Nimon.7840

Well there's two alac scourge builds that don't provide 100% prot uptime: condi alac scourge and cele alac scourge. But I don't think that anet should balance protection on scourge around those builds. That would just lead to something like herald 2.0. and I don't think that we want that. Though they definitely could improve various boons on scourge. Might: there's plenty of might with torch, abrasive grit and blood is power (or dessicate). Fury: already a "problem" nowadays many dps classes provide 50% fury uptime for a group. But the problem is, that not all of them do so. Regeneration: no problem here, healing well, dodge, serpent siphon all provide regeneration. But it can still be a problem sometimes. I wonder if you could just make furious demise from the curses traitline group wide, but I think it would be better on either a support traitline or a power traitline, best imo would be a weapon. Cause often it feels like a waste to bring dessicate. Aegis: we do have serpent siphon which is a rather decent skill, the only problem I have with it, is that it's not an instant (no casttime) skill. Btw same as warrior which makes it sometimes a lot harder to actually block the right attack. Swiftness: huge problem, that needs to be addressed imo. There's only the febe relic, which can give you almost 100% uptime if you use the healing well on cooldown, but that's not something you want to do with your main direct healing ability. And there's trail of anguish which leads me to stability and the overall problem of this skill. This skill can basically not be used to prevent a cc in a lot of fights unless you know them extremely well, because you first need to know, that some cc is incoming and then you also have to run through all your allies to actually provide stability, which takes a lot of time. So adding some of the "missing" boons to weapons or maybe even shift some healing on a weapon would be nice.

So with the introduction of the new weapons, a lot of classes got some kind of support weapon. Mesmer rifle, warrior staff, engi short bow (even though it's not that good). And two more classes got one handed weapons to compliment their offhand choice for the second weapon set: ranger mace and rev scepter. So all of those classes now have at least one weapon set, with more than just one support skill on it. If we look at necros support skill options on weapons that either heal or provide boons: Torch 5, warhorn 5, staff 2 - that's it. And necro has 12 weapons it can equip, but the most number of support skills a weapon set can provide is one? Don't get me wrong. Heal scourge is very good as a healer, especially for groups/fights in which people tend to go downstate often. And it's also good as a celestial build if you feel like you don't need 2 full healers, but one wouldn't be enough either. For it's pretty annoying that on full heal scourge you only have one support skill on every weapon set. That makes the weapon choice kinda redundant. Imo there should be at least one more skill on something like dagger. And dagger 2 would be the perfect candidate for that. The life steal could just be changed, that it heals allies as well. And if the values are too high, make it heal allies by 20% of the value you are healed, and if you are full health that value gets increased to 50% or something like that. Which could in some distant future make heal harbinger a thing. And there have been several other ideas in the forum, for example giving warhorn a blast finisher and group swiftness just to slightly improve necro support builds.

After playing with the swords a lot more, I definitely have a differing opinion than I had with my first impression: Open world: I still use them on a power reaper build and it's good to have a decent but not great range option. Instanced pve: they are just too weak compared to greatsword. Also if I saw it right both 3 skills and 4 skills are not affected by quickness, which I could understand for the 3 skills since they are leaps, but not for the 4 skills. Wvw: only useable for roaming and even there, there's better options. Projectiles in Zerg are just bad. The only nice thing about swords is the mobility which is unclear, if the tooltip or the ability is bugged. Having much more leap distance than the tooltip states. Overall the theme of sustain weapon that also damages yourself doesn't really work in my opinion. Especially when the flip over skills that cost health are much weaker than the original abilities. It's just not worth pressing flip over skills 2 and 4 at all. Wvw roaming meta is either one shot people with very high power dmg (for example willbender) or playing some kind of cele abuse. Now you might think, hey cele, those are longer fights right? Swords should be good in a sustain fight. No they aren't. The sustain they provide is ok ish, but the dmg they do at the same time is not good, especially on a cele build, because they don't inflict any conditions. Also by not playing axe on a power necro you are missing out on that very important burst that a power build needs. The only ok ish combination I found was axe/sword for a power build. Hitting people with the 5 and then do a higher burst with 5+2. but to be honest, just play focus. More damage, a boon rip, and isn't a projectile on it's important skill. Imo the swords still need a lot of work. They are much better than they were in the beta, but that's about it.

To be honest: go with a condi build for open world. While power necro builds are fun, they aren't particularly strong for solo stuff. My open world (solo) power reaper: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAExzlVwUYHMPWJO2WnNbA-DyQYhom8fHKwZEhKoCpgMvFEkAp+AA-e Suggestion for (solo) power harb: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAExzlhyUYHsUWLOWXlxSA-DyQYhom8fHKwZEhKoCpgMvFEkAp+AA-e But harb misses a stun break and condi cleanse with this build in my opinion. You could also probably drop the accuracy sigils and use marauder gear to substitute for the precision loss, which will also help on the hp side. As soon as there's other people around you that give boons, for example map metas, you can swap traits like dread to close to death, since other people will almost always provide you with fury. With the reaper build you can solo champions, but you actually have to play good. If you want a braindead me not care for mechanics build you should definitely consider some condi/cele reaper/harbinger. Maybe you want to check out Lord hizens builds for that (just search on YouTube). Imo the big necro problem is, that you can't really play instanced content builds in open world. Or at least they are quite a bit weaker than dedicated open world builds.

I played the new story with them. Didn't bother to test them on golem without arc and was in wvw for a bit: Open world: totally fine weapon. The 5 skill is great to trigger the dread trait. And gives might for every target feared. But the dmg felt a bit weak sometimes. Extra mobility is great. Wvw: solid weapons but nothing special (only tested one power reaper build yet, but I got a couple more ideas). I feel like axe/focus is still stronger. Bug: to me it seems sword 3 is bugged in some way. Either they increased the leap distance and forgot to change the tooltip, or the leap distance is bugged. I used the distance rings from blishhud and reaper shroud 2 as a reference. Sword 3 almost travels as far as RS2 and that says 600 range in its tooltip. That being said: the swords feel a lot more fluid to play than they did in the beta. Especially the increased leap distance is very nice. Will they make it into reapers instanced pve kit? - probably not, since the numbers aren't quite there -yet (from what I read in SC discord).

The problem is, that this greatly limits build diversity if you basically have to play Wurm, Walk and speed relic on every single build to get mobility that still can't really keep up with the mobility of other classes. Even swords don't really add much mobility. 450 range leap? - I mean common And for the second one you have to pay health.

While I agree that boon all meta is super boring I have to say, that anet wont just nerf corrupts/boon removes. They basically obliterated alacrity in wvw, so that only few sources can still give alac. Which will overall lead to less boon spam already.

Exactly. Gs isn't a pure pve weapon. In wvw Zerg play it's very good and even in roaming it's useable. You just have to know, how to use it. Imo in roaming it's more of a utility weapon rather than a dmg weapon.

While I think that this would complete the fashion wars, I see problems with it as well. 1. Technical problems: since we don't really know, how GW2 is programmed we can't judge if it's possible to easily add dye channels. 2. Balance/visibility problems: to be fair this point mainly affects pvp modes, but it's still very important. For example if scourges elite breach would suddenly be displayed purple/pink it might look like mesmers time warp. And while both are punishing to stand in as an opponent, not being able to judge from the looks of a skill to easily tell, what skill it is and making judgement whether you can step into it or have to evade it, would be really bad. So unless there would either be an option to display enemy spells in their original color, it would be a bad idea to introduce dye channels to skills. There would also be the option of only the caster seeing the different dyes, but imo that would to some extend invalidate the point of changing colors in the first place. If i put my heart into dyeing a Charakter, I also want other to see it, no? 3. Visual clutter/noise. Another aspect would be, that you could make skills look bad on purpose to disturb other players. I myself have a character, that I tried to make as ugly as possible, by choosing skins that don't match and colors and infusions that don't really work well together. I wouldn't want to see a neon pink, red, neon green spell breaker bubble for example.

Do you really want to discuss useless traits? I mean, look at nourishing ashes, feed from corruption and sand savant, all in the scourge trait line. You might argue, that you don't have to select them, but that's even worse imo. Or basically every trait that involves deaths carapace in the death magic trait line, which can grief other players in instanced pve, due to them giving toughness. There are a lot of very useless traits.

Does stealth really have counterplay? Yes there is a mechanic that counters stealth, but it's not very accessible. Most classes have like one skill, that actually reveals enemies. And for example on Necro that's locked behind a core shroud skills. Don't get me wrong, you can definitely play around an stealthed enemy. For example putting down Necro staff marks to limit a stealthed enemies movement. But that's no real counterplay in my opinion. That being said, I wouldn't remove stealth. Just nerf stealth in a sense, that you can't just spam stealth skills anymore to be invisible for a very long time. I don't know what a reasonable max duration would be. Maybe around the 6-10 second mark. Or give more specs a skill that reveals.

You are absolutely right. The current balance team is doing amazing work and communicating much better. I just wish that it would finally be time for them to really look into Necro problems. For example absolutely useless traits like sand savant feed from corruption or nourishing ashes, that nobody uses in any game mode. And weapons like dagger that just don't really do anything (main and offhand). And design flaws of something like power harbinger, mainly due to power coefficients of shroud skills. But also that no matter what trait you choose in harbinger, the playstyle doesn't change. That being said, we have 4 very good instances pve builds being cscourge, charb, reaper and halac scourge. And another set of decent builds being calac scourge, cquick harb. Though in competitive modes the good builds for Necro drastically decrease in numbers and will be even lower due to support scourge probably being removed from wvw (nerfs are justified, but the nerfs are way to harsh, and imo it would "just" need some shift of power).

Necro: It's nice to see the addition of optional shareable protection at a damage loss for harbinger. Though I'm wondering about the duration of that protection. The current condi- quickness build doesn't use any boon duration gear I believe and gets around 13% from the twisted medicine trait. Will that be enough with two elixirs and the elite elixir to keep up protection? I kinda doubt it, but we will see. We will see if power harbinger will be an option. But I believe that it would be better to put some effort into reworking the traits instead of just increasing the numbers. What I absolutely don't understand, is why support scourge in wvw gets the double hammer. First you take away the alacrity, which is a bummer already, then the cooldown of most barrier skills goes up as well. Not to mention that transfusion is at a 60s CD. Unless you want to delete support scourge, imo the cooldown increases shouldn't happen. Also what is there left to play as Necro in wvw? Power scourge isn't in a particularly good spot. It still strips, but the dmg is awful. Condi isn't viable. Reaper will still be the best option, but why would you keep decreasing good builds for a class, when you are looking to increase it for others or don't touch others at all. The only good thing is, that mesmer sees a pretty hefty nerf to boon removal, which might increase the demand for some kind of Necro spec in the Zerg, because apart from alacrity the boon spam doesn't see any decreases. Plague signet and signets of suffering: While I think that it's really nice, that you can't get randomly immobilized anymore, it also removes a lot of flavour for plague signet. That being said, apart from cdps harbinger in pve this skill doesn't see any play right now because of the self grief possibility and because you are basically forced to play spectral walk and Wurm in spvp or wvw roaming, which leaves you with one free skill choice. Signets of suffering: I don't think anyone will ever use this trait. For pve the boon remove is kinda pointless and for pvp modes the signets aren't really good. There will be one good signet, which will be plague signet, but as I already said: you don't really have space for another one. And the only good one would be signet of spite. The heal doesn't do enough. It doesn't cleanse condis, nor gives boons, nor does it heal much or ist just a lot lower cast time. it just heals once and the active passive will be kinda wasted. So maybe people will experiment with it, but soon realize, that awaken the pain and chill of death are both much better.

I think it's great that anet managed to change so much on all the weapons. From what they say about the swords it sound good. Not amazing but solid. We will see. The only thing I would change before sword release would be the new 5 flip skill. Why does it have to be might we get. I think fury would be a lot better, especially for reaper. Cause then you didn't have to switch traits in spite trait line between playing different content. Cause if you do something solo you kinda have to take the dread trait instead of close to death for fury uptime. But in group instanced content you will always play close to death. And "wasting" a build template for a trait change is a bit too much imo. At least with the very limited amount of build templates per character

I really appreciate the heads up notice. Some of these changes are pretty nice. What I don't understand is, why there's still no changes to the boon radius of a lot of builds. And there's also no changes to the boon access to certain boon dps builds. There's basically no reason to play any other quick dps build than herald. Other than that, I have a very big issue with waiting for Necro swords, before making changes to power harbinger. Sorry but dmg wise those swords were so bad in the beta, that they have to be buffed to the moon, to make power harbinger a thing. And then this creates another problem: they even have to be a lot better than greatsword, to make power harbinger a good dps build. But then this would be a dmg increase for reaper as well, and reaper is a lot tankier and imo easier to play, so basically no reason to play harbinger. I feel like harbinger needs a rework. But I'm excited for the big profession updates in the patch after this one. And I'm really sad about no nerfs to heavily over performing roaming/small-scale builds for wvw.

This is so wrong and shows, that you don't really understand, what builds are strong, and what builds are lacking. At least reaper has a rotation, not like scourge, where you basically press every button on cooldown, or some Buttons together. And there's still a lot of bad reaper players, that don't manage to deal any significant amount of damage. I see them every day, when doing the daily Soto strike as celestial (heal) scourge, outdps-ing people that should so more dmg just by autoattacking. Is reaper strong at the moment? Yes and even the condi build is solid. But it's pretty unlikely, that you will see reapers getting used in a speedclear. (Unless it's some " do all wings speedclear"). Is scourge strong at the moment? Absolutely. There's only two builds on necro, that struggle right now. Being power harbinger and quickness condi harbinger. Power harbinger just doesn't exist due to lackluster design choices in my opinion. And quickness harbinger struggles extremely due to herald existing. Because herald does everything harbinger does, but better. - boonradius: herald 600 to harbingers 240 - boon access: herald can provide might, fury, protection, quickness, swiftness, regeneration stability and has boon Extension while harbinger basically only provides fury and quickness (yes it has a very dangerous elite, that provides all boons, but the uptime is pretty bad) - damage: both builds are even. While harbinger is technically ranged, you loose a lot of dmg, if you can't stay in melee range. and herald can easily swap from sword/sword to greatsword for minor single target dps loss, if you need more cleave. - utility: while herald can basically freely swap it's second legend to provide useful utility like 10 target stability, dmg reduction, boonstrip, projectile hate, cleanses. Harbinger has one free utility slot. So if you wanna complain about something on Necro, complain about quickness harbinger.

Nice animations, poor/mediocre execution. There's so many bugs regarding the autoattack, and I think they have all been listed already, so I won't do it again. Skill 4 Flip skill sometimes has a weird Aftercast that won't let you reactivate the flip Skill. Skill 2 Flip Skill has no impact at all. While the life cost is a nice idea, the rewards for actually paying those costs are non existent. PvE: the weapons just don't deal any dmg in relation to their Casttimes/aftercasts. Pvp/wvw: Autoattacks are bugged as hell so it's a bit hard to judge. Skill 4 casttime is way too long. Skill 5, could use a slight speed up in projectile speed. Overall the weapons feel as slow as great sword, and that's not good for competitive modes. Also the Casttimes of all skills and range on skill 3 are a big issue. I watched naru playing pvp and he had the same problem as me: sword skills barely connect. Guildwars 2's Combat is pretty fast paced, and that's great. But having a slow weapon just doesn't fit that combat Style. Also I don't quite understand the devs saying, to use them in group content in Wvw. Any weapon doing a lot of projectiles is bad there, due to the amount of refelcts available. PvE: The dmg of swords is way too low. General: While the swords don't have to be good PvE weapons, they are pretty mediocre at best for competitive modes. So in their current state, they have no real purpose. Overall the flip skills aren't rewarding at all. They all cost health for only little of benefit. Flip skills: Skill 2 needs a heavy increase in dmg scaling. Skill 3 could be changed to a 900 Leap, or at least 600. Skill 4 could be good if Skill 4 would be easier to hit. Skill 5 costs way too much health in PvE. That health cost would only be justified, if it repeated the first skills dmg imo. Combo finishers: I totally agree with the people. Skills 1 are missing the 20% projectile finisher, and skill 3 the Leap finisher. Maybe even add a blast finisher to 4. I really hope that those swords get really closely looked at before they get shipped, else they are dead on arrival.

Pretty much this. Well, we don't know what gear he was wearing in the stream, but some things I noticed: 2's flip over skill is yet another weapon skill(PvE) that is supposed to be used below 50% enemy health, but GS gravedigger might just be better. 3's leaps are only 450 range?! And a skill that brings you in melee range when all other abilities are ranged? I could see a world in pvp modes, where you use like: 4 to chill, 3 to leap to your target, then use 5 to "guarantee" the skill to actually hit. 4's skills: pretty solid 5's flip over skill never worth it to use, at no point ever, 4.8k health cost is just way too much for a mere fear. And the skills cost probably don't scale with max health, so harbinger will find it really tough to actually use the flip over skills. I played trailblazer harbinger, with t10 jade core, and in the convergence I did my max health would go down to 3.9k at full blight and 50 stacks from gathering that essence. Well that's just one very unique kind of scenario. We will see this evening. I'm going to take a lot of time to properly test those swords.

Sadly power harbinger is still bad. In PvE it gets held back by it's shroud doing not enough power dmg. And in competitive modes it's way to squishy for the dmg it does. The potential to oneshot people with skill 3+4 got nerfed heavily and you don't want to use both Mobility skills to try to oneshot people. If you miss them, you're basically dead. It's basically as @Roadkizzle.2157said. Scourge might benefit from it in wvw, but I can't see dps swords scourge being better than current heal scourge. Also the ranged swings could be animation locking yourself, if it's not the autoattack, which is very bad in wvw zerging. So basically there's only power core Necro and reaper left to use those swords on, which is kinda limiting. Unless anet reworks some traits especially for harbinger. in the Blogpost it says that skill 3 will heal yourself for each enemy struck, so basically Guardian gs3. Which is ok ish, but I don't believe there will be insane healing numbers without healing power on the Necro, since else this might just be a full heal on a Necro with healing power. Unless they make the scaling really bad. The other skill showcased is another one that's interesting for competitive modes. But maybe not so for PvE dps. It says it's stealing life. Lifesteal is normally very low dmg and it can't crit. So unless the reactivation does a lot of dmg, you will most likely never use those skills in PvE for a dps rotation. but we can't even say if those swords are good for PvE dps builds. They might just be intended for competitive, where, especially in spvp Necro was heavily lacking in terms of mobility. All in all, we can say, that we don't know enough yet to say anything apart from: it looks really nice, nine new skills will make those swords feel very fresh, and the thematic is pretty dope. But there's also a lot of questions stemming from this post. 1. The already mentioned power harbinger rework - when? 2. Swords sound like a better mainhand dagger. So there kinda has to be a rework for dagger in the near future. But hey great news, Necros don't have a mainhand support weapon, so let's go! 3. Sine we saw a lot of ranged skills, swords might outshine axe in competitive modes, depending on numbers. But then axe has no purpose either. Which would set it up as another weapon, that needs some rework to have an identity. Overall it sounds like this weapon is very number reliant. If the skills that consume health are not hitting hard or have other big benefits, you will never use them. What brings me to another question: how long are you able to use those flip skills. Or how long do you need to wait, to use the non flipped skill? Do the flip skills have cooldowns or do only the original skills have cooldowns. Else this might be a nightmare on guessing, when your flipped skills cooldown is ready again. So many questions, guess we will see in a week.

I don't think, that they should add more marks. Quite the opposite, remove the trait, rework staff and get rid of most of it's marks. Depending on what we get for swords. But there is definitely a theme. Almost every profession got some sort of support weapon. And they all fill "holes" in that their either give the profession a 2handed support weapon or a one handed one to complete their offhand support choices. Mainly speaking for PvE: And Necro doesn't really have a mainhand support weapon, but two offhand ones, torch and war horn. If you count staff, Necro has three weapons, that kinda do something to support allies, but on every single one of them, it's just one skill. They don't even come close, to what support weapons of other professions can do now, or will do in the future. What they still could do is something like ranger maces. For example the mainhand being a mainly a melee condi support weapon, while offhand is for PvE power dmg. But I'd really love to see some kind of defensive mechanism on those swords. Like a block or evade (something a Necro doesn't have aside from serpent siphon) Your third idea @Dadnir.5038 is really cool. Having a "dmg immunity" and converting it, or some percentage of it to life force would be soo good. But anet would have to be really careful on that one, since if fuels shroud, the main "defensive" mechanism Necro has (well to some extend: because dmg reduction in shroud on core and reaper). A point I really don't like: having some kind of minion tied to a weapon. Generally the minion ai is rather trash. And you can't make minions powerful for the sake of pvp (well I guess there's skill splits). Though there is some scenarios I can see something like that working. For example a minion wall/ring that's stationary but can be exploded, like a combination of those untamed spores and a guardian hammer ring. Also I don't know if kneeling is a good idea. While it wouldn't really matter for PvE. It would be not usable in competitive modes, since Necro doesn't need to be less but more mobile in those modes.

Can't wait to be forced to be melee, while necros defense out of shroud is basically zero. Unless there are teleports, or blocks attached or some other kind of defensive mechanism.

Swiftness? By running through people with trail of anguish? - really bad application method, and it's the same skill, that provides stability which you don't want to press on cooldown. The other method would be taking the new febe relic. Which triggers of your heal skill, which you don't want to press on cooldown either. And you "loose" the relic effect of something like monk, mercy,... Imo healscourge has one big problem, while it's still one of the strongest healing builds (together with druid) when combined with a quickness herald. Problem: Application method of boons. And that one problem consists of multiple problems: Swiftness and stability: as described above. Utility Skill Slots: there's only three utility skills. Good utility skills to slot in: Trail of anguish, serpent siphon, signet of undeath, well of power, spectral grasp, corrosive poison cloud, dessicate, or even sandswell or Wurm. If there's a quickherold in your party you at least won't need to worry about something like swiftness, fury, might, and sometimes stability. And a lot of dps build also provide group fury. But in general you will have trouble fitting all the skills you might want on your bar.

Reveals soon. Sneak peak on ranger maces is already out!

Ok first of: Scourge is one of the strongest supports in wvw right now. If you can get a firebrand, a class that cleanses and heals and a heal/support scourge in your group paired with two DPS specs that's basically the optimal comp right now in my opinion. The barrier output is crazy and it also removes/corrupts boons like almost no other build right now. Imo this build needs nerfs or better: changes, but I feel like if you touch it just the wrong way, Necro won't have a spec for wvw zerging anymore. Reaper is absolutely fine right now as a DPS for zerging, but it's heavily enabled by the barrier output of scourge. Else your shroud gets deleted way too fast. And blighters boon will never see any play in wvw. The extra ferocity, quickness and even the cooldown reduction is just needed in wvw. Now we get a possible relic choice for reaper. The nourys one I believe. But it reads like that is just for longer fights, which might be useless. Last roaming: still no one will take blighters boon on reaper. Both other traits give you so much more dmg output and you won't kill anyone by just tanking dmg, without being able to deal considerable dmg yourself. Core: I can see a world where terrormancer might be one of those oppressive roaming builds that's basically impossible to kill, unless you Perma cc it. Harbinger gets buffed, Which I don't understand. Cele harbinger is over performing in roaming. (Well same as cele catalyst and power/cele willbender) The only problem I have with nerfing that build is, that cele is basically the only choice you have on harb. The power version is absolutely useless and the pure condi version doesn't have enough sustain from boons and healing effects. Which says a lot about the spec (needs some major reworks imo)

Necro feedback: Since this patch is looking to adjust some of the underused traits I'm curious on the usage rate of the three power traits in the harbinger traitline since I don't feel like anyone plays power harbinger anywhere, because it's way better to just play condi. The power damage in shroud is just lacking. Aside from that: Core: the changes are good. Nothing that seems super bad nor super good. Buffing terrormancer builds is nice but this might cause an outcry from people that are in certain ranks in pvp (don't know the exact wording from the stream on why scourge gets some pvp nerfs) Reaper: i don't feel like these adjustments will do anything at all. Augury of death: The shouts trait competes with two other, way better traits. With this trait equipped you kinda want to hit multiple enemies to make it worth. PvE: I feel like you will still run double well, since blind and vulnerability is much better than any shout pvp/wvw: if you face multiple opponents you kinda need an supporter anyways, why "waste" a trait on something, that your support provides. And on single targets for something like solo roaming this trait just isn't worth it Blighters boon: The change is nice and kinda scary, hence the reduction in healing I assume? PVE: the trait is takeable, but I don't think it's needed. Maybe it's great for soloing champions/legends in open world. But I feel like reaper is tanky enough in open world, that you won't play this trait. pvp/wvw: you sacrifice way too much damage for a mediocre effect. The reason why I this is a mediocre effect in competitive modes: with the last patches more and more boon removal/corrupt got taken away from Necro. And reaper doesn't really have good ways to supply itself with boons. This trait would most likely be used by some power or maybe some cele builds since for condi builds deathly chill is kinda essential. so what do power builds have as boon sources? - chilling victory: another trait that is only mediocre in comparison the the other two. - spite: reapers might and siphoned power. And maybe even dread since power builds usually are looking to burst people, which isn't possible if you attack as slow as reaper does without quickness. And yet again, you would loose out on traits like close to death or spiteful spirit. - curses: only gives fury on shroud entry - deathmagic: gives pulsing protection - blood magic: potentially gives Regeneration on dodge - soul reaping: swiftness on shroud entry and potentially protection on shroud entry what else boons can we get: might from you are all weaklings, swiftness from spectral walk. maybe some boons from sigils, or relics (even though there's nothing like old pack or durability rune, that gave 3 different boons). but is that worth it? I doubt it. it feels like you are trying to push a tank/tanky Playstyle onto reaper that just doesn't cut it. in PvE: role compression is the name of the game. If you tank you kinda want to do something else. Be it damage, dps boon Support or healing. And for a lot of encounters it's extremely beneficial to have blocks/invulnerabilities/evades which reaper doesn't have. in pvp: I don't think that pushing a pure tank build is what you want. Sure tank reaper could sit on a node and wait for people to waste their time, but would it have kill pressure? I doubt it. Would it still need a supporter? Probably, because stability access and the evasion of cc abilities is very limited on reaper. in wvw: just being a selfish tank, that does no damage is absolutely useless. If you want to make Necro/reaper more tanky, give it more possibilities to evade damage. Evades, Blocks even mobility can be a form of sustain. General Feedback: Even though the new relics aren't shown in this preview, we still got a glance at them in the Lifestream. I really hope there will be immediate adjustments in the 28th patch if for example the poison relic is too oppressive. Even if this specific relic has a long cooldown, it still might be oppressive on builds like condi thief, that already apply a lot of poison. Wvw: Also healscourge might need some adjustments in Wvw (along with specs like willbender). Though if you nerf it too hard, there might not be space for necros in squads. Imo any other Necro build other than heal scourge is kinda useless at the moment. Maybe reaper, but it gets hard carried by heal scourges barrier, since your shroud won't easily be deleted while under barrier. (Yes I'm asking for adjustments even though I like playing heal scourge). But reaper is just way inferior to something like berserker in terms of dmg application or defensive utility.