I was wondering about something:

So if scourge is on its way out in dps, maybe reaper can be the dps spec?

I mean if reaper was made even less strong in aoe and buffed in sustain and dps, would people cry less for nerfs in spvp? Then you could have traits like:IF you choose power, your dps duration and dmg is reduced by 50%, and if you choose condi, you get no might and do less dmg, or something like that.

You could then leave scourge as the aoe dps spec for wvw only and i dunno find some way to make it less desired for spvp by nerfing radius and buffing damage in a way that maybe it infects other people with bleeds or something? i would love to see reaper become the go to spec for single target pve, its a lot of fun going in and dealing bunch of single target dmg.

I was thinking something along the lines of traits like the way tempest ele has for major aoes and then have some traits that get buffed for only single targets if you want to burn down a target, like a boss.And if for an example:Scourge could be extra great vs that one level in swamplands with all the plants and animals type level as a ideal type level, and reaper could be really brilliant vs the tournova or whatever its name was.

What the... What are you saying?

Are you talking about a trait that would reduce condition damage and duration by 50% to let you deal power damage? Using condition prevent you from gaining might stack?

What the hell?

First of all, might stacks benefit both power and condition, this is the case for all professions and there is no "need" to create an exception for a single profession or even a single e-spec.

Elementalists don't have traits that make them deal more damage against a single target or maybe in another game but not in gw2. Elementalists have a high dps aginst immobile foes because they can stack a few aoe under their feets at the same time, the strength of the elementalist is it's hit rate, something that the necromancer can't even begin imagine to reach due to it's skills being vastly different in gameplay (thus to avoid saying: slow and non lasting skills).

To "balance" thing out with the elementalist anet choose for the necromancer a skill design were a single skill can do a lot of different things at the same time. This skill design let the necromancer appear as having a low skill ceiling because players mindlessly associate high skill ceiling to the ability to use a lot of skills at a fast rate.

To make things easier to grasp, against non large targets, the staff elementalist is like a dagger reaper that would have well of corruption on a 8 seconds coold down (lava font) and 2 wells of suffering on a 20 seconds cool down (glyph of storm and meteor shower) but can't protect himself behind the shroud yet use soul spiral (frost bow Ice storm or fiery great sword equivalent) as often as possible. (for convenience we will imagine that the shroud is a conjure weapon).

On large target, it would be like soul spiral and well of suffering hit twice as often. No trait ever can allow something like that and that's part of why the elementalist is and will stay top dps in PvE.

The issue of the scourge is that shades have been designed without a thought for game balance. The core necromancer make them strong, nothing more, nothing less. And that's were the crux of the issue lie, anet can't nerf an already weak core necromancer for the sake of something that they didn't foresee, yet they have a policy to never return on something that they released. Ideally, they would rework the shade system from the beginning, however it would be like releasing a whole new e-spec. So they try hapharzardly some numbers tweeks hoping to reach a state were the professions will be neither strong nor weak in PvP setting. Sure, in the process they hurt quite a lot the core necromancer and the reaper but, that's all you can expect from them.

Hopefully, After maybe another 2 years of changes, the scourge will have seen a transformation to something like that:

• Manifest sand shades (without sand savant): No longer have a cool down, you can only have one sand shade active at a time.
• Manifest sand shades (with sand savant): Work the same way as it does atm.
• Manifest sand shades (general): no longer proc on F2-F5 use.
• Desert empowerment: Proc on F2-F5 skill instead.
• Unending corruption: This trait corrupt boons into torment (2-3 seconds) only.

Meanwhile, Reaper would have had an increase in PvE chill uptime and a some slight changes:

• Chilling nova: reduce ICD to 5 seconds (PvE only), increase base chill duration to 2 seconds (PvE only)
• Reaper's onslaught: Might stacks now grant ferocity to the reaper (10 point per stack in PvP/WvW, 15-20 point per stack in PvE)

And core necromancer would finally see some QoL change:

• Dark path projectile speed increased, cool down reduced to 10 seconds.
• Life blast's damages slightly reduced but faster cast time.
• Life transfer cool down reduced to 30 seconds.
• Dagger auto attack smoothed in both attack speed and damage.
• Focus #4 now prioritize foes on bounce.
• Focus #5 have a shorter cast time and depend less on boon removal for the damage it deal.
• Chilling darkness ICD removed in PvE only. (let's be crazy)
• Well of suffering cool down reduced to 30 seconds in PvE (wow...)

This done, I can see some room for the core necro, the reaper and less complaints about scourge (well, except power scourge). Thought, this doesn't fix the reaper's survivability issue, but I doubt that anet will make a move on this one. (Still I may be wrong on that, actually I'd love anet to prove me wrong on that)

NB.: Note that this is the bare minimum that I think would be needed to be done to achieve some kind of balance for the current necromancer.

Alright that was a bad example.

Maybe if core stuff and reaper was reworked to offer better dps and something to give it more sustain so it can act like warrior.What if Dagger was made the main weapon for power builds besides axe for generating life force and was buffed to be good second hand weapon with axe? or dagger.I would love if dagger offered something else honestly besides just dmg, to make it ideal.

I mean i look at eles weapons and you got different kind of movesets on dagger and some of them are fairly nice, like hte jump forward with evade.

It makes no sense to make dagger better than axe, when axe already does a good job as a power weapon, unless its better for generating drains on a enemy to drain life or something for healer build, but then i dunno.There are people plenty more skilled than i, so i would need ideas.

Maybe core shroud could be reworked to be our mobile spec and be better? i dunno.Would give lots of options.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

This done, I can see some room for the core necro, the reaper and less complaints about scourge (well, except power scourge). Thought, this doesn't fix the reaper's survivability issue, but I doubt that anet will make a move on this one. (Still I may be wrong on that, actually I'd love anet to prove me wrong on that)

Reapers sustain fix is easy. Reaper need boon steal to sync with blighters boon but necro or reaper lacks it within its kit. Scourge has it and most dont even use it. IT was poor design choice putting that trait on scourge the other aspects of neco could benefit from it far better than scourge can.

Perhaps in the future we could see something likeSiphoned Power -now only grants 1 stack of might but also copies a boon from targets you strike under the health threshold (Pvp /wvw only)(Remains 2 might in pve till they start implementing more boons on enemies in pve)Chilling Victory - now steals 2 boons a boon when you strike a chilled target. 2sec icd No longer grants might (unless it happens to steal it) or generates life force. (pvp /wvw only)(Remains un changed in pve simply grants might when hitting a chilled foe)

I dont know :/now to try and make sense of what the OP was trying to explain lol

@Axl.8924 said:I mean i look at eles weapons and you got different kind of movesets on dagger and some of them are fairly nice, like hte jump forward with evade.

The reason ele has skills like that is because they cant weapon swap. So they need to have flashy and special things tied to different weapons when they swap attunements. If you look at other profession weapons skill you will see that none of them have the flexibility that elementalist weapons have. Maybe with the exception of some thief weapons....

It makes no sense to make dagger better than axe, when axe already does a good job as a power weapon, unless its better for generating drains on a enemy to drain life or something for healer build, but then i dunno.There are people plenty more skilled than i, so i would need ideas.Dagger could just use some number tuning but even then there is a limit to what they can do. I wouldn't expect to se any dagger effects change any time soon if at all.

The best thing to hope for is that the next e spec is something thats designed and well thought out rather than something sloppy thrown together like scourge was.

Reaper was a well thought out design and while it lost some of its unique flavor from the beta to launch to now its still designed well and can hold up even if its QoL changes come 2 years too late.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

This done, I can see some room for the core necro, the reaper and less complaints about scourge (well, except power scourge). Thought, this doesn't fix the reaper's survivability issue, but I doubt that anet will make a move on this one. (Still I may be wrong on that, actually I'd love anet to prove me wrong on that)

Anet's devs said that they don't split mechanism only "numbers", so that won't happen.

I dont know :/now to try and make sense of what the OP was trying to explain lol

English is probably not it's primary langages, It's not mine either but I must say that I found it's ording quite perplexing as well.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:

Anet's devs said that they don't split mechanism only "numbers", so that won't happen.

Well darn rip i guess just gotta hope the next espec is good design then. It just feels odd to me cause i feel like they have done it on other professions before on other occasions.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Axl.8924 said:I mean i look at eles weapons and you got different kind of movesets on dagger and some of them are fairly nice, like hte jump forward with evade.

Mesmers too got evades and stuff like that.I would love to see scourge have evade frames like mesmer, and kind of offensive tools too focused on.Scourge with speed up and evades would be still squishy, but would run around.

It makes no sense to make dagger better than axe, when axe already does a good job as a power weapon, unless its better for generating drains on a enemy to drain life or something for healer build, but then i dunno.There are people plenty more skilled than i, so i would need ideas.Dagger could just use some number tuning but even then there is a limit to what they can do. I wouldn't expect to se any dagger effects change any time soon if at all.

Dagger seems kind of like a support tool by the way it is.It could be great in that if it was tuned a little.It doesn't need to be high damage or condi like some say in my opinion, and it generates life and has higher generation of life force.For me, this would be a great combo for axe for getting to reaper faster, but i would love if some tools allowed to overcome hard counters, so maybe if the life drain was buffed and could be synergizing really well with blood or something

The best thing to hope for is that the next e spec is something thats designed and well thought out rather than something sloppy thrown together like scourge was.

Reaper was a well thought out design and while it lost some of its unique flavor from the beta to launch to now its still designed well and can hold up even if its QoL changes come 2 years too late.

Reaper if it was so perfect it had flaws in the chill effect in pvp and that jagged horror was op in pve.

@Axl.8924 said:

Mesmers too got evades and stuff like that.I would love to see scourge have evade frames like mesmer, and kind of offensive tools too focused on.Scourge with speed up and evades would be still squishy, but would run around.

Why should scourge only get those things based on your reason. Weapon skill evades are part of mesmers core set for the most part. Ideally Necro in general should get better defensive tools not just scourge.

Dagger seems kind of like a support tool by the way it is.It could be great in that if it was tuned a little.It doesn't need to be high damage or condi like some say in my opinion, and it generates life and has higher generation of life force.For me, this would be a great combo for axe for getting to reaper faster, but i would love if some tools allowed to overcome hard counters, so maybe if the life drain was buffed and could be synergizing really well with blood or something

Because that life drain deals damage and the game does not use % mechanics when leaching health like other mmos do. Usually when you steal life you steal a % of damage delt thats partly where i think a lot of necro leeching fails. The healing part scales from healing power while the damage part scales from power instead of just doing it all from power based on damage done.

Reaper if it was so perfect it had flaws in the chill effect in pvp and that jagged horror was op in pve.Reaper had no flows with chill in pvp their were counters to chill and thats fine there should be counters to the chill condition its a very strong soft cc. The issue was that it was not coded to do damage through break bars in pve which anet could have fixed but chose not to.Jagged horrors were never suppose to be used that way it took some time before people figured out to use them like that.They were not really op it was just not a healthy use to the reason people took lich form it was a power elite being used to pop 1 skill for condition damage.