Shroud Decay and Damage

Shroud decay feels fine on it's own, but when you throw in incoming damage, especially from multiple sources it's a bit too much. Reaper needed a damage buff to begin with, and it's fine if you don't want us camping with it but reduce how much damage knocks down life force or make it take a percentage of HP. It's pretty hard to sustain shroud when thrown in a group due to our lifeforce generation not being enough with how fast we lose it.

Maybe a bit too early without good testing but let me know what the rest of you Reapers think.

I think they want it to be part of necromancers theme at this point nearly everything must be risk vs reward. Necro needed these buffs and to get something on necro we have always had to give something. I would rather risk gaining more dps for shroud up time over being stuck with tons of up time and still not being able to deal viable damage to others. Consider the fact that some of the main kilers of necro have also gotten some pretty significant nerfs making them more vulnerable to necro mains

They took the option to build defensive/tanky Reaper build with this changes. I hate losing that options. Now its max damage reaper or nothing, at least on paper looks like that...

@mazut.4296 said:They took the option to build defensive/tanky Reaper build with this changes. I hate losing that options. Now its max damage reaper or nothing, at least on paper looks like that...

Swap Spite for Death Magic or Blood Magic. You'll still want Soul Reaping and Reaper for your other two slots. It can be tanky, just not as easily as it was before. Before you could trait for damage and gear for damage, but still be left wanting for damage. Like other classes, you should have to trait and gear, if you want to be tanky, it shouldn't have been in the profession mechanic (I mean this more for core Necro rather than Reaper, but both shouldn't have had strong defensive from shroud).

@ZDragon.3046 said:I think they want it to be part of necromancers theme at this point nearly everything must be risk vs reward. Necro needed these buffs and to get something on necro we have always had to give something. I would rather risk gaining more dps for shroud up time over being stuck with tons of up time and still not being able to deal viable damage to others. Consider the fact that some of the main kilers of necro have also gotten some pretty significant nerfs making them more vulnerable to necro mains

I don't mind that at all, I just don't think we have enough life force generation to get back into shroud. Right now there's not really a risk to using shroud, it's become a weird "burn the resource bar" but unless there's tons of mobs dying nearby I'm not able to sustain using the CDs between shroud and greatsword like I used to be able to do.

I'm not really against the rate we lose it, I don't like how long it takes to get it back. Either that, or they reduce how much mob damage does to shroud so we can work with our current life force generation. IMO it's a bit much atm.

Pfff..... forget Reaper. Every non POF class should be weaker than the new one, thats the plan! Just buy POF and play scourge and make moarr $$$ for Anet

@mazut.4296 said:They took the option to build defensive/tanky Reaper build with this changes. I hate losing that options. Now its max damage reaper or nothing, at least on paper looks like that...

Realistically that was never reapers theme to be tanky anet already expressed that they pretty much disliked bunker builds and tried to remove them as much as possible from the game with the exception of a few professions that a are just naturally great and built for doing that job. Its called reaper not tanker. If you want to build tanky use core necro now.

Some of us dont like being forced into building tanky either you know. Perhaps now if you spec to be zerker you actually hit like a zerker rather than spec zerker and hit like a wet paper roll compared to other profession zerker builds.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@mazut.4296 said:They took the option to build defensive/tanky Reaper build with this changes. I hate losing that options. Now its max damage reaper or nothing, at least on paper looks like that...

Its all cool, I also like the damage increase. Gonna test if I still can survive 10-15 adds. Maybe killing them faster will balance the shorter shroud.

I also think that it was never their intent for shroud to be used the way it has to make necro so tanky in general, and I think this change will make the Soul Reaping line more important to builds centered around being in shroud. which makes sense imo.

I almost ALWAYS popped out of shroud on my own before it ran out, so I am hoping this change doesn't have a huge impact anyways. I like the idea of doing more damage in shroud. This gives shroud more versatility. You can pop into and dodge roll outta there and still survive more than most classes. Or you can use it to bump up the deeps.

..........

I like where it's going design-wise. But there's still a tortuous road ahead before they finish decoupling the sustain and damage/utilities of shroud.Using one, preventing the other, has always been terrible design and impossible to balance properly.

In early stages, Necromancer was wearing leather. Now I think it should wear heavy armor with high protection uptime, and treat shroud just like a weapon swap / engineer kit, losing health when hit in shroud.

Right now, in PvP, with even less sustain than before, Reaper is in a tough transition state.Increased damage doesn't do anything against double endure pain, double stone signets, when it's not complete invulnerability... And that's if they chose not to disengage!

I hope other professions will have their sustain looked at for the next redesign/balance patch.I'm happy daredevil got hit, but there's still a lot to do on warrior, guard, ele, druid...

@Ara.4569 said:I like where it's going design-wise. But there's still a tortuous road ahead before they finish decoupling the sustain and damage/utilities of shroud.Using one, preventing the other, has always been terrible design and impossible to balance properly.

In early stages, Necromancer was wearing leather. Now I think it should wear heavy armor with high protection uptime, and treat shroud just like a weapon swap / engineer kit, losing health when hit in shroud.

Right now, in PvP, with even less sustain than before, Reaper is in a tough transition state.Increased damage doesn't do anything against double endure pain, double stone signets, when it's not complete invulnerability... And that's if they chose not to disengage!

I hope other professions will have their sustain looked at for the next redesign/balance patch.I'm happy daredevil got hit, but there's still a lot to do on warrior, guard, ele, druid...

I'm really not looking forward to another crazy long period before we get some adjustments again, they really need to roll these guys out in shorter waves.

Add the decreased shroud up time to immense boon stripping meta in wvw and reaper is dead for wvw.

i do mainly play only WvW, sometimes PvP, necro is my main with 3.000 hours out of 5.000 in total i have played, and let me tell you that about WvW reaper now have
a bit better but still mediocre dps, not existant stability, not existant resistence, not existatn breakstuns, and now thanks to the patch a not existant life force pool to do anything usefull. Only possible way to play necro is midline reaper wich is mainly stay behind and spam damage in front (Pirate Sheep FTW) which is dead boring if you ask me, eventually you move in to do something for 4-5 seconds untill the life force is over, then you are dead for the lack of utilities listed above. You can also play Scourge and spam shades around, but once again it is a stay behind and spam in front meta (Pirate Sheep again) which try to guess? YES it is still dead boring.

To sum up, PvE speaking, Necro is useless, PvP speaking, Scourge is the only viable option. WvW speaking once again Scourge is only option viable.

So if the patch purpose was to give ppl a clear signal that YOU HAVE TO BUY NEW EXPANSION BEACOUSE IT WILL BE THE ONLY DECENT SPEC VIABLE, yes, it worked indeed.

Thx ilmau for your summary, particularly with wvw in mind. Scourge is boring to play and I really wish that power reaper was viable in wvw. Seems they removed the only reason for reaper in the beginning which was to give the option to melee in shroud.

the current decay isnt higher than the decay of earlier days when you didnt skilled vital persistance, so its okay i think. you can cast spectral armor if you enter shroud and than cast your spike. after the spike -> leave it and regenerate lf. this rotation works good. remember: power weapons have much higher lf regeenration than condi weapons. so its not difficult to reload the shroud on power reaper.

I mean... the biggest thing about shroud is that it's the only survive tool a reaper has.Anet gave reaper shroud more dmg, which is great. I really love the dmg buffs.

But they also took away a lot of survivability with it.This means the ONLY tool we had to keep us alive got nerfed as well.

I feel like the change did not take into account the fact that shroud is quite literally the only way reapers have to stay alive.Maybe some sort of defensive trait should have been made to account for that?

seems to me like anet dont want anyone to play reaper in anything other than pve.

@needbeer.1687 said:seems to me like anet dont want anyone to play reaper in anything other than pve.

still not even compared to the DPS of a war tbh, even beastmaster can do more damage of a reaper and with some support utilities as backup not like you run out of life force and you are totally exposed

I have just decided I will no longer buy any Gems till they pull their head out and actually fix Necro. That simple. Anet only seems to care about money so if they will not fix the Necro class I will not give them money. Simple as that.

@mazut.4296 said:They took the option to build defensive/tanky Reaper build with this changes. I hate losing that options. Now its max damage reaper or nothing, at least on paper looks like that...

Yea but wasn't Reaper supposed to be a huge dps spec, not a tanky one? I thought it was always a mistake that it could be built tanky

@ZDragon.3046 said:I think they want it to be part of necromancers theme at this point nearly everything must be risk vs reward. Necro needed these buffs and to get something on necro we have always had to give something. I would rather risk gaining more dps for shroud up time over being stuck with tons of up time and still not being able to deal viable damage to others. Consider the fact that some of the main kilers of necro have also gotten some pretty significant nerfs making them more vulnerable to necro mains

But WHY do we always have to give something? Power Holosmith was straight buffed across the board in the same patch.

I think the nerf to shroud camping will be a good thing in the long run. Perhaps it will spur the return of longer chill duration.

Reaper was described as a slow monster that could own unwary players that entered melee with it. If the balance team looks at Reaper from that perspective, they may end up buffing more power skills, traits, and soft CC like chill to realign the specialization toward its purpose.

Shroud camping, condi-Reaper, mobility, and ranged damage are not aligned thematically. Reaper should be susceptible to kiting and ranged damage but not so much for anything in melee.

@Anchoku.8142 said:I think the nerf to shroud camping will be a good thing in the long run. Perhaps it will spur the return of longer chill duration.

Reaper was described as a slow monster that could own unwary players that entered melee with it. If the balance team looks at Reaper from that perspective, they may end up buffing more power skills, traits, and soft CC like chill to realign the specialization toward its purpose.

Shroud camping, condi-Reaper, mobility, and ranged damage are not aligned thematically. Reaper should be susceptible to kiting and ranged damage but not so much for anything in melee.

can you please go and check reaper as it is now, check every trait, runes, sigils, stats combination and please let me know how it is supposed to stay alive in any game mode?

I am getting bored to repeat always same story, it is useless to do insane damage if you CAN NOT LAND an HIT, nor can stay alive by any means. Got it ?

Mesmers and Thief goes perma evade and stealth, Guard and War got permablock and resistence, Revenant and Ele and ranger are evasive, not to talk about ranged full zerk class who kills you even beafore you get in melee range. DO not come here telling me that RP #2 skill if effective to get in melee range coz you just need to dodge back and you are again out of range, not to talk about Longbow and Rifle range. So by my pov, take a class turn it the way there is no way you can stay alive is just DUMB AND DUMB AND DUMB HAS HELL.