Methuselah.4376

You should be a poet.

Should put in a TLDR mate, I got my own thesis to work on...

I've had this issue and in fact couldn't raid on Monday. I think it's server instability, because I've never had trouble with my internet connection before, certainly not to the extent where i was at 4,656 ping for 5 minutes.

Just played in T4 fractals with someone who was running this build. Their dps was 10k behind mine and they were dying quite often.

Condi Reaper is benching higher than Power Reaper.

I am not sure I understand your point here. The meta build optimizes damage, ergo it is designed for the highest potential damage a Reaper can reach. Soul Eater gives you 5% of your damage deal out of shroud back as health therefore the better your dps (which Soul Eater contributes to) the better your sustain. Meta builds are meta for a reason. It's not some arbitrary decision made by the toxic "elite" players who want to gatekeep, it's what's been tested to the maximum so the best of the best can be discerned. Does that mean that other builds shouldn't exist? Of course they should. But claiming that a build is better than the meta for the role it is meta for, it's sheer stubbornness. Furthermore, the logic that "this build is better because your squad might be brain dead and not do mechanics" is a bit of a non sequitur, because any build would suffer under those conditions and at that point it's not your dps that would matter but raid training for the people involved. Again, nothing wrong with enjoying a build but most of the backlash to the OP is due to their seeming stubbornness in insisting their build is better. They can say it feels better for them and their play style and they admit it's not better than the meta, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

When you say build diversity, what do you have in mind?

That's where support roles come in play. Yes, everyone wants the spec that can do everything but that doesn't mean there is no room for pure dps. Especially now that they're clamping hard on builds that offer boons with no boon duration. A player that knows what they're doing will rarely get hit in raids. While healing in shroud is certainly an issue, it is not a prevalent as you would imagine it if the player knows what they're doing. In fact, I put it to you that because of shroud it is often that the Reaper will need less healing especially as of next week where shroud 3 will offer good damage mitigation. Something good has happened. Why all this doom and gloom? Is Reaper perfect? No. But learn to appreciate a good thing.

Chilled to the Bone will take care of that.

I love Dark Harvest on Reaper.

I do think that greatsword on Reaper either needs an increase in speed or an increase in damage to justify the slowness. The skills themselves I personally like (though the targeting on GS5 needs further work); I certainly don't want Reaper greatsword to be a copy paste of other professions.

I feel you. But they won't; there's the trait Eternal Life (which is a joke in PvP) and you can also spam YSIM (which means your heal is potentially on CD when you need it most), not to mention despawning minions (and MM sucks in pvp). So yeah I agree with you, but they will tell you that you already have sources of LF...ignoring how laughable they are.

Hmmm I wasn't clear. What I meant was this: - It can remove boons, but mesmer/revenant can do it better. - It can provide quickness, but pretty much every other quickness build can do it better while providing more. - It can damage at melee and ranged, but pretty much every other profession can do it better.

Not sure how what you said is any different than what I said. Strictly speaking, necro can do several things, it just doesn't do them as well as other classes.

1. More than a condition heavy profession, it is more of a condition management profession. This means it has the ability to transfer conditions from allies to itself, transfer conditions from itself to enemies, turn conditions into boons on self and allies and conversely can turn boons into conditions on enemies. Core necro is the weakest but also the tankiest of the specs available to necromancer. Minions are great for open world due to taking aggro off you, but yeah, their damage is terrible though they can have some utility. 2. Reaper has a lower damage ceiling than other professions, currently benching at 35k dps. In actuality, this dps is good and good (or even great) for any PvE content. The issue is that most other professions have specs that are benching 40k dps, so in comparison Reaper's dps is moderate. The advantage that Reaper has over most other professions is that it is typically easier to reach its dps ceiling due to its self-reliance plus easy rotation coupled with inherent tankiness. Furthermore, recent buffs to shouts has made it easier to clear trash mobs with a Chilled to the Bone + You Are All Weaklings combo, which can be timed for both to hit at the same time since the latter shout has no cast time. Reaper is also good at cleaving and has blind and chill as part of its highest damage toolkit (Nightfall and Well of Darkness), which for PvE works wonders at shutting down mobs of enemies that are under Champion level. Furthermore, it has access to stability and damage reduction as part of its base tool kit (Infusing Terror), projectile destruction (Death's Charge) and decent CC (Terrify + Executioner's Scythe). In all honesty, Reaper is currently in the best position its ever been (though still in need of a few more buffs) and will serve you very well in nearly every aspect of PvE. Most people will rage with foam at the mouth because since it doesn't do 40k dps and doesn't really have group utility then they think it automatically sucks, but unless you are interested in speed clearing hard mode content, then it is perfectly fine for everything else. Are there better options? Sure but Reaper will still serve you well. 3. Scourge does quite well at dps and can do it from range. It also comes with built-in support in the form of barriers, though these are mostly effective with investment into Healing Power. You do need to manage your shades well and be aware of what traits they trigger (ideally you would always want to have all 3 out). The support variant does not focus on healing damage but on preventing it through barriers, so where most other healers play re-actively, a support Scourge is more proactive, saving their biggest barriers for when a big package of damage is incoming. An example of this would be on Vale Guardian where a Scourge applies the barrier as the green bomb is about to go off. What Scourge really shines at is power rezzing, with its ability to pull in downed players and near instantly resurrect them. In fact support Scourge is one of the best support roles for in-experienced groups or when learning new content, as it has the ability to keep the group alive almost indefinitely through pumping barriers and power rezzing. Support Scourge's biggest weakness is the inability to provide either Alacrity or Quickness, boons that are quite vital for supports to provide in order to be "legitimized" in end game content for experienced players. 4. Harbinger was designed to answer to the cries of the community: a glass canon. Or at least this is what it was meant to be. While it uses a similar shroud mechanic to core Necro and Reaper, this shroud does not protect its health. On the upside this means that Harbinger can be healed while shrouded whereas necro and Reaper cannot (barring life steal). Harbinger also has to deal with Blight stacks, which build up through the use of Elixirs and being in Harbinger's Shroud. Each stack of blight lowers your maximum HP by 1.5% and it caps out at 25 stacks, meaning you lose 37.5% of your health at maximum Blight. Do note that Blight heals you for 13 health per stack (with Alchemic Vigor; this healing can be further enhanced through healing power). Quite a few skills interact with Blight, where once a certain number of stacks has been reached, you spend that amount of Blight to make the skill more powerful. As can be seen, this spec was designed to counter the usual points of why a necromancer shroud spec cannot have high dps: high health and 2nd health bar. Without these things, Harbinger seemed to have been given the green light to do more dps (condi wise at least, the power variant is terrible). It is not everyone's cup of tea, and most players prefer to stick with Scourge due to Scourge being easier to play and more forgiving coupled with more group utility, whereas Harbinger needs to be in melee range for maximum effect and is the squishiest of the necromancer's specs though also the only one that has a quickness sharing build. I personally enjoy Harbinger a lot and it definitely brings a different style of play which I think can be a breath of fresh air, but to each their own. Overall the general theme of necromancer is this: you can do something well, but other professions will do it better. In essence it can be a jack of all trades, master of none sort of profession. Having said that, it remains my favourite profession and with the right level of skill you will certainly perform very well on it. Regarding race, there is no impact on your stats or build whatsoever when it comes to picking a race. It's mostly aesthetics and how the main story line beings. Though each race has its own racial skills, these are so horrible that they never make it into any build (or at least none that I have seen in my 10 years of playing GW2). The only thematic racial skill that fits a necromancer would be the Avatar of Grenth, which is a human racial skill. Hope this helps 🙂

The thing is, all of the strengths you mentioned for a Valkyrie build are meaningless in a raid scenario because you have healers and should also have 2 brain cells to rub together in order to do/avoid mechanics. Necro's health is already high enough that it can afford some hits from the boss (though you still don't want that if you want to keep the Scholar bonus). All I kept thinking was how much higher your dps would be if you had the actual raid build.

Might be a bit busted, but maybe they could rework Augury of Death to cause shouts to delivery a secondary attack package after a delay (3s?) or make enemies affected by your shouts take 5% more damage for 15 seconds.

Honestly I like this buff to shouts, makes them worth running in open world and even in fractals. CTTB + YAAW tends t to clear most trash plus the quickness and might is always nice.

I personally run DPS Harbinger in Fractals/Strikes/Raids when I am going the condi route. Scourge will be more versatile, but if you are just focusing on dps, then Harbinger beats Scourge by a good margin, provided you know how to manage Blight. If you like low effort but effective, then you can't go wrong with Scourge.

I'm not sure what you mean by duration; do you mean condi duration? The stats available that have condi and expertise will always prioritise condi as it is usually higher. The reason viper is good is because it have great condi damage, good condi duration and precision which increases crit chance, which then can proc traits like Barbed Precision more often.

In open world you can build for anything really. Power Scourge can be a thing, sure. Regarding crit for condi, it actually does work well due to Barbed Precision.

I also remember the times, few though they were, when I managed to get a full army of minions going in ABs. Mowed down most players.

Ah yes, this takes me back to the Alliance Battles, where I had a full blown lifedrain build that was pretty much unkillable as long as the energy held. Wonderful times :')

Guild Wars 1 had an amazing gameplay for Necromancer, but unfortunately that cannot really be carried over to GW2 due to core differences in the games. Diablo 3 and Elder Scrolls Online are good examples of Necromancers done right. In ESO, even though you can pick skills from common "traillines", you would always want your class skills and all necromancer builds there incorporate at least one minion (albeit these are short lived minions, whether its a minion that rushes a target and blows up instantly, a minion that attacks from range, or a minion that heals you over time). Having said that, I do enjoy the Reaper theme in GW2; it's the only elite necro spec that I fell in love with instantly, whereas both Scourge and Harbinger took some getting used to. But yes, I get what you mean.

Maybe they haven't noticed? I have been playing Reaper for 7 years and I must say I have never noticed this.