Since the latest nerf and anet calling for statistics i give it a try to compare 2 classes that have some similar play styles to Show that reaper still Needs defensive buffs.

(I primarly wanted to compare more classes and points but this comment already got too Long, so i decided to cut it)At first i want to define some Things:

Sustain mechanics are mechanics that negate Damage to lifepoints.reaper Sustain is his LF. and LF Regeneration is not heal.i set LF as alternative Sustain to blocks and invuls and evades.every skill that heals the real llifepoints is counted as heal.

The following Points i want to compare seperately:1.) Heal - I will compute an overall average heal per second value to compare the classes2.) Sustain - I will compute the Overall uptime for dmg negating mechanics on the different classes

Lets start with the Reaper itself:

The builds i used as Base for this values is:http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAR3dnMbClbitbC22A0biFcBjqL0GeWQXtAwBI+K+FLjA-j1xHQBB4JAoi9Hen6P/T5330NAgLCADVCSKgqEaB-w

(I have choosen that very offensive build because that is what the most People where complaining About. i know there are also a lot builds with more heal with blighters boon or bloodmagic, but These builds give up a lot of dmg to gain a Little more defense)

1.) Heal:

The most used Heal skills on Reaper are "Your Soul is mine" and "Consume Conditions" depending on the Opponent (power/condi).

YSIM has a healing Output of 4555 heal with 20 seconds cooldown. An average heal of 227.75 h/s (Heal per second).

CC has a healing Output of 5240 + 724 per condition. in my experience you barely consume more than 7 conditions so the realistic maximum of that skill is set here to 10,308 Heal with a cooldown of 30 seconds. An average heal of 174.66 - 343.6 h/s.

2.) Sustain

Lets here firstly compute the LF gain i can have realisticly in a fight against 1 person.

On the linked build i am using GS and axe/Focus.

The lifeforce generating skills there are (every skill has 10% increased Generation because of gluttony that due to the complex numbers):

only outside of shroudAxe 2 -> 13,2 % every 8 secondsFocus 4 is nearly never hittingGS 3 -> 13,2 % every 12 secondsGS 5 -> 4.4 % every 25 seconds

Following skills are used to expand shroud uptime:Spectral Armor -> max 70.4 % every 40 secondsLesser SA -> max 70.4 % every 50 seconds

So how Long is my maximum shroud uptime?

you start with 22k LF (1% = 220 LF). Enter shroud. e.g. an axe warrior AA chain is hitting the reaper (2000 armor) permanently (chop 1k dmg+ double chop 2k dmg+ triple chop 4k dmg=7k Base Damage in 2 seconds)With 75 % crit Chance (fury) and 210% crit dmg you get 6k dps in that case.

you expand your shroud uptime with following effects:

first shroudentry:50% dmg reduction on shroud33% dmg reduction by protection because of SA20 % dmg reduction by Infusing terror8,8 % LF / s from SA. (1936 LF /s)

6k 0.5 0.66 * 0.8 = 1,6k dps

For 6 seconds Reaper LF is draining every second:1.6k + 5% LF drain /s (1100LF) - 1936 LF (from SA) = 664 LF per second.6* 664 = 3984 LF lost.

between seconds 6-8 (infusing Terror get lost):6k 0.5 0.66 = 2k dps2k + 5% LF (1100LF) - 1936 LF (from SA) = 1164 LF per second.2* 1164 = 2328 LF lost

after 8 seconds (loosing SA):6k * 0.5 = 3k dps3k + 5% LF (1100LF) = 4100 LF per second.

so you Exit shroud here loosing Overall 6312 LF.

(lets create a case where i try to hold 50% shroud uptime - shroud cd is 10 seconds. if i want a shrouduptime of 50% i Need to stay in shroud for 2 more seconds.draining another 8200 LF for Overall 14.512 LF lost)

8 seconds infight(10 seconds infight)outside of shroud in 10 s you can use Axe 2 twice, GS3 once every time. GS4 every second time.you can Regenerate 9680 LF (Refill LF when left after 8 seconds / gain up to 17168 LF when left after 10 seconds). but usually you go down to below 50% life, activate your LSA and you enter the shroud for the second time.

18 seconds Infight(20 seconds infight)

second shroud entry:50% dmg reduction on shroud33% dmg reduction by protection because of LSAInfusing Terror on cd8,8 % LF / s from LSA

for 8 seconds:6k 0.5 0.66 = 2k dps2k + 5% LF (1100LF) - 1936 LF (from SA) = 1164 LF per second.8*1164 = 9312 LF

now loosing LSA.6k * 0.5 = 3k dps3k + 5% LF (1100LF) = 4100 LF per second.

So Exit shroud with 9312 LF lost.

26 seconds Infight

(If i would stay again for 2 more seconds in shroud loosing extra 8200 LF for Overall lost of 17512 LF so i already lost all of my LF in the case where to try to hold up 50% shroud uptime)(30 seconds infight)

gaining again lifeforce while cooldown on shroudentry. 8712 LF regenerated by Axe and GS after 2nd shroudexit to 21400 LF (or 8712 LF in case for the 50% uptime)

36 seconds Infight(40 seconds infight)

third shroudentry:50% dmg reduction on shroudSA on cooldown20 % dmg reduction by Infusing terror

for 6 seconds:6k 0.5 0.8 = 2.4k dps2.4k + 5% LF (1100LF) = 3.5k LF per second.6*3500 = 21000 LFafter 7 seconds Auto shroud Exit. no Lifeforce left.Done…(after 2 seconds LF empty again)so in case i only stay for 8 seconds in shroud everytime my third shroud uptime after 43 seconds Infight collapse. after 53 seconds 4th shroudentry is Ready again.(_42 seconds infight in case i try to stay 10 seconds in shroud my third entry collapse after 2 seconds-10 seconds cooldown until shroud is Ready again)

when we try to hold the 8 seconds uptime per entry with 10 seconds cooldown we have finally 43 % uptime because 3rd shroud collapsed a bit earlier. 4th shroudentry i can use SA and Infusing Terror again. but this 43 % uptime are max. because you see that already an increased uptime to 50% is killing your LF completely.(in the 50% case you would have 50% for the first 26 seconds. after that your third shroudentry Ends after 2 seconds. so your uptime for that case was 22 seconds in 52 seconds that means a 42 % uptime)

in 60 seconds necro gainswith Food 8 dodges -> 8 0.75 seconds = 6 seconds evade uptime in 60 seconds -> 10 % uptime.sigil of Energy gives additional 6 dodges per 60 seconds 6 0.75 -> 4,5 seconds uptime -> 7,5 %So necro come to an Overall ~60.5 % dmg Negation uptime against 1 person.

Lets watch to Spellbreaker:

Build i used:http://de.gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQNAR3ejMdQZIWFCehAnIWuCMlcQrrGgvhDxnYkAQCoAA-jVSBABA8AAIa/BNOIAXcEAuS5nZKBxT3Alq/sxFAgUAVJ0C-w

1.) Heal:

Healing Signet 344 heal /s.Adrenal Health 133 per stack per second.

So Overall heal is between 344 - 743 heal /s.

2.) Sustain:

Warrior in 60 seconds:6 x fullcounter = 3 sec dmg Negation (if triggered)3 x Shield blocks = 9 sec dmg negation2 x endure pains = 10 sec dmg negation6 x GS#3 = 4,5 sec dmg negationwith vigor and Food 10 dodges = 7,5 sec dmg Negationwith sigil of Energy additional 6 dodges per 60 seconds 6* 0.75 -> 4,5 seconds uptime

so he has with an optimal Rotation 64 % uptime for dmg Negation.

Comparison:

Necro Heal e.g. with CC : 174.66 - 343.6 h/s <-> 344 - 743 h/s : Warrior HealNecro Sustain Uptime 60.5 % <-> 64 % Warrior Sustain uptime

my conclusion:

a.) in heal we see the first Problem of necro. the very low heal he has. if i have an ele, Guardian, warrior or any other class and dont attack them they fastly heal full again. warrior alone can at max have 2-3 times more heal than necros and there are classes with still more heal than Warriors. if you dont attack a necro for 15 seconds he is mostly at same life like before.

b.) second Point is. in Theory in 1 v 1 the uptime for dmg Negation on necro Looks shiny. and as reaper you are in okayish Position in most 1 v 1 because of the above computed Sustain.

the main Problem is, that if you hit a warrior while he is using endure pain or a reaper in shroud with 10k dmg. 10k dmg got negated. if you hit the warrior with 100 k dmg, 100k dmg got negated.but if you hit a reaper with 100k dmg, shroud imploded and he die. so the scaling of necro defense mechanic is really bad. that is basically because of the lifeforce regenerating skills. neither spectral armor nor Axe 2 are upscaling with the number of enemies. you could say lifeforce from death increase in Group fights. but that Counts mostly for 60 v 60 fights.5 v 5 fights can be really tough without deathes for a Long time. in that case reapers lifeforce reg by skills isnt increasing and also lifeforce from death doesnt help you. if you got focused by 5 enemies your shroud implodes very fast because of missing upscaling effects.

c.) while every other class can get healed WHILE Blocking or being invul. reaper is still unhealable while in shroud. and i see no reason for that because it is separating shroud necros in General from Group Play. a warrior that has same Sustain uptime and better Sustain scaling can get healed while invul. so also shroud necros should be able to get healed by teammates or own effects.

my solution to bring necro defense in a better position:

a.) anet should increase healing Output from healing skills to the same Level other classes have. buff by approximately 50% for CC and YSIM.b.) e.g. spectral armor should trigger once per second per unique attacker to give it an upscaling factor in bigger fights.c.) shroud shouldnt delete Incoming heal. open shrouds for healing to end this unhealthy mechanic that seperates necros from their Group.

i also compared dmg and mobility, so i could see warrior is a bit faster than nec, but nec has a bit better range. dmg is more or less equal. but i think this post is already Long enough so i took it out.

i gave my best. Maybe you hate it or not. but i hope for some critic and opinions. and it seems i messed up with the text seettings but i couldnt find the Problem. so plz excuse that^^.

Let's be fair, this is a very optimised calculation.

But the problem is power creep.

There is like literally no scenario, where exactly this calculation will happen.

So you described a perfect fight, where the enemy warrior is just hitting you with axe auto, but who will ever do that?

Take mesmer spike for example, that's like a 20-30k burst, occuring in like 1 and a half seconds.

So if the warrior uses block or invuln for that burst, his sustain is way higher than the necro sustain, that will loose over 15k lifeforce in just this one second, assuming that you had nothing but shroud up.

Also calculating with SA or LSA every time you go into shroud is almost impossible to pull off.

If you try to follow this exact order you described, you might end up dead after the first shroud exit.

Also most warriors still play with healing signet, which is a non-interuptable passive heal.

Necro heal can get interrupted. Especially consume conditions.

Also you shouldn't forget, that reapers shroud is the biggest offensive tool necro has, if you just go in there for dmg reduction, you will loose 95% of the fights even against bad opponents I think.

So when I heard all the reaper qq. I thought like:

Why would people complain about necro? It has maybe the most telegraphed attacks in the game.Especially reaper shroud 4. Sure it does lots of damage, but when everyone is complaining about it, it seems like everyone is forgetting, that first of all, it's a channeling skill, which can be interrupted and second: is has a huge cooldown.

While I really agree, that necro needs more active defense. Or sustain/healing

Look at weaver, if you don't manage to bait out his dodges and then cc him with a big cc afterwards to kill him in one shot, the weaver will outsustain any class.Maybe is on par with ranger.

While both of them can also do very good damage.Ele even can oneshot people without triggering passive invulnerability, while necro can't, as he just does a lot of frequent hits.

I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

Honestly you give a nice numbers break down but your comparison is just....... bad....I dont specifically understand why you compare necro (reaper) to warrior of any kind to be honest. The better comparisons to make would be to elementalist defenses or mesmer defense as they are also scholar professions, not soldier professions. Warrior will always give necro a hard time and we shouldn't be comparing it to necro simply because its one of the harder matchups that often wins against necro.

You also failed to factor in condition application which plays a big role in necromancer efficiency and sustain regardless of if you play it as power or damage condi. Even with power you still have things like Cripple, Weakness, Chill, (and possibly imobe) to consider.

Personally i dont want to go back to reaper having good(better) soft defense and crap damage for a few reasons.

• While you will have more damage you can soak you still wont have tools that stop you from taking insane burst from say (a mesmer) or tools that can keep you from being cc'ed like a and knocked around like a pingpong ball.
• Fights feel much more unfun when you cant do enough damage to even get your foe near death while they can still shred you.
• I dont want another tank meta thats the last thing we need. I personally think the game could do without anymore support / tank metas

I think at best reapers offense is its best defense and thats how it should be.Could more things be changed to make this overall better? I'm sure they could.

• A new mechanic on the shout trait wouldn't be so bad
• 2 charges on some shouts wouldn't be so bad
• Having 2 charges on staff marks
• Buffing death magic generally with better numbers and new defense mechanics that didn't exists at the launch of the game (though not so much that everyone uses)

I think anet knows that core necro lacks a role it would ideally be perfect for a sub support / tank role if they properly set some numbers right and made a few traits work strongly with it but not with (reaper / scourge)One of the problems we have right now is that when anet buffs core (possibly to make core better) it just makes reaper and scourge better leaving core just as lost as it was before. I think that was the main reason we saw core shroud changes over more core trait changes in the last bigger balance update but it was not enough. Anet has worked themselves into a corner where they cant buff any core traits in hopes of making core fit any kind of role without simply power creeping reaper or scourge.

Granted Core necro should have been more stable to start with like warrior, ranger, guardian, and mesmer. Which all have strong cores that their elites stand on.

You've done a decent workup. You've touched on a very old problem: necromancer defenses are largely inactive and finite. While other classes get defensive abilities with theoretically no peak, the necromancer sort of forced to take the brunt of it. This will put the necro in a weird place, where either it will win the fight with overwhelming presence against an enemy, or it will lose with no chance at all.

This makes the necro a balancing nightmare for the devs. Core and Reaper tend to alternate between being overpowered and underpowered, since they either have too much bulk or simply not enough. The Scourge, which focused more on area denial and debuffing for its active defenses, also encountered a similar problem. Since then, the scourge has been nerfed many times to deal with all the debuffs and damage it inflicts, and now Scourges hit like a wet noodle. Giving the necromancer all of the blocks and invulnerability that other classes have removes the class identity.

now we need to compare boon-accessibility, boon-sustainability, mobility... and then we should be ok :D

first of all thanks for the kind Feedback.

@Nimon.7840 said:Let's be fair, this is a very optimised calculation.

that was intentionally, to Show that also in best case necro defense is just even, never superior.

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

a.) this warrior build is not a defensive build. if you compare dmg numbers and cooldowns on weapon- and f-skills you will get the same offensive numbers for SB like for reaper.b.) the dps loss is amazing because of the vulnerability you loose without bitter chill. also the boonhate of LSS and spiteful spirit is necessary to kill a lot of classes (firebrand, ele, boonbeast,...). These classes are unkillable on bloodmagic.

c.) spectral mastery would due to higher cd on shroud 4 and 5 what is also a big loss in dmg. higher cd on stability, leap.

@ZDragon.3046 said:Honestly you give a nice numbers break down but your comparison is just....... bad....I dont specifically understand why you compare necro (reaper) to warrior of any kind to be honest. The better comparisons to make would be to elementalist defenses or mesmer defense as they are also scholar professions, not soldier professions. Warrior will always give necro a hard time and we shouldn't be comparing it to necro simply because its one of the harder matchups that often wins against necro.

i wanted to compare These to because both are melee specs facing the same Problems of being supposed to push at some Point. melee range usually means a lot more Incoming dmg.

You also failed to factor in condition application which plays a big role in necromancer efficiency and sustain regardless of if you play it as power or damage condi. Even with power you still have things like Cripple, Weakness, Chill, (and possibly imobe) to consider.

every class has Access to cripple/chill, some classes like ranger even more to immob. also the spellbreaker can copy everything you give him back to you with fc. so the Advantage is not really existing.

Personally i dont want to go back to reaper having good(better) soft defense and kitten damage for a few reasons.

• While you will have more damage you can soak you still wont have tools that stop you from taking insane burst from say (a mesmer) or tools that can keep you from being cc'ed like a and knocked around like a pingpong ball.
• Fights feel much more unfun when you cant do enough damage to even get your foe near death while they can still shred you.
• I dont want another tank meta thats the last thing we need. I personally think the game could do without anymore support / tank metas

I think at best reapers offense is its best defense and thats how it should be.

i dont deny that.

i just think there are some weaknesses necro got by Intention to create counterplays (less stabi Access, low mobility) and there are some weaknesses that where created around mechanics in 2012/2015. for example the old shroud had 3 % Decay and 7 seconds cooldown when skilled. to prohibit shroud Camping while being able to get healed full life over and over again they developed a shroud that blocks Incoming heal.

now we have a way higher Decay and less Access to shroud than in earlier days on reaper and this no heal System while in shroud is overaged imo.

If the spellbreaker drops GS he has even lower mobility than reaper. If he drops shield he has even lower defense. Running both costs him his range. There are huge drawbacks for the spec.

The numbers above are overcomplex and not helpful. It's better to just compare the utilities of different specs. The meta spellbreaker is even easier to kite than a reaper. If we would compare a full melee spellbreaker with a full melee reaper... yeah then reaper would have a problem. But there have been huge axe/focus buffs in the past.

The healing of unholy sanctuary, soul eater and blighter's boon should be increased and focus 4 should grant a triple-stack of regen (~400 heal/s base) to slightly improve survivability. Blood Magic should remain untouched. It's already very strong.

There are a number of non-obvious assumptions in your analysis, Zero.

For example, we know Shroud can be cast quickly and without failing if we are moving at the same time. Shroud up-time may not be super-long and shroud does decay but we only really need it to counter a large burst and are unable to dodge or interrupt.

Necromancer's sustain is much more complicated than I could possibly analyze without getting paid full time to do for a long while. For example, how does Well of Darkness fit in, or dagger 2's siphon?

@Zero.3871 said:

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Honestly you give a nice numbers break down but your comparison is just....... bad....I dont specifically understand why you compare necro (reaper) to warrior of any kind to be honest. The better comparisons to make would be to elementalist defenses or mesmer defense as they are also scholar professions, not soldier professions. Warrior will always give necro a hard time and we shouldn't be comparing it to necro simply because its one of the harder matchups that often wins against necro.

I still think you should have looked at other scholar professions, Mesmer has melee aspects to it and weaver is ideally focused on being in melee range but has good defensive tools as well.

You also failed to factor in condition application which plays a big role in necromancer efficiency and sustain regardless of if you play it as power or damage condi. Even with power you still have things like Cripple, Weakness, Chill, (and possibly imobe) to consider.

Personally i dont want to go back to reaper having good(better) soft defense and kitten damage for a few reasons.

• While you will have more damage you can soak you still wont have tools that stop you from taking insane burst from say (a mesmer) or tools that can keep you from being cc'ed like a and knocked around like a pingpong ball.
• Fights feel much more unfun when you cant do enough damage to even get your foe near death while they can still shred you.
• I dont want another tank meta thats the last thing we need. I personally think the game could do without anymore support / tank metas

I think at best reapers offense is its best defense and thats how it should be.

Stability access is an issue that should be addressed but understand (pulsing stability or resistance on any profession) is not a healthy gameplay mechanic because it has few counters other than run or hide. Infact necromancer was the only profession that could punish such things and even then it was still annoying to face which is why it was removed globally from any profession that had it. (Except warrior) where its durations have been cut significantly.

Secondly the old shroud lacked alot of power damage as new things came along and when Path of Fire launched Reaper failed to kill due to having low damage low speed and low mobility but at the same time the slower decay did not help you survive against strong professions like warrior, guardian, mesmer, etc. In any cause you survived a few seconds longer.The increase in decay was not to prohibit camping in shroud. It was in exchange for increased damage which reaper shroud needed it was ideally a step in the right direction. Keep in mind anet has been trying to remove the tank meta that was the start of HoT for some time now because people were generally more unhappy with it than the power burst creep meta that exists now. This change also was incentive to be more offensive than defensive to reward players who played more aggressively rather than defensively.Honestly we shouldn't be asking for a Reaper shroud fix to decay at this point, we dont need it. I think fixing how life force is generated could address that issue without having to touch the shroud and its an overall much bigger problem to all aspects of necromancer.

While healing in shroud should be addressed (its a death magic issue) there is a good potential trait for healing and sustain in death magics grandmaster (Unholy Sanctuary) but its numbers are far too low. That trait should heal roughly for a few hundred hp per second possibly a bit more or less. aka they need to up the base heal by a ton and kill the scaling with healing power so that it cant be abused for broken unlimited sustain.

now we have a way higher Decay and less Access to shroud than in earlier days on reaper and this no heal System while in shroud is overaged imo.

Don't exclude the things we do have now though.We also have more damage, more personal attack speed, better critical damage, and a more viable power option, the ability to kill just as quick as we are killed. Higher decay can be managed if you make the right plays under the right situation (Necro still has good skills still mitigate this). We cant do anything about access time to shroud... I think maybe reaper at its base trait (shroud knight) should allow for a quicker entry time (7s) over the standard 10 which would easily please alot of people.

I personally think no healing in shroud is fine because there are options for doing this... the issue is that they are currently just bad and outdated. Necro will always be vulnerably to one shot burst regardless of what defenses you add short of a invuln similar to endure pain or something that converts all damage taken to hp or life force.

I think right now before we start comparing necro to warrior so harshly we should look at tools we don't have and possibly compare them to the tools that scholar professions do have and choose what would be (ok) but not broken to add to improve necromancer sustain. (I personally would prefer more mobility (offensive engage blinks) or evades over boons because boon creep is insane right now and needs to be culled (boon beast rangers >_>)Examples include

• Better boon access / Better boon uptime
• Better Core / Skill evades (More natural access to vigor boon or ways to recover endurance)
• Better but still limited stability uptime (you already addressed this)
• Reliable Engage tools (blinks leaps etc)

But we cant exclude things that necro can do that they cant either

• Boon conversion on massive scale across a plentiful number of builds
• The ability to invest in tanky stats but still hit as though fully invested in offensive stats without a major loss. (this one is major)Not many professions can get away with dropping a massive chunk of precision and ferocity for tanky stats and still hit hard like reaper does.
• The ability to proc one condition into another consistently(just to name a few)

Im not saying necro cant use better defenses (even if its done by offense) but i dont think comparing it to warrior even more so spellbreaker so directly is the right way to go about it.

@Zero.3871 said:

@"Dadnir.5038" said:I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

So for you a defense/discipline/spellbreaker is not a defensive build as opposed to a spite/SR/reaper build? Discipline/defense SB is certainly not a a full glassbuild like the Spite/SR reaper build is. This is a defensive build even if warrior's defensive builds tend to output quite a lot of damage.

b.) the dps loss is amazing because of the vulnerability you loose without bitter chill. also the boonhate of LSS and spiteful spirit is necessary to kill a lot of classes (firebrand, ele, boonbeast,...). These classes are unkillable on bloodmagic.

You lose onto the burst but not much onto the dps in itself. This is the only difference. This mean that on a sustain build you'll end up with more reliable constant dps and you can truly try to achieve something that may outsustain your foe.

c.) spectral mastery would due to higher cd on shroud 4 and 5 what is also a big loss in dmg. higher cd on stability, leap.

The issue is that you want burst, sustain damage, survivability and sustain but go all out into the glassiest build possible. You oppose on this glassy build a build that ultimately take the equivalent of the death magic traitline instead of spite. You want mirror build that may be comparable, you should look for a warrior build that take strength instead of defense. This mirror build won't be able to take the stance trait (equivalent of spectral mastery) or the inbuilt sustain trait from the defensive traitline (equivalent to vampiric effect). Sure the warrior will have more damage but it's sustain will be way lower than the full glass necro build.

Your warrior build trade damage for sustain while your necro build don't. You just can't complain that the necromancer end up with a lower sustain/defense than a build that invest into it. You can't spit onto a trait or a traitline that give you just that when you oppose to it a warrior build that make use of such traits.

Edit: even in the spellbreaker traitline the traits taken are ultimately defensive traits while the reaper's build use full damage traits. Really you just can't oppose the survivability of both build and say that it's unfair that the reaper got less survivability. If all professions could go full glass and have the same survivability than a build that use defensive traits, there would truly be a big problem.

Amazing problem of being able to cleave down 5 players in a heartbeat but also being vulnerable to them. Must be rough.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Zero.3871 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

b.) the dps loss is amazing because of the vulnerability you loose without bitter chill. also the boonhate of LSS and spiteful spirit is necessary to kill a lot of classes (firebrand, ele, boonbeast,...). These classes are unkillable on bloodmagic.

c.) spectral mastery would due to higher cd on shroud 4 and 5 what is also a big loss in dmg. higher cd on stability, leap.

hmm i see where you are coming from. in my experience it is just that there are classes (ranger, mes, firebrand, weaver) that you cant kill when you go bloodmagic for more Sustain. while using bloodmagic still doesnt give enough Sustain to also outsustain these classes. so i end up in a Situation where i just die a Little slower. on a build with spite i at least have a Little Chance to take them down before they down me.in my opinion bloodmagic is based around Group support. the selfsupport is not that great but with wells and vampiric presence you can give your whole Group support. so if you Play in 5 v 5 and get focused by the whole enemies group. bloodmagic will barely helps you. if they would rework deathmagic to a self Sustain traitline that allows a better upscaling of necro defense mechanics i would aoppreciate that. and also take out spite for that. but atm i dont see the gain there.but Maybe i just didnt the correct adjustements and skillrotations there. so its more a personal issue.i wouldnt exclude that^^

Dishonest comparison, OP. And as Dadnit said, you want it all.

Yes, reaper now has no defense. That was the point. The raid heroes whined and got what they wanted, so they got rid of all of its defense to accommodate for what amounts to literally double the damage it used to do. When people demand huge damage buffs to the point where they're almost asinine for skill usage, this is what naturally happens when the class is otherwise a baseline tank.

Necro's going to fundamentally suffer in the DPS department so long as shroud exists, so the mega-optimized raid community will whine until the only thing shroud is good for is part of a DPS rotation.

Unfortunately, shroud is what carries the necro in the PvP modes as the enabler for all of its damage and is also its primary defense tool, and it's been that way since forever. It's not a broken concept - it's a broken dynamic between the game modes because people are fixated on optimizing for PvE, and ANet played into the mentality thanks to raids and their respective mechanics without considering the necro.

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:Dishonest comparison, OP. And as Dadnit said, you want it all.

Yes, reaper now has no defense. That was the point. The raid heroes whined and got what they wanted, so they got rid of all of its defense to accommodate for what amounts to literally double the damage it used to do. When people demand huge damage buffs to the point where they're almost asinine for skill usage, this is what naturally happens when the class is otherwise a baseline tank.

Necro's going to fundamentally suffer in the DPS department so long as shroud exists, so the mega-optimized raid community will whine until the only thing shroud is good for is part of a DPS rotation.

Unfortunately, shroud is what carries the necro in the PvP modes as the enabler for all of its damage and is also its primary defense tool, and it's been that way since forever. It's not a broken concept - it's a broken dynamic between the game modes because people are fixated on optimizing for PvE, and ANet played into the mentality thanks to raids and their respective mechanics without considering the necro.

hmm, you say want it all. but to be honest. there are a lot of classes that has tonns of Sustain, dmg, mobility, heal, cc in one build. and it seems anet want it that way. comparison ever has the target to see what others are allowed to have and what i am missing. so its also the Question, when reaper shouldnt have that, why does a Mirage one shoot People with mindwrack, while being nearly unkillable because of a good amount of Mirage cloak casts and teleports. or is soulbeast hitting on LB AA on great range like your gravedigger because of "sick em" 40% dmg buff after melting while having a lot of heal (healskill and mostly pet heals), Sustain (by signet Stone and stances) and mobility (double swoop).

the Point is, what have to be done to bring Things in line?

Still. Reeaper> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

Hm. I don't know about that.I went to meta battle to check out Warrior PvP builds. They all play demolisher amulet. Which I do on my reaper as well.Yes I know these aren't the best builds but I can at least get a glimpse of warrior builds, as I never played and never will play warrior in gw2.

Then let's go to snowcrows and see the possible DPS: 33k, 2k above reaper

So now:It uses the same stats, why do you consider warrior a defensive build, while reaper is offensive?

I don't know much about warriors, I just got to know, which skill-animations I have to dodge, because they hurt or the follow up skills hurt.

I just did some PvP matches in a 5man premade team. And any warrior I met, wasn't really playing defensive. They all went full ham.Sure they used blocks and invuln.

So let's compare necro and warrior:

Both have same amount of healthNecro is light armor, warrior heavy, which makes him tankierNecro doesn't have very good healing (sure you can play blighters boon and blood, I did that as well and felt like a useless piece of crap with that)Necro doesn't have blocks or invulns, warrior has.Necro has shroud, but it's defense and offense at the same time, if you use it defensively, you might not be able to use it offensively and the other way round.

But the most important thing: you have to consider blocks and invulns.So I'm just for better comprehension take the pve DPS numbers. As I don't know the actual DPS numbers of warrior and reaper/necro in PvP.

So necro uses shroud to mitigate dmg for 2 seconds: dmg reduction from shroud only is 50% with infusing terror active you get 60% reduction. But let's take the 50% as it's easier to do without a calculator.Assuming necro has infinite lifeforce you would take33k possible DPS = 16,5k DPS in shroudBut necro LF isn't infinite

There is classes like ranger and mesmer that do those 30k damage burst in less than two seconds even without having all the boons.

So there's one second and shroud is gone, afterwards you are left open with only 33% reduction from spectral armor.

Now warrior. Warrior just uses a block or a invulnAnd can easily take even 100k dps in that time, he won't get any damage.

So warriors defense is way more worth than the dmg reduction necro has.

@Nimon.7840 said:Still. Reeaper> @"Dadnir.5038" said:

I'm not sure it's relevant to compare an offensive build to a defensive build and say that the necromancer with it's offensive build need more defense because the warrior defensive build have more defense...

For more defense/sustain:

• swap spite with blood magic: this will give you the ability to gain health while in shroud through life leeching effect.
• swap to spectral mastery instead of vital persistence: this will give you these 2 second of defense that that say you lack.

And what's amazing is that the dps loss won't really be "huge".

Because in the builds that the op list (if you were to concentrated on metabattle or snowcrow to look at them), it's reaper build is full glass, taking only damage traits while the warrior build focus heavily on defensive/controle traits. This is indeed enough for me to claim that the warrior's build opposed to the necromancer's build in this thread is a defensive build.

And like I said in my second post on this thread, if you want to compare the performance of both professions at list use builds that are comparable. Come on on one side you've got a build with a whole traitline that grant sustain and defensive cool down reduction while on the other profession you have only dps traits taken. How can you even begin to think that the warrior's build isn't a defensive build in comparison to the necromancer's build? Or maybe you think that defense only come from stats?

You don't need to have played these build to understand that they focus on vastly different areas, you just need to look at the traits taken.

Soul Reaping is a mixed traitline for offense and defense. That's why it is pretty much mandatory. Its defense outshines even Blood Magic, when you don't focus on wells and group support.

A Spite/SR/Reaper build can be very defensive. Spite is a must pick when opting for Blighter's Boon - otherwise its healing is even worse than Unholy Sanctuary.

The OPs builds:Reaper:

• utilites: full defense
• Spite: full offense
• SR: 2 out of 3 main traits are defensive
• Reaper: full offense
• gear: semi offense (marauder)

Spellbreaker:

• utilites: full defense
• Defense: full defense
• Discipline: mixed (heal, damage, condi cleanse)
• Spellbreaker: mixed
• gear: full offense (berserker)

I would not call a berserker Spellbreaker a defensive build. It's just a build with very few but then devastating counters - named corrupts, kiting, burst / FC avoidance. To be honest I can not imagine one single spec that can not gear and trait in a way to easily kill a berserker Spellbreaker. The question is: does it make sense? In WvW I could go full corrupt to overwhelm all these overconfident frontline spellbreakers in two seconds (sometimes I do, just because why not?!). But most of the time it's simply better to ignore them and focus on the mid- and backline with raw damage and finish the Spellbreakers at the end or just let them run away.

@Zero.3871 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:Dishonest comparison, OP. And as Dadnit said, you want it all.

Yes, reaper now has no defense. That was the point. The raid heroes whined and got what they wanted, so they got rid of all of its defense to accommodate for what amounts to literally double the damage it used to do. When people demand huge damage buffs to the point where they're almost asinine for skill usage, this is what naturally happens when the class is otherwise a baseline tank.

Necro's going to fundamentally suffer in the DPS department so long as shroud exists, so the mega-optimized raid community will whine until the only thing shroud is good for is part of a DPS rotation.

Unfortunately, shroud is what carries the necro in the PvP modes as the enabler for all of its damage and is also its primary defense tool, and it's been that way since forever. It's not a broken concept - it's a broken dynamic between the game modes because people are fixated on optimizing for PvE, and ANet played into the mentality thanks to raids and their respective mechanics without considering the necro.

Nerf the rest.

That's literally what it comes down to.

Everyone compares their class to the rest but that's how we get a circle of powercreep and why things are broken.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:Dishonest comparison, OP. And as Dadnit said, you want it all.

Yes, reaper now has no defense. That was the point. The raid heroes whined and got what they wanted, so they got rid of all of its defense to accommodate for what amounts to literally double the damage it used to do. When people demand huge damage buffs to the point where they're almost asinine for skill usage, this is what naturally happens when the class is otherwise a baseline tank.

Necro's going to fundamentally suffer in the DPS department so long as shroud exists, so the mega-optimized raid community will whine until the only thing shroud is good for is part of a DPS rotation.

Unfortunately, shroud is what carries the necro in the PvP modes as the enabler for all of its damage and is also its primary defense tool, and it's been that way since forever. It's not a broken concept - it's a broken dynamic between the game modes because people are fixated on optimizing for PvE, and ANet played into the mentality thanks to raids and their respective mechanics without considering the necro.

thumbs up ... better than how I was thinking it.

Reaper is our DPS spec ... people ought to know that by now. People should also be aware of how poorly a spec plays when they try to push it beyond the direction it's designed for.

The biggest faux pas is that the OP even tried to make a class comparison in the first place; are people still honestly under the impression that's a compelling argument to change a class? It really isn't.