Necromancer needs diversity.

[Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046]

1/2 of traits have become useless. (competative)Deathmagic, Bloodmagic, Spite & Soulreaping really need some looking at, most minor major and grandmaster traits have now become obsolete.Build diversity is nil.Either reaper, scourge or vanilla.But nothing in the traitlines syncs with eachother. iow. you play reaper in ONE way, scourge in ONE way and whomever plays vanilla.. well..

The last patch has been ..underwhelming to say the least. instead of offering a plethora of possibilities. it is as if anet had one build in mind and forced everyone to play it.This is due to reworking things that did not need work. and ignoring things that DO need work.

PS: If any balance team reads this. please stop balancing towards raids and min max DPS rotations. it's absurd.

[Dadnir.5038]

You are looking at it in a totally wrong perspective.

Simply put they made reaper shroud more bursty where he was just a sponge for damage. However, They didn't touch the death shroud if player want to continue being a sponge. Plus, there are still way to build in such a way that you can take quite the beating and stay alive as a reaper.

I won't say that there is now nothing to change in the traitlines. They are mainly aweful, blood magic being the support traitline and death magic being the tanky line still make no sense, lich form still need to be changed totally, the golem still need some swimming lessons... etc. However, this patch actually gave an identity to the reaper shroud, it changed it from being a direct upgrade of the death shroud to a different tool that need to be used in a different fashion.

You may not like it and it's your right, but this illusion of over-tankiness that the shroud have have hurt more the necromancer than anything. Giving the reaper shroud a different image than "tanky" will help the necromancer as a whole more than boosting the shroud uptime. Because, the fact that the shroud is tanky is the main argument of the necromancer's haters. If facts prove them wrong then there is more room for the necromancer to gain their share of the good things that help them both in PvP and PvE.

And you talk about build diversity? Before patch, build diversity was condi core, condi reaper and condi scourge. Now it's still condi core, either condi or power reaper and either condi or power scourge.

PS.: It's not "raid balance" that have been done, it's PvP/WvW balance. Open your eyes please, the complain of other professions about the tankiness of the necro don't come from PvE. Raid don't care about necromancer's tankyness, raid just care about whether a profession have high damage or not and the patch didn't gave more damage to the necromancer, it kept him at it's level of damage and reduced other's potential damage.

[Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046]

@Dadnir.5038

I don't mind reaper getting more bursty, more possibilities to flashing shroud etc. (sounds great!)I am just not rly happy, fo example, with the plague signet change to be used in DS only, locking a new elite spec out of it's main transfers.add to that the previous workover and nerfs of other traits.

Example: now signets don't remove boons, locking out signets for scourge or condition builds while the most used signets are for: Condition sending/transfer/gain.with reworking one trait for an elite spec they hammer 3 others specs or builds. making build less diverse each step.(also drifting away from what necromancers are best at, condition weaving)I am saying there are too many trait lines that don't sync and become more and more obsolete the more the focus lies on elite specs.By having one less transfer for conditions , on crit nonetheless, scourge/vanilla runs consume conditions as heal. cancelling out the new elite spec heal within a few weeks.plague signet on utility nearly becomes a must for condition builds. I can go on..and on..

tldr;Reaper buffs \o/Less Builds /o\

PS: Wait.. is there a hard split all traits & skills between pve and pvp?

[ilmau.9781]

you do not need diversity mate, you need to buy the latest expansion or be out of games.

[Eltiana.9420]

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 said:PS: If any balance team reads this. please stop balancing towards raids and min max DPS rotations. it's absurd.Funny, considering all this forum was pre-patch was people complaining about Necros in regards towards raids and min max DPS rotations.

[Dadnir.5038]

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 said:@Dadnir.5038

I don't mind reaper getting more bursty, more possibilities to flashing shroud etc. (sounds great!)I am just not rly happy, fo example, with the plague signet change to be used in DS only, locking a new elite spec out of it's main transfers.add to that the previous workover and nerfs of other traits.

Honnestly, I doubt plague sending was used often in PvE, but I think I've seen quite a few complain about it (indirectly) being a pain in the PvP subforum. I'm pretty sure that quite a few PvPer are delighted to be less punished when they send conditions to a necromancer.

Example: now signets don't remove boons, locking out signets for scourge or condition builds while the most used signets are for: Condition sending/transfer/gain.with reworking one trait for an elite spec they hammer 3 others specs or builds. making build less diverse each step.(also drifting away from what necromancers are best at, condition weaving)

Also, you can look at it another way, before, plague sending allowed you to send back 5 conditions every 30 second without really any control over it while now it allow you to send out 2 conditions every 10 second with control over it. On another handPlague signet didn't changed at all and can still be used like before.

I am saying there are too many trait lines that don't sync and become more and more obsolete the more the focus lies on elite specs.By having one less transfer for conditions , on crit nonetheless, scourge/vanilla runs consume conditions as heal. cancelling out the new elite spec heal within a few weeks.plague signet on utility nearly becomes a must for condition builds. I can go on..and on..

Well... traits that don't synergize are nothing new... Honnestly the traitline make no sense for a lot of reasons but we've live despite it since release.

tldr;Reaper buffs \o/Less Builds /o\

Not really, at this point it's more that the old meta build are obsolete and there is a need to search for new meta build that are played in a different way and exploit the current strength and flaw of the necromancer.

PS: Wait.. is there a hard split all traits & skills between pve and pvp?

Supposedly yes. But anet is shy when it come to this, now they can even split for WvW, awesome ain't it?

[Oldirtbeard.9834]

I agree we should have an optimal Tank Spec for PVE so that Chronos don't get to have all the fun.

[Obtena.7952]

Let's ignore the patch, or all that ... GW2, overall, has never offered a whole lot in terms of build diversity to begin with so really, diversity is not needed. Diversity is nice to have though. On that note, I think the latest patch changes have pushed Necro into MORE diverse, not less. There is actually more than one reason to use Reaper Shroud. The observations made in the post could be applied at any time in the game history to any class ... I wouldn't say it's a problem but more of a 'missing' feature.

[ilmau.9781]

@Eltiana.9420 said:

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 said:PS: If any balance team reads this. please stop balancing towards raids and min max DPS rotations. it's absurd.Funny, considering all this forum was pre-patch was people complaining about Necros in regards towards raids and min max DPS rotations.

mate i try be educated but it is really hard sometimes, so how can i explain.... who cares about DPS if i am dead or i can not lend a single hit?

i hope it is more clear now :)

[Obtena.7952]

@ilmau.9781 said:

@Eltiana.9420 said:

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 said:PS: If any balance team reads this. please stop balancing towards raids and min max DPS rotations. it's absurd.Funny, considering all this forum was pre-patch was people complaining about Necros in regards towards raids and min max DPS rotations.

mate i try be educated but it is really hard sometimes, so how can i explain.... who cares about DPS if i am dead or i can not lend a single hit?

i hope it is more clear now :)

Let's be clear here.

Anet doesn't balance to min/max DPS rotations ... those are just a consequence of the fact that there are optimal DPS solutions for each class.Eltiana is right ... most of the complaints related to Necro were not PVP/WvW related.The no DPS if dead argument is old, tired and wrong ... in the situations where people are interested in minmaxing their DPS, there is MORE than enough support from the rest of the team (as well as assuming most people don't play like noobs) to keep you alive and 'lend a single hit'. The idea that Necros are so hard done by they can't even contribute a single hit in those situations, even based on the new changes is preposterous.

[Nilkemia.8507]

Apparently the only options now are "be scourge or get the hell out."

[Obtena.7952]

@Nilkemia.8507 said:Apparently the only options now are "be scourge or get the hell out."

I don't get that statement ... from what I have seen, Scourge and Reaper DPS are very close. Is there something in particular that makes Scourge the obvious choice over Reaper?

[Nilkemia.8507]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Nilkemia.8507 said:Apparently the only options now are "be scourge or get the hell out."

I don't get that statement ... from what I have seen, Scourge and Reaper DPS are very close. Is there something in particular that makes Scourge the obvious choice over Reaper?

Oh, I dunno....everything!? Shades seem to do a lot more damage, and if in PvP, they can lock down a point by having them stacked there. Reaper can't go anywhere near one without being destroyed, and the shrouds were never a good alternative for the lack of mobility/evades/invulnerabilities the other professions have, even before they removed the ability to lessen the cooldown on it and then made the Reaper shroud degenerate faster, which is incredibly stupid for a shroud form meant to be in melee where they'll likely be bursted down anyways. Point is, they screwed any form of necromancer that wasn't Scourge.

[Aktium.9506]

@Obtena.7952 said:I don't get that statement ... from what I have seen, Scourge and Reaper DPS are very close. Is there something in particular that makes Scourge the obvious choice over Reaper?When you do Reaper rotations you also have to constantly move out of the stack to position yourself so you can lay down RS5 chill field so that at least a sliver of the field isn't covered by another field. That way you can spin into it to ensure chill field whirls have priority. Sounds like a small thing but it's pretty annoying in practice. Sometimes it can cause you to miss out on Chrono wells and other short range party buffs. Worst case scenario you go out and position yourself put down your chill field and then a big field like Air Overload, Time Warp or cPS F1 overwrites your chill field and you get the wrong whirls costing you around 10k dps for the next 30 seconds. In general it's also very reliant on nothing going wrong with the rotation, if you goof something up and you end up stuck on GS when you should be on Scepter or in Shroud your DPS drops pretty heavily. Scourge doesn't have those problems so its a lot more reliant and easy to play. The only thing Reaper really does better than Scourge is breakbar dmg.

[Eltiana.9420]

@ilmau.9781 said:

@Eltiana.9420 said:

@Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046 said:PS: If any balance team reads this. please stop balancing towards raids and min max DPS rotations. it's absurd.Funny, considering all this forum was pre-patch was people complaining about Necros in regards towards raids and min max DPS rotations.

mate i try be educated but it is really hard sometimes, so how can i explain.... who cares about DPS if i am dead or i can not lend a single hit?

i hope it is more clear now :)

You really missed the point. I'm not talking about Anet's execution. I'm pointing out the OP is complaining that ANet shouldn't worry about balancing around Raiding/max DPS, and my point was, that's what the community was complaining for pre patch pretty exclusively.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Nilkemia.8507 said:Apparently the only options now are "be scourge or get the hell out."

I don't get that statement ... from what I have seen, Scourge and Reaper DPS are very close. Is there something in particular that makes Scourge the obvious choice over Reaper?

I assume he's talking in a PVP capacity.

[Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046]

@Eltiana.9420 said:

You really missed the point. I'm not talking about Anet's execution. I'm pointing out the OP is complaining that ANet shouldn't worry about balancing around Raiding/max DPS, and my point was, that's what the community was complaining for pre patch pretty exclusively.

I admit i have been away for a while. ;)