Atille.5047

Yeah, that's fair. I didn't torture golem on it yet because there's kinda no point, it won't be significantly better than Scourge in DPS - in normal playing pressing 3 and 4 to move around felt like I was constantly resetting my blight for nothing, which sucked.

Blight thresholds did very little good. The secondary effects are nigh-worthless (token bit of power damage + throwaway blind/cripple or a weak effect we could get from anything else like 1 boon corrupt), whilst them spending blight effectively made you generate half as many stacks per each elixir. It just made managing blight more annoying, and by "managing" I mean "staying topped off". Which is what you want in PvE. Visually, blight looks like your character smelling really bad in a cartoony way (with green clouds surrounding you), which is hilarious until you realize that you're going to look like that pretty much at all times with Harbinger. Talk about visual clutter! The boons on elixirs still mostly suck, and I would urge you to consider the aim of each elixir. Why stunbreak one is the resistance-granting one? Why it's not stab? How are we to offer better boon support if we're very, very limited on sources of things? Maybe some could be merged? It's just very shallow and feels like giving up a utility slot for a weak button that does one or two yellow icons and nothing else of note. Not only that, but you're also forced to use these still-underwhelming skills, because blight. No, Ambition is not a good elite skill design-wise, it's literally the most boring thing one can come up with - "slap all boons" will never be good design. Harbinger Shroud is still not distinct enough from Core Shroud. Not having unique sound for it isn't helping, but it's the gameplan that is setting it in stone - you still spam 1 and fill with 2s. "Buffs" to 3 and 4 made them apply torment by giving up 5 stacks of Blight, which makes them kind of not worth pressing still, but also range nerf on these mobility skills just cripples the already shabby identity of Harbinger further. 5 still looks like leftover Halloween decorations. No idea why it eats as much life force per second as Reaper's Shroud - wasn't "more drain per second" thing peddled as Reaper's tradeoff for having melee skills? Shroud 4 still uses Daredevil's Vault animation, during which you're holding an invisible staff. Combined with the lack of new voicelines or sound design for Harbinger's Shroud, this makes a very, very bland impression. Mechanically speaking, Harbinger removed Necromancer's main survivability source - LF/vitality tanking - without introducing some cool dodge abilities, only giving us 3 and 4 that are pretty much meant to engage and for dps purposes - aren't worth pressing. I don't feel like I'm getting something new when playing it, I feel like I'm playing core but faster, I guess. If anything, core has a bit more intricacy in it's rotation that Harbinger does still. Removal of passive LF to HP conversion also removed the actual unique thing about Harbinger, so that's sad in it's own right. Pistol is still tremendously boring, having all 3 skills being different varieties of "pewpew", almost exactly copying Engineer's pistol. Problem is, Engineer's pistol been this way since 2012, you'd think for an elite spec in 2022 we'd get something cooler than 3 pewpew skills with same character animations. We still have no good offhands in the entire class to use with it. Last but not least, trait design is really, really bad. It has no interaction to already established traitlines, which makes it that much more boring - there's no synergy to be found or a cool build just waiting to be plucked up if you try running Blood Magic with something, it's just "that's dps, that's boons, that's condi". Traits do nothing to maybe make us build not Soul Reaping/Curses for once, which in my book means that they fail the whole "bring diversity" thing for us in PvElands. Oh, and Power Harbinger is still a joke nobody really wanted to exist. Just buff Reaper a little more (cough cough critcap it out of shroud already) and give Harbinger some PvP/survivability traits instead of power ones, thanks. My overall impression is pretty disappointed, because I've honestly expected more changes - yet a good chunk of the spec still feels like it's placeholder for something later.

The elixir changes for Harbinger are a step in the right direction, but ultimately boring trait choices + pistol being a copy paste of Engineer's with no cool animations to show for it still make it just a better core necro. Hopefully you'll do more in character animation department so we don't literally use Daredevil's Vault on shroud 4 while holding an invisible staff.

Willbender is entirely-self serving in it's theme, whilst it's traits and utilities don't really open up anything interesting besides maybe a hybrid burst build. Most of the utilities are underwhelming, as class has a number of core ones you would rather use instead (and probably for greater effect too), there is some potential in virtues-modifying traits for it like Phoenix Protocol and such for some complexity/variety of playstyles, but it's simply not there yet. Worst offense is that it's simply not flexible and entirely one-dimensional - it's only here to do some DPS and to maybe have a better open world build (good luck competing with FB in that niche, though). That, naturally, begs the question - wait, what is DH then? And thus, it simply fails to feel any unique. Mobility skills are just that, mobility skills. They're nice but not spec-definingly nice. Tradeoffs for it are too harsh, since it really gets nothing special besides stats for sacrificing toughness and general Guardian defensiveness, and Mantra of Solace isn't here to provide solace for you anymore. Firebrand's mantras being simplistic in their nature is perfectly offset by tomes just casually existing, however Willbender has no such luxury - it's virtues are just three flavors of dashes with some mechanics baked on top. Utilities on it simply need to do more, or have greater synergy with the spec - just some boons for shadowstepping is really not that exciting/interesting. For example, I'd really enjoy some sort of Aegis-based parry mechanic for it to reward skillful use, making you rely on active defences over passive ones entirely? Puzzle pieces for this sort of thing are already in core guardian, they just need to become good again/for once. Lastly, and quite importantly - if we're going so heavy on mobility skills, they need to be anything but clunky. Meanwhile offhand sword is not only worse dps wise than a focus (lol), but also feels quite bad to dash around with due to awkward animation stuttering breaking your momentum. Another peeve I have to WB is the fact that I fully expected it to replace mainhand sword skills too - after all, spec literally has 2 swords in it's icon? Considering Firebrand got 3 kits for itself, coming off heels of FB feels like Willbender is a downgrade of FB, sidegrade of DH at best. And lack of mainhands to run with that new shiny sword is showing, further diluting the feeling of "new" for this spec - yes, there's some new offhand, except you're stuck with same old sword in mainhand you were rocking on every power (and some condi) builds for nearly a decade. I feel like it's a missed opportunity to truly "break some rules" as was claimed.

Critcap it outside of shroud by making either Decimate Defences or Soul Eater a minor trait, if you really want to push it further into being good - reduce CD on Lich or rework it entirely to only be skill 4 or whatever, and make Gravedigger into a chain, since Revs having this animation too now bothers me. Another thing it could get is the idea with a "no defence from shroud" above - big thing that holds back reaper's damage potential is the fact that taking damage to your shroud = a DPS loss, and quite frankly passive arena ticks, mechanics you generally cannot avoid and stuff like VG greens just put you in a worse spot than you should be. You also often end up without Scholar if you end up going to Shroud right after taking a minor hit/tick damage/whatever, which is also really annoying for it's actual in-game performance. For WvW, reaper is indeed quite glassy and generally lacks tools to handle more obnoxious roamers outside of mad jukes and outplays. That could be fixed by making shouts actually good, since none of them are for neither PvE nor WvW/PvP whatsoever. Throw a damage mod upon use of "Nothing Can Save You!", maybe would let us ditch the signet/WoD for once? The whole thing of "scales with number of targets" needs to go, honestly, it just ends up making them all worse than they should be nine times out of ten, and they're already underwhelming in most aspects or are literally outshadowed by core utilities. By the way, "versatile and durable" is a meme. Reaper isn't anywhere near either, taking damage to shroud makes it perform very poorly so you still can't facetank like Scrapper does and your "versatility" boils down to a free pick in heal skill department and golem vs lich, neither of 2 wells you can ditch (Suffering is damage, Darkness is both damage and chill uptime) and very rarely you can ditch the signet for some heavily situational skill, entirely for selfish DPS reasons (wurm/walk pretty much). While Necro indeed has some good utility options, Reaper lacks the leeway to actually use any of it - both power and condi ones, at that. If you want to keep me at Scrapper damage, make me facetank things as well as Scrapper does, then.

Quickness shroud trait working on proximity makes it terrible, as instead of your subgroup/party it slaps quickness on virtually anything as long as it's close. (That includes clones/phantasms, pets, minions) DPS is way too loaded into shroud 1, 2 and pistol 2+scepter 3. Results in boring rotation. Lack of offhand is evident, as necro historically never had a good offhand before Scourge happened - I think it needs an offhand pistol too. Utilities themselves are unimpactful - 1-2 boons per button isn't really exciting, and they don't stand out from Engineer's elixirs with something extra or unique flavour - even Reaper's shouts did a twist and made them all offensive (despite all of them remaining bad to this day), however elixirs just didn't do much with the idea. Maybe if they could be used in Shroud for different offensive purpose they could be interesting, like glyphs? Artistically unfinished. Character animations are heavily reused, shroud 4 even sounds like Daredevil's vault. Pistol animations are boring and unvaried, really not selling the whole "agile dark gunslinger" angle - effects as always are good (if a bit too thick on max blight), elixir icons are very samey-feeling with none of the necromancer flavor. Lack of new voicelines isn't fun too. Overall, I think harbringer needs more work to really bring it out. Some numbers desperately require tweaking (but that's about to be expected, that's what betas are for after all), but so far it's unfinished state fails to make it feel distinct from just a roided up core necro. It simply needs more.

It really needs some more worthwhile rewards. It's not a fast fight even at it's best, and it's quite involved - it's only fair it'd be more rewarding than 2 liquid gold and a handful of sprokets.

I appreciate communication, thank you for clarifying things, but please do something for the balls begone thing. I really want to solve all my trinket issues once and for all, but I'm 100% not interested in a personal portable gum bubbles... thing?.., and a lot of people aren't as well.

Not everything that is correct is aesthetically pleasing, and off-line thing really looks out of place and jarring, since I can't even recall a single game that cared about doing that. Just really looks odd for no good reason.

It's not, but hey, if it floats for you. It's not a 7% difference and I will still advocate for actually learning how to play a better build with a higher damage potential rather than relying on SoS - especially for raids, where most of encounters is spanking of next HPsponge's derriere and Reaper is really not that demanding of group's boonsupport performance - bar is incredibly low for it to perform to the best of it's ability. I also did lay down that with Spite over WoD you'll be at risk of worse Chill, but would make up somewhat for lost power. I did also mention that some specific bosses (and depending on how your group performance is) can call for a SoS build - namely I'd advocate for it on Adina, Sloth if poor slub control, and the likes where you notice taking a lot of unnecessary Shroud damage. Keyword, it's usually unnecessary and it's better to work on your positioning instead. Classic Power Reaper clocks out near-permanent uptime by itself, ditching WoD drops that to around 45%, further down in actual encounters. It's a huge dip and you must be mindful of it and your comp, because nobody will be doing the chill application for you intentionally. Risk is very much there, especially out of Shroud - giving you very unfortunate damage dips. It's possible to make up for it by burning Shroud 5, but that's delaying your 4 whilst also burning your convenient CC skill, so not exactly ideal either.

Not entirely true, AtP is flat out +250 power. Huge chunk (practically all) of your damage IS purely power. If not making any further changes, your damage drops from about 33.5-ish K dps all the way down to 25-26k (at best), which is big. You can, however, also ditch WoD, but then you must be mindful about not being low on Chill, because losing Cold Shoulder uptime is also a big hit, twice as bad if that happens during Shroud loops. In case those conditions are met, you'll be sitting at about 29k-30k if RNG permits, and ideally you'd want to be burning Shroud 5 before every loop as well. Thus, losing 5% of Scholar bonus is bad, but losing 250 power, potentially uptime of 15% damage increase if you choose to run no WoD on top of that is even worse. There's no advantage to running an offmeta variant compared to normal Reaper in any instanced situation besides ease of use, and it'll always be quite a bit worse. I'd rather advocate for learning the encounters and doing good on classic Reaper instead, for besides it's shortcomings Reaper remains hugely forgiving in many aspects - and in light of supports being around, there's really no reason why you should sacrifice so much just in fear of one damage modifier being potentially lost. In OW/DRMs/WvW, though, fair play and obviously a better choice if LF management/more tanki-ness is desired.

In open world, just switching Awaken the Pain for Signets of Suffering and running Undeath gives you enough passive LF both in and out of shroud to tank pretty much most things whilst making 0 gear changes. It isn't even that awful in instanced content and sometimes (rarely) is desirable if there's a lot of shroud pressure fumbling over your uptime of big deeps mode, something like Adina in raids or Sloth if group's bad at controlling slublings. There's quite a bit you can optimize with just trait/skill changes alone, however for WvW/OW I would still advice getting Marauder stuff for convenience sake. It'll also let you run better rune than Scholar, which is obviously good for damage, but not for much else - Pack, Strength, Speed or Durability are all solid choices for you to try. WvW in zerker gear is doable, but not very pleasant - increased HP/Shroud pools help. As far as sigils go, Hydromancy is good for chill/bit of damage (and chill's a big factor for you outside of instanced fights), might-related sigils also go a long way (you only cap out might with Spite after hitting 50%, really). When it comes to instanced content, however, I'd still say go zerker. Unfortunately, Reaper is on the very cusp of competitive, so giving away stats for safety is a big trade-off. Also, don't forget that supports exist for a reason as well; they're bound to keep you on your feet if things go south, generally.

Fractals are already pretty daunting for any newcomers with their 100 levels and then literal year-long grind of titles, + super bloated costs to infusions with +stats as a final touch. Adding "today's special" dailies implies that to take full advantage of this mechanic, you're required to put together a build on every class (spec even, based on your write-up). There's 27 specs you can gear (9x3), and one ascended armor set costs you about 350g. In other words, you want people to invest nearly 10k gold in napkin math just to take advantage of this new system overall, and that's besides costs to infusions and other aspects of gearing like runes and sigils. Now, some specs would of course end up using generally same gear with minor variants, sure, but don't you think it's still kind of way too much to ask for as a figure to be an entry point for new dailies, even if it's in the realm of like 5k? Besides that, pugs already aren't playing to class' potential in most cases, now imagine pugs who chase dailies that also switch classes every other day without knowing how to play them. Single best way to promote diversity is creating competitive options and doing the whole balancing thing more often than roughly once a year.

Versatile, because playing 2 same wells and a signet of never press to hope on dealing any sort of competitive damage is mega flexible on Reaper's part. So is dealing less damage than other DPS options both due to Shroud being tied to your dps (and then arena ticks/unavoidable damage punishes you for existing), gimping you on several occasions to add more flexibility of use. At least Scourge gets a bit of a lift, if not half-forgotten - remember how it has a +conc minor, yet 0 boons besides might to actually apply? Yeah, wouldn't blame anyone for not remembering either, seeing how the whole "support" side of this spec is just ignored. And the thief thing is the most backwards thing ever. "Not enough builds, so let us clear this one out and make it only viable on Kenut, because there's totally a point in running a BT if it's 5man, just take a better (actual) boonclass to carry the rest of the squad!". Chrono one is just bleh, but as a former mesmer main I'm used to them saying me playing the only options left after nerfs to everything around Mirage is "degenerate" and "mesmer tends to attract people of lower skill" (lol), so I'm not shook by that one. Chrono's just not going to be a truly good and universally functional DPS class until it has reliance on Slow and Chronophantasma making it a weird "condition class of power classes" with the whole ramp-up deal and shatter slowdown. As far as competitive modes go, might as well not be there atm.

Small correction; Not even fractals, playing chrono is basically griefing in those due to how slow it is at doing stuff Fractals want. and support role is just way too clunky compared to competition.