Lets talk about the Flaw with Harbinger(PvE focus)

[Lily.1935]

I'd like to start out by saying that harbinger is still quite a powerful elite spec to run and it has 2 very solid builds In PvE and its fairly strong in other game modes as well. This post isn't about how strong it is, because no complaints here. More I'm going to discuss a very big flaw in its fundamental design which might turn people off to the elite spec. And that is the flaw with blight. Before I really get into that I'd like to say I LOVE blight as a mechanic. I think its really fun to use. But it also creates some issues which I'll go over.

Generating Blight

Right off the bat when trying to build a harbinger, when looking at builds and their traits and skills you're faced with a pretty important question. How are you going to generate blight? Much of the harbinger's design is centered around blight, primarily its damage which is interesting but we come in with a major flaw. Blight can only be generated by being in harbinger shroud or by using elixir skills. So what happens with their builds? Harbinger isn't a healer they just don't have the tools to fill that role. They're not a tank, they don't have the tools for that either. Harbinger is a quickness support or glass cannon DPS. Now this isn't an issue on its own but this means that they want to generate blight and spend blight to maximize their DPS. So how do they do that? Well they need to run a few elixirs. How many is needed though? typically 3.

Necromancer builds require a few things for their DPS setups. You need to keep soul barbs so you are expected to be in shroud for 10 seconds and out for 10 seconds to maintain near 100% uptime of the trait. Even scourge follows this rule to keep soul barbs up. So a harbinger can only generate so much blight while in shroud for those 10 seconds. So they have to get it from their elixirs. And this is where the problem starts. In order to get enough blight since each elixir removes 5 stacks and gives 10 except for the elite you need to run 3 to get 20 blight to match the burst damage of shroud. Your elite provides more blight but at more than double the cooldown of the other elixirs. So you need 3 on your utility bar.

Utility

With this is mind, we begin to see the flaw Harbinger needs blight to function optimally. And you need to run 3 elixirs and not just any elixir will do. They need to have their cooldowns line up properly with each other and your shroud so for starter elixir ignorance is out of the question for both builds because of it having a slightly higher cooldown. So when asking what you should take the optimal answer is what the ones that give you damage boons. Why? well just in case your party can't fill the required boons for whatever reason. The elixirs don't have enough identity beyond that to really justify taking the other two. The bonuses you get from having more blight is minor with the only one having worth while damage being elixir of promise, the heal.

When asking if you could take other utility, the answer is no. You have your elite slot and one utility slot free. You could sacrifice damage to take other utility but it takes away so much from your build that its just not worth it. Blight is the center of your build so you need to generate that. Looking at the condition build with both its 2 variations being quickness and pure condi they both take the exact same utility for this reason. The only flex slot either have is the elite because the opportunity cost is much too light.

Compared to Reaper and Scourge

Looking at both reaper's build and the scourge build, both of them have more freedom with what utility they could bring to the table. Reaper can replace its signet of spite for spectral grasp, "Suffer!", Signet of undeath, signet of the locus. Or they could replace one of their wells with well of corruption adding to their overall utility. Scourge has it even better since if they're in a high life force gain fight they can run Shadow fiend, Well of darkness, spectral graps, Sand Swell, corrosive poison cloud, trail of anguish. They have this these options because they're not tethered to blight.

 

This is probably the biggest issue I have with harbinger and why I feel it might not be as popular in pve as I think it deserves to be. With this said, I'll be spending some times to think of methods on how I think Arena net could improve on their blight generation. As I don't think the mechanic should be removed, however it shouldn't be so isolated to elixirs and harbinger shroud. I think the traits are a good place to look for its generation. Really diversify how blight is generated so the choice between traits isn't so pick a line and go down it but more natural in how it could work. The Pistol trait could generate blight on pistol skill use, although I think other solutions could be possible. I'd like the harbinger have a bit more diversity in how they're played because as they are now they're pretty limited in how they can be run effectively.

[Dadnir.5038]

Increase blight duration -  Problem solved.

[Seuchenherbst.2746]

It really seems to me like a lost opportunity, the way they ultimately settled (or rather, due to time constraints, had to settle) on the way they implemented blight and elixiers in general.

 

First let's talk about blight.

Just looking at reaper traits really shows how much different builds are possible based on the traits alone. The design feels very natural and unique, and interacts very very well with other necro traitlines and weapon skills. However, with Harbinger, this is simply not the case, unfortunately. Some traits don't even work at all with Harbinger (even GM(!) traits in Blood Magic and Death Magic).

Just some ideas I have right of the bat for Harbinger:

- have a GM trait similar to Holosmith, where the blight stacks never time out, and maybe lets you transfer them to enemy at maximum stack (at enemy they decay over time)

- have another GM trait maybe exchange your dodges with another skill which consumes blight

- or have a trait which applies blight when dodging an attack

- make a trait which turns it around: gradually gain blight while out of shroud and gradually lose blight while in it

- have a pistol trait which lets pistol skills interact with blight, consuming or generating blight

- to make life force gain actually useful to Harbinger, have a trait which lets you gain health whenever life force is generated

- have a trait which makes fear apply blight every second it's on enemy

- have at least one of the harbinger shroud skills (number 4?) apply fear, to make it interact well with other necro traits

 

Ofc all of this would have to be tested to make it balanced, but at least that way there would be some variability and some interaction with other necro traits/utilities. In it's current state, you could slap the blight mechanic to any class really and it wouldn't feel unnatural at all.

 

Regarding elixiers, there was really a huge amount of unused design space. For example the elixiers could have been infused by corrupted dragon magic, which would have fit the theme of EoD. For example, heal elixier could have been Soo Won-infused, another could have been Primordus and apply burn and might, Zhaitan poison/weakness/blind/fear or stomp enemies/res allies, etc., you get the idea. That way the elixiers would actually have an identity and something which really makes you think about which one to choose.

 

Edited September 22, 2022 by Seuchenherbst.2746
spelling

[Artificer.3468]

You pointed out even more issues with blight and  lf gain since December last year I think which were also never addressed.

 

Hopefully they will look at  it for December this year because the priority for blight consumption is also off

[Lily.1935]

12 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Increase blight duration -  Problem solved.

This wouldn't solve the issue because blight is a resource that is spent while in shroud. And its duration doesn't influence that at all. It might help some players to have an easier time with timing but doesn't solve its fundamental issue. Which is how locked the harbinger's utility is.

[Lily.1935]

4 hours ago, Seuchenherbst.2746 said:

It really seems to me like a lost opportunity, the way they ultimately settled (or rather, due to time constraints, had to settle) on the way they implemented blight and elixiers in general.

 

First let's talk about blight.

Just looking at reaper traits really shows how much different builds are possible based on the traits alone. The design feels very natural and unique, and interacts very very well with other necro traitlines and weapon skills. However, with Harbinger, this is simply not the case, unfortunately. Some traits don't even work at all with Harbinger (even GM(!) traits in Blood Magic and Death Magic).

Just some ideas I have right of the bat for Harbinger:

- have a GM trait similar to Holosmith, where the blight stacks never time out, and maybe lets you transfer them to enemy at maximum stack (at enemy they decay over time)

- have another GM trait maybe exchange your dodges with another skill which consumes blight

- or have a trait which applies blight when dodging an attack

- make a trait which turns it around: gradually gain blight while out of shroud and gradually lose blight while in it

- have a pistol trait which lets pistol skills interact with blight, consuming or generating blight

- to make life force gain actually useful to Harbinger, have a trait which lets you gain health whenever life force is generated

- have a trait which makes fear apply blight every second it's on enemy

- have at least one of the harbinger shroud skills (number 4?) apply fear, to make it interact well with other necro traits

 

Ofc all of this would have to be tested to make it balanced, but at least that way there would be some variability and some interaction with other necro traits/utilities. In it's current state, you could slap the blight mechanic to any class really and it wouldn't feel unnatural at all.

 

Regarding elixiers, there was really a huge amount of unused design space. For example the elixiers could have been infused by corrupted dragon magic, which would have fit the theme of EoD. For example, heal elixier could have been Soo Won-infused, another could have been Primordus and apply burn and might, Zhaitan poison/weakness/blind/fear or stomp enemies/res allies, etc., you get the idea. That way the elixiers would actually have an identity and something which really makes you think about which one to choose.

 

All of the elite specs have major flaws that hold them back when it comes to build design in PvE. I wanted to touch on harbinger for a few reasons, Mainly because I haven't addressed it yet, I have more time and experience with the elite spec so I now have a far better understanding of what's wrong with it and because I've already posted quite a bit about reaper and scourge.

Lets see about those ideas. I'll give you my take if that's okay.

"-have a GM trait similar to Holosmith, where the blight stacks never time out, and maybe lets you transfer them to enemy at maximum stack (at enemy they decay over time)"

2 problems with this. You want to spend blight using harbinger shroud skill 3 and 4 to boost their damage. There isn't an issue with duration as far as PvE goes You'll still have 20 stacks when you enter shroud and you should be leaving with 0-5 regardless. Its pretty insignificant as far as changes go.

As for transferring stacks to foes? That's a hard No for both PvP and PvE balance. Blight is percentage based and it would break bosses in half in open world, raids, dungeons, fractals and it would be very oppressive in PvP too.  Gaining another benefit like a burst of damage is fine, but giving blight is an extremely bad idea for a multitude of reasons.

"- have another GM trait maybe exchange your dodges with another skill which consumes blight"

Necromancer has poor access to vigor and other means to gain endurance. Being almost exclusive to sigil of energy. The issue blight has isn't being able to remove it. We are very good at removing blight. shroud 3 and 4 remove 15 stacks in total without issue. And you spend enough time that you'll have removed a total of 30 stacks before you leave shroud.

"- or have a trait which applies blight when dodging an attack"

Too unreliable. Much of the same issues with necromancer show up for this suggestion like the last. There's also the issue of blight is a debilitating resource you want to risk its stacks for great reward. This increases the risk but doesn't offer a reward for doing so on top of it being unreliable.

"- make a trait which turns it around: gradually gain blight while out of shroud and gradually lose blight while in it"

There are major issues with this as well. You losing the blight in shroud means you can't reliably get that bonus damage from shroud skill 3 and 4 and its slow. It would help the out of shroud stacking issue but its ultimate impact on the build would be that its substantially weaker than it is now. Which there isn't an issue with its power but rather its available utility and how poorly designed the traits are.

"- have a pistol trait which lets pistol skills interact with blight, consuming or generating blight"

We don't want to remove the blight, we have 2 skills in shroud that are quite powerful that do that for us. I did mention a pistol trait which would gain blight on skills use which would help the build a bit. I think an idea like that has potential. Especially if Arena net's idea about cooldowns is something they're talking about for all classes. If pistol's traited cooldown becomes its normal cooldown then having the pistol trait generate blight in addition to its stat boosts this could free up a utility slot depending on the amount of blight.
HOWEVER! I have to again point out a major flaw with this idea as well. Harbinger doesn't exclusively use Pistol, they also use scepter. So it exclusively working for pistol skills might not be the best, it might need to work for weapons in general, but that sorta removes a weapon specific trait which would be a shame. I'll workshop the idea later, but there are still issues with its design.

"- to make life force gain actually useful to Harbinger, have a trait which lets you gain health whenever life force is generated"

Life force is a very important part of the harbinger already. Having enough life force is extremely important for making sure your rotation functions properly. If you spend blight at the wrong time or spend slightly too much time in shroud you can quickly find your resources depleted. You also need to make sure blight is generated out of shroud because blight actually will increase your life force percentage which changes the duration you can remain in shroud by quite a bit. Its a very complex dance with blight I've made an entire post about. But Life force is just as important to Harbinger as it is to reaper and Scourge.
As for gaining health. that's not needed. We do gain health for having blight already, so that's just more healing on top of that which we have quite a few traits to gain a lot of healing already.

"- have a trait which makes fear apply blight every second it's on enemy"

"- have at least one of the harbinger shroud skills (number 4?) apply fear, to make it interact well with other necro traits"

Typically its skill 3 which applies fear. And its not needed and would be clunky. Spending blight is already on 3 and 4 and they're already quite engaging and fun to use. Adding a source of fear wouldn't be as good as you think and the fear applying blight is a bit clumsy design. This asks us to run warhorn or staff along with it to generate blight which we want those fear sources for stunning bosses so that would take us off of the utility those weapons might bring to build up blight. Which means although we might gain the utility of a utility skill we also would lose utility of a weapon skill.

Sorry if I shot down all your ideas, but primarily the issues with harbinger isn't how long blight lasts or how we can get rid of it but more how quickly and how much effort it takes us to generate it. The easiest solution would be a trait which gives us 10 stacks for entering harbinger shroud on top of what we have now. And suddenly the utility of harbinger opens up quite a lot. But that doesn't really solve some of the other issues with traits.

[Dadnir.5038]

11 hours ago, Lily.1935 said:

This wouldn't solve the issue because blight is a resource that is spent while in shroud. And its duration doesn't influence that at all. It might help some players to have an easier time with timing but doesn't solve its fundamental issue. Which is how locked the harbinger's utility is.

The longer blight last the easier it is to keep it up. If it's easy to keep up then you don't need to generate more of it.

I don't see the need to add more blight source personally except to justify skills that already have way to many effect stacked on them.

Point is that more blight sources promote even more using elixirs (whose base effects are already very strong as they are and even stronger when traited), while longer blight only allow you to be confortable with any utility skill slotted.

[Asum.4960]

I'm just going to throw my rework suggestions from 2021 in response to how messy the spec became in Beta 4 in here, as I still believe it to be the superior version in terms of offering distinct playstyles within the spec between Ranged DPS, Melee Brawler and Boon (DPS or Off-heal) Support.

More interesting core Trait synergies between different Traitlines with different builds.

More engaging and interesting Elixirs that aren't just bland Blight generators that you are forced to take.

As well as a more streamlined Blight mechanic entirely tied to Shroud (with rapid generation), which one can either spec in to stack and maintain, or to consume for benefits.  

 

Because I agree, in terms of efficacy Harbinger is in a pretty good spot over all, but the passive and boring Trait design, the dreadful Elixir design, the conflicting Blight design, the convoluted and contradictory interactions of Blight being encouraged to stack with Elixirs that you are forced to take, for thresholds and Adept and Minor Traits for Damage and Sustain, but then Blight being baseline forced to remove if you want damage or mobility in the spec via the Shroud skills.. it's such a mess, one my suggestions I think clear up pretty nicely. 

 

Have a read here.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Asum.4960

[The Boz.2038]

Fixes:

• A trait that adds Blight to some non-Elixir, non-HarbShroud skill or action, to allow some tiny bit more build freedom.
• Remove individual Blight stack durations; Blight lasts forever in shroud, and is lost at a rate of 1/s out of shroud. 
• At least one capstone should be AoE on target, not self (so it's support PBAoE, damage PBAoE, damage ranged AoE).
• Dark Gunslinger needs to add Expertise and Ferocity based on Vitality; Implacable should be defensive (prot on exit?).
• Wicked Corruption gets +15% Crit chance vs tormented, instead of the current effect (crit-capping pNecro is a struggle).
• Vile Vials add both poison and vulnerability to Elixirs, avoids the power from deleting people in PvP, but adds cover condi.
• Septic Corruption gets a 4s AoE poison on critical hit vs poisoned target on a 3s cooldown instead of the Shroud 2 poison.

[Lily.1935]

14 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

The longer blight last the easier it is to keep it up. If it's easy to keep up then you don't need to generate more of it.

I don't see the need to add more blight source personally except to justify skills that already have way to many effect stacked on them.

Point is that more blight sources promote even more using elixirs (whose base effects are already very strong as they are and even stronger when traited), while longer blight only allow you to be confortable with any utility skill slotted.

typical rotation goes 1 elixir, gain 10 blight, second elixir lose 5 blight gain 10 blight, 3rd elixir lose 5 blight gain 10 blight. So that's 20 blight before entering shroud. You do a few skills on scepter and pistol while activating Blood is power and plaguelands. This is the opener, roughly speaking. You enter shroud, use skill 2 then 4 then 3. Skill 4 removes 10 stacks of blight. Skill 3 removes 5. Of that 20 you had you've lost 15 stacks. As you spend time in shroud you get about 1 stack per second. So you'll build up 10 blight. The rotation demands you use skill 3 and 4 one more time before exiting shroud which will leave you with 0 blight. Now, I'm not perfect at this so I end up with 1-4 stacks of blight on existing, however the perfect timing will leave you with nothing. The duration of blight's window to spend it is easy enough to hit, even sub optimally.

So what happens if that Duration is longer? Nothing. The rotation stays exactly the same with no deviation in it. It actually has zero impact on the rotation as its execution is exactly the same and the timing windows are the same even though blight's duration might be larger. The windows on skill activation are still the same because soul barbs and skill cooldowns need to be timed correctly. So, the duration isn't the issue. Mathematically it does nothing.

Now, lets look at a very simple solution to this problem since you claim more blight sources would make people use more elixirs than before.

Here's is the simple solution I'll use as an example. Gain 10 stacks of blight on entering harbinger shroud, on top of its normal blight build up per second while in shroud. What happens from that? You only need 20 blight before entering shroud since that lines up perfectly with skill rotations. How many elixirs would Harbinger need to run for them to get 20 blight? One.

How does this change the rotation? Well, Harbinger would use the healing elixir and have blood is power and 2 other utility skills as flex slots. OR the Quickness one has one extra utility slot as a flex slot and could run a different heal skill. The Elixirs only remove blight if you have blight so you get the 10 stacks and on entering shroud you get your 20 to start your DPS rotation.

Now, I Think this solution is extremely flawed because it means elixirs would go the way of punishment skills or shouts. Rarely used if at all which isn't what I want to see. But the exact opposite is what would happen from what you suggest would.

Now, perhaps you're mistaken and think I want to double the Blight pool to 50 instead of 25 stacks, which isn't what I suggested at all, not even close to that, but I'm just covering all my bases because I'm not sure what you're getting at in your criticism because it doesn't logically track unless you have an assumption like that.

[Joxer.6024]

Elixirs are a silly way to apply something needed for combat. Yea, ANET rushed it and someday they may fix it as you suggest, we can but hope.

[Asum.4960]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:48 PM, Lily.1935 said:

Here's is the simple solution I'll use as an example. Gain 10 stacks of blight on entering harbinger shroud, on top of its normal blight build up per second while in shroud. What happens from that? You only need 20 blight before entering shroud since that lines up perfectly with skill rotations. How many elixirs would Harbinger need to run for them to get 20 blight? One.

How does this change the rotation? Well, Harbinger would use the healing elixir and have blood is power and 2 other utility skills as flex slots. OR the Quickness one has one extra utility slot as a flex slot and could run a different heal skill. The Elixirs only remove blight if you have blight so you get the 10 stacks and on entering shroud you get your 20 to start your DPS rotation.

Now, I Think this solution is extremely flawed because it means elixirs would go the way of punishment skills or shouts. Rarely used if at all which isn't what I want to see. But the exact opposite is what would happen from what you suggest would.

Now, perhaps you're mistaken and think I want to double the Blight pool to 50 instead of 25 stacks, which isn't what I suggested at all, not even close to that, but I'm just covering all my bases because I'm not sure what you're getting at in your criticism because it doesn't logically track unless you have an assumption like that.

 

You say it's an extremely flawed solution, but it's already exponentially better than what we have in the game right now. 

 

I mean let's actually talk about the insane current design of Elixirs/Blight, especially in the context of group content. 

As a DPS you equip up to 3 skills on your bar which do literally nothing. They have zero non-redundant primary effect, safe for the Heal with some minor Poison. All they come with is their opportunity cost of taking up a Heal/Utility slot each, the opportunity cost of their cast time, and the opportunity cost of causing you to lose maximum health via Blight, the generation of which is their sole purpose. 

Then you use that Blight to make half your Shroud skills do anything in combat via generating extra Torment by removing the Blight again, which then comes at the opportunity cost of reducing your Life Force since your maximum Health and Life Force increases again with the removal of Blight, due to LF being percentage based off your maximum Health - while the actual current LF stays the same, you now have less LF, which drains at an increased rate as percentage off of your now higher health pool again. 

And let's not forget that this whole Blight Consumption for extra damage via Shroud 3&4 stands in direct opposition to Wicked&Septic Corruption and Alchemic Vigor's design of encouraging Blight Stacking and maintenance for extra damage and sustain.

(As well as Elixir's being ranged, despite having to just throw them at yourself in almost all gameplay scenarios, and the Elixir's requiring careful positioning on huge hitboxes, or they bug out and they don't even generate any Blight on you.)

That's not just extremely flawed, that's a trainwreck in terms of design.

 

Even in their best case use scenario as Quickness support, their only function is to fill a small gap in Quickness and Fury uptime out of Shroud, which could be easily fixed by extending the base duration of Deathly Haste a tiny bit instead, while suffering all the same problems as above otherwise, and providing zero extra Utility to a squad, such as Stability, Aegis, Reflects, Stealth, Superspeed, Portals, Mobility, Cleanses, Barrier - nothing. 

 

If in turn you don't take the Elixir's as DPS, you simply do the damage of a Scourge through the same means in Torment, except without the flexibility and cleave of the Shades, without the AoE condition Cleanses, and AoE as well as especially self Barriers, in favour of maximum health reduction, extreme vulnerability to any form of Projectile hate/obstruction and having lower DPS uptime due to having to be in melee range for Approaching Doom. 

 

Like I get that all the GW2 community cares about is DPS, and as long as a spec does that it's fair game, but it's actually genuinely upsetting to me that this design made it past the first concepting stage and that nobody seems to care about design as long as the damage is there, especially when it's this downright awful. 

 

Add to that the fact that Elixir's remove 5 Blight before adding 10, meaning any Elixir beyond the first one operates at 50% efficiency at even their sole purpose of generating Blight, any change that encourages only having to use one of these awful skills, is a win in my book. 

Adding 10-15 Blight stacks on Shroud entry to Corrupted Talent certainly would be a welcome change in that regard, considering Blight and Elixir's likely never will get the rework they deserve (although I'd also argue for removing the Blight interaction from Voracious Arc, increasing it's range back to 900 and it's evade frames to at least cover it's entire cast time/animation at 0.75 seconds, giving it some purity of purpose as Defensive/Mobility skill while just leaving Devouring Cut as damage skill). 

At least then we can just forget these skills exist and just spam the Heal on CD while actually bringing some Utility skills with functionality, or as some might say.. Utility - as we did with Shouts, Serpent Siphon, Desiccate and co.

 

Is it a shame to have more useless Utilities pile up on Necro? Sure, but the solution to that is to design skills that aren't kitten, not semi-force the use of kitten skills for increased performance through such convoluted means.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Asum.4960

[The Boz.2038]

On 9/23/2022 at 9:26 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

The longer blight last the easier it is to keep it up. If it's easy to keep up then you don't need to generate more of it.

I don't see the need to add more blight source personally except to justify skills that already have way to many effect stacked on them.

Point is that more blight sources promote even more using elixirs (whose base effects are already very strong as they are and even stronger when traited), while longer blight only allow you to be confortable with any utility skill slotted.

Amazing.
You managed to be factually, objectively wrong on every single point you made.

[Zaret.1450]

i think it could work with, you coukd call, other game mecanics, while in shroud your autoattack and maybe another skill generate blight, while the other skills consume certain stacks of blight, as foe elixirs it woukd be good if poison was in another elixir other than the heal, so you have more agressive elixirs too

[Lily.1935]

9 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

 

You say it's an extremely flawed solution, but it's already exponentially better than what we have in the game right now. 

 

I mean let's actually talk about the insane current design of Elixirs/Blight, especially in the context of group content. 

As a DPS you equip up to 3 skills on your bar which do literally nothing. They have zero non-redundant primary effect, safe for the Heal with some minor Poison. All they come with is their opportunity cost of taking up a Heal/Utility slot each, the opportunity cost of their cast time, and the opportunity cost of causing you to lose maximum health via Blight, the generation of which is their sole purpose. 

Then you use that Blight to make half your Shroud skills do anything in combat via generating extra Torment, which then comes at the opportunity cost of reducing your Life Force since your maximum Health and Life Force increases again with the removal of Blight, due to LF being percentage based off your maximum Health - while the actual current LF stays the same, you now have less LF, which drains at an increased rate as percentage off of your now higher health pool again. 

And let's not forget that this whole Blight Consumption for extra damage via Shroud 3&4 stands in direct opposition to Wicked&Septic Corruption and Alchemic Vigor's design encouraging Blight Stacking and maintenance for extra damage and sustain.

That's not just extremely flawed, that's a trainwreck in terms of design.

 

Even in their best case use scenario as Quickness support, their only function is to fill a small gap in Quickness and Fury uptime out of Shroud, which could be easily fixed by extending the base duration of Deathly Haste a tiny bit instead, while suffering all the same problems as above otherwise, and providing zero extra Utility to a squad, such as Stability, Aegis, Reflects, Stealth, Superspeed, Portals, Mobility, Cleanses, Barrier - nothing. 

 

If in turn you don't take the Elixir's as DPS, you simply do the damage of a Scourge through the same means in Torment, except without the flexibility and cleave of the Shades, without the AoE condition Cleanses, and AoE as well as especially self Barriers, in favour of maximum health reduction. 

 

Like I get that all the GW2 community cares about is DPS, and as long as a spec does that it's fair game, but it's actually genuinely upsetting to me that this design made it past the first concepting stage and that nobody seems to care about design as long as the damage is there, especially when it's this downright awful. 

 

Add to that the fact that Elixir's remove 5 Blight before adding 10, meaning any Elixir beyond the first one operates at 50% efficiency at even their sole purpose of generating Blight, any change that encourages only having to use one of these awful skills, is a win in my book. 

Adding 10-15 Blight stacks on Shroud entry to Corrupted Talent certainly would be a welcome change in that regard, considering Blight and Elixir's likely never will get the rework they deserve (although I'd also argue for removing the Blight interaction from Voracious Arc, increasing it's range back to 900 and it's evade frames to at least cover it's entire cast time/animation at 0.75 seconds, giving it some purity of purpose as Defensive/Mobility skill while just leaving Devouring Cut as damage skill). 

At least then we can just forget these skills exist and just spam the Heal on CD while actually bringing some Utility skills with functionality, or as some might say.. Utility - as we did with Shouts, Serpent Siphon, Desiccate and co.

 

Is it a shame to have more useless Utilities pile up on Necro? Sure, but the solution to that is to design skills that aren't kitten, not semi-force the use of kitten skills for increased performance through such convoluted means.

Well said. I agree with you and I think I'll make another post about the harbinger with some ideas on how to fix it. At the moment the traits are pretty isolated form each other. The Adept have no competition against each other since power is not strong enough and the elixir trait sacrifices too much damage, Master tier has 2 traits which see use and the Grand master its the same way. And I think I might have some basic solutions that might help diversify them. Now, that's still on arena net to find the right solutions to these problems, and we can only suggest so much without hands on experience with testing these suggestions.

I think the solution I've suggested should be an Adept trait, and how blight works with elixirs should be looked at as well. The choice between wicked corruption, septic corrupt and vile vails isn't a real choice. I think taking the Damage bonus from Wicked and Septic corruption and just having a damage bonus to all damage types added to corrupted talent instead would be far better. As for the poison from Septic corruption, this could either be baseline or be a part of Dark gunslinger. I'm not sure just yet, I have to consider how that would impact builds.

[Valisha.8650]

Honestly, harbinger itself is just such a boring and dull design. Imagine using 3/5 of your utility slots simply for "add stupid blight"      -_-

[The Boz.2038]

The shroud skills removing blight is such a puzzling design decision...

[Bakeneko.5826]

Just now, The Boz.2038 said:

The shroud skills removing blight is such a puzzling design decision...

I's to give extra dps without making shroud OP - blight empower 3 skills from OK levels to Very good levels without making necro too OP

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

I's to give extra dps without making shroud OP - blight empower 3 skills from OK levels to Very good levels without making necro too OP

Blight gives necro damage. The design should be "have blight to deal damage, shed blight to stop and heal". Heal elixir should be removing blight, as should exiting shroud. But shroud should have always been blight positive, and not have the dumb element of "spend your damage increasing resource to deal damage and deal less damage afterwards". The way the class works right now has really missed the mark on good flow and good battle decision tempo design.

[Nimon.7840]

It has multiple flaws:

Condi quickness: it's not firebrand.

- Zero protection share

- stability and aegis are gated behind a massive cooldown, which also is a dps loss

- even with those drawbacks it's not able to keep up 25 might (you technically can if you go aristocracy rune, but tha still needs you to run elite elixir and adjusting your rotation which is even more dps loss ~ tested with Plaguelands and I was at around 23-24k dps. And rotation wasn't perfect for might uptime so it might be even less dps.

- firebrand on top of that has tome 2 to heal allies.

 

Power quickness: it's not herold

- no protection

- no 100% swiftness and regeneration uptime

- big plus: insane boonramp at the start of fight/ burst phases

- Herold can take dwarf and provide 10 man stability every 10 seconds (legend swap CD)

 

Condi DPS: it's not scourge or virtuoso or specter

- utility comes at a much higher cost

- even though the kit says "I'm ranged" a lot of dps comes from being melee

 

Power DPS: it's not "insert any DPS"

- just right up bad dps (I think a bit below reaper if I remember correctly)

Edited September 26, 2022 by Nimon.7840

[Asum.4960]

3 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

The shroud skills removing blight is such a puzzling design decision...

The critique in Beta 1 was that the spec pretty much revolved entirely around Autoattacking and spamming 2 on CD in both in and out of Shroud, as well as Elixir's being so bad that no one in their right mind would ever use them. 

 

Their solution was to add Torment to Harbinger Shroud Mobility skills simply for the sake of there being more buttons to press, and to semi-force the use of the Elixir's to fuel the added Blight consuption on them - rather than actually reworking the problem points of the Spec. 

Pretty much the definition of a hack job in response to the valid feedback.

[The Boz.2038]

I know, I remember. I was one of the "yo, this needs work" voices.
Sad, tbh.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

Wouldn't increasing the rate of gain of blight while in shroud and increasing the duration of blight be the easiest solution?

[Valisha.8650]

5 hours ago, Nimon.7840 said:

It has multiple flaws:

Condi quickness: it's not firebrand.

- Zero protection share

- stability and aegis are gated behind a massive cooldown, which also is a dps loss

- even with those drawbacks it's not able to keep up 25 might (you technically can if you go aristocracy rune, but tha still needs you to run elite elixir and adjusting your rotation which is even more dps loss ~ tested with Plaguelands and I was at around 23-24k dps. And rotation wasn't perfect for might uptime so it might be even less dps.

- firebrand on top of that has tome 2 to heal allies.

 

Power quickness: it's not herold

- no protection

- no 100% swiftness and regeneration uptime

- big plus: insane boonramp at the start of fight/ burst phases

- Herold can take dwarf and provide 10 man stability every 10 seconds (legend swap CD)

 

Condi DPS: it's not scourge or virtuoso or specter

- utility comes at a much higher cost

- even though the kit says "I'm ranged" a lot of dps comes from being melee

 

Power DPS: it's not "insert any DPS"

- just right up bad dps (I think a bit below reaper if I remember correctly)

This. I really hope they will somewhat rework this underdone e-spec in the next PvE balance patch.

[Lily.1935]

10 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

The shroud skills removing blight is such a puzzling design decision...

I was opposed to the idea in the past but removing blight with those skills is actually very fun in practice.