Upcoming Necro Notes

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/69910/upcoming-balance-notes

"Necromancer

As we continue to update the necromancer, we're looking at each of its elite specializations and moving them more toward their expected roles. Scourge applies a bit too much instant corruption pressure in large-group WvW settings by simply laying down shades; we've reworked Unending Corruption and renamed it Herald of Sorrow to address this. The reworked trait now acts more like a delayed version of boon corruption that also grants an area-of-effect barrier. Reaper has seen an excessive loss of damage with the update on traits in the last patch. We'll be pushing some of its damage higher through skill updates in PvE, but will be mostly leaving it alone in competitive modes, as all the necromancer specializations have a healthy representation in competitive game modes.

• Nightfall: Increased the damage of this skill by 50% in PvE only.• Desiccate: Fixed a bug with this skill in which its might gain applied in a larger radius than the listed value. Removed an unlisted whirl finisher. Reduced the casting time from 1 second to 0.75 seconds. Increased its damage by 150%. This skill now grants a bonus 2% life force for each target it strikes.• Oppressive Collapse: Fixed a bug that prevented this skill from granting might when used on targets in a downed state.• Enfeebling Blood: Increased the amount of bleeding stacks that this skill applies from 2 to 3.• "You Are All Weaklings!": Reduced the recharge time of this skill from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. Increased its damage by 40%.• "Nothing Can Save You!": Reduced the recharge time of this skill from 25 seconds to 20 seconds. Increased its damage by 40%.• Serpent Siphon: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to list an incorrect amount of barrier. Reduced its recharge time from 30 seconds to 25 seconds. Increased its damage by 21%.• Spectral Ring: The description and skill facts for this skill have been updated to indicate the amount of life force that is gained when fear is applied to a foe.• Cold Shoulder: Increased the amount of bonus damage that this trait grants from 10% to 15% in PvE only.• Unending Corruption: This trait has been reworked and renamed Herald of Sorrow.• Herald of Sorrow: Equipping this trait turns Desert Shroud into Harbinger Shroud, which removes the pulsing effects of Desert Shroud and instead shifts into a single detonation after a 3-second delay. This trait deals damage, corruption, and conditions in one strike while providing barrier to allies within the vicinity."

Yay reaper buffs :)

Harbinger shroud is going to what? Corrupt 3 boons, deal the ammount of 5 ticks of desert shroud and apply 10 stacks of torment all at once after 3 seconds? This will be super hard to use in PvP and everyone will be complainging about it wvw when 5 scourge can shroud bomb a whole group

@Lexan.5930 said:Yay reaper buffs :)

Harbinger shroud is going to what? Corrupt 3 boons, deal the ammount of 5 ticks of desert shroud and apply 10 stacks of torment all at once after 3 seconds? This will be super hard to use in PvP and everyone will be complainging about it wvw when 5 scourge can shroud bomb a whole group

I imagine the damage in general would be less from that trait compared to it pulsing but I guess we'll see on tuesday

1. Crippled scg in small scale roaming even more while not giving anything to core necro. Scg still aoe spam in zergs and still source of visual noise and power damage spam while boon corrupting like a bot. Death magic, weapons and several util skills are unused since years in wvw/pvp. Good reaper pve buffs but i dont play reaper pve so i dont know how it will turn out. But the 10% modifier icon on bar is a big giveaway of reaper in every competitive gamemode and they dont want to fix it just because other classes like warrior also show same buffs on bar but Anet dont realise shroud is the sole defense reaper has and timer on shroud shown to everyone kills the spec if enemy has a half a brain. Makes me believe its intended to be used for pve only.

2. Serpent siphon will always be unreliable no matter how much you buff it as it requires you and enemy both to stand on aoe to gain its effects thus being highly susceptible to evades invuln etc and basically hard to meet all the conditions to make it useful, massively nerfed in previous patches. Needs a lot of barrier buff to make it worth running in any gamemode. I personally would only run if it gave almost max barrier one can get just because of how clunky this skill is. Btw herald os sorrow will give barrier? That conflicts with 1st trait in same tier.

3. Thats pretty much it. They didnt change much. Just power reaper pve buff, scg wvw nerf and some inconsequential changes to irrelevant and clunky skills to make them look appealing but in reality they wont be of value ever because their way of working is defected and different from what is needed.

Their first line sums up their mentality for the class so i cant argue anything here. Necro is made to be sent into their specific role in every gamemode while other classes can have multiple roles in all game modes and they have different ways to stay relevant. They see necro specializations and their effect on the meta. The thought of "will it be fun to play after changes" is always secondary. Waiting for next balance patch where they may realise necro is represented because people love the concept and lore behind and basically want to be edgy not because its fun in competitive game modes. I guarantee you that if they change all animations on the class to not look like necro, no one will play it just because its mechanics are so bad.

Pve Reapers needs more damage for sure, great changes.

The damage buffs for power reaper are marginal, I don't know why people are happy when they buffed skills that:

a) Nobody uses in PvE. The shouts are useless in PvE and buffing 3k damage by 40-50% only brings it to the damage level of a single autoattack at a 25+ sec recharge. It's garbage.

b) Nightfall composes a very tiny percentage of power reaper damage overall.

They're complete placebo buffs.

One thing is a bit strange to me, which @XECOR.2814 brought up:-Herald of Sorrow grants barrier to allies, which is cool, but it competes with Desert Empowerment. The two have potential use for support (and HoS make a trait like Life from Death more reliable, especially when combined with the barrier), but I find it odd that they compete with each other. Regardless, I am curious to see how much barrier it will grant as well as how well it scales with healing power.

Have the same concerns about HoS as @"Pterikdactyl.7630"

Reaper buffs are really small, but for PvP they will come in handy.And the buffs will make reaper do more than 30k DPS once again

Reaper was ment to scale with more people thus why shouts have shorter cooldowns and do more damage and give more life force based on targets hit. For raiding with single target shouts arent as good as wells or a minion.For PvP where you can aoe chill and Condi cleanse and hit 5 targets, shouts got a buff there.Nightfall is a slight buff for pve but big for PvP, boon rip and blind are big deals there

@Lexan.5930 said:Reaper was ment to scale with more people thus why shouts have shorter cooldowns and do more damage and give more life force based on targets hit. For raiding with single target shouts arent as good as wells or a minion.For PvP where you can aoe chill and Condi cleanse and hit 5 targets, shouts got a buff there.Nightfall is a slight buff for pve but big for PvP, boon rip and blind are big deals there

Nightfall buff PVE only. :/

If Unending Corruption truly changes sand shades, power reaper may be much more viable than power scourge for outright damage.

@"Lexan.5930" said:Yay reaper buffs :)

Harbinger shroud is going to what? Corrupt 3 boons, deal the ammount of 5 ticks of desert shroud and apply 10 stacks of torment all at once after 3 seconds? This will be super hard to use in PvP and everyone will be complainging about it wvw when 5 scourge can shroud bomb a whole group

I think the boon corruption is completely gone from popping sand shades. Unless the sand shades affect the same 3 people, this new trait probably just boon corrupts once.

The change makes power reaper more attractive for power damage especially since "Nothing Can Save You" removes 2 boons .

Goodbye Firebrand, I'm switching back to my old Shout Reaper main. :blush:

PvP wise, I think the change that will have the greatest impact is the change on "you are all weaklings!". It will make the already somewhat good aristocratie reaper better.PvE wise, I guess we can expect some chill output from druids which could make the cold shoulder buff reliable. That is, if druids survive to this patch in PvE.

Herald of sorrow sound strange, I wonder how it will affect "while in shroud" trait effects. Does this mean that desert shroud will now have a 3 second duration on a 30 second CD? That would be plain awful...

@"Dadnir.5038" said:PvP wise, I think the change that will have the greatest impact is the change on "you are all weaklings!". It will make the already somewhat good aristocratie reaper better.PvE wise, I guess we can expect some chill output from druids which could make the cold shoulder buff reliable. That is, if druids survive to this patch in PvE.

Herald of sorrow sound strange, I wonder how it will affect "while in shroud" trait effects. Does this mean that desert shroud will now have a 3 second duration on a 30 second CD? That would be plain awful...

yh it's pretty bad, I don't even think you get a "in shroud" effect.

Overall pretty meh changes, and even worse they think all necro specs are doing fine in competitive mode so RIP core necro

@"felincyriac.5981" said:Overall pretty meh changes, and even worse they think all necro specs are doing fine in competitive mode so RIP core necro

Of course they do! The necromancer is one of the only profession that already resigned itself to not try aimelessly to be a duellist wanabe. As long as he got it's nanny the necromancer is really doing fine in competitive gamemode. And this kind of gameplay is probably what ANet see as "healthy" for the game. It's the overperforming duellists that aren't healthy for a cooperative game like guild wars 2.

Well it's all on paper, lets see how it works in game, then make conclusions.

• Herald of Sorrow: Equipping this trait turns Desert Shroud into Harbinger Shroud, which removes the pulsing effects of Desert Shroud and instead shifts into a single detonation after a 3-second delay. This trait deals damage, corruption, and conditions in one strike while providing barrier to allies within the vicinity."

I understand why they want to change it, but 3 second delay, they do realize that 3 seconds in WvW is massive, you can die in 3 seconds in WvW, with enemies moving, that 3 seconds is a total waste of time, and they will have moved off the point by then, you also have that nice AOE marker on the ground, any group worth fighting wil just wait for that AOE field to detonate then move on to the fight, you would be better dropping scourge and running reaper again, sometimes they just go full ham on builds to please a few people crying about it.

@"Ok I Did It.2854" said:• Herald of Sorrow: Equipping this trait turns Desert Shroud into Harbinger Shroud, which removes the pulsing effects of Desert Shroud and instead shifts into a single detonation after a 3-second delay. This trait deals damage, corruption, and conditions in one strike while providing barrier to allies within the vicinity."

I understand why they want to change it, but 3 second delay, they do realize that 3 seconds in WvW is massive, you can die in 3 seconds in WvW, with enemies moving, that 3 seconds is a total waste of time, and they will have moved off the point by then, you also have that nice AOE marker on the ground, any group worth fighting wil just wait for that AOE field to detonate then move on to the fight, you would be better dropping scourge and running reaper again, sometimes they just go full ham on builds to please a few people crying about it.

It really depends, if you can cast f5 then wait, then use f1 right before the bomb goes off.

But I guess that's a pretty long timer. And if it doesn't do very good dmg, the trait will be completely dead. People will just switch to the middle one, reducing punishment skills CDs and add some burningSo dmg has to be the same as those 7ticks from desert shroud?!Maybe like 70% of that value because you also share the barrier. But what amount of barrier? 5k would be way too much and also you don't take scourges because of their barrier, but because of the corrupts.Also keep in mind, that 1 big hit from f5 harbinger shroud can get blocked, multiple hits from desert shroud are less likely to get blocked

I'm extremely cold to these changes. Reaper is fine, but I don't care much for reaper. This is less than I expected over all. And I expected nothing. Desiccate went from meh to God awful. We've been through this anet. 2% life force for a utility skill even a potential of 10% is not good. This skill will lose use, serpent siphon wont see use. And than change to unending corruption is bleh. Of course, this doesn't change my WvW build much at all. And for pve I've lost a tool in desiccate which was already underpowered.

I need a vacation.

We have to wait how Herald of Sorrow will work. But in general Scourge is now the master of delayed impact, which is not fun to play at all.

Regarding Power Reaper: ANet tries really hard to not give it too much damage. We will end with a flat 30k now - god forbit 31 or even 30,5 while everyone else is doing 35. It's ridiculous.

@"Lily.1935" said:I'm extremely cold to these changes. Reaper is fine, but I don't care much for reaper. This is less than I expected over all. And I expected nothing. Desiccate went from meh to God awful. We've been through this anet. 2% life force for a utility skill even a potential of 10% is not good. This skill will lose use, serpent siphon wont see use. And than change to unending corruption is bleh. Of course, this doesn't change my WvW build much at all. And for pve I've lost a tool in desiccate which was already underpowered.

I need a vacation.

Wait. When I first read this, I thought it was a buff."This skill now grants a bonus 2% life force for each target it strikes." Sound more like we get the 2% per target in addition to the 10% it gives right now. No?

@Nimon.7840 said:

@"Lily.1935" said:I'm extremely cold to these changes. Reaper is fine, but I don't care much for reaper. This is less than I expected over all. And I expected nothing. Desiccate went from meh to God awful. We've been through this anet. 2% life force for a utility skill even a potential of 10% is not good. This skill will lose use, serpent siphon wont see use. And than change to unending corruption is bleh. Of course, this doesn't change my WvW build much at all. And for pve I've lost a tool in desiccate which was already underpowered.

I need a vacation.

Oh, okay. That does sound like that. Hopefully that's the case.

now "nothing can save you" shares the same cooldown of "suffer" 20s ( 18s if traited) and would be a good pick vs power comp

One major problem with the buff, chill application when yhe mob is under 50%. Gravedigger applies no chill so your one chill will be from gs5, and mb suffer of haunt. Reaper will require additional chill to reach full potential.Again buff is maginal.

I was more excited after reading the nerf to Deadeye's Silent Scope.That was the best change this patch.