Methuselah.4376

If anything necro is in a much better position than it was 3 years ago, with the exception of dps Scourge. Power Reaper has been buffed time and time again, and while Scourge's dps was cut down, its support where it is valuable is still incredible.

Do note that if you have a Shade summoned, any F skills will also proc Summon Shade effects, so Dhuumfire will proc whenever you use an F skill through a shade, provided you wait for a second before each activation due to icd.

Blood is Power applies bleeding to your target just by using it, but then it also applies bleed and torment (if traited) on you. Then you have Plague Sending which is a Major Adept trait in the Curses traitline. This is triggered by entering Shroud (F5 in Scourge's case) which then causes the next successful attack to transfer 2 condi on you to the enemy. So you are applying 2 Bleed stacks by using BiP on your target, and are sending another 2 bleed stacks + 2 torment stacks to them via transfer for a total of 4 Bleeds and 2 Torments on your target. So no Desert Shroud will not continuously pulse Blood is Power for its duration.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > That's all subjective. Objective are the snowcrows benchmarks, that reach from 42k to 34k for dps builds and you can find each class in that range. Below 34k are the support builds, which makes 34k dps necro (that has 0 support!) look even worse as support builds reach almost its dps numbers. But this is the issue. People look at benchmarks, which happen in a vacuum. Not saying that Reaper is going to perform better in an actual fight, but it relies less heavily on situational condis like Slow for power Chrono or a very fast paced rotation like Weaver. > Why are you changing the subject here? The OP asked whether necro is still underperforming and it clearly is. It is the bottom of the barrel in dps. Each other class has a dps build that is stronger and some have also better support builds. This has absolutely nothing to do with the question whether is can just "complete" content. Of course it can - that's trivial. Fair enough. I like to think of it more as other professions overperforming but that's splitting hairs I guess (looking at you, Guardian, with your nice burst damage and sexy tomes). > > > > I wouldn't expect this to ever change. Defense is built into the class mechanic, so DPS will always be lower. Except Shroud in end game content, or in general as a Reaper, isn't really used for defense since it is a DPS boost and any damage taken in shroud will reduce your dps as you are spending less time in it. I get what you're getting at, but as far as end game PvE is concerned, boosting necro's damage is not gonna be game breaking because you still need to have life force management as well as avoiding taking damage while in shroud. And since PvP/WvW and now split from PvE, it's no longer ridiculous to expect a dps boost. Again, I agree Reaper's the bottom of the dps chart. But it is still a powerful profession and it brings with it a lot of natural tools most other professions would need to sacrifice some dps for. This is the balance that comes with the class imo. We all remember a time when power Reaper felt like you're hitting with a wet noodle. That is no longer the case.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > This brought the dps to 34k at the golem, which would be awesome, if we had the year 2016. In 2021 this is the bottom of the barrel and close to inacceptable. Hyperbolic much? Reaper is the lowest power (pure) dps sure, but it's not at a "close to unacceptable level". A build doesn't need to pull of 42k damage to be great. As of writing this: dps over 38K: Amazing dps over 36K: Great dps over 34K: Good. dps over 32K: Decent. dps over 30k: Bad. Then there's Scourge. It's tiring to always see people bashing builds/classes because they don't speed clear end game content. Not everything needs to have speed clearing ability to complete end game content. And if it doesn't have speed clearing ability, it is not automatically trash. So to the OP: If you enjoy Reaper, and become good at it, play it because it does very well. Yes you will meet people who will out dps you on certain classes if they are good at them, but from my considerable experience in T4 fracs (which I do on Reaper) and raids (which I switched to pSlb only because it's got such an easy rotation for high reward), that will not happen as often as you think. And if it does, it doesn't matter, because Reaper is no longer in a state where it drags the group behind....it used to be mind you, but not anymore.

I like Tempest as an alternate character. And for raids as far as a power option is concerned, I favour Soulbeast.

> @"silent killer.5732" said: > > @"Dadnir.5038" said: > > The build sacrificing efficiency for survivability, I am not surprised that it's not listed as "meta". Why would it be? Unless you're looking for a spot as a "tank", being undying at the cost of 4-5k dps isn't looked kindly on. > >** I find that the more skilled you become the less survivability you need such as stability** and constant healing. If you use this build not to heal yourself if you are skilled enough to fight without the need of using the barriers to your favor but to keep the condis on your party in check than this build shine the most > It's quite the opposite; the more skilled you are the more knowledge you have of the fight and the better prepared you are for it. So in a fight where there's a lot of stun like the end boss on the Chaos fractal, the more stability you have the more you are able to continue your rotation, the less you have to move and by proxy the less you have to move the boss, the quicker you kill the boss. To that end, you want the boons and the healing to push through it. Barriers are nice but, ultimately in 5 man content, they will always lose out to straight up healing and boons. Not to mention that Scourge has the worst ramp up time for conditions which makes it the lowest condi damage dealer as it is, and then to sacrifice 4-5k dps on top of that means that, to be blunt without intending disrespect, you're wasting a slot in your group composition due to the inefficiency of your build. Unfortunately, Scourge is one of those professions that has an inverse correlation with group performance, i.e. the worse your group is the better it will perform, most especially support Scourge. I appreciate you that you might enjoy Scourge play over Reaper and that's obviously fine. But if I may make a recommendation; though condi dps is generally not favored in fractals and Scourge has the worst condi dps of all, you will still be more beneficial running 2-2-2 Scourge with epi at the ready. Trash will usually die too quickly to power dps before you build enough condis on them to epi or even deliver enough damage, so you would be better off focusing on any vet enemies. There are bosses where epi scourge will be of great help, such as Arabella, The Voice for shade control, the Ice Elemental and so on. But ultimately, that help alone will still not be enough to justify taking Scourge over Reaper, which has far better burst.

I understand that with the current situation that it might not be as easy to maintain a steady work pace. However, is it just me or has it been an exceedingly long time since we've had a balance patch?

> @"BnooMaGoo.5690" said: > who says the peas can't touch the carrots? A good farmer.

> @"Nimon.7840" said: > > @"Methuselah.4376" said: > > The moment you said "Why should I have to do A to avoid B" is the moment you lost all credibility on this thread and really makes you look like a troll. Clearly in all your time playing this game, you've not learned much. The biggest reason ranger counters necro is because it has range and disengaging skills for days and these are things that necro lacks and has no counter to. That doesn't mean that you will automatically win against a necro simply because you're on ranger; skill is still very much required as well as some measure of strategy along with the right gear. If you're going to go YOLO and take a Reaper head on in melee range with a suboptimal build while you're chilled and with blind fields down, you're playing into the Reaper's game and if they are not brain dead they will butcher you. > > There's still a ranger build that's extremely strong in melee range. > 70-90% protection uptime > 60-80% stability uptime > > Both counters reaper extremely hard. > > You can't land critical stuns because of the stab uptime and prot uptime makes you look like trying to hit the ranger with a wet noodle. > > Obviously it's not what OP is playing, else OP wouldn't have issues with reapers Yep hence why I said going in YOLO in melee range with the wrong build.

It's not a good idea to give two traits the same basic functionality just with different values, especially if they are in competition with each other. In PvE, Deathly Chill isn't too bad and it is a must if you are going the condi reaper route. Problem is that the biggest source of bleeds you will be inflicting relies on a field that can be overwritten. I personally think that they should create a unique condi for chilled applied while Deathly Chill is active. That way it can be stacked and treated like any other damaging condition. There's still that whole RS5+4 problem but if the condi itself does enough damage, then it can be considered a bit of a balanced thing. Blighter's Boon....ye sustain on it's own is pathetic. Combined with blood magic it can be of some help I suppose but at it's level of power it belongs in the master tier not grand master. Maybe it should be something where it restores 10% of your damage done as LF and while in Shroud, 5-10% of damage done as health. Maybe it's too OP in terms of sustain but something doesn't rely on a thing that necro doesn't do too well, i.e. apply self boons especially out of shroud.

The moment you said "Why should I have to do A to avoid B" is the moment you lost all credibility on this thread and really makes you look like a troll. Clearly in all your time playing this game, you've not learned much. The biggest reason ranger counters necro is because it has range and disengaging skills for days and these are things that necro lacks and has no counter to. That doesn't mean that you will automatically win against a necro simply because you're on ranger; skill is still very much required as well as some measure of strategy along with the right gear. If you're going to go YOLO and take a Reaper head on in melee range with a suboptimal build while you're chilled and with blind fields down, you're playing into the Reaper's game and if they are not brain dead they will butcher you.

This is the build I use since pretty much the first time I started using Heal Scourge: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAYt/lNw0YJMQmJmqXevOA-zRJYvRNfZkYFUdK47s43wG-e I have never had any problems keeping people alive. I switch out Soul Reaping for Curses when I need to do a bit more damage. It's a sort of jack of all trades, master of nothing build. It provides high enough barriers, power rezzes, provides might, heals a bit and can fire off sufficiently damaging epidemics when needed.