Any ETA on a fix for reaper shroud drain?

Ok dear Anet, speaking frankly, this is gone to far.

I am a 1.900+ days account with 6.000 hours, most of them in WvW, i know many many many players, old veterans and newcomers, i am in game very often and i talk with ppl, and there is absolutely NOONE i talk with that is happy about your decisions about Necromancers. We do understand the fact you want to promote new specs but there is NO REASON AT ALL to totally destroy the previous ones. Reaper is unplayable. U N P L A Y A B L E. Only viable option at the moment is Scourge but not everyone likes to play it. Me and many others were confortable with our condi reaper build and we agree it was strong and a bit nerf was more than fair but if we could understand a nerf we can not understand a total destruction of the build itself. Maybe you did not realized, but fact is that changing Deathly Chill and Soul Spiral you removed 18 stacks/rotation of bleeding from our build, so basically ALL OUR OFFENSIVE PONTENTIAL, in top of that you also increased the decay of shrouds to 5% from 3%, this mean you reduced our defensive/offensive potential of about 40%. THAT IS INSANE!!!!

As Reapers are now we do not do damage, we do not stay alive, we do not have decent breakstuns, nor evade, nor mobility, nor invisibility, nor block, WE GOT NOTHING.... you took a working class and turned in to a useless amount of NOTHING!!! So please, you want Reaper to be a power spec, ok, the nerf on condi damage was more than enought but the life force decay was just ridiculous, give us back AT LAST the chance to do something at last restore the decay to 3%, PLEASE!!!!

For pvp I always thought the passive shroud degeneration was obsolete because of all the damage people do now that they can just instantly melt it without it passively going down, and that the degeneration should be removed entirely. The 5% degeneration ruined a lot of the builds I enjoyed in both wvw and pvp, and sent me back to playing other classes because reaper is just too weak now.

I usually do not reply to such posts, but the way you are putting the problem mate is just ridiculous. On this note, I am asking our dear dear devs to please completely ignore this post and just remove any memory from mind. Now back to you :) if you feel that changes with the class you main on are wrong or do not fit your gameplay anymore you have options, right: learn to play after the changes are made, make another build that suits these changes, play with another class so on so on. if you just complain that necro got a huge nerf omg what are u doing this is crazy, usles bla bla bla...no one will ever bother with you. Ele for example has seen so many nerfs this year that you woun't believe. I main in Ele, got 2 of them (tempest and weaver) u don;t see me on forums complaining about this nerf and that nerf. I make it work with what I have and make the class better by understanding the devs that made those changes. I also play reaper, for a year now and to be honest (since I play it in wvw most of the time) I find the changes good. classes that have un unfair advantage on other is bad, long shrod with condi damage is crazy. Adapt and make it work man....make it work :) be a better player, stop writing on forums and get into spec understanding. No salt intended here

I wasn't much of a Reaper player and was more of a Core Necro player, but I did notice how a Reaper was played as one of my friends has a Power Reaper build.He did really well until this patch came out.

He still likes Reaper as it's his favourite class in the game and won't just abandon it, but he and I have noticed that his power dropped a bit due to getting out of shroud way too quickly, and things he used to survive he's downing to pretty easily.

I'm now playing as a Scourge and even when he said once "This area is rough" and I went to him and took out everything then helped him back up, he even thought "Maybe I can give Scourge another try... but I just don't like how Scourge plays."

I think the only problem they did was the shroud nerf. That was not needed.

Not just the decay, but the 7 Sec shroud is needed too. More so on a glassier power Reaper.

@"Ayumi Spender.1082" said:I wasn't much of a Reaper player and was more of a Core Necro player, but I did notice how a Reaper was played as one of my friends has a Power Reaper build.He did really well until this patch came out.

He still likes Reaper as it's his favourite class in the game and won't just abandon it, but he and I have noticed that his power dropped a bit due to getting out of shroud way too quickly, and things he used to survive he's downing to pretty easily.

I'm now playing as a Scourge and even when he said once "This area is rough" and I went to him and took out everything then helped him back up, he even thought "Maybe I can give Scourge another try... but I just don't like how Scourge plays."

I think the only problem they did was the shroud nerf. That was not needed.

Your mate sounds like...me! I wont abandon it either but damn this is beyond rough. For the last week for the life of me I've tried to adapt/rebuild but its tragic. Even with the new playstyle opponents know tht you really have to hang bk and get tht lf then pounce. So even before im1/4 into lf gain the thiefs on me like sauce. So then i move with the pack...same deal singled out and obliterated. My ratings into mud zone but I dont care at this stage I'll keep experimenting. To all who say adapt ok i will but to those who say change classes thts a straight copout on the class/spec we hold true to. If you're like the above individual who can just switch then i suggest the reaper forums arent best for you. Dude up top mains ele and has comments for us lol. Really main reaper as hard as it is to stick to a class. Try a good solid week of pvp, give us a solid assessment. If you're succeeding or even running even compared to last season let us all know. Then go jump bk on your ele and post over your end.

Scourge is not even a necro.. Necro have shroud and that is what i like of it. Scourge is just something else, they could have gave this spec to any oter class since the mechanic does not fit Necros lore by any how.

@Emperor Palpatine.5329 said:I usually do not reply to such posts, but the way you are putting the problem mate is just ridiculous. On this note, I am asking our dear dear devs to please completely ignore this post and just remove any memory from mind. Now back to you :) if you feel that changes with the class you main on are wrong or do not fit your gameplay anymore you have options, right: learn to play after the changes are made

I agree with you on most of your points, specially that the guy posts looks so much more like a cry than something usefull.But you may agree that Devs makes their mistakes sometimes. I think thats the case with the Reaper Changes. I was used to play Reaper as a Power Build, not Condi.

And i cant feel myself happy with those changes. I can imagine the Condi Reapers players feelings. They got nerfed even harder.

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:Not just the decay, but the 7 Sec shroud is needed too. More so on a glassier power Reaper.

This might as well become baseline. If I'm on Soul Reaping, I never even consider the other traits, that's how necessary Foot in the Grave is. Pvp perspective, I don't WvW or PvE with necro/reaper/scourge.

Theres not going to be a "fix" for a change they made on purpose. Theres no "fix" needed for something that isn't a bug.

From SnowCrows;

NecromancerFor changes and updates to Necromancer we forward you to an earlier post by Farbstoff. The patch has put the necromancer back in a very bad position. Anet tried to improve Reaper, but the result is far from satisfactory. Reaper has a lot of small problems which sums up into a very unbalanced class. The +400 Ferocity buff is locked to Shroud, making it less relevant with the reduced duration and the inability to receive healing while in Shroud. Scourge mechanics are currently not good enough for PVE because the specialization is designed around barrier and boon corruption. Both can only be applied very sporadically to enemies in raids and fractals; Mesmers do it much easier (for boon strip) and barrier is currently pretty useless in PVE.

Tell me again how it isn't necessary to fix this? You can argue it wasn't a bug but the bloody result is the same. I think that whoever is currently balancing necromancer needs to be pulled away from the class completely because it is pretty obvious to everyone except Anet there are clear issues with this class and frankly the lack of willingness to respond to these concerns is disconcerting!

If they truly feel that they need to keep it this way for the drain then they need to add in a barrier on reaper from activation. Using your mana for a shield never works out well for a mages class.

I have a necro too. Yes the latest adjustments on the shroud are a bit harsh. but they dont need fixing maybe some more adjustmentsyes the current pool is draining too fast that sometimes you dont even have time to actually use skill 4 & 5

@"Vlad Morbius.1759" said:From SnowCrows;

NecromancerFor changes and updates to Necromancer we forward you to an earlier post by Farbstoff. The patch has put the necromancer back in a very bad position. Anet tried to improve Reaper, but the result is far from satisfactory. Reaper has a lot of small problems which sums up into a very unbalanced class. The +400 Ferocity buff is locked to Shroud, making it less relevant with the reduced duration and the inability to receive healing while in Shroud. Scourge mechanics are currently not good enough for PVE because the specialization is designed around barrier and boon corruption. Both can only be applied very sporadically to enemies in raids and fractals; Mesmers do it much easier (for boon strip) and barrier is currently pretty useless in PVE.

Tell me again how it isn't necessary to fix this? You can argue it wasn't a bug but the bloody result is the same. I think that whoever is currently balancing necromancer needs to be pulled away from the class completely because it is pretty obvious to everyone except Anet there are clear issues with this class and frankly the lack of willingness to respond to these concerns is disconcerting!

Well, I believe that anet see the necromancer's support as a "condi manager". The "heavy support" that they advertise when they talk about the scourge is all about condition management:

• Barrier: design to absorb the condition damage taken (which indeed is not really relevant in GW2's PvE)
• Condi cleanse/conversion: Yes, the scourge is pretty good at this role if you build for it. (Again, not really relevant in GW2's PvE)
• Boon corruption: Nobody can say that the boonhate is not strong in the scourge fella. (Still not relevant in GW2's PvE)
• Revive: Well... Let's say that it can be nice. (Not relevant if you trust your party in PvE)
• might stacking: Usefull. (yet they changed the druid in such a way that it became irrelevant in PvE)

The test of SC show clearly that neither the scourge nor the reaper lack dps, it's just that their utilities aren't needed (or weaker than their counterpart) in PvE. Objectively, scourge and reaper are viable options in raid just because epidemic exist and this skill allow their dps to grow to viable height. What restrain the current necromancer in PvE might not be it's abilities but, instead, it's long history of being the guy that do not bring anything to the table for it's group. And SC and LN seem to fall into this "trap" by only seeing barrier and boon corruption and not the condition cleanse and might aspect of the scourge.

They might not be wrong in what they say, but they seem to lack objectivity and look at the profession superficially. The scourge have 2 good point on it's side: It reach easily it's dps ceiling (which make him a reliable dps) and it does have epidemic (which make him the king when there is adds to kill). This does not make the profession otpimal in any way but make it a reliable asset when you need a dps and you are not sure of how good the player is. Note that a warrior dps will be in the same position than a scourge, except that his strong points will lie in it's hard CC abilities.

The problem is there are several classes that do what we do well the same or better and also bring far more DPS, so the question isn't a matter of lacking objectivity they just see better options. When it comes to the shroud one of the best uses we had in group fights was the fact that we had a second health bar which in many cases allowed us to stay alive just long enough to revive downed players that carried the groups DPS. Now by removing that they make us middle of the road in DPS all the while removing that defensive utility. They just don't see it and every time they try to fix the Reaper they break it even more, the last balance pass clearly shows they have tunnel vision when it comes to power reaper and that's whats killing hope for many of us!

@Vlad Morbius.1759 said:The problem is there are several classes that do what we do well the same or better and also bring far more DPS, so the question isn't a matter of lacking objectivity they just see better options. When it comes to the shroud one of the best uses we had in group fights was the fact that we had a second health bar which in many cases allowed us to stay alive just long enough to revive downed players that carried the groups DPS. Now by removing that they make us middle of the road in DPS all the while removing that defensive utility. They just don't see it and every time they try to fix the Reaper they break it even more, the last balance pass clearly shows they have tunnel vision when it comes to power reaper and that's whats killing hope for many of us!

there are a lot of ideas around, a rollback asap would be the best possible solution then they can re-think better at what to do.