ZeftheWicked.3076

In the upcoming wvw and pvp split Forced Engagement is to get double the cooldown for reduced energy cost.

But the real problem with this skill in competitive is not it's energy cost but very low reliability.

Compared to other "throw a hook" skills it's just below the standards:

* Dragon hunter's spear of justice is unblockable. And it's a pull - much more potent cc.

* Thief's scorpion wire has the advantage of being on a thief - he can cast it from stealth....and it's a pull

* Necro's spectral grasp grabs up to 5 targets in huge area. Oh. And it's a pull.

Meanwhile our forced engagement is a taunt (far easier to break free from, and much less potent at pulling enemy to us, especially ranged one), is blockable, and generally too often gets bloked because in group setting there's always a guard/fire brand throwing aegis around like candy.

On 10s coodown i can still understand such a setup. But on 20s cd i expect more. I expect a reliable interrupt (beucase in competitive that's what it basically is). Especially since unlike any other profession i cannot just take it off Jalis's utility bar and replace it with something better.

So please make that thing unblockable and with it actually useful for competitive use!

Well it certainly won't be as hard hitting as specialized build ;) But the point is to let you experience both condi and power, cause imho condi is lotsa fun on rev. Also condi is the meta for raids and fractals, so that's a thing too;)

Just play it how you like it ;) It's for fun. Also jack of all trades must have stats for all occasions, and that means celestial ;) Or legendary armor;)

Whoa there, not so fast!

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQRApX8snXNeNSqJvJR/kHlsgykS4Q5SJYrsrkFUlStC+gRINAKgE4PEPxXE-jBiAABQqEM6nAwi6HIcfA0U+p+CDmq+DAnEASBsomN-e

You said jack of all trades, right? Well there here's a celestial based renegade for you. You can do condi + power damage (kalla's fervor gets crit damage surprisingly high for a celestial build). Thanks to 33% free crit when endurance full you get high enough crit rate to matter in power setting. And thanks to trait enchanced F2 skill combined with mace's fire field blasting and sword's #3 might generation you won't be running low on might in your fights.

Also stuck you some defense in there with retribution line - a new and upcoming rev needs that line like oxygen, especially if they're not the tanky herald, but much more offensive renegade.

Sylvari. Rev has this glow on his arms depending on chosen legend, and cabbages have their own nightly glow of nearly any color you want. Really helps propagate the outerwordly feel of it.

Necro gets my vote. Not because he's the hardest out there, but because he's vastly misunderstood and deserves some votes.

Everyone is about "necro is so easy!"

What "easy" means is forgiving. That in no way relates to actual depth of a profession. Bearbow ranger is also easy. That does not make the ranger a shallow class or an easy one to master.

Necro is not about managing shitton of clones or swapping weapon kits/attunements. Playing him **seems** easy. But once you get down to making a build, you'll understand just how deep that rabbit hole goes. And it goes real deep.

Because of great balance of traitlines (save underperformer death magic), and having numerous aspects of gameplay (such as healing, defense, condi, power, cc) spread across many different lines, skills and weapons, the necro can be build in really various ways, unlike to what his theme (no flashy kits, attumenents or super speedy gameplay) would suggest. Also in combat you really gotta be on top of your defense. With just 2 dodges and everything else being literally "position well, interrupt it or eat it!" necro needs to learn his enemies real well if he wants to get past a brick wall of skilled opponents that aren't intimidated by your first everyday shade or larger healthpool then them.

Make sand savant boosted Manifest Sand Shade go on 5s cooldown if it doesn't hit opponent when placing it.

Make sand shroud stop it's pulses if barrier from it got depleted.

Downed state is a huge part of pvp mode. Battles and numerous tactics around reviving/stomping, getting downed enemies off capture point, because they are still capping it, leaving downed enemies to bait more into a trap etc. A lot of depth goes down the drain if you cut that out. Also certain classes are balanced around having weak/strong downed state, which can lead to unbalance. So same as now, only in a different way ;)

Going straight to OP post, bypassing walls of text after.

Dagger is a great weapon, taking top spot in necro arsenal along with axe. Both have very clear identity, purpose and skills that synergize with eachother for their role.

Considering sick amount of life force and life steal (espcially with healing power) that the dagger can pull off, it's raw damage is also a very good deal.

Even condi scourge can benefit from it, due to the life force generation aspect.

Self bleeding can be a problem, but this necro we're talking about - we're the last profession that can't handle condies on self. And it is a very important step in the right direction, even if bit clumsy one. The direction of making power necro also reap some benefits from condi manipulation plays.

Offhand dagger however...oh boy. That thing needs a total rework. A trait (weakening shroud) beats it's #5 by leaps and bounds. While nr 4 is slow as molasses on a skill that should be reactive (bouncing blind). But becuase it has condi transfer attached to it, it's slow and so the blind just acts as an odd addition, becuase certainly not as a reactive counter to incoming blow.

> @"Meteor.3720" said:

> I've had this before and tbh I'd rather not enter the AT than have to carry a silver/ gold player who intentionally joins at the last moment with the intention of exploiting the imminent start and getting better players to carry them to more wins/ gold.

If this is not a pride thing, please elaborate, because i don't understand your logic behind this.

The way i see it:

1. it's not "exploiting" because he literally saves your chances of getting into tourney. No one else came, it's him or bust.

2. If you end up at lower spot because of him - the rewards on top aren't that bigger then ones below, and you spend less time on the tourney if you fall off before final.

3. unless you end up 17th or below - it's still relatively fast money.

Well making sure you got skills to remove the cripple/chill/immob trio is core to making a thief build. Else rangers, warriors and scourges will eat you alive. If you can't make a quick exit even with those on, you're gonna end up dead pretty fast.

I still know too litte about rev to answer you (recently started playing him for real).

But i can certainly say that if you got victimized by cripples (i have no idea what on rev could cripple) or chills (now that, we have) as a thief, than this one is on you. Normally thieves have a buttload of skills that remove those as "side effect".

My bad armor does affect things in spvp

Long story short - 4 man plat team, tourney about to start. I join them 10s before start, being literally their last chance to enroll on time. Nope. One guy "doesn't play with guys he doesn't know". Well congrats, you get to keep your platinum pride and 0 gold cause 4 man teams can't enter.

Don't be that guy. If you can't get a teammate 10s before start, stop being picky and grab anyone you can, cause even worse result then usual beats getting nothing at all.

Just reading the Mallyx part made me cringe.

**Emproring Misery** is flat out **amazing** heal. If you trait it with Demonic Defiance it's hands down one of most potent heals ingame. The more condies on you, bigger the heal, and resistance pops split second before actual healing, making sure no poison will kill it off. Also unlike consume conditions it doesn't take ages to go off. 3/4s is pretty reasonable.

**Pain absorption** Block on skill that's spammable? Surely you jest. As heralds we enjoy massive block uptimes already.

Also resistance weak? Well...have you considered maybe covering that resistance with other boons, like the kind that herald throws left and right?

Also if you think rev's resistance for party (with 600 radius!!) is weak, i suggest you go to WvW and talk it up with your nearest commander.

**Banish enchantment** sucks? Say what? Since when does a quick cast unblockable boonstrip with confusion application and moderate energy cost suck? Not having banish enchantment vs guys like engies, eles, rangers, guards and warrs would suck. Bigtime.

**Unyielding Anguish** is a high cost, pulsing skillshot. Pulsing means enemy will get out of it ages before it does it's full damage. While the huge energy cost will not get refunded because enemy only ate half the damage....

Need I eleborate what energy deficiency in middle of a fight means for revenant?

**Embrace the Darkness** - since you didn't touch on this subject, I will. It tries to be amazing, but fails hard.

Torment pulses are plain weak. One stack per second on an elite is a joke. Old necro plague did better and that thing was a defensive elite.

Blindness immunity is applied only to skill itself, not reve. Anything else you do will miss when you're blinded despite elite being up.

Stat boost means next to nothing on a **condi** elite. Power builds love short term dps gains, but condi ones need a reliable, stable damage boost (like keeping might stacks up 24/7). They can't make use of window of opportunity to unload 100% to 0 damage combo in a split second, and then not worry about 0 energy or all good skills on cooldowns, cause the enemy is already dead anyway.

As it stand Embrace the Darkness is only good for triggering Diabolic Inferno and/or Demonic Defiance, then deactivating it a.s.a.p. to conserve precious energy.

> @"Obtena.7952" said:

> I would like to see the following:

>

> **Signet of Undeath:**

> PASSIVE: changed from passive LF Regen to flat rate reduction of LF consumption while in Shroud

> ACTIVE: Reset Shroud Cooldown?

I refuse. If there's any real value to signet of Undeath it's because of the way it's current passive works - pop a corruption skill with signet of uneath and you can self-generate some life force. Also it's very fun to use it along with other life-force generators when shrouded to combat too fast degen.

Making it a passive life force degen reduction kills such options.

it's active needs a change though. For ranged ress we already got transfusion that is instant, doesn't require hour long aiming if you're trying to ress more then one fallen ally, and is not on absurd cooldown. Not to mention that it's a trait, not taking up precious and very contested utility slot.

My idea for active:

"Heal yourself and nearby allies at cost of 20% of your current lifeforce." Base strength of the heal would depend on amount of life force you had when you casted it. Lotsa LF = strong heal, barely any lf = weak base heal. On top of that your standard healing power - based coefficient, so healing necros get some value even when low on life force.

Offhand dagger.

I want it have an ability to be thrown and tethered to an enemy. While tethered, mainhand's auto would strike them regardless of range, as long as the tether is up. Follow up skill would pull enemy to you.

The second skill be melee, single target fear, or knockback, to allow for some disengage and all the torment stacks that condi rev stacks to actually do their job.

Well for what it's worth i can say that in WvW shiro really pulls his weight with both ability to pursue targets and life saving evades, that intervowen with regular dodges make for major escape tool when mispositioned. So regardless if condi or power, having shiro in WvW is a good idea unless you're gonna be hugging your zerg all the time and don't plan any solo roams or playing frontline hero.

And as for Herald as a recently picked up revenant (was my crafting character) i can say i'm fascinated by it's possibilities. But to each their own.

I have a different idea - ofc knowing a-net fat chance that will happen in core spec (no new money there).

Offhand dagger that will have the ability to hook & pull at range.

Since rev is basically a melee character, instead of bending it backwards to do what it's not meant to be, better to have a skill that can pull enemy to you, like Dragon Hunter's spear of justice.

Second skill could be a fear or a knockback, to make it the perfect engage/disengage weapon.

> @"Sublimatio.6981" said:

> it wouldn't be op because power necro doesn't have condi transfer unless you specifically trait/slot it. Also, some mobs don't give conditions on you and in team play condis are immediately removes by allies. So, pretty useless idea. Sorry, next

Simple solution would be to make self-inflicted condies unremovable by allies, only self.

It would both make self-condies an actual playstyle in group setting, and corruption skills' side effects an actual thing, rather then a joke.

You touched up on something i noticed too XECOR. Generally in wvw it's extremely punishing to be a melee profession, even in 1v1 skirmishes. My condi rev (mace/shield) was just hitting air, while enemy chrono was having a field day with his gs where all the effort of hitting me is tab + auto, unlike my mace where the #2 & #3 are skillshots and all in melee.

Ofc i'm a beginner at rev, but still it feeld damn inbalanced when i got short range and have to land a skillshot, while other side gets unreflectable death beam of doom that only needs pressing 1 after choosing a target..

> @"Nimon.7840" said:

> > @"XECOR.2814" said:

> > Don't waste your time they will never implement this. Didn't you see they increased cd on reaper skill and plague signet. I wish everyone who plays necro delete their chars 1 day collectively to send a message to the devs.

>

> Or everyone should just stop playing necro

Already on it. Jumping ship to revenant, as we speak. I'm just dissatisfied with state of core and reaper. Scourge is viable, but pigeonholed to be aoe condi aids spammer rarther then having multiple builds and roles like core and reaper can.

unranked exists so ppl can do their games on chillmode (learning how 2 pvp with new profession for example) without ranked players screaming their heads off over their mmr cause "noob lost us game!!".

Thread of 101 "good" advices on how to **not** fix scourge.

1. Weakness is an excellent condition with very clear role and purpose (stopping crit builds from dumpstering even on 24k hp targets in 2s)

2. Your 25 might stacks got converted to weakness? Well...maybe dodge the corruption?

3. Necro having less coruptions means tommorow you'll be dying in 1.5s to burst of any of these professions: Ele, Mesmer, Engi, Ranger, Warr, Rev, Guard.

The real issue of scourge (if i must go there) is how easy it is for him to hit a target with shades, without any significant punishment if he fails to do so, or openings for those engaging him in melee.

A few solutions i would propose.

1. Misssing Manifest Sand Shade (that is not hitting any enemy with it) puts the skill on forced cooldown (no insta casting next one).

2. Sand shroud (the main offender) can be spilt into two parts - instant barrier and cast-time pulsing damage. Latter interruptable, putting skill on full cooldown.

3. Having shades do different preparation animations (so you can see what's coming) would be lovely.

In a recent thread it was revealed that condi reaper dps and condi scourge dps are virtually same, assuming balls to the wall builds.

If you're not raid oriented (or don't intend to be) i would say grab trailblazer instead of viper. A lot more sustain for bit weaker dps package (since condi damage and duration are almost the same).

Don't underestimate the power of bruiser/condi tank necro in open world PvE, especially HoT maps. Other berserker/viper squishies will be dropping like flies when something tougher rolls around while you ress them left and right, keeping yourself and ergo the whole group alive.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQRBLfhG2JRvQPNYzNgnNA/NYxYwm6BLgXQ0PLAst0brx17KA-jRiAABAcSA6afgD1NE9TAoMlf2oFQ9FGaUJIpq/AA-e

Here's a build I use (more or less).

This is a real healer condi scourge. Best way you can be a healer scourge is to be tank healer. Get aggro off your allies, keeping yourself alive with insane life steal, barriers and heals, while they get your Transfusion and barriers to deal with some damage that falls sideways.

Notice the dagger/warhorn combo. On scourge i can let my utilities and shades do the condi damage job while d/wh combo will let me quickly build up both life force and health (dagger #2 with healing power is massive). This is what makes me survive 1v1 with champs (given they can be soloed at all). When not in dire need of filling both your bars, stick to scepter/torch.

Obviously damage is down. I use sand savant for concentration and expertise buff, letting my healer get ~55% condi duration without expertise gear. Also less damage traits, more barrier traits, you can adjust those as you see fit. But yeah, while pretty average damage wise, this builds heals, shields and survives even real nasty brawls.