FalsePromises.6398

I think if we’re starting to really scrutinize healscourge for its transfusion, I think we also need to give more attention to its quality of life. Shade radii are tiny and hard to use with spread out formations; boon sources for swiftness, fury, and protection are makeshift and very tight; and stability is a long-standing sore point. I want to throw some of my own suggestions out there, in hopes that we get some love to counterbalance losing transfusion, if healscourge is finally being reconsidered again. Starting with some of the simpler stuff, I think some of the existing swiftness sources like Speed of Shadows and Locust Swarm ought to be granted to nearby allies too. Swiftness is such a mundane boon and should be granted more liberally. I also think some boonage could be added to staff marks to give more breathing room to support necromancers in a natural way. Staff already does regeneration on Mark of Blood, so it’s not too out-there. A chunk of protection on Chillblains and a chunk of fury on Reaper’s Mark would go a long way to improving the upkeep of these boons, as they currently only have one source with very little cushion. Necromancer also has a sore lack of good stability, but I don’t think we need to focus on Trail of Anguish: instead, stability should be added to another skill. I personally think Flesh Golem’s Charge is the safest pick for adding good stability: just pop five stacks on nearby allies when cast. It’s not only thematic to the skill, but it also has a healthy cooldown and a sizable opportunity cost in competitive modes, which will prevent necromancer’s newfound stability from becoming too powerful in modes where they’re potentially problematic. I think we can un-nerf some of the skills that were nerfed due to compounding with Transfusion’s teleport. Well of Blood should bounce back from 2% to 7%. Transfusion itself could also return to 2% revive per pulse as well with scourge specialization. Since compounding these skills isn’t guaranteed without teleports, these skills need to be stronger standalone. Here’s the edgy part, saved for last: kill Sand Savant. Get rid of it, merge it into Desert Empowerment and reduce the big shade’s ally target cap to 3. Then, return shades’ 20 second duration. In doing this, alacrity builds are now actually locked to a single shade and thus 6 targets, so using 8 second duration shades to soft cap them to one sustained shade when they have three is no longer necessary. This also makes alacrity builds WAY easier to cover allies with, like how old support scourge builds used to be, and gives breathing room back to Sand Sage upkeep, which is a pretty vital stat bonus. Keeping Sand Savant separate from Desert Empowerment is a massive liability to the entire specialization and every single scourge build, since balancing alacrity target count with three shades by mercilessly shaving shade duration eats into all builds’ quality of life. What is everyone else feeling? I know healscourge is in a pretty decent spot even before transfusion teleports (but takes a hit when allies need to do footwork or spread out), but I think it could be way better in ways that don't even really buff its skill set and total capabilities, just make it more user-friendly and reliable.

Are the devs not aware of how massive of a total joke buffs like this are? "Buff axe coefficients by small percent" is literally a running joke in necromancer communities, viewed as a waffling technique for when they're lacking knowledge or direction on how to patch up necromancer's flaws. Not that power necromancer is really needing anything in PvE right now, but there's certainly better fixes and QoL improvements that could be implemented in regards to spear. Make Perforate higher priority cast and harder to interrupt with other spear skills, increase range on Perforate and Addle so they're more flexible and fluid with the rest of the kit, move Perforate recharge to Isolate instead of Distress so the reset won't bug out when triggered during Perforate's long aftercast. Matter of fact, if we're nerfing the questionable boon block component of Extirpate, I don't see a reason it needs to stay 240 radius either. In practical application, you're not wanting to get close on power necromancer unless you're in shroud or on greatsword. Spear doesn't have the raw cleave nor defensive area blinds of greatsword, so it needs more range to be used safely and effectively, like every other necromancer power weapon. Possibly the worst thing I can think of for support necromancer after so many of their mechanics were counterbalanced due to this capability. Transfusion itself was nerfed from 2% to 1% in scourge specialization because of compounding revive mechanics that won't be possible any more. Well of Blood was reduced from 7% to 2% downstate revive per pulse because of it. Last Rites has 300 radius to play into transfusion pulling downstates closer. Dare I say, a lot of healscourge's design feels like it's given scraps to work with because they've been punished for having this capability. Keep in mind, Transfusion doesn't elevate high tier players beyond what should be possible, it just gives a fighting chance back to players who fumble, which is especially beneficial to improving players' experience in open world meta bosses. Remove it in WvW exclusively if you need to, but in PvE I think it's a good thing to have, because Transfusion alone isn't going to save a group that can't perform to begin with.

As much as I'm critical of necromancer spear's current iteration, it's not the worst weapon in the game. There's quite a few contenders for that spot, and necro spear is well above them. Even if we narrow it down to the spears alone, most of which are really good, I dare say it's tied with ranger spear if anything, which needs to cast a stealth skill to access better damage. That spear loses out on 50% of some skills' base damage if you use it without stealth... and to get that stealth, it means either running a certain pet or casting a skill on your weapon bar that doesn't deal any damage or other effects at all beyond swiftness. Necromancer spear has a solid and stable foundation, it just needs usability and streamlining, and it's already part of the PvE meta for power DPS harbinger and power quick harbinger builds. Even outside of that, it gives necromancer some of the rapid and immediate burst they've been sorely lacking in their power weapons, with a huge spammable siphon (5k health siphon on a skill with multiple cooldown resets and quick cast time) as a generous bonus. Anyway, if you want a ranged power weapon with survivability, that's literally what swords do. Multiple skills including the auto siphon health or heal, it has chill on auto, has mobility, has a lot of fast casting skills with flip skills that you don't need to face your target to deal damage with... it's an incredible ranged sustain and kiting weapon that still deals competitive damage.

I personally don't think the autos need to increase range or become ranged. The autos aren't super important to the kit, and the rest is pretty substantial for covering its regular usage. Think like dual daggers. If you need a kite weapon, you really ought to go for swords or axe, and sword in particular feels like it was pretty much made for that exact purpose since it has leaps on it too. I am totally on board that Addle needs range increase to 240 though, it's a glaring inconsistency with the rest of the kit and seems to betray its otherwise pretty good style of staying just out of melee range when casting its important skills, where necromancer wants to be. I'd also include Perforate in range increases, because it's incredibly restrictive to use. I still don't get this desire for evade on Distress though. It doesn't fit necromancer's style, nor most other long range teleports for that matter. I could see maybe blindness, but not evade, that seems rather overdone and thematically inconsistent, both for a gap closing teleport with no cast, and for necromancer in general. That's like, a mesmer thing.

Fair. Only thing I'll concretely disagree with is that I more often than not am able to actually use Blood is Power with dagger 4 successfully, even in ten man content with healers, unless it's a healscourge. It also still works in open world too, you just usually want quickness, and the only build left that uses dagger 4 instead of instant transfers like plague sending, plague signet, or suffer, is condi quickharb anyway. That aside, I've definitely also noticed Guild Wars 2 has a striking lack of the crazy mechanical gimmicks you actually have to respect that are present in other dark magic users in MMORPGs: necromancer winds up lacking the messed up hexes and curses designed to punish carelessness, and the closest they get is boon hate. They sooner put weird debuffs on themselves via blight.

Staff is first and foremost condi before they buffed it's power exclusively for PvE, just not very good condi. Poison, bleeding, transfers... all more concurrent with necromancer's condi styles. Dagger, axe, or staff aren't really strong standalone power weapons if we're talking PvE, they don't hold a candle to greatsword, spear, or swords. It'd be like calling guardian mace or revenant staff a power weapon. There's a running joke that you can use any weapon as a power weapon for reaper and hit near 40k dps if you just never swap off greatsword. Anyway, yeah scepter has been kinda trampled, I was really annoyed they chose to attack scepter when weaponmaster first launched and scourge was dealing 49k DPS. I'd have rather seen tone-down on pistol or trait modifiers if anything. Spear might be a stretch but greatsword isn't. Every single button on greatsword can apply a damaging condition through Deathly Chill, either via direct chill application, intentionally generous whirl combos in chill fields from shroud, or blindness into chill via Chilling Darkness. It's like mesmer dagger. Damaging conditions on every skill is more than can be said about some actual condi weapons. I wouldn't hesitate to count offhand dagger as condi when Blood is Power exists. Before Plague Signet buffs (and still currently) dagger is used to transfer Blood is Power's self conditions for a sizable amount of damage, and Enfeebling Blood got buffed for more bleed. Dagger 4 can even play into Deathly Chill via Chilling Darkness. I'd also be careful of counting any skill that doesn't do condi damage as power. That's not constructive at all, sometimes skills are meant for support or utility or just aren't good in any direction, just filler. Torch is the one support weapon, not really warhorn lol. Torch boon upkeep > warhorn's piddly over-time siphon. I wouldn't really consider death magic and summoning undead as primary themes, as you have. I'd sooner put soul reaping first, then spite and curses, and then blood magic. When I think of necromancer I immediately think of shroud and life force and boon removal/corruption and debilitation, none of which are prominent in death magic. Anet wants to just leave death magic for the LI minionmancers. I haven't even looked at death magic as a legitimate traitline since I theorycrafted before EoD that harbinger would be a poison spec to validate it. Minions and summoning actual undead are two themes that the elite specs haven't really touched on in a serious manner, unless you technically count scourge shades... which c'mon, nah. Anyway, the reason they keep catering to power is because necro power struggled for the longest time to not be a joke, while the existing condi weapons were pretty good where they were used. I would not trade Dark Pact for a leap. Ranged immob/corrupt > gap closer. You often DON'T want to be up close like that, melee range is other class's parlors when you have little to no stability nor reactive defenses (blocks, evades). Sword 3 is a weird skill shoveled in because people wanted leaps, just like harbinger shroud. Spear doesn't really step on daggers. Life Siphon vs Perforate is apples and oranges: one's cast and forget strike damage + healing over time, the other is a faster channeled strike damage cleave + siphon ammo that relies on each hit landing. Dark Pact vs Addle is even more laughable, because Dark Pact is better in every metric while Addle tries for risky melee interrupts. Also, again, calling staff a long range power weapon is an insult to weapons like ranger longbow, engineer rifle, elementalist spear, even mesmer greatsword. Staff is a condi/utility/competitive weapon that's been refurbished for extra power in PvE alone, and it's not consistent for sustained damage. Given they didn't extend their PvE power buffs to other modes, I don't think they intend for staff to be a real long range power damage weapon. But I agree here. These new weapons do weird crazy things while older weapons fall out of style. It's the result of no longer making elite specs that can elevate old weapons, and using new weapons as an outlet for new mechanics instead. But frankly, I think it's just that anet is hesitant towards necromancer balance, since they've been a sore spot ever since boon meta and PoF adding scourge. One necromancer in a good spot pisses off ten other bitter players by default. I haven't seen them really buckle down on making necromancer better since those overdue reaper buffs. Sorry, I know you're trying not to derail the topic after all that, but I just wanted to address those things, because some of them kinda bugged me.

I mean, the releases thus far have been power, condi, condi, power, power... It's 3 to 2, one apart, so I don't see it unreasonably favoring power unless they add another power weapon next. Necro might seem like it has a lot of power options, but there's only three that are substantial standalone (greatsword, spear, swords). The rest are kinda competitive-focused, or meant to be used for like two skills and swapped out of immediately. If we include ANY relevant weapons when talking about power vs condi, condi then has staff and dare I say greatsword too with Deathly Chill. I could even include spear as a condi weapon with Deathly Chill, since it's actually seeing use on condi reaper due to having some chill on it, but I also hear that condi reaper's starting to edge into hybrid territory now. Anyway, I do agree that three good power sets is more than two good condi sets. As much as I'd love one last power weapon to fill a straight-laced ranged power damage role (unlike staff, swords, or axe), I think we're due for a new condi weapon next time around.

The Isolate bug you speak of must be an actual bug, but I've never seen it. The target dying doesn't make Distress not work or immediately skip to cooldown, I've casted Isolate on ambient creatures in PvE (which die in one shot) and was still able to cast Distress to teleport to where they died. I've never seen it skip Distress unless the target dies before the spear reaches it and it therefore misses entirely. Also yeah, Extirpate is really awkward to judge based on the animation because its entire 360 degree strike happens at some singular point during a rather slow overhead spin that has both windup and extra animation afterwards. I also think it's a low priority casting skill, which makes it easy to cancel with other abilities. Or maybe all the other spear abilities have really high casting priority, idk. As for finding the weapon strange... I think the only reason it's strange is because its skills are rife with sequence issues, weird animations, and short range thresholds that strangle its effectiveness and reliability. I think once all its issues are properly smoothed out, the overarching idea of it will seem a lot more sensible and less confusing.

Yeah, I think we're in agreement on spear needing a little more range. Perforate and Addle need longer range to be practical: Perforate requires you to get way too close for a channeled cone attack and struggles to cleave without a really tight stack, and Addle ruins the flow of using skills in sequence with its 130 range while the rest of spear's skills are 240 or more. I just hope the developers don't fall into the pitfall of "spear works in instanced content, it's fine". Anyway, I don't think spear is competing with greatsword unless you're forcing that idea yourself by thinking you need a ranged weapon in your setup. When I need ranged in open world, I'm sooner picking harbinger or swapping styles entirely to scourge before swapping in dedicated ranged weapons. I think I'd sooner want a better pure ranged power weapon later down the line than try to contort spear into that role. Spear will do nicely as a mid range damage, sustain, and burst weapon once Perforate and Addle get some proper range tune-ups.

I hear you. I still think that it's not up to the skill to guarantee your burst. Necromancer has always been very telegraphed, and it's been up to the user to be crafty about how they use their skills to be unpredictable and land the vital blows when you start playing against enemies that know your tricks. Back in my PvP days, guardians would be dumb and use Judge's Intervention into Whirling Wrath to engage, and if the enemy dodged or countered that, it wasn't the fault of the guardian's skills not working for them, it was because they were predictable. Anyway, I might agree that the 3 second window of Distress makes trying to use the teleport in a not-obvious manner rather difficult, so I could see the Distress teleport time window maybe increasing, but I wouldn't say give it an evade unless you made it an actual attack itself, but that would dampen the spear's unique tricks. I would also agree that the spear throw could stand to pierce anyone between you and your target, that makes total sense. I mean, they did it for deadeye's sniper attack, why not an attack that gives you a very important gap closer? Why allow that to be bodyblocked?

I feel like you're half not even arguing with me, just what you've heard other people say, but I still want to iterate some things in case you ARE talking to me. I'm not so much of a spear fan that I'm saying it's infallible, I'm saying it has good uses thus far in PvE and a promising design but is in desperate need of improvements to its skills' usability. I'm not talking WvW: I'm hesitant to make statements about competitive mists modes because I quit those a while ago and never regretted it. My point on spear being good for harbinger is for PvE, not WvW, if that wasn't clear, and it was because harbinger has an easy workaround for the Distress failure issue in the Isolate combo by using an elixir between the two Perforate casts to pad Distress. I completely agree the Isolate --> Perforate --> Distress --> Perforate combo or even Perforate --> Isolate --> Distress --> Perforate combo are super clunky. Isolate/Distress are huge pain points in spear right now because of the obligatory flip skill activation with no cast, since the reset fails if you're in the aftercast of your last Perforate cast when casting Distress. That's why I say the soul shards and Perforate recharge should be moved from Distress to Isolate, so you can stay at a distance instead of putting yourself at risk. Perforate itself is too short range to be safely cast, and having to teleport to use what you might want as a recovery attack is also kinda messed up. Perforate's range should be increased so the skill is safer to use and more reliable. Addle being 130 range is also incredibly clunky because, like I said, the rest of the kit is 240 range or more, so in sequence of using skills, Addle becomes a "stop, wait a minute, let me get closer" speed bump. It even feels bad to use in PvE, let alone competitive. I can't attest to anything about the reliability of spear vs other weapons in WvW, but I do know in PvE it has a very unique and fun style to it and performs well in DPS rotations, seeing as it's already worked its way into power harbinger meta for PvE. That aside, when I tested spear vs greatsword in a standalone benchmark against a DPS golem in the raid training area (without firework relic to remove greatsword's massive advantage due to Nightfall and equalize the conditions), Spear was actually a smidge stronger, and that was without using shroud or weapon swapping, which puts spear at a disadvantage since you can't use one of Isolate's strongest gimmicks. Spear is pretty good, it's just crippled in practical use. All in all, aside from gamemode-specific things, I think we pretty much agree: Perforate and Addle need range increases, Isolate/Distress needs some fixing to make it more fluid. I'm glad to see it: if enough people agree, change is likely. Hopefully.

First point, yes, absolutely. It's the only way to make Addle feel fluid with the rest of the kit that sits at 240 range or greater. Second point... maybe, but probably not necessary. Extirpate is going to be a hot topic for competitive, expanding its radius might be met with a lot of groaning and moaning. It is a point blank circular AoE though, not just frontal cone, if that's what you're wondering, it's just a rather small for most groupings that aren't super tight. Personally I'd say it could expand though. Third part... I'd probably say spear doesn't need to speed up auto chains, but I would point out the first auto chain strike weirdly has longer cast time than the second, which deals more damage and more benefits. Seems like an odd choice, I can only imagine they did it to make the animations look better maybe? Still, seems unnecessary. If I were to reduce any cast times of the auto chain, it'd be on that first strike only. Fourth part... I don't think we need an evade on spear, and necro's never really been about that kind of thing. Spear already has some nasty siphons and mechanics, doesn't need to be overloaded.

I don't see it necessary to add a bimodal ranged attack on the autoattack. You're not really needing to land those autoattacks, and the kit is pretty well designed to gap close and stay at a little safe distance. What you need to land is your other weapon skills, which is why I bring up Perforate and Addle range increases, because they play like super up close skills when that's not what spear really wants. A ranged channel should not be 300 range, that's basically melee where ranged channels are notorious for failing to cast properly or fully. Then Addle is 130 range while the rest of the kit is 240 range, making it a serious oddball in practical use. Those two are the range issue, in my opinion.

Spear is actually in a pretty good spot, it's just facing terrible restrictions on the ranges of its more powerful or vital skills. Spear is currently the optimal damage weapon alongside greatsword for power harbinger, which I believe is because harbinger has other skills it can cast during the forced delay between perforates when using Isolate --> Perforate --> Distress --> Perforate (as mentioned in the original post, this combo needs to either cancel the previous Perforate's aftercast or use another skill while casting Distress to make sure the reset works properly). Also, I did the math with someone above, and spear is actually a pretty dang good sustain weapon, since its soul shards on Perforate outheal dagger's Life Siphon, and it can also reset Perforate's cooldown AND regenerate full soul shards in the process. 5160 heal on Perforate with full soul shards vs 4860 heal on Life Siphon with bleeding modifier. Sword might have more consistent healing across all skills but dare I say it's counterbalanced by being smaller healing among more skills AND needing health to cast certain skills anyway. Spear is just limited by Perforate's range, which forces necromancers to get unreasonably close and often take more damage trying to get their healing. Spear's role in necromancer is a close range bursty weapon that gives necromancer a lot of immediate danger that its previous weapons were missing. Sword's damage is evenly dispersed, doesn't have huge burst. Greatsword is too weighty and slow for a lot of that immediate pressure or followup. Staff might work in PvE as a bursty power weapon but it burns out FAST and has no further use, and isn't a power weapon in competitive. Axe is axe (lol). Spear has a great unique identity with substantial performance, I just want to enhance its performance in ways that wouldn't even buff the current high end meta uses. Range increases would help it be more usable in open world, Isolate/Distress changes would help the weapon work more fluidly, and slight Perforate recharge on autoattacks would help it sustain damage in longer use, which is antithetical to how harbinger and reaper play since they hop in shroud during cooldowns, but throws a bone to power scourge, which has been nonexistent in serious PvE thus far. To reiterate on previous concerns though, no, spear is not competing with greatsword, it's working alongside it. If anything, spear is eclipsing a lot of subpar other power options that anet seems to design more for competitive mists anyway. I want spear to follow in greatsword's steps because it's the only good model so far for consistent power damage on a necromancer weapon, and a lack of consistent power damage is what keeps power builds on scourge in PvE under wraps (also the fact that shade skills have low power coefficients, but that's only part of the issue).

Comparing weapons between classes is a terrible idea. Classes all have different dispersions of strength, capabilities, and complexity between their different parts: weapons, traits, slot skills, and class mechanics. Every class is balanced wildly differently, each one a different apples to oranges conundrum. Some classes will always look wildly unfair compared to another class. That said... I think the fact you can inflict almost permanent chill with necro spear autos already (easily permanent chill when on reaper with Cold Shoulder and Chilling Nova) means you don't need more. I think permanent chill is already stronger than 2 stacks of might for 5 seconds and 2 seconds of weakness. Chill is a really oppressive condition. Also Perforate does provide something useful: 5160 heal if you land all hits with soul shards, and that's before any other effects like Relic of Atrocity, Relic of Zakiros, or Soul Eater. That's pretty big for a skill that's also meant to be strong burst damage and cleave. That's bigger than necromancer's own siphoning specialty weapon, dagger's 2 skill, Life Siphon (4860 heal with bleeding modifier). The real issue is that the super short 300 range screws it up: if you really need the healing, you'll probably move too close trying to land it and wind up eating damage you shouldn't have. 5k health gained looks like 1k health gained if you take 4k damage trying to make sure the hits land. On to Isolate range increase, if Isolate became 1500 range, I think it'd be the longest range teleport in the game without getting into portal skills. I'm pretty sure all non-portal teleports and shadowsteps cap out at 1200 range.

I'm pretty sure I remember thieves complaining that Voracious Arc was just their Vault but longer range and that it should be nerfed, and that's what I attribute the nerf to. Something deep in my gut feels like vindictive thief mains had a hand in designing harbinger, since the whole spec feels like "Oh, you want damage? Get rid of your 'second health bar' and your high base health and be squishy like me". The vital flaw is they didn't give harbinger the raw recovery capabilities or defenses of squishy classes, opting instead for passive regen. I do agree that harbinger is a total mess under the hood, rife with clashing mechanics that could be remedied if the class wasn't in a dormant balance discussion state of "it deals damage, we're done", a state I'm hoping spear won't fall into before its issues are fixed and its style corrected to what it should be. I'll be able to stomach spear long term if they at least move the Perforate reset to Isolate, but I really hope they increase Perforate and Addle range so they're more usable in ways you'd really want to use them. Addle in particular is irking me because every other skill in the spear kit is 240 range or more, which leaves Addle very awkward to use when you're using the rest of your kit in sequence.

Ask and ye shall receive. Even as someone wanting buffs to necro spear, I disagree with a lot of those points. 1. chill on every strike is comically overpowered. Not even greatsword, the weapon for the spec thematically tied to chill, does chill on every auto strike. Chill on even just the third strike is a little generous in my opinion, since spear has no real reason to have that. 2. I don't have LF issues with spear and don't see a need for this. Make sure you're using your shroud effectively, not taking absurd amounts of damage in shroud, using your other LF generating skills on spear, and cycling weapons so you can effectively rotate LF generating skills. Or maybe just run chilling grasp. 3. Addle is not fine, it's terribly short range and glaringly visually inconsistent with its animation. It needs a range increase so it can better work alongside every other skill in the set having 240 range or more in practical application. 4. 1200 range on Isolate is fine: if you need 1500 range on a teleport, that probably means you're casting it to engage enemies from unreasonable distances beyond their range too, and in that case you can just run the extra 300 range instead. I also don't see a realistic need for extra poison, it's a power weapon after all. If anything, the more glaring issue is that Distress's soul shards and Perforate reset should be moved to Isolate for better skill sequencing, since Distress's Perforate reset fails if casted during Perforate, including if it's casted during Perforate's aftercast, which starts necessitating skill canceling tomfoolery. 5. I can see where you're coming from, I lowkey agree, but now that Extirpate has better benefits on the first target struck and per hit, I don't see it as near as much of a pressing issue as Perforate or Addle or Distress. Plus, it needs to be counterbalanced so it's not oppressive in competitive with its new Extirpation debuff. Same reason harbinger shroud 5 is 240 radius.

Definitely one of the more glaring issues, I agree. I took some screenshots when I was testing Perforate, and the difference between the actual range vs the visual effects was comical. I did this by selecting an ambient creature and nudging myself away until perforate was JUST out of range, and then using it. At 300 range, my spear was visible moving PAST my target, but not striking it. The visual effects went out TWICE as far as the actual skill's range. I tested it again by moving myself to 600 range and... it looked like the perfect distance for its visual effects. Addle was the same: it seemed to actually look more like a 240 range skill. The actual spear itself reached to 180 range, and the visual effects of the glowing strike reached to 240 range. Having these skills actually function at this range would do LEAGUES for spear being a super flexible and applicable weapon. Like I said in my original post, spear isn't warrior daggers where you have 2 leaps and every reason in the world to cling to your enemy's body like a flea. Longer range on spear would give necromancer an incredibly useful mid-close range weapon without the windups or slowness of greatsword. It feels like the range decreases on spear were artificial, like someone in the development team wanted to pump the brakes on it and curb necromancer expectations for the weapon, because the visuals are definitely suited for longer ranges but the skills are stuck with such inflexible ranges for a necromancer weapon. Even greatsword has skills that have extra range to visually match their animations, with Gravedigger at 180 radius and Dark Spiral at 240 range. Maybe they preemptively nerfed it to make it not too good in PvP?

While using necromancer spear I was getting mixed signals: some clashing designs and ultimately something missing. After talking with others, I wanted to make a forum post just to put my thoughts and feedback out there and hopefully start some conversation, because I worry spear will fall into a "it deals damage, we're done" rut and be left in a mediocre state when it could be doing MUCH more for the class, even without over-tuning what reaper and harbinger have or touching damage coefficients. I'm putting the key parts in bold so it can be read with a glance for tl;dr, but I encourage reading the whole thing. I think first and foremost is the range. The key parts of the kit feel cramped, and Perforate is the worst offender: its visuals shoot all the way out to 600 range, but it can only strike half that distance, and with such short range it often fails to cleave at all. I think tuning up the range to 450 or 600 would do the skill much more justice, even if it comes at the cost of a narrower cone attack. Perforate doesn't need as much spread if it's a better linear attack. Addle also needs extra range, maybe 180 or 240, so it can embrace a better "poke and pin" function. Necromancer's spear isn't like warrior's daggers where you have two leaps and want to be in their face all the time. Spear in general really ought to embrace some more "poking" instead of falling into an awkward pure melee role where its important ranged channel attack is at most disadvantage. If anyone's not aware, ranged channels often fail against enemies that move inside, through, or around your hitbox, which happens a lot in melee. After that, Isolate should be the skill that generates soul shards and recharges Perforate, not Distress. It would streamline skill sequences and allow you to stay at "poking" range instead of needing to teleport right in an enemy's face with a channeled cone attack prone to cancelling itself or missing entirely against certain movements. It would also improve usability: in a damage-optimizing sequence, you would go from (Isolate --> Perforate --> [another skill to ensure Perforate goes on cooldown before Distress] --> Distress --> Perforate), down to a much cleaner sequence of (Perforate --> Isolate --> Perforate), a much cleaner skill sequence. The teleport can be saved entirely as an optional gap closer then, like Death Shroud's Dark Path and Dark Pursuit. My last suggestion is one that gets a little inspiration from greatsword, that spear's autoattack chain should partially recharge Perforate. Something small like 33% recharge of Perforate on the third skill of the autoattack chain would work perfectly, so that two auto chains plus one other spear skill would give you full shards plus enough recharge progress for a clean loop into Perforate. Encouraging sustained damage mechanics on spear would fill some gaps in power scourge in PvE, plus it would give spear that consistent strength like greatsword that I think more weapons in the necromancer arsenal ought to have, since they tend to pump skills and then sit on longer cooldowns (if they don't swap off). A change like this shouldn't even affect reaper and harbinger's damage in PvE since they spend more time in shroud and avoid extended periods of a single weapon. Tl;dr of the tl;dr, spear should aim for more of a poking, mid-close range style instead of a clashing melee style with a ranged channel attack, by increasing the range of Perforate and Addle and moving soul shards/Perforate recharge off of Distress to Isolate. Spear can then be enhanced akin to greatsword by adding partial Perforate recharge on third auto chain strikes, improving its sustained damage for specs or styles that don't rely on shroud kits as much.

I think they missed mentioning some points that it wasn't just tanky and slow, but also devastating for its debilitations and control. They gave up a lot of reactive defenses (blocks, evades, invulns, even a little bit of consistent mobility/healing/cleanse were sacrificed) for passive defenses (damage reductions, shroud health) that made them have to focus more offensively or be overwhelmed, and they were given special tools to make their offense more sustainable and harder to ignore via siphons, transfers, corrupts, debilitations, and powerful control. Necromancer is supposed to be a powerful and weighty dampener with staying power, and it kinda evolved to deal more damage as anet wanted more fairness between classes, especially in endgame PvE. Harbinger kinda hopped the tracks by removing shroud health for mobility and a little spare regen and also kinda losing some of the AoE and debilitation aspects, but scourge and reaper are definitely more true to the original.

I actually really like this idea, can't believe I never really thought of it when I was using it. The original, which obligates the teleport by tying the soul shards to it, results in skills piling up on top of each other in high speed rotations. Putting the soul shards on the spear throw itself (and making the skills better able to be queued while they're at it) would make spear MUCH more user-friendly and have a better "poke" identity, since you'll be able to throw your spear and cast Perforate from any range you please, instead of being teleported right in between their legs. This is with the idea that the Perforate recharge is also moved to Isolation from Distress too, otherwise it's not really sensible.

I think spear is a very neat and fresh set, but the resource management and ranges could stand a little fine tuning. This is speaking from a strictly PvE perspective: I haven't tested in PvP or WvW, but I do feel like these points are worth saying. The spear ranges/area effects are the biggest pain point, since they clash in application. Spear 3, 4, 5 (Addle, Isolate/Distress, Extirpate) are very much up-in-your-face skills with short/melee ranges, but that clashes with skill 2 (Perforate), a semi-mid-range frontal cone. This makes for a clunky playstyle when you use 3, 4, and 5 while in the thick of it right in an enemy's face, but you need to back up to cast Perforate effectively, since it's a longer range poking cone attack that you need to line enemies up inside instead of a point blank area effect or melee strike like the rest. I think Addle could definitely be expanded into a bit of a poking wave attack to help build on that just-out-of-melee-range poke style, and maybe a slight range increase on Extirpate (maybe from 240 -> 300) so you don't have to position AS tightly to get the most of it, allowing you to worry more about how you position for Perforate. Isolate and Distress are hard ones to touch on range-wise though, being a teleport sequence. Don't know if there's a good answer for that one unless it becomes something that isn't a teleport any more. I also think soul shards could stand an uptick in generation and a downtick in being conditional. Distress (flip of Isolate, skill 4) is the only one that feels like a reliable soul shard generator because it generates all six immediately, but that could stand to be less up and down. Maybe changing Distress from (3 guaranteed on teleport and 3 more when isolated) to (4 guaranteed on teleport and 2 more when isolated) would make the skill a little less flakey, and to make sure this doesn't make Addle's bonus effects above four soul shards too strong or guaranteed, Addle could have its bonus effect threshold increased to five soul shards. Also, the soul shards generated from Addle and Extirpate could stand to be increased by one at least. As it stands, soul shards feel like they only come from Distress. If Extirpate granted 2 per target, it'd make it much easier to get more from the skill and increase its value as a soul shard generator, and Addle could stand to generate one more soul shard on the initial hit maybe just to top off Distress when a target isn't isolated. Soul shards also feel a little too short duration. Being 10 second duration when they can only be expelled via an 8 second cooldown skill seems a bit tight. Expanding that duration to 12 or 15 seconds would make soul shards feel way more comfortable, especially when you can't guarantee you'll be in melee range at the right moment before they expire. All that said, I'm definitely enjoying using spear as a faster paced alternative to greatsword that doesn't strictly put me directly in the thick of combat. I like the idea, and look forward to its future use. Props to the designers and everyone involved with it.

The worst (and really only) offender of annoying mechanics on ranger is untamed, purely because it's just so many buttons with new binds plus having to keep an eye on that ambush buff. Meanwhile thief is probably okay to use freely in open world, but endgame and large scale content makes it start to get tedious, with regards to tiny healthpool, big punishment for weakness/blindness/downstate on deadeye, cleave issues on condi builds (think venoms and scepter), lots of forced movement or movement restrictions among its styles, annoying ally target mechanics on heal specter, etc etc etc... I mean, thief is LEAGUES better than it used to be, with how its conditional damage modifiers used to require you to stay above 90% health with 11k hp or else you lose crit rate and crit damage, and how venoms are being updated to not erase each other with multiple thieves present, but it still strikes me as more trouble than its worth. Like I hope I'm not dragging thief too hard, but ranger just seems like a better all-rounder investment, both for an exploring player and as an endgame option.

I feel like this is exaggerating an issue that isn't really there. Astral force management is not really a problem unless you're being nitpicky about certain interactions (of which deadeye has much worse versions) or trying to strictly adhere to a rotation in suboptimal environments. Soulbeast's "beastmode management" just... doesn't exist. You pick a pet and merge with it and call it a day. You might unmerge and swap pets for a spare beast skill or two in fringe cases, but that's an extra-mile solo play trick that's fun to do, by no means a requirement nor expectation anywhere else. You're largely you're just sucking in your pet for some stat boosts and a few neat skills and that's it. Untamed might get complex at its peak but it's otherwise lax: you can easily goof around and juggle the mechanic between you and your pet with zero repercussions on your own since it's practically zero cooldown. Worst thing that'll happen is you swap the mechanic at the wrong time and have to wait maybe a second to swap it to your pet and back to get it at the right moment. Of the three medium armor professions, ranger is the easiest to get into, use universally, have variegated roles with, and enjoy yourself at any skill level since it's very forgiving.

I don't know if this will really do anything for heal warrior. In my experience, one of the biggest hurdles for heal warrior (at least in PvE) is adrenaline generation, which makes Burst Mastery way more appealing than a number multiplier. You could consider it a "choice" between two support grandmasters, but I feel like just about every heal warrior will pick Burst Mastery over this new Heightened Focus iteration just for how much adrenaline refund they get out of Burst Mastery. What COULD happen that would make Heightened Focus very appealing to heal warriors is if it generated adrenaline while in combat, maybe up to a certain threshold, akin to how Eternal Life on necromancer generates life force up to a certain threshold, allowing support necromancers to focus more on utilizing their life force instead of micromanaging it. I do understand, however, that people may believe this to be antithetical to adrenaline's design in the first place. I do want to say, though, that I LOVE everything else going on with the other heal warrior buffs, especially Martial Cadence getting better consistency.