Patch Notes - Necromancer

Necromancer:The reaper specialization from Heart of Thorns™ is seeing a few significant changes in this update, primarily centered around Reaper's Shroud. We drastically increased the damage of all shroud attacks while simultaneously increasing the rate at which life force is lost while in shroud. These changes are aimed at allowing the reaper to output more damage at the cost of some defense. In conjunction with these changes, we are also revisiting some underperforming shroud-based traits to focus their power into specific high points centered around entering or leaving shroud.

Skills

Blood Is Power (World vs. World): This skill's PvP split has been extended to WvW and will now use the lower 20-second cooldown.

Deathly Chill (World vs. World): This skill's PvP split has been extended to WvW and will now apply 1 stack of bleeding for 8 seconds upon chill application.

Manifest Sand Shade: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge. Made back-end changes to increase the priority of shade visibility.

Nefarious Favor: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge.

Sand Cascade: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge.

Garish Pillar: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge.

Desert Shroud: Fixed a bug that could cause this skill's targets to be lost due to proximity between shades or the casting scourge. Increased the damage inflicted per strike of this skill by 25%. Increased the duration of torment inflicted on each pulse of this skill from 2 seconds to 4 seconds in PvE.

Reaper Shroud: Increased life-force consumption rate from 3% per second to 5% per second.

Life Rend: Increased damage by 25%.

Life Slash: Increased damage by 30%.

Life Reap: Increased damage by 25%. Reduced life-force gain per hit from 2% to 1.5%.

Death's Charge: Increased damage by 25%.

Soul Spiral: Increased damage by 40%. Reduced poison duration from 4 seconds to 2 seconds. Reduced number of whirl finishers on this skill from 6 to 4.

Executioner's Scythe: Increased damage by 33% on targets above 50% health. Increased damage by 30% on targets below 50% health. Increased damage by 28% on targets below 25% health.

Fading Twilight: Increased damage by 8%.

Sand Swell: This skill can no longer be canceled by other skills before the portal is created. Fixed an issue where the displayed casting time did not reflect the actual casting time.

Chilling Scythe: Increased damage by 21%.

Traits

Reaper's Onslaught: Recharge reduction on shroud skills is now calculated per target hit by Life Reap.

Rending Shroud: This trait has been renamed to Awaken the Pain. This trait grants 5 might for 5 seconds when entering shroud and causes might on you to grant 40 power and 20 condition damage per stack at level 80.

Reaper's Might: Fixed a bug that was preventing this trait from properly granting might on use of scourge shroud skills.

Dhuumfire: Fixed a bug that was preventing this trait from properly inflicting burning on use of scourge shroud skills.

Unyielding Blast: Fixed a bug that was preventing this trait from properly inflicting vulnerability on use of scourge shroud skills.

Spiteful Spirit: The attack caused by this trait now converts 2 additional boons on targets below 50% health.

Unholy Martyr: This trait's functionality has changed. It now causes the necromancer to draw up to 5 conditions from 5 allies within a range of 600 to themselves when entering shroud. When exiting shroud, the necromancer consumes up to 3 conditions, converting each condition into 7% life force.

Signets of Suffering: This trait now grants the passives for all equipped signets while in shroud, regardless of whether those signets were on recharge prior to entering shroud. Removed 20% recharge reduction. This trait now causes all signets to recharge by 4% each second that shroud is active.

Plague Sending: This trait has had its functionality changed. It now causes your first strike after entering shroud to transfer two conditions to your target.

I don't play a necro, but one of my guildies does and she loves her necro. What do you guys think of the changes? Good? Bad? :) I want to let her know.

So uhhh... where are the axe and dagger buffs? Where is that meaningful change to Scourge to bring it up to par in raids as a "heavy" support?

I'll take the desert shroud buff. The plague sending change may make me drop curses in wvw, though.

@AegisRunestone.8672 said:I don't play a necro, but one of my guildies does and she loves her necro. What do you guys think of the changes? Good? Bad? :) I want to let her know.

Mostly pretty good in my opinion. Though its not quite enough just yet. One issue I have is that Awaken the Pain is competing with Axe mastery which doesn't help axe at all. That's a pretty big oversight since necro's axe has been struggling and its trait is needed to make it semi decent. There are still a lot of issues to be looked at for necromancer and this wont fix it, but I didn't expect it to be fixed with the patch anyway....

Aegis..... :3

I don't believe the Reaper buffs will make us Meta how ever it does look like some meaty buffs,

Now with awaken the pain, which looks good as well btw, is our might generation shared with others, or the side effects mentioned for condition?

Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

@Lily.1935 said:

@AegisRunestone.8672 said:I don't play a necro, but one of my guildies does and she loves her necro. What do you guys think of the changes? Good? Bad? :) I want to let her know.

Hi, Lily! I'm glad you saw this! At least, it's a step in the right direction?

(The Unhindered Combatant Daredevil Trait nerf has me SAD)

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

So you trait for life force generation I suppose, that signet trait line helped generate a ton of life force before so if you blow your signets you could then enter shroud and still have the passives, I think there was also a trait line in Reaper that increased life force generation too.

If you read what they did with Dhuumfire for the scourge its actually a nice buff, I'd say if played right scourge can find its way to be very useful PvE wise :)

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

Yeah, I sighed hard at that. I don't get what they want reaper to do anymore.

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

Camp shroud, so trait for life force generation, use utilities that generate it as well, perhaps tons of wells and signet of undeath?

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

Camp shroud but here's some nerfs so you can't camp shroud? Hope you don't take any hits either while in shroud.

Unholy martyr could be useful on scourge, only place I’m seeing it though. Awaken the pain is interesting along with the Reaper buffs. Singet trait seems nicer? But idk if I’ll take it since our Signets aren’t much to look at anyway.

Other than that, scourge appears to be suffering the same problems as before, and the life force consumption increase for Reaper shroud does not make any sense to me at all....

Overall, on paper it looks like a net gain but... ehhhh. It’s another step in the right direction, but one that feels like it was made very unwillingly.

I wonder how good Strength runes will be now with Awaken the Pain compared to Scholar :# wish I wasn't working!

@Oldirtbeard.9834 said:

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

Just testing this. With SR, reaper, spite traited (with all the shroud stuff in SR), LF duration is a absolute joke now. Not even getting hit it last maybe 8-10 seconds (depending on your gear) when full LF. I fought one halloweenie vet (not champ, vet). One cc/hit took me from full to out of shroud in less than 3 seconds. the 'extra' damage got him down to half before i was knocked outta shroud. Did more tests. I could not stay in shroud fighting one vet skeleton before he knocked me outta shroud. Thats one vet. Damage increase doesnt mean crap if you can't stay in shroud to output any damage. Fighting multiple enemies? Shroud drains so fast now with each hit, plus the added drain that i cannot stay in a fight longer than 5-6 seconds.

I'd rather have the old reaper back. I'm not surprised mind you. Anet has a track record of buffing one aspect of necro, than completely neutering it on the back end to offset (and make worse) the buffs).

Reddit thinks necromancer is fixed, and anet's move to trade Reaper sustain for damage is what the community asked for. But, the gap between necromancer/Reaper and viability was so huge that I don't see that anything really changed.

Sorry, I think the character stays on the shelf.

Edit: I really wanted to see fixes to weapons & specifically to focus, but anet doesn't fix weapons that people don't use.

@nekretaal.6485 said:Reddit thinks necromancer is fixed, and anet's move to trade Reaper sustain for damage is what the community asked for. But, the gap between necromancer/Reaper and viability was so huge that I don't see that anything really changed.

Sorry, I think the character stays on the shelf.

Sucks for you then, my Reaper has almost exclusively been my main.

@TheLastNobody.8319 said:Unholy martyr could be useful on scourge, only place I’m seeing it though. Awaken the pain is interesting along with the Reaper buffs. Singet trait seems nicer? But idk if I’ll take it since our Signets aren’t much to look at anyway.

Other than that, scourge appears to be suffering the same problems as before, and the life force consumption increase for Reaper shroud does not make any sense to me at all....

Overall, on paper it looks like a net gain but... ehhhh. It’s another step in the right direction, but one that feels like it was made very unwillingly.

Honestly I think the consumption rate increase was the way to go, turning reaper shroud into more of a "I am mad and going to kill you now" button.

I wish though they had done more for our out of shroud damage, the GS buffs are nice but I wanted to see some more buffs for MH dagger, axe, and the long forgotten staff.

Wow fuck this game.I wasted 100 gold on my condi gear and I log in to find my dps has dropped by 10k .

First impression without trying out:

• Reaper gets shafted in pvp because pve players wanted more dmg.

Going to try it out, but while I like changes to some traits which were totally suicidal (namely trait which put all condis on you in shroud lel) or useless, I think reducing survivability on class which already has low mobility/defensive abilities is kind of crazy. But we'll see if high damage can be compensated by having more defensive traiting or something.. Problem might be that those traits just do not work well without weird weapon choices or condi dmg.

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

What?

Going into shroud is now a DPS increase for the first time ever. These changes are amazing.

@Crinn.7864 said:

@Castitalus.6359 said:

@mulzi.8273 said:Double edge sword for me. Great, they improved reaper damage, but then they double-nerfed shroud uptime (counting the nerf from the previous patch).

They seem like it huh? They're not though, considering shroud has been double nerfed now you basically get to use shroud for about 6 sec until you're out if you're lucky and not being hit by anything. These changes would be amazing if you could utilize shroud long enough to enjoy them, as it stands I actually think this is a net nerf to Reaper.

I could have sworn that went into shroud at some point, but it was gone so fast that I'm not sure it happened at all.

@redwolv.4751 said:

Honestly I think the consumption rate increase was the way to go, turning reaper shroud into more of a "I am mad and going to kill you now" button.

Ye but they removed the ability to dip in and out of shroud two patches ago, meaning it's now a massive commitment. Seriously, the drawbacks for are horribly unforgiving.

@jalmari.3906 said:some traits [..] were totally suicidal (namely trait which put all condis on you in shroudApparently someone (probably just ONE person who quit playing a week after launch) uses this as a tactic to dump conditions on enemies. Yeah, because that happens.

Pve Deathly Chill is unchanged. All is good in the world (my world, at least). Any word on Griever insignias yet so I can redo my armor?