Auburok.4518

Death magic needs a real focus and should do something like fully focusing on minions or something. It might even be fun if the traits improved minions to a point to a point where you could occasionally peel enemies in PvE. Sustain or defenses need to be improved. Either cap HPS on cleaves, reduce value in shroud, only make it available in shroud, revert back to the whole "holding a greatsword" 200 HPS if we're going the sustain route. Blood magic doesn't make sense to take when you solo; it's not a viable mitigation for what you trade for it (vulnerability/+10% damage/33% crit + ferocity/reduced shroud cooldowns/more life force and life force generation or might generation/+10% damage on boonless enemies/boon removal/+20% damage on low health enemies). If the sustain was better, it might be an option, but you trade a lot for subpar sustain to the point where it would be better to just kill things faster. So far blood magic is only useful in disorganized groups/groups where any healer is better than no healer. I would be okay with shroud taking less life force damage from hits, or allowing outside heals. Currently other classes get some sort of evasion or block while still being able to be healed by party members. It made sense when a reaper was self reliant while in this mode, but now it's pretty much gated to safe moments. Since it's ticking down, and it's a melee-focused mode, it's sort of strange how frail it is. At least before if I get insta-popped out of shroud it was a possibility I may have recovered some health. Now I'm force to spend time running away if I'm low in shroud. Seems counter intuitive for a mode designated "Reaper Shroud"; the image of death runs from his enemies in order to avoid going down rather than using it to fuel an onslaught. I've only been playing for four months, but I finally got ascended gear and managed to get some scholar runes. It kind of sucks that scholar runes reward other classes that can burst while being topped off, or can pop and evade/block while being healed in preparation for a burst. Take a -1750 hit and now shroud is sub-optimal. Otherwise, things feel alright. Signet of spite doesn't make sense for a power passive, and self corruption play is undermined by AoE cleanses so it's kind of pointless, but a lot of things feel pretty good when you look past the big sustain/defense issues. Not to say the traits in all trees couldn't use some real diversification, but improving survivability would be a good start to making melee feel like better on a class that otherwise takes subpar ranged options as a backup plan.

I've noticed this, too.

You want to know this decision is poorly thought out? This entire trait (Photonic Blasting Module): https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Photonic_Blasting_Module - Depends on overheating, and now half of a holosmith's options are cut off. This is really disappointing. Is this referring to overheating, what is overloading on holo?There is no "overloading", just overheating.https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Heat#Overheating

Yikes! You sure about that? It just sounds like you're limiting viable options for self-sustain, which is pretty much required when a reaper phases into their anti-heal bubble in battle. This has been suggested before, but: why not just half the healing while in shroud? Seems like a decent place to begin, rather than stripping it entirely. If this were to go forward: healing while in shroud would rely on Blood Fiend and Vampiric Presence.