Anet please make soul eater function opposite to what is intended.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

It makes way more sense thematically to heal while in shroud and not when out of shroud, also adds more flavor to trait.

[KrHome.1920]

Either that or increase its range to 900 (I mean GS has a 900 range :# and historically it's meant to be a GS trait).

[James.1065]

Bump this up

[Dadnir.5038]

Objectively, to be balanced a trait should either give survivability or damage. When a trait give both it's not balanced. For the trait to heal in shroud the reaper's community would have to be ready to lose the 10% increase of damage on foe in the radius. And If ANet had removed the damages people would be complaining about the damages being removed just as much as they do for this bit of sustain.

Originally, Soul eater was a sustain trait with very low damage added. It's under the pressure of the community that ANet gave it damage and that the trait ended up overperforming both other traits of the same tier. So in short the trait got powercreeped and ANet choice was either to powercreep both other master trait or nerf soul eater. They nerfed it in the way that suit the community wishes, I really feel that all those rants about this change are hypocritical when in fact ANet just do what they have to do while trying to satisfy the wishes of their customers.

Remember, customers wanted reaper to be a competitive power damage based profession when it was almost competitive as a condition damage based profession. After nerfs and buffs reapers have reached a state where it dish power damage at an almost competitive level and the condition damage build have been left in the dust. However, in the process, a trait soul eater gained enough raw power to supress other traits at the same level bringing down their value.

What would you do if you intended a trait to give extra damage to a profession but in the end this trait compete with another that grant just as much damage and give survivability on top of that?What would you do if you intended a trait to have a good synergy with another trait for improved survivability but in the end this trait compete with another trait that grant enough survivability to make this synergy worthless and gave damage on top of that?

There is no point. The trait needed to be nerfed and objectively, from a balance point of view, it probably still need to be nerfed. Something that would probably send the necromancer subforum even more on fire.

[ZDragon.3046]

@"Dadnir.5038" said:Objectively, to be balanced a trait should either give survivability or damage. When a trait give both it's not balanced. For the trait to heal in shroud the reaper's community would have to be ready to lose the 10% increase of damage on foe in the radius. And If ANet had removed the damages people would be complaining about the damages being removed just as much as they do for this bit of sustain.

Should it really though? I think you are right in some ways here and also wrong at the same time.From a pve perspective where no one takes sustain from the start perhaps it should not provide healing but then only a 10% damage bonus? Gonna need that 20% recharge on gs skills to return if thats the case or a bigger damage bonus while in shroud.

From a pvp perspective while the traits healing did not provide much, A class which has no real blinks, invulns, limited stab, and evades.... should a trait like this really not provide both. Because i think it should.But from a pvp perspective, that frustration form that side comes from not having a proper defensive line to run which would grant the same thing.Warriors have Defense for example Necromancers ideally should have Death magic but at any given time over half the traitline is not active making it far too useless to run. Even when you start to look at the traits they just dont properly do the job take Soul Comprehension and Unholy Sanctuary as two prime examples.One is completely null the other is considerably underpowered from a numbers and mechanical standpoint.

Originally, Soul eater was a sustain trait with very low damage added. It's under the pressure of the community that ANet gave it damage and that the trait ended up overperforming both other traits of the same tier. So in short the trait got powercreeped and ANet choice was either to powercreep both other master trait or nerf soul eater. They nerfed it in the way that suit the community wishes, I really feel that all those rants about this change are hypocritical when in fact ANet just do what they have to do while trying to satisfy the wishes of their customers.

Soul eater was a sustain trait that did not work very well as a sustain trait. (had the old version worked in shroud there would have been no reason to change it) Most people realistically took it for the gs recharge reduction not for the hp restoration. Reapers damage was also far below the average for a lot of other classes at end game if you want to consider that too. People pressured for more damage because the damage was not where it should have been from the start.

I even if we assume all of what you say here is correct. Customers still have the right to argue and disagree that this was not the best way to achieve their goal. Simply reducing the effectiveness of the trait without culling half its mechanic would have been ok in most peoples eyes. Heck most people would have been ok with it healing in shroud only and not out of shroud which is ideally achieving the same result. I think its more so not that the trait was nerfed its how they went about nerffing it that that has people frustrated.

Remember, customers wanted reaper to be a competitive power damage based profession when it was almost competitive as a condition damage based profession. After nerfs and buffs reapers have reached a state where it dish power damage at an almost competitive level and the condition damage build have been left in the dust. However, in the process, a trait soul eater gained enough raw power to supress other traits at the same level bringing down their value.

I dont think thats the right way to look at it at all. Your history here is a bit incorrect from what i remember condition reaper hinged on a long string of exploits.

The idea of gw2 before PoF was that any class could do anything. Reaper was likely one of the first designed elite specs as it was one of the first to be revealed meaning its design likely still followed the core aspects of the game which is why it had both power and condition traits in its builds. People didn't want it to have both but rather anet gave it both. Teased us with the unique idea of chill doing damage and thus people flocked to the condition aspect of it. When that got "hot fixed" and the unique flavor was removed tons of people quickly fell off the condition bandwagon and took to the power side of it thought the majority stuck with the condition side.

From this point you need to understand why condition was left in the dust. Or rather why it was a failure.From this point condition reaper was just one exploit after another, this is what kept the condition side of reaper afloat for a long span of time.When exploits are making a class keep up with the others it means that the class is not up to par. As each one of these exploits was removed between a few other nerfs condition reaper fell back to its true self which was very lacking.

Remember when I said in another post the word "HotFix" usually implies a temporary solution. This is what happens when you don't fix that temporary solution. Bleed on chill was a quick temporary fix which needed to be exploited in itself through specific items or runes or along side something else to be competitive. It alone was never a competitive condition build and when there were no more exploits to abuse it or along side it people complained that reaper was not good enough because it truth it was not. Anet made the choice to boost the power side of reaper for increased life force cost. This was the big changed that started to flip people over from condition reaper to power reaper.

What would you do if you intended a trait to give extra damage to a profession but in the end this trait compete with another that grant just as much damage and give survivability on top of that?Give the base kit/skills/traits the proper damage and cooldown numbers so that the new trait could be made into a sustain/survivability only style trait.ORMake sure that a sustain style trait works with proper values inside the shroud mechanic and not only outside of it. This is the biggest down fall of most of the sustain based traits.

Make sure that if you are going to make a trait like this it cannot compete with a trait thats going to be required for end game dps roles on a dps spec.I say this because blighters boon is still a good trait but it competes with The critical bonus damage and skill recharge gained from RO. You cannot run Blighters Boon be accepted for endgame dps in 2019 its just not going to happen as the dps loss is too great and there is not a way to make up for it. Anet must knows this. The community knows this. ITs why blighters boon is not used. You become unviable for taking it despite how good of a trait it still is for increased sustain and hp recovery in shroud.

Honestly anet should just allow others to heal you in shroud, even if its slightly reduce healing.... shrug that would flat out be the easiest solution to solve the majority of the frustration that people have over this whole freaking topic. We wouldnt need healing from traits like soul eater, parasitic contagion etc to work in shroud if that was the case.

What would you do if you intended a trait to have a good synergy with another trait for improved survivability but in the end this trait compete with another trait that grant enough survivability to make this synergy worthless and gave damage on top of that?

Make sure that the synergy is worth taking, but you cant currently name any traits on necromancer with a good enough synergy effect to be classified as competing with the soul-eater trait an doing what it does. Not a single synergy is good enough or balanced properly enough, or fits in place at end game to be "Competitive" with it. Spite is required, Soul reaping is required, reaper is required. Even if you go condition reaper Curses is required there is no room for blood magic and the under powered death magic here for such a thing.

Let me ask you this..Where do you plan to fit such a possible synergy in the main three lines that wont result in a considerable damage loss? Which would by the way make reaper unviable as its already riding a fine line as is. Condition atm is the preferred choice for the majority of end game content. because on most other builds it strong and ramps very fast but deals more damage than power damage over a long fight which most end game fights usually are long-ish.

Sorry for being a bit long winded here but i feel like you were leaving out quite a bit of info that should be addressed when you start digging that far into the past about why something is or should or should not be a certain way.

[Morde.3158]

I agree give the trait back to the greatsword reduce reaper cast times without onslaught remove the agility from onslaught move the agility to relentless pursuit 3-5seconds of agility when enter shroud. Boom reaper problems fixed I still personally want back my recharge on shroud but whatever I cant enjoy wvw as much without it. Not sure why necro still has to be the only slow class Chill of death and other proc traits was nerfed so that they cant crit that has to be a joke those traits was the only thing that was keeping power necro alive in pvp. Yet now we still choose to play power necro in fact its the meta in wvw. Remember when necro was a hybrid class Scepter 3 feast could crit for over 10k and target the weak give extra damage per condition on the target? Yeah All of those changes for nothing. Please I don't want to hear about it helped condi necro in pve cause I really don't care lol.