ZeftheWicked.3076

Both scourge and reaper can be absolutely valid tanks. Problem is this is gw2 meta has schizophrenia calling **support** (chronomancer) a "tank". Chrono aint tank cause of his huge damage reductions (more like evasions) powerful self-healing or ability to force enemy focus onto himself. He gets the role cause of quickness and alacrity spam + distortion for party. He is no tank, he's extremely heavy support, that was chosen to be a tank, because he can also surivive being focused.

Oh. Also because chronos did shit damage since HoT and had no other role to take. Later on when mesmer got real damage...well everyone settled into chronobunker meta and nobody cared to make a change in the tank spot:/

I think neither. It should reflect ability to perform versatile tasks. For example strong and simple dps builds should be able to do dps but little more. While strong but complex rotation builds for example could share barriers, do some off-healing, do some fire field might blasting, be able to sneak in stealth or other short panic button defense that can be activated by changing the rotation etc.

They really botched the healing part of vampiric aura. Such values would be good on skill with no icd whatsover, but on 1/2s icd one, it's a bad joke...

It sounds pretty darn awesome. Though i'd enjoy seeing some undead vines (that druid part) grabbing enemies. Immob is a condition necro has shortage of and could really use.

Out of bigger problems i have - lore and idea sound sweet but implementation is too plain. Remember that current day elite specs like to have more mechanics to them - for example druid got glyps (which have 2 sets of skills based on form). Scourge got punishments which basically are fixed corruption (cripple + torment) skills.

Herald got facets - fusion of upkeep skill with active skill.

Not everyone has it, there are plainer skillsets in elites (reaper, renegade, soulbeast etc), but i think it would be cool if our utilities had a twist. I think glyphs would be a great fit since we do have 2nd form by default (shroud), and this could play off the light/necro-dark theme you got going on in your spec!

Imho the problem is **reverse** of the question asked. It's the overabundance of active god-mode defenses + too easy regular mobs that are the issue.

Too much active defenses means defensive stats can't be strong, else in the small windows of opportunity when a character blows all his super defenses you still couldn't get real damage in and down them. This is an issue because the rule of meta is build "200% damage and slot a defensive trait or two". I'm only glad they remembered that necro is not part of that equasion and gave him traits that can compensate him damage for chossing more tanky stat sets.

Other issue is mobs - only veterans (and not every one!) and up can make you actually consider using your defensive skill. Else you just build full damage and plow through mobs that fall after a fart or two from your full zerker builds.

Heart of Thorns deserves a praise as its mobs hit hard, tend to group up, and are not easily beaten by going full berzerker's yahoo build with 0 regard for proper defenses. You beat them by exploiting their weakness, setting up proper defenses (like projectile hate skills vs tendrills) and using tanky/damage stat sets that keep you alive far better then pure damage gear.

Oh yeah i played condi reaper in spvp when deathly chill was a unique damage condition. Man that trait was awesome, it was the first (and most likely only) time in the game necro staff could output something similar to damage....nope, had to gut that...as usual.

Dagger auto is **very** good.

First off it has amazing speed for a necro weapon. Too easily necro gets shut down by blinds because of his huge windup, slow attacks. Dagger is not that easy to shake off. Then there's the life force gain and life steal from blood magic passives that greatly benefit from it's speed.

Considering how strong of sustain this weapon offers for both base health and life force, the damage is also very solid. It's 2nd place behind GS and ahead of axe. I did some testing on that.

I would say dagger's identity and performance are both solid. It is the main damage and sustain power weapon for non-reapers, while more of a 1v1 duelist option for HoT spec.

If someone feels dagger needs a different role or identity...that's up for discussion, but let's not go calling sky black by saying current dagger is underperforming or has no identity.

Tell me about it. I loved the old bomb kit hobopack (barrel rigged with explosives), instead of thise stupid pumpkin pie looking bomb in hands...

Mesmer - you have to focu.....**LIKE HELL I'M PLAYING A PROFFESION WITH PINK BUTTERFLIES!!!**

And now you know why i can't master mesmer...

You and me both, condi rev needs love in spvp and wvw

Imho the best builds will be the vampiric reaper. A slight dps loss in exchange for real ressing potential for your not-so-great pug looks awesome.

It could. But since i can't 100% be sure, there's also the scenario it could be another bug all together.

I dunno nor care. Kalla support 31k dps, and there are 2 higher damage rev builds for large targets. Small target 33k power dps on herald. Rev looks great to me from where i stand.

Which is way more then i can say for raid necro ~ 28.5k for condi builds, and 27.8k for power vampiric which imho would be the build to choose becuase it offers some support and bit extra damage from vampiric presence that probably is not taken into account fully when golem testing...

Has happened to me this morning. 4 teams entered the tournament, so worst i could get is 4th place (which me and my team did).

That should be 15g tier reward. Got the 5th-8th place reward instead (10g).

Later same day I enter tourney with allegedly 15 teams. We win first game, so ergo should be in top 8. Again we get reward that's meant for lower tier - 5g that's for 9th-16th place...

Just played tourney. 15 teams. Won first round. So by logic in top 8, which means 10g.

Nope. Got 5g reward...

Similar story this morning - playing the 4am (europe time) toruney - 4 teams in total. So worst we can get is 4th place and 15g.

We get 10...

What gives?

Spite doesn't need more reasons to be used in a condi build. If you're alone, you come here for vulni stacks, might generation and some corruption from spiteful spirit or superior sustain and mobility from signets traited with signets of suffering.

If you're with team, then assuming vulni stacks and mights are already provided from outside, you still have 4 core necro lines competing to be part of your build - the obvious Curses that provide all things condi, Blood Magic (for sustain and support), Death Magic - Death Nova and condition-build-friendly defenses, and soul reaping - obviously Dhuumfire.

Spite really does not need to join that fray, and if it did, we would have to see some power damage nerfs in this line while major buffs to other lines to keep it balanced and in check. Else suddenly most builds would be "Spite" + other 2 lines.

Two aspects of your proposal are bad, but one is amazing!

The amazing idea is the health cost damaging you through shroud. You can use it to activate some traits that way. The passive spectral armor for one, granting huge sustain for shroud itself for next few seconds. Other being healing bonus from Last Rites, good before casting transfusion traited #4 or using Ritual's of life passive Well of Blood.

There are also few runs that will respond to you reaching a certain health treshold.

The first bad aspect is the health cost itself - 10% doesn't make much sense. Healing does not scale with vitality. So 10% means squishy builds will have easy time healing back up, but for high health builds this trait would be very suicidal. I think it should be flat health cost, moreover individual one for each skill. I don't see Executioner's Scythe taking same amount of health as death's charge.

Second bad aspect is the reward - being able to ignore cd on a shroud skill is gonna be very problematic balance wise. Core necro might get away with it just fine, since whatever his Death Shroud does (save the fear and auto) is crap and waste of a button push. But reaper with his shroud's kit would really get outta hand.

This needs to be changed to a reward that will justify the health loss, but not be a balancing nightmare, like a damage increase on shroud skills for price in your health, or adding damaging condi to your shroud skill for the price in blood you just paid.

Tbh i think awaken the pain **is awesome** as is. Hear me out here:

Notice the snowcrow's test build - it using blood magic. Reason is - there is no damage to be gained by going soul reaping. And the reason for that is most likely current iteration of awaken the pain, that keep dhuumfire's damage lower with condi damage loss from mights.

But that's what makes it great - blood magic is our team support and ress line. Getting ~28k with selfish soul reaping would be a solid failfest. But doing ~28k while having blood magic out is a pretty meaningful buff if you ask me. Now reaper doesn't need to choose between having damage (which he needs badly) and saving downed nibs in your pug run only to be told to eat shit cause he's doing crap damage due to his "support".

Being able to passively stop their health degen when downed, then quicken their revivial by a country mile with Ritual of Life is no small deal when things aren't going "as planned" for your team. And that setup won't cost you any damage loss. If things are really dire you can lose a bit dps for transfusion. Pretty sure saved allies will forgive you 1-2k dps less in exchange for being able to mass ress them before getting defeated.

So i say, power dps boost? Fine, but leave awaken the pain alone. In it's current iteration it lets reaper support his team and save raids under the guise of "it's top dps", way better deal then being the 0 utility but let's say 2k higher dps bot.

That's actually very in tune with necro's thematic. It's the power of these trade - offs that remains questionable.

Utility - our defense needs something anti-focus, others have blocks, evades, invulnies, or right down damage to healing conversions. For necro it's "grab a firebrand, and strap him to your leg!".

Also i'd like to see ability to protect our necro boons from getting stripped. Necro is at bottom of the barrel in terms of boon spam, and boonhate is no longer necro's exclusive niche. Quite a few professions can easily deprive you of your own stab or protection. I'd prefer that necro instead of becoming nth boonspammer had his own way to do it - a conditional, skillbased boon-lock, so that boons he casts can't be removed for a certain grace period.

Our range game sucks. Ranger isn't that bad to fight if you got protection and signet of vampirism, but deadeyes are just disgusting. They outrange us, do absurd damage and have no issues kiting. While we got no real good reliable damage post 900 range, unless it's wells or lich form. Not that it matters as Deadeyes can snipe you at 1500 range vs which we have nothing. Necro can be both outranged and easily kited, that is a huge problem.

Also i'd like to more power necro interactions with condies, like self-bleeding boosting dagger's health siphon value, or poisoning enemies lowering their damage on you if you slot putrid defense.

Death Shroud (along with core necro) is in a very bad shape, that too, though i could select only one option, so i chose utility.

Bloodmagic works well for shadow fiend too. It basically does same damage as it would with necromantic corruption trait in Death Magic.

But that wouldn't push the damage forward on targets that already capped on vulni.

It's the fps that needs love and attention, less so visuals. Some zones are well optimised and i get nice smooth 60 fps with some settings set to max, others turned down a notch or two.

But some are 30fps for no appparent reason, mostly newer zones. That and huge fps drops in blobs (despite having character model limit set to "low") require addressing.

I would, but on the condition that gemstore goes away. Sub fee + cash shop is not acceptable for me. I want the full experience ingame in exchange for signing up for guaranteed, continueed support.

For example i'd much rather go to branded zone do few missions there (or long term commitment there) to unlock branded mount skins, rather then having to shell out for it.

I'm only at experimental stages, am not good with rotations. What i can can tell though is this - dagger has better sustained dps then axe, but axe has better burst. So maybe do it that way:

Equip axe/focus - both work well with spite's minor trait (cooldown and 5% more damage vs boonless foes). Use your shroud when switching to axe/focus set. First use axe #2, you can also use reaper's scythe, then go shroud and blow your load. Once done use axe #2 again (should be off cd) and go to greatsword for it's rotation.

After small experimenting on my side it seems that in terms of dps:

Shroud auto > gs auto > dagger auto + life siphon > axe auto + ghastly claws.

Replacing axe with shroud while keeping ghastly claws casts going should be good dps.

Also stupid but obvious - double check your foods, gear (stats on each piece), traits, self buffs from training arena console, and lastly if your golem has 25 vulni stacks set.