class where-as on the opposite end of the spectrum, thieves are near immune to the bloody condition.

Yes reaper’s will have a large amount of chill, this doesn’t automatically mean eles will fall over and die when a necro gets in combat with them. Your making a ton of assumptions that you can’t actually show to be true (It is logical not to make assumptions you can’t show to be true). I do think that something needs to be done about eles weakness to chill, but you shouldn’t justify that with a class that isn’t released, finalized, or tested by players. Furthermore, their attunement swapping should not be immune to it, attunement swapping is not the same as weapons swapping and rightly has some drawbacks.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

Chill just flat out needs a rework, it’s useless against some classes and insanely overpowered against others.

I don’t even play Elementalist in PvP, but all i need to do is wait for an Ele to leave water attunement, chill him, and he’s pretty much done.

Chill does not need a rework, the only class that isn’t effected properly by it is thieves (reduced inititiative regen please). Ele attunement swapping is a skill usage regardless of what you all think, so those attunements should be effected. Having said that I do think they are a little too weak to chill, but maybe that is intentional. Also, eles have stop drop and roll which removes chill and burning on dodge roll. You aren’t fighting good eles if all it takes to kill them is a little bit of chill after water swap. Furthermore, what your stating is good design and gameplay in that properly timed skill usage should be strong.

Xillllix.3485:

zapv.8051:

No one has actually played reaper. Stop saying what you will have to do against something that hasn’t been released please. The fact is you don’t know how strong reaper will be.

We’ve seen all the traits and skills. I would say we have a pretty good idea of how strong the Reaper will be, but honestly chill has been OP on ele for a while, and I wouldn’t even mind if they nerfed cleansing water honestly, as long as they removed chill on class mechanic on top of the normal chill on skills.

Really, so you know how much realistic uptime of chill reapers are going to be able to get on eles when they are still making changes to reapers?

You know how much damage they are going to be able to effectively land?

Are they going to be better for commanding than guards?

The fact of the matter is, you no very little about how the reaper will actually perform in game because all you’ve seen is the skills they aren’t even done balancing. Your trying to make them seem strong to justify buffs to your class, when in all actuality you know very little.

I do think it is a little too strong against elementalists. Maybe if it just reduced attunement CD by 33% instead it would be more manageable.

Xillllix.3485:

I totally agree, chill should not affect attunement swapping. With the Reaper we will be forced to trait cleansing water + geomancers freedom and diamond skin, and even that may not be enough.

No one has actually played reaper. Stop saying what you will have to do against something that hasn’t been released please. The fact is you don’t know how strong reaper will be.

I agree with you guys, the problem with necros is they have almost nothing that is low cast time. Furthermore, there isn’t any uncounterable defense on the class. All of our defensive skills either require hitting a target (LF generators, condition transfer, conditions), them hitting you (Spectral Armor, Walk), or have a big cast time. These all have direct counters, comparing to other classes they either get straight up healing instantly, boons instantly, blinds instantly, invlunerability instantly, teleport instantly, etc. Basically, necros need some instant uncounterable defense, which they don’t currently have.

Until we see some kind of hard to counter defense we will continue to get focused down in teamfights. They have made steps with reaper, the low cooldown stun break that applies weakness, 1/4 second aoe blind cripple, and pulsing stability will help greatly. Now they just need to add a few more things like that to the base class. Basically, I want them to buff our stunbreaks. Well of power should pulse stab, walk should have a teleport at the beginning or last longer, wurm should be instant cast or 5k range, armor should last a little longer or grant stab (note some of these might be a little op). Stuff like that, so that we can either create space to land skills, or have stability to land skills. This is because all of our defense relies on hitting foes, which makes us simply to vulnerable too coordinated cc.

Laraley.7695:

1. Have you ever played zerker ele? With that little hp you can really take only one LB to get all the procs. It’s also the fact that LB can proc both air and fire, which in total can be over 10K damage.
2. Dude, did you even write what I said? I even pointed out that every class does have access to those sigils, but they do not have another instant proc like CoD.
3. Again, this was never about how to counter necros. Altho, the downstate dmg is ridiculous.
4. I disagree with that completely.

1) Yes in fact I have. You have to hit the person when they are below 50% health for it too proc, aka at least two hits. Although it could proc off of something like locust swarm, and seem like it was one hit.

2) Right and what I’m saying is that an instant cast skill that procs those sigils is far harder to deal with. I know when chill of death is coming, I don’t know when a guard will pop an instant cast meditation, when a zerker ele will switch to air, when a mes is going to shatter or when a thief will hit me out of stealth. In other words, the necro has far more counterplay.

3) If it isn’t about countering necros what is it, if you want something nerfed because it is killing you it’s because you can’t or aren’t countering it. I’m explaining why necros are easily countered and therefore why this isn’t OP, or at the least less op than other things.

4) Your talking about the class that has to setup just to get access to it’s profession mechanic. All those staff and dagger autos a power necro lands are setup, whether you like it or not. Even then you better burn through a few of your enemies cooldowns and dodges or cc them before you get to land the big fat telegraphed skill that is life blast. It isn’t a difference of opinion, necros have to do a lot to land good damage against decent players. It certainly requires far more work than medi guard, theif, or fresh air ele.

1) Other classes have more instant proc/uanvoidable damage, again medi guard, thief, and mes all have unavoidable instant damage. Also, you are wrong it takes at least two life blasts to proc chill of death. It won’t proc till you hit them under the health threshold. Also, you should know that COD is coming.

2) Again, other classes hit just as hard if not harder, and are equally unavoidable. The fact that you keep bringing up fire and air just proves you have no point, every class has access to those sigils. I get that it is annoying that COD can proc these sigils, but you should focus more on not letting it proc in the first place, which is something you can’t do with other classes builds.

3) CC, blinds, dodging, reflect, bursting them out of DS, safe stomps. Literally doing just about anything defensively allows you to avoid most of necros damage. Much more counterplay than anything else.

4) Necros damage requires far more setup than other classes, their burst comes once every 30 seconds or so and requires immobilize to land. All the damage is on wells and life blast. If you can’t walk out of a well, burst a necro out of DS, CC a necro in DS, dodge blind or block a LB its because your bad, not cause the class is cheap.

Anyway, in the long run we are on the same side, I’m not really for stuff without counterplay, but its really dumb when people focus on necros and rangers that have the most counterplay in the game (this is evident because meta builds have very little counterplay, and necros and rangers aren’t meta).

If it was that strong, necros would be taken in tournaments. They aren’t, so it must not be. The FACT that necros, and also rangers aren’t taken in tournaments should be a much higher priority then people on the forums OPINIONS that they have OP or cheap mechanics.

Edit: in response to the last post

Laraley.7695:

Necros have 1 passive proc on the power build, that is it. You also know when it is coming, so it has direct counterplay far more than the meta builds that have absolutely no counterplay (engis instant cast ccs, warriors instant cast healing condition removals, guards instant damage and condition removal, steal on theives, shadowshot on thieves).

It is a myth that necros and rangers depend on pressing a few buttons. If you aren’t using all the skills available to you on those builds you aren’t playing them right. You can argue all you want about counterplay and skill required, but again power necro and longbow ranger are far less cheesy than the meta builds in terms of counterplay.

These specs aren’t cancer in soloq anymore than the meta builds. I’m much more excited to fight a power necro that doesn’t have much defense or a longbow ranger that I know I can lockdown versus a medi guard that has 5+ defensive cooldowns, instant cast damage and teleports, or a shoutbow that literally facerolls. Also, if your team lost to 3 power necros casting lich form its because your team was bad and probably would have lost anyway.

Here are the facts:

Necros and rangers have ample counterplay, that do not require serious group coordination. It isn’t that hard to call targets.

The actual meta builds have very little counterplay in comparison.

Necros and rangers are taken very rarely if at all in competitive pvp.

I can see how some of the stuff on these classes might be considered “cheap”, but if you nerf or remove the cheap stuff without giving a serious amount of buffs to these classes they will see no play at all. These are two of the least played classes in the game, and not wanted for many many things. The last thing they need is nerfs.

I agree with nexed, having to pay attention to animations is part of the game. Moving back to cast bars would be a step back, that’s for games without nice unique animations.

Yea, I’ve found dhummfire builds to be a lot stronger right now than traditional terromancer. The extra pressure you get, along with chill of death is necessary in this meta of people with a bunch of condition clear and sustain. Also, the 300 power from spite on a carrion amulet puts you at 1800, which is enough to make your life transfer, and life blast hurt much more. Basically, you need to minimize your damage build up in this meta otherwise you’ll never get enough conditions on people to kill them.

My strategy right now is to kite around, apply low cooldown skills, build LF, and dodge most of your opponents attacks (double energy is a must imo). Then use fear to make them pop cooldowns, corrupt boon, and burst with DS. The toughest class too fight is medi guard because they have a stupid amount of cooldowns. Shoutbows take a while to kill 1vs1 and thus aren’t worth engaging, but if I really have to I kill them eventually most of the time because I can send back most of their condition damage.

Everything on the Reaper looked good except shouts, which need a few changes imo. Gs brings a lot to the table besides damage, chill, aoe blind+cripple, 12 vuln stacks, and a pull are all great things. There seems to be ample variety in its usage as well. Also, Reaper shroud gives stab, so you should be able to run with only 1 stunbreak, which is huge for necros.

People keep saying GS will be really bad in pvp because it can be outranged, but reaper will be on point most of the time. If someone is off point I’ll just LOS like I do now. Only really becomes a problem on foefire with rangers. They also say it’s too slow and will be susceptible to blind spam, but the weapon has a multihit skill, and an aoe pulsing blind cripple field. That pretty much directly counters blind spam.

I’m not too worried about the reaper in general, I am far more curious to see what they do with the other traitlines. If they really work on blood magic (upwards of 5-6 trait rethinks), and fix up curses, spite, and death magic just a little bit, as in 2-3 trait changes, necros will be in a good spot traitwise. I’m also curious to see if they will change weapon and utility skills at all because that could be huge.

Other classes will not do vuln better after patch I promise you. Reaper’s will be able to get 25 vuln in 2 seconds or less and maintain it, no other class comes close to that. We will have a bunch of blinds, as well as chill, and hopefully some big fat scaling skills.

Well you can earn enough money to make sinister armor in about a day, so it won’t slow you down to much on your journey for a legendary. Sinister is the best pve condition damage gearset, so if that is what you want to do I would recommend it. Remember though, it is still miles behind zerker for speedruns. Sinister is also pretty good in wvw roaming, so there is that. I’d also recommend completing LW2 achievements for those unique ascended trinkets.

They should make it ally triggered, so if you or anyone else walks over it it activates. It would retain pretty much the same functionality given they didn’t change the activation, but maybe add another layer of depth.

I’m totally down with them nerfing chill of death, and downstate damage, as long as they buff literally everything else first. It’s sad when the only complaints about a class are when that class is on its back about to die.

Kilger.5490:

I’ll be using it in WVW. I’m thinking we wont be able to handle front line so focussing on an improved survival skirmish range build and going Knight when under severe pressure to escape, avoid pinball mode or if I want to lay down some melee pressure of my own.

For utilitys spectral walk for speed and wells, maybe a shout. Elite skill lich for old school lifeblast style nuking.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQDvAXUBuw~

We will almost definitely be able to survive front lining.