Guild Wars 2

Because we get nerfed without rhyme or reason repeatedly. This has actually happened 3 times now since launch of HoT.

Rune of the Lich just got removed from PvP, probably to nerf MM reapers. Something literally nobody complained about and it got removed.

GG Anet you really know how to show that you understand what you’re kittening doing. Removing content from PvP without any rhyme or reason and without taking communty feedback on it.

How about you let the kittening game settle and see if Minion masters actually are even USED AT LEAST ONCE in competitive play before nerfing them HUH!? If you’re gonna let elementalists run rampant for literally years then you can let me have fun for once.

“removed from PvP to promote healthy gameplay”

I got my answer. Apparently removed because abjured lost to a set of builds they had no experience too. Instead of letting the meta develop Anet removed content from the rest of PvP to cater to a small handful of players.

This is a big pathetic joke. You let vampiric runes run rampant on D/D eles for months, but a single team loses to a new build and you immediately remove the stuff they lost to from PvP? kittening disgusting. GW2 will never be Esports. Especially doing kitten like this.

don’t use GS auto attack unless the enemy is focused on another player. I find most of the time when I try to rush someone down with the GS, they’ll just create distance from me regardless of the positioning it will put them in or what my other allies do. The auto attack basically spells death for someone as soon as you get the third hit off.

Can this please stop? The only time this interaction exists is PvP and it’s only from engineers and mesmers vs necromancers. It’s bad design and makes it so you can be completely locked out of a PvP match if the mesmer or engineer run their skill that moa morphs.

pro tip: they will ALWAYS run the moa morph if they know a necromancer is on the other team. Moa morph counters every single part of the necromancer (knocks us out of all of our elite transformations, forces us out of death shroud, kills all minions). Not only that, but both of these classes WILL do it out of stealth, so there is no counter play beyond randomly dodging and hoping they don’t simply wait for you to use up both of your dodges.

The worst part, is if the engineer runs the tools trait that makes his toolbelt skill automatically recharge, he can moa you once every 40 seconds (he can do it even more often if he misses, this number is assuming he ONLY does it with the trait off cooldown). That means he’s able to keep your all of your minion utilities on cooldown 66% of the time (or flesh golem on cooldown 100% of the time) and if you somehow manage to dodge the first attempt, he will have a second attempt he can use! This isn’t fun at all.

The best part is that this only happens to minions. Every other class that summons things is completely unaffected and there is NO REASON FOR IT. Minion masters just get the shaft “just because”.

/rant

I don’t particularly much care for threads like these as they are pretty off topic. But whatever good luck and all that.

Additional sources of chill are never a bad thing. the closer you can keep the chill uptime to 100%, the closer you are to wining by just about default. AOE chill is also very VERY good in any team fight situation.

chilling victory isn’t honestly a “corner stone” trait anyways. It’s basically just some additional might procs for blighter’s boon.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAndRnM0Adbid1Au1As3glaBT6HEEObxbxx4ZEqrFAaAA-TZhBwAAOCAaOFAkLDE5BA4b/BA

This is what I’m currently running. It’s a death/spite/reaper Minion Master build. Unlike the traditional MM builds, this one focuses on the minions supporting you rather than you supporting the minions.

This build is pretty darn good, as blighter’s boon is very easy to proc. between spiteful spirit’s/unholy feast’s retaliation stacks, stability pulses, and the might stacks, you will be recovering a lot of health in RS, and be gaining a lot of life force to utilize RS. I normally have full life force by the time RS comes off cooldown.

the massive amount might stacks, and all the vulnerability you get from chill applications (25 stacks from 0 with just RS5+4 combo) you and your minions will be hurting the enemy. You’ll be just about able to maintain retaliation the entire time, so the enemy will also be hurting from trying to hurt you.

Beyond damage, you have massive amounts of damage mitigation from the absurd toughness and condition removal your minions provide. Let alone the power of “Rise!”. You’re minions also supply supplementary CC and life force generation. I could honestly make a lengthy video discussing this build and all it can do. It’s so much fun <3

Honestly, the only things I find that give this build any form of trouble are builds with overwhelming amounts of raw unmitigated spike damage in 1 on 1 scenarios. Things like damage focused daredevils give me the most trouble, as I can’t lock them down but they can lay massive amounts of damage onto me. This is no complaint as I SHOULD have trouble against them.

Well, now there is a lot less reason to run blood magic with reaper. I guess running reaper/spite/death magic is the way to go for me again.

considering WvWvW maps are hyper open, giving high mobility a huge advantage (in this case, any blinks, teleports, leaps, ect) you really shouldn’t expect anything different.

Also, Anet has said many many times they don’t balance the game around WvWvW. So you really shouldn’t be surprised.

Tim.6450:

Goldenrevolver.4371:

imo the vampiric traits are strong enough. life siphons are unblockable and not mitigated by armor. there is no real need to buff them atm imo.

I’m pretty sure that they are blockable. They are not migitated by armor though but atm they do around 40 damage/hit so to reach 1K damage with a single trait you need around 25 hits so it’s vey negligable.

striker.3704:

Atm vampiric needs to be stronger baseline. Right now it scales poorly and competes directly with life from death. If it had stronger base values, it’d be really good for builds using the blood magic tree but aren’the invested in healing power. At the moment, vampiric aura is completely inferior to life from death.

Well the vampiric traits could compete due to their hybrid nature and not having to rely on flashing death shroud. Better scaling could make them a contender for people who hand a bit more offense while still going blood magic.

Increasing the scaling of vampiric aura won’t help it because life from death scales INCREDIBLY well with healing power. vampiric aura needs a stronger base heal and damage so builds that want blood magic without investing in healing power can still benefit.

You honestly shouldn’t run minions without going all in unless you’re running a niche build (chilling darkness blind necromancer would use shadow fiend for it’s blind, for example). If you’reduce min maxing reaper, then there are other, better utilities for your build.

Atm vampiric needs to be stronger baseline. Right now it scales poorly and competes directly with life from death. If it had stronger base values, it’d be really good for builds using the blood magic tree but aren’the invested in healing power. At the moment, vampiric aura is completely inferior to life from death.

The shadow of great for sure. Anet just needs to re-release the great hood so I have a reason to craft the back piece.

There’s nothing preventing you from running dagger/warhorn and GS. Just use dagger/warhorn above 50% and GS below 50%.

It’s a huge buff to the 95% of the players who don’t care about their party composition beyond things that outright don’t work in select dungeons. This will make being a minion master in crucible of eternity and fractals a LOT easier.

This won’t make a difference to speed running. speed running is as meta as it gets composition wise, and minion master will never have a place in that (not like it really matters).

butch.8136:

Nike.2631:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Hey all,
…
We felt like minions were in a good place for PvP so we didn’t want to change them there for now. Thus, the interaction between players and minions in PvP combat will remain the same.
…

That’s a joke right? While ranger pets are more or less a thing because they have to be, Ranger Nature Spirits, Guardian Sprit Weapons, and Necromancer Minons and even Elementalist Elementals are extinct as an entire class of utility skills in sPvP and WvW. Even Engineer turrets have largely been bred out of the competitive environment and you can’t expect gyros or Reaper’s shambling horrors to change that.

The zoo meta was horrible in PvP. The turret meta was horrible too. We don’t need more AI in PvP.
Necro minions are being used.

there was never a zoo meta. Turrets were never used as turrets, only mass knockdown. Neither of these were issues caused by AI.

I hate this stigma against AI that has absolutely no substance or backing at all.

Reaper isn’the OP in any way. To suggest such a thing shows a real disconnect from the game.

No it doesn’t proc outside of combat.

Caine.8204:

striker.3704:

On GS I’m partial to sigil of chilling and sigil of ice. The 30% chance to proc can set up the third hit of the auto attack. The 20% increased duration is also awesome for all the other chill sources you have.
Honestly sigil of hydromancy should only compete with the sigil of ice. Both are additional sources of chilling, the difference is dependant on how you use your chills. I’d honestly say hydromancy is the better defensive one, and ice is the better offensive. You should always use the sigil of chilling if you’re running a lot of chill applying skills.

Eh… maybe in PvE, but not really. Hydro adds an additional chill, predictable rather than random, deals damage when it procs, and if you’re running Condi, geomancy would be better than +20% chill duration, or if you’re running power, air or fire would increase your damage more.

(I’m talking PvP here)
Damage isn’t always the most important thing. Chill is a good condition in PvP thanks to it’so ability to slow down cooldown recovery. Even without it’s damage components it’s useful to any type of necromancer build to some extent, especially reapers.

You really couldn’t miss marks as it was to begin with. Their AOEs are so big that most players can’t get out of the activation circle before you finish your animation. Besides, not everything has or needs counter play. It really isn’t that different than any other class dropping a trap or a chaos storm.

Honestly, I wanna know if the lock function will automatically turn you around. I think this has bigger re-precautions for thiefs.

On GS I’m partial to sigil of chilling and sigil of ice. The 30% chance to proc can set up the third hit of the auto attack. The 20% increased duration is also awesome for all the other chill sources you have.
Honestly sigil of hydromancy should only compete with the sigil of ice. Both are additional sources of chilling, the difference is dependant on how you use your chills. I’d honestly say hydromancy is the better defensive one, and ice is the better offensive. You should always use the sigil of chilling if you’re running a lot of chill applying skills.

Sinzaku.2980:

Tman.6349:

Ruduce Spinal Shivers to a 1 sec cast. Make Reaper’s Touch a 100% proj finisher and change the regen to 5 secs of Fury on ally bounce. (Even the trait knows this is a power weapon. :/)

Yay. Focus is now fixed.

Read this Geesus please <3

I think it should still provide a defensive buff to allies. Protection would be a lot better than regeneration (and still work in DS). Having it give retaliation instead would also give it a defensive and offensive option all in one.

warbringerpt.9576:

striker.3704:

you honestly have a lot of options:
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA
This is a celestial build that gives you more DPS, soul reaping lets you use death shroud more frequently to heal yourself and your minions more often.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA
This build is similar, but it gives you more condition damage while still letting you heal your minions.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA

This build doesn’t really support your minions at all, however it certainly will make the best use of death nova and will probably have the best condition damage rate. Deathly swarm, night fall, and haunt will all apply chill with this, so you’ll have ample chill, weakness, and blind going on.

Them links are all the same :<

ah balls I did it wrong, my b.

you honestly have a lot of options:
http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA
This is a celestial build that gives you more DPS, soul reaping lets you use death shroud more frequently to heal yourself and your minions more often.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA
This build is similar, but it gives you more condition damage while still letting you heal your minions.

http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJBIhNyQDN1YXN4WDs344XomV9V3DyVoFSBoA4DA-TJRIABzeCAA4BAYUZAU2fAA

This build doesn’t really support your minions at all, however it certainly will make the best use of death nova and will probably have the best condition damage rate. Deathly swarm, night fall, and haunt will all apply chill with this, so you’ll have ample chill, weakness, and blind going on.

I honestly like the scrapper mechanic, though I’m also a huge fan of turrets so I’m a little biased.

soul eater should definitely get siphoning on all attacks, maybe 100 per hit base? Give grave digger another gain when you hit with it, like generating life force or give it back that original 3% cooldown reduction from grave digger blows on top of the additional siphoning.

If we aren’t getting new dungeons I will be incredibly confused. I understand raids are their shiny new thing for the players, but that doesn’t mean dungeons should be ignored. The only thing we know about rewards so far is that high level fractals will get more rewarding and that the system we need to follow for legendaries will change to encompass the whole game world more.

my bad on the number of people, however 10 people still leads me to believe finding a spot won’t be that difficult. I also believe raids will be very different in structure than current dungeon running system we use (stack, mass buff, wipe out boss in 3 seconds) which should make survivability more valuable.

gavyne.6847:

Rangers got group support that they lacked, necros got to become melee monsters and got a small bit of mobility that they lacked. Win/win imo.

If you want to talk shafted, visit tempest, daredevils, and dragon hunters.

I honestly love tempest and dragonhunter, come at me.

Anyways, reaper is by no means getting us shafted. Thematically it’s extremely cool and flavorful, and mechanically it honestly works out very well with a few tweaks needed here and there. It gives the necromancer stuff it’s been missing for a while, so it’s doing it’s job just fine.

Druid doesn’t give you a life shield, so in reality it’s very different. I don’t feel threatened by it at all.

Sigmoid.7082:

It should be something they do but it may not be something that is done for a while depending on how much time and resources it would take and what else may take precedence over it. A lot of changes that as players we see as simple can be a mountain load of work to do behind the scenes.

That is very true. A great example is transformations killing minions. Back early on in the games life they said transformations killing minions was an issue they wanted to fix, but didn’t have the coding for it, something about breaking the minion chain skills. We didn’t hear anything else about it for like 2 years. Now they have the technology and implemented it, at least for our own transformations (moa when pls).

I’ve got a little bit of hope for them being able to do something like this. With the most recent changes we’ve seen between BWEs, skill functionalities, animations, and mechanics, they seem to have a larger team and resources they can utilize right now for release, though release is only a little more than a week away. They could potentially pull it off by drawing from RS coding, especially since it utilizes the same trait systems as DS, indication similar coding functionality.

nekretaal.6485:

The skill is still single target in a game where nearly every other skill cleaves or is AoE. It ought to be really strong. .75 cast is still too long. This weapon is up against Warhorn!

Also the cooldown needs to be looked at. Right now the cooldown is too long for use as a reliable boon ripper or chill generator.

The lost damage isn’t negligible. That’s 66% damage removed.

And Chill of Death is a cheesy proc effect that nerfs the damage potential of every other necromancer damage skill (and was also responsible for the necromancer downed state nerf). I will trade good spinal shivers for chill of death in a heartbeat.

focus 4 is a multi-target skill, so it’s not like focus is lacking there. However I do agree spinal shivers needs something for sure.

traited it’s just under a 30% chill uptime, that’s excluding things like if you’re running the reaper trait line or using other factors to amplify duration. That’s nothing to scoff at (i wouldn’t complain about a cooldown reduction though, like 15 seconds base instead of 20 seconds).

I say negligible in that the skill still does it’s primary function. There was a long time where it didn’t ever have this scaling damage based on boon removal.

So would I, I never cared for the chill of death trait but always use focus, so it holding back the focus is a pain. I’d honestly like to see the spiteful talisman trait get that functionality instead of 5% bonus damage to foes with no boons, or just see chill of death replaced entirely.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

They can reduce the cast time of Spinal Shivers and Chill of Death would be completely unaffected.

I was talking the other way around, people complain about chill of death because of it’s lack of a cast time, spinal shivers would be subject to the same thing if it got a short cast time.

Sigmoid.7082:

I have no idea why offhands have weird weapon strengths because they dont seem to be used in any calculation unless you have no mainhand equipped (no reason you would ever be in this situation unless you got stuck incombat while changing weapons). Think of offhands as a slot to make sure you have equal stats to two hander sets.

On topic. Shroud would need to recoded i believe to function like RS not sure how much effort they would want to put into it.

A lot of what’s been happening with the release of HoT has been normalization to set up the ground works for future expansions and elite specializations. If this is their goal, than making RS and DS work the same would go perfectly in line with this mind set, especially if future elite specializations for the necromancer use different shrouds as well (which changing shroud based traits to only say “shroud” instead of “death shroud” implies).

Also I agree with bawb, proccing sigils on shroud exit is a lot better than not proccing it at all, wasting a potential cooldown that could be used. Shroud is basically a third weapon set anyways in functionality, so it honestly makes sense in a way.

Tempest already actually does a lot of what you’re looking for, as it gives you more access to auras than any other traitline, and all of them are strong defensively. You could consider running F/A/T trait lines hehehehe for a combo that gives mass blinding, protective auras, and damage, rebound even gives you a last minute protection net for yourself and allies, which gives you even more defense.

You also get a lot more access to blind than once every 8 seconds, especially if you run a fresh air scepter build and possibly even evasive arcana.

@blackbeard: a blind every 8 seconds is nothing to scoff at, especially when utilizing blinds from other sources.

Water attunement will still be strong in a PvP sense. In PvE mass AOE healing was only demanded early on in the games life because people were still learning how to utilize movement. Even then the guardian argue-ably does it better.

Druid simply gives the ranger a form of allied healing support it was lacking before, nothing more.

It would make more sense to look at the number of sources of regeneration instead. Soothing disruption should honestly heal for a small amount instead of applying regeneration.

Cantrips are already the only utilities I see used, i think other utilities should get a buff instead. Arcane getting might on use or glyphs getting might in addition to their other buffs makes more sense.

You can’t really make a dedicated burning build on elementalist due to how elementalist swapping works. You can make a conditions pressure build using scepter+dagger off hand or scepter+warhorn (overload fire+wildfire is a lot more burning AOE than ring of fire). However burning seems to be more for AOE condition pressure than single target if you run scepter. Your single target condi damage will probably come more from bleeding.

If you run any form of condition damage build, you will be running F/E/x no exceptions.

Valentinus.3412:

Sadly not. Scepter is the antithesis of the elementalist:

“Jack of no trades, master of even less”

Scepter seems to be the master of single target, or at least seems like it was designed with that in mind, akin to GW1 air spike ele. Especially with scepter Air 2+3, electric discharge trait, aeromancer’s training, and fresh air.

meow one twenty.4376:

Okay, idea…
Just go with me on it…

First, let’s make it a condition. (.25 second duration)
Then, let’s scrap the current least favorite Focus skill. Let’s make Defenseless be applied by this skill, but this skill is a channel so we can’t be attacking while using it. Teammates can take full advantage, but it prevents Signet of Might type bursts from the user.

It has counterplay in three forms, it is a Condition, it can be interrupted, it prevents the applicator from using other skills.

A 25 second channel would be ridiculous. It would be over powered in PvP and highly situational all at the same time (you can immediately guarantee someone gets wrecked in a team fight, but it’s useless in every other scenario) It would also leave you incredibly vulnerable.

Lets compare it to spinal shivers:
-Spinal shivers relies on the enemy having boons for it’s full effect, it has a 1.25 second cast time
-If the enemy has no boons, it still deals some damage and applies chill
-it has a relatively decent cooldown (20 seconds isn’t too bad, the skill is always gonna be up when you really need to use it).

Despite the fact that spinal shivers still does plenty when it’s situation isn’t met, it is still considered lack luster because of it’s cast time and reliance on boons for it’s full effect. A massive 25 second channel to only stop blocking and nothing else would be an atrocious skill for all these same reasons. too long, too situational, very little benefit.

If we are to gain a way to remove an enemies ability to block ,it either needs to be caused by a ramp up (following suit with our attrition format) or needs to be usable on reaction (which makes it more bursty, which really contradicts the necromancers design).

The issue here really, is that by making it a ramp up it’s unreliable at best, and can proc when it isn’t needed.

If anything, we need more skills that are unblock-able. Spinal shivers could be made unblock-able and it would be a huge boon to the skill, the same goes for spectral grasp.

Not to mention, we already have wail of doom on the warhorn that acts as a guard break, one of the only ones in the game. We don’t want to step on the skills toes as that creates contradictions.

Honestly, I really like Lily’s suggestion. Putting the condition on skills that already specialize in that (warhorn, well of darkness) or putting it on skills that can be actively avoided (wells come to mind) or on skills that really need it or can utilize it the most (spectral grasp becoming unblockable and applying defenseless would make it a great lock horns skill, punishing players for trying to escape) would make the most sense thematically and mechanically.

Slashftw.6307:

so the weapon you have equipped before you enter shroud affects your damage? between staff and dagger which would be better?

The weapon damage does yes. 2 Handed weapons give you more damage in shroud, as death shroud doesn’t take into account your offhand’s damage, only your mainhand. So if you’re wielding an axe+focus, you will deal less in DS than someone using a staff or GS.

I’m pretty sure the reason death shroud damage scales off of your weapons is because it’s using an archaic solution to PvE leveling scaling issues. In reality DS damage should only be determined by your level and the respective stats for the damage type.

I think I remember someone saying RS doesn’t have this issue, only base deathshroud does. Since RS procs weapon swap sigils (when leaving RS to the weapon with the on-swap sigil) while regular DS doesn’t, I’d assume for RS the game treats it like you’re wielding a new max stat 2 handed weapon, which would explain why it works differently for both damage and proccing on-swap sigils when you leave RS.

DS should do this as well, it would be a welcome quality of life change.

nekretaal.6485:

I prefer that spinal shivers be a useful chill generator and boon ripper. I don’t care for the damage. Reapers touch has damage.

Anet shoul keep the boon rips and chill, & lose the bonus damage and lower the cast time to .25

If “they are being conservative with the skill because it hits like axe skills,” then nuke the skill entirely. It has no business being in the game if they are going to treat the skill like that.

Honestly instead of losing the damage, I’d love to see the skill corrupt 3 boons instead of simply removing them, make the cast time like 1 second or .75 seconds.

However, removing 3 boons+chilling on a .25 second cast time would simply be too strong, as the lost damage is negligible. This is why the trait chill of death gets so much hate.

In fact, buffing spinal shivers in any way is gonna be an issue with chill of death as that would inadvertently buff chill of death as well (unless they forget to update it like they did spiteful spirit). Chill of death isn’t a trait that really needs any buffs.

nekretaal.6485:

Pvp: Worse spot. Reaper is worse than base necromancer because it has no ranged pressure, is slow, and chill durations are too short. Reaper Dead on arrival until Axe fixed or staff/scepter get a big buff. (Watch Nos get destroyed by Phantaram on Reaper then go turn around and destroy him on Necromancer).

WvW: Same Spot. You will still be using necromancer and it will still be good.

WvW Roaming: Necromancer is terrible (no escapes), Reaper is somehow worse.

PvE (open world): Anet seems to be making open world event trains a thing on all maps. Reaper will be great for this.

PvE dungeons: Dungeons are dead,

PvE Fractals: Gimmicks like unholy sanctuary will help the necromancer be part of the first few groups that “beat fractals” despite not enough AR. Otherwise same place (not good).

PvE Raids: Since Raids are designed by the teams that like to put everything on timers, Reapers In a bad spot. No team support, cant be healed, and not #1 at DPS. (DPS is all melee and axe sucks so any anti melee attacks on bosses will severely kitten reapers who have to face tank).

Tl;dr. Reaper not good. Needs axe to be fixed.

Just to interject for a moment:
1. We can’t really call reaper worse in PvP, especially since the whole point is standing on a control point. Reaper can at least tank just as much if not more damage than base necromancer, and can simply absorb the ranged pressure until the point flips. Also RS2 can be used against a wall on a point to destroy the projectiles while capping.

2. Reaper actually has better “escape” capabilities than base necromancer because of RS2 as well. The lengthier chills also assist with peeling the enemy off of you.

3. PvE dungeons: No? we’re getting new dungeons with new mechanics, and we don’t even know how the new defiant bar mechanic will impact older dungeons.

4. Raids: we have no idea how raid bosses will play, and being top DPS in a raid doesn’t really matter with the number of people in it. What’s more important is coordination. The reaper also can bring party support in soldier runes with a shout build, or by running almost literally anything in blood magic, or just by running a well build using reaper (lots of whirl finishers and combo fields). If we ignore base necromancer traits and weapons, the GS brings a lot of whirl finisher and it’s dark field, which can lead to healing for allies (whirling in water or light fields) or additional damage+ healing (dark field).

The corruption skills applying conditions to one’s self are fine, as it’s the flavor behind that archetype. The skill is quite strong now, so I think the weakness is fine. If you’re really concerned about it, why not run sigil of purity?

Honestly, I think the only issue here is the current discrepancy between burning and other conditions, making cpc look weaker.

Though, I think if you’really running a bunch of corruptions, you should be running that plague signet trait and saving your transfers and cleanses for when the enemy piles conditions on you.

Muchacho.2390:

striker.3704:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

striker.3704:

robertul.3679:

People keep saying projectile finisher this, blast finisher that but it’s extremely irrelevant since necro doesn’t have proper fields to benefit from it.

No, dark field life steal is not good enough. Neither is 3 seconds of weakness.

Necromancer has quite a lot of access to fields. In fact, every single utility category provides a type of field (except for minions if you don’t have death nova). Even then, GS has a dark field built into it, and reaper will give a lot of access to a chill field with RS 5.

Signets have a field? Shouts have a field?

signets, no, shouts, yes. (the signet that resses downed allies should create an ethereal field now that I think about it, it would make sense and help a signet in need.)

Shouts dont have a field unless you count the fields the “rise” minions, traited with death nova, give…

No chilled to the. . .
Wait, I thought it created an ice field, weird. Nvm.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

striker.3704:

robertul.3679:

People keep saying projectile finisher this, blast finisher that but it’s extremely irrelevant since necro doesn’t have proper fields to benefit from it.

No, dark field life steal is not good enough. Neither is 3 seconds of weakness.

Necromancer has quite a lot of access to fields. In fact, every single utility category provides a type of field (except for minions if you don’t have death nova). Even then, GS has a dark field built into it, and reaper will give a lot of access to a chill field with RS 5.

Signets have a field? Shouts have a field?

signets, no, shouts, yes. (the signet that resses downed allies should create an ethereal field now that I think about it, it would make sense and help a signet in need.)

robertul.3679:

People keep saying projectile finisher this, blast finisher that but it’s extremely irrelevant since necro doesn’t have proper fields to benefit from it.

No, dark field life steal is not good enough. Neither is 3 seconds of weakness.

Necromancer has quite a lot of access to fields. In fact, every single utility category provides a type of field (except for minions if you don’t have death nova). Even then, GS has a dark field built into it, and reaper will give a lot of access to a chill field with RS 5.

Necromancer however, is sorely lacking in finishers (no finishers on focus, scepter, axe, dagger main hand, dagger off hand, very few finishers in utilities).

From the short time I played reaper in the 3 BWEs, I found the ability to use finishers, even if they’re just whirl finishers, a huge game changer. It lets you get a little extra something out of what you and your allies do, and adds up very quickly.

Also, 3 seconds of weakness is nothing to scoff at. especially if it’s on a projectile that can apply it 2-3 times, the same goes for the leeching bolts.

GW1 had something kinda similar to that in cracked armor. I think it would be neat to see that kind of debuff added through either the axe or the spite line as a part of the vulnerability/axe line on the bottom row of the spite line.

combine Unholy fervor with spiteful spirit, add a new master trait.

New master trait: cracked armor: If you hit an enemy with (10, 15, whatever) stacks of vulnerability, apply defenseless for 5 seconds (30 second cooldown):
defenseless: enemy can’t block attacks, stacks duration (maximum of 5 times)

I can only speak for PvP, but as far as how the reaper will influence it:
-Reaper really opens up and strengthens certain builds, particularly power necromancer and Minion master. Both of these will become more prevalent in PvP and see more play in all levels of PvP below the highest tier of PvP.
-In the highest tier of PvP, necromancer is still in a weird spot. At that level of play invulnerability, evasion, mobility, and focus fire are paramount to success. So necromancer will never really be a staple in higher tier PvP by design.
-Ironically though, by design necromancer is an excellent counter pick to a number of builds due to their de-buff, boon stripping, and general absorption qualities. If base necromancer is buffed in a few specific areas and reaper holds on to it’s strengths from the last BWE with a few more tweaks, we can see a wide variety of necro usage as a choice counter to other teams strats. This all depends on how balanced other builds though, and if we’ll see another meta as grossly saturated by one particular build as D/D ele has been that had no truly effective counter.

TL;DR
general PvP: necromancer and reaper will be doing fine
top tier PvP: necromancer won’t be a staple like 1 thief, but it might have a place as a variable counter pick.

. . .Ok I can at least talk about normal casual dungeon running PvE a little bit:
-In the kind of PvE environment 90% of player experience, necromancer will still be fine in the core dungeons. You won’t be kicked out of a group for being a necromancer as far as normal core dungeon runs now, and that won’t be any worse in HoT.

High end fractals and speed clearing core dungeons. . .I guess reaper will be a little bit better off, but those parties are more focused on buffing themselves and doing maximum damage through stackable damage amps that are shared, which necromancer by design won’t have.

New dungeons might be wildly different from how core dungeons work, the necromancer mechanics might be more valued in these new dungeons, so we will need to see how this plays out before making a judgment call.

Raids: I think people focus too much on how WoW raids work when they talk about the place necromancer/reaper will hold in a raid. GW2 has a very different combat system, so dedicated tanks/healers won’t work. There is also a hard limit on how many people can be affected by your positive buffs at a given time (5) so in instances where there are 15-20 people, having 3-4 necromancers won’t hold anyone back. We also don’t know how chill will work against raid bosses, or how valuable debuffs will be in a raid environment.

In the worst case scenario, honestly, raids have so many people, that having someone doing more or less damage doesn’t really matter. What is important is consistency, communication, and coordination. So if people are looking for more for a raid, with how difficult it is to get 15-20 people together, you won’t see anyone turn down a necromancer when they need to fill up some space.

The new legendary staff doesn’t really do anything for me. However it does kinda go with reaper, considering a lot of reaper great sword animations drop feathers. So I can see it being popular with reaper builds using staff/GS.

The axe is REALLY COOL, however I already have frostfang thematically fitting with my necromancer, so I don’t really need it. However it’d probably look cool with twighlight great sword off switch, as they both have a star/sky theme. The axe seems like something more fitting to a ranger.

Honestly, I’m waiting for the new greatsword legendary. I’ll be working towards twighlight in the mean time, but if something comes along that matches my necromancer’s theme or my frostfang more, I’ll definitely use it instead.

Oh, I also want to see what the legendary focus will be like. Mostly out of simple curiosity, as the corrupted artifact matches frostfang excellently, but I could be pleasantly surprised.

there’s already a hard cap on AOE heals (only 5 allies at max) which limits the number of minions you can maintain by default. You also can’t ever generate the minions in a reliable scenario where they can get completely out of hand.

In PvP they drop incredibly quickly to burning AOE rings, or any AOEs.
In PvE they drop to AOEs 5 times as quickly.
in WvWvW. . .don’t even ask.

Why are you suggesting nerfs to an ability as soon as people say it’s usable? How about suggesting nerfs to something that’s been over powered for literally YEARS HUH?

I’need gonna add some more feedback from a minion master perspective.
Great sword:
-the auto is too slow to really glue to the enemy. I think all three hits should apply chill. However the first hit’s duration should be very short, the second hit 1 second of chill, and leave the third hit as is.
-grave digger seems cool and works great.
-soul spiral’s animation needs to be tightened up. It clips through the ground and is too light and transparent to be a clear tell. Make the energy darker and start closer to the sword and extend outward during the thrust. Otherwise it’seems spot on mechanically and functionally.
-nightfall is awesome.
-grasping darkness (whatever GS5 is called) is perfect.

Traits
-all of them seem pretty spot on. However soul Eater still feels off and weak. I’d say give it siphoning on every attack, and more on grave digger. Possibly even give grave digger back it’s cooldown reduction when you hit with it on top of the 20% base reduction. Right now soul Eater loses out on sustainability to chilling victory (which will always be paired with blighter’s boon) and needs a bit more identity. I think changing it in one of these ways would help. Keep the main focal point of the trait grave digger. Grave digger is a flavorful skill and it is cool seeing the trait utilize it.

Shroud
-feels really good functionally and performance wise. I’d like to see the range on reaper shroud 4 Transfusion match the necromancer shroud 4 transfusion.