Necro Elite Spec: The Harbinger

[SeTect.5918]

Just now, LucianDK.8615 said:

Harbinger definitely have potential. But surviability is indeed a concern if you have no active defenses at all.

Exactly what i mean.. Especially on vipers with curses and power its going to have horrible high chances of getting just 1shot away in fractals. 

[Asum.4960]

6 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Imo blight could at least get reduced. Like the traits give 1% power or condi so blight also just 1%. 50% hp loss is too massive for a light class without barrier and Shroud. Torment runes or whatever cant heal 1hits while u have 11k hp. 

I main weaver and can say that sustain loss of necro Was too much. At least i have a bit barrier lol. 

 

I love harbinger playstyle tho and its 100% my fav of the 3 atm. 

50% is pretty massive, yea. I also don't like the visual disconnect between the stacks and HP reduction that way, like you glance at your (de)buff bar to see 17 Stacks of Blight, which would make sense to translate to 17% max HP reduction for visual clarity, not 34%. If they keep the 50%, at least make it 50 Stacks at 1% each triggering every 0.5 second instead.

 

At 25% it would put Harbinger at Medium class Health levels, which does feel more reasonable than low health considering it's already losing Barrier/Shroud (and it's 50% damage reduction). 

 

For Condi Harbinger 11k is going to be fine with all the possible sustain from one or all of Parasitic Contagion, Trailblazer gear and Tormenting Runes, but Power Harbinger, outside of organised groups with support, is going to be really rough.

[Ya Ya Yeah.7381]

Just watched the livestream replay and all I can say is this spec is going to be wicked powerful in the right hands, there will be nerf screams echoing for months over this thing, having said that, I really like what I see and I can definitely see HUGE potential there. Also, I definitely see some serious balance issues coming just because of the damage potential vs shroud blight mechanic, it looks like it will be a real challenge to balance this Espec. They gave the necro some depth which is what a lot of players wanted, but it will be scary cause this espec has monster damage potential. The thing is it will be very squishy at least how they have it right now but put it in a comp or a zerg with dedicated heals and this thing is gonna be crazy. I like what I see tentatively but I see a long road of balance for this espec. I will love it til it gets beat to death by the nerf bat 🙂

[Jabronee.9465]

lolz guess i have to wait 2 more years IF Necros gonna get Stealth/Invinsible.

Lower hp? More Sacrifice? meh short cd dash leap abilities? No thank you 😊

Guess i'll stay on my D/P Thief & my SA DE 😇

See ya'll in WvW Harbingers!

And as a reminder always... Never walk alone 😉

 

[misterman.1530]

37 minutes ago, Jabronee.9465 said:

lolz guess i have to wait 2 more years IF Necros gonna get Stealth/Invinsible.

Lower hp? More Sacrifice? meh short cd dash leap abilities? No thank you 😊

Guess i'll stay on my D/P Thief & my SA DE 😇

See ya'll in WvW Harbingers!

And as a reminder always... Never walk alone 😉

 

 

Yeah, that's what I was hoping for. Invis would have been nice instead of two "leaps".

[misterman.1530]

5 hours ago, Tungsten Monarch.6058 said:

Runes of Torment solves this issue.

How do Runes of Torment help with Healing?

 

Edit: oh. wait. It heals based on Torment. Durp. Two bottles of wine with the wife tonight will make you slow, trust me. :)

Edited August 14, 2021 by misterman.1530

[Eros.6801]

I'm fine with the concept and mechanics, it is interesting tbh but please, please rework on Harbinger's weapon and utility icon it looks so cheap, that cyan/blue hue is just not go well with the green/black hue of the overall necromancer theme. Just by looking at the icons i got a straight up downgrade feeling, so unpleasant.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Eros.6801

[Infusion.7149]

2 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Exactly what i mean.. Especially on vipers with curses and power its going to have horrible high chances of getting just 1shot away in fractals. 

It's probably going to be run on plaguedoctor's (for the vitality/boon duration) with tormenting rune. I don't anticipate that it will be a diviner gear class.

It was stated that 2023 power was used for the preview and the tooltip for pistol auto (Vicious Shot) was only 467 strike damage while the torment lasted 4s (344 base damage, 511 condition damage to nonmoving targets).
Pistol #2 (Weeping Shots) is 1872 damage for all 6 hits while the torment condition damage is 4K if moving and 6K is stationary over 8.25s.
Pistol #3 (Vile Blast) is 779 damage while poison damage is 2347 over 8.25s.

Shroud 1 / Tainted Bolts had 702 tooltip while the torment damage was 344 if moving and 511 if stationary over 4s
Shroud 2 / Dark Barrage had 2802 tooltip while the torment damage was 4K if moving and 6K if stationary over 8.25s.
Shroud 3 / Devouring Cut had 779 tooltip while the torment damage was 1022 if stationary and 688 if moving over 8.25s.
Shroud 4 / Voracious Arc had a 982 tooltip.
Shroud 5 / Vital Draw had a 1.1K tooltip.

The commonality among all of this is torment. I think running tormenting sigil / sigil of demons plus rune of tormenting will be the norm. You'd probably run dhuumfire in Soul Reaping to make Tainted Bolts do more condition damage.
Twisted Medicine (the elixir-share trait) is a Master trait with vitality to concentration independent to the pistol trait that converts vitality to expertise. On plaguedoctor you would get 42% boon duration and 77% torment duration with sigil of demons and 100 expertise food. From Twisted Medicine you'd gain an additional 23% or so boon duration since Harbingers get +360 vitality.

Most importantly the trait Deathly Haste shares quickness in Harbinger shroud, with 2.25s duration. The interval is 3s so if there is 37% boon duration as stated it means you need roughly 33% boon duration if the tooltip doesn't include boon duration or ~82% boon duration if the tooltip was including the boon duration.

Elixir of Anguish is listed as 5s quickness with a 25 cooldown so I don't think that will be the main source of quickness even if you have Twisted Medicine traited.

As far as power DPS goes, it probably won't supplant reaper. For condition damage it has a decent shot  with pulsed 3 stacks torment on Doom Approaches.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[Nephalem.8921]

3 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Exactly what i mean.. Especially on vipers with curses and power its going to have horrible high chances of getting just 1shot away in fractals. 

It will have ele/fb health so maybe necro players have to bind their dodge keys again. You can still run tormenting runes.

[Sigmoid.7082]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Most importantly the trait Deathly Haste shares quickness in Harbinger shroud, with 2.25s duration. The interval is 3s so if there is 37% boon duration as stated it means you need roughly 33% boon duration if the tooltip doesn't include boon duration or ~82% boon duration if the tooltip was including the boon duration.

Its worth noting when he was using this trait he also had the elixir trait, twisted medicine, active. This gave him more concentration, roughly 50% in total. The base duration of deathly haste, with some maths, is going to be 1.5s so you need 100% if you are looking at just this for sharing quickness.  

[Kalocin.5982]

Kind of thought they'd have something more unique, kinda seems like an inverse Holosmith right now tbh

[Rym.1469]

Since Harbinger is going down the route of a 55 hp Monk, what if one elixir, potentially one the least useful, could be made to replicate Protective Spirit from GW1? 

 

Essentially giving a brief unique defense mechanism in place of evades and stealth other glass cannons have. 

 

Quick mock-up of the idea;

 

https://i.imgur.com/gi7RVF7.png

Edited August 14, 2021 by Rym.1469

[SeTect.5918]

5 hours ago, Nephalem.8921 said:

It will have ele/fb health so maybe necro players have to bind their dodge keys again. You can still run tormenting runes.

Basically i Was just talking about the high chances of getting 1 Hits due to less defense than weaver actually has and u come around with tormenting runes like they would heal 1hits. 

 

But i guess we have to wait for 17th. 

 

The things i wrote are just fears coming up when i saw this and are based on numbers. 

We ll see on 17th if its going to be like that or not. 

And we re supposed to find things to do with harbinger that could be reworked or not.

[aymnad.9023]

At first I thought it was power but there are so many condi traits and ways to get torment on this that it will probably be a hybrid (but leaning towards condi). The mechanic is going to be challenging and is going to be quite exiting to discover. Get perma regen but lose health, get high damage but lose the second health bar.

The elixirs combined with the high damage potential are going to be used in raids. If I have to guess most people will avoid playing it in fractals (except if you are confident in yourself and your group). At first I did not see it in PvP but then I joined the end of teapot stream and the idea of a bursty necro with a support got me curious.

I know a lot of players enjoying necro tankyness who will skip it but it could how change we usually see necro.

[draxynnic.3719]

19 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

Yea, I'm not disagreeing with Mesmer having Confusion or it being a major part of it even, absolutely, just that they got it almost exclusively without a single one instance on Necro. Similarly, fairly low Weakness access. 

Mesmer got a fairly high amount of dazes, with interrupts and such having been a big part of Mesmer as control caster, but Necro imo lost pretty much all exploration of their themes to Shroud, save for Scourge which at least very slightly filled that Hexer role with Torment.

Likewise, I wouldn't mind Fear on Mesmer either thematically, yes.

Discussion has well and truly gone past this, but:

 

I could see it being done as an elite specialisation in the future. Elite specialisation which is essentially taking secondary Mesmer, with Exemplar Kerida returning to give a tease of what might be coming, even though the specialisation itself will have its lore tied to a future expansion location rather than the Shining Blade. (But that could be explained through it being something that "Kerida" learned during her travels.)

[azarhal.3086]

After sleeping on it I came to those realizations.

 

Elixir are balanced with the idea that they give 5% (or 10% for the Elite) damage boost for 25 seconds and that their main use is to gain Blight stacks, not gaining the buffs.  In other words, the person who balanced them think that Blight always grant a damage boost instead of it being trait based...

 

Vile Vials needs to do something with Blight too, the cd reduction and small aoe debuff isn't worth the max HP pool lost and Elixirs are mandatory to keep the high Blight stacks as Shroud only generate 1 per second. As currently designed, it only server to punish the support build.

 

Also, that means none-Elixir builds will have 8-15 Blight stacks on which is basically Soul Barbs at the cost of 20% health. Saying that, the Shroud skills seems to deal a lot more base damage without Blight (Dark Barrage seems crazy actually...if it can be reflected 🤣).

 

I'm a bit concerned by all the melee-centric features on a class designed to be a kiter (poor vigor generation and zero active defense outside one evade frame on a 10s cd). They call it "high risk, high reward", but it's more "high risk and kamikaze".

 

They also tried to make it both Power and Condi, but the traits and torment everywhere are biased toward Condi. Especially when it comes to sustain, way more option with Condi than Power.

 

edit: I forgot, I suspect the design/balance was done before the rework on Torment...

Edited August 14, 2021 by azarhal.3086

[Sevans.4619]

4 hours ago, Rym.1469 said:

Since Harbinger is going down the route of a 55 hp Monk, what if one elixir, potentially one the least useful, could be made to replicate Protective Spirit from GW1? 

 

Essentially giving a brief unique defense mechanism in place of evades and stealth other glass cannons have. 

 

Quick mock-up of the idea;

 

https://i.imgur.com/gi7RVF7.png

 

This is an amazing idea and is what Blight and the concept of the reduced total health pool should have looked like; it incentivizes stacking Blight in an interesting way instead of a boring, trait-required damage boost (that should be baked into Blight so it works for all Harbingers, not just the traited ones).

Edited August 14, 2021 by Sevans.4619

[Asum.4960]

1 hour ago, azarhal.3086 said:

Elixir are balanced with the idea that they give 5% (or 10% for the Elite) damage boost for 25 seconds and that their main use is to gain Blight stacks, not gaining the buffs.  In other words, the person who balanced them think that Blight always grant a damage boost instead of it being trait based...

 

Vile Vials needs to do something with Blight too, the cd reduction and small aoe debuff isn't worth the max HP pool lost and Elixirs are mandatory to keep the high Blight stacks as Shroud only generate 1 per second. As currently designed, it only server to punish the support build.

Yea, not sure why they didn't do gain 0.5-1% Boon Duration per stack of Blight for Vile Vials, especially since Harbinger seems to require 100% BD to just so maintain perma Quickness. 

Seems so obvious next to the Power and Condi damage Traits as boon support option. 

 

Although the Slow makes it more viable as PvP pick for Harbinger builds that want to avoid stacking Blight and just flash Shroud for Mobility, Shroud 2 bursts and Shroud 5 CC. So having at least a option for Blight avoidance builds (if such a thing will be viable/worth it) is nice. 

 

Out of all the options for PvP, I may even be most excited to try out a more durable DM+BM low Blight build with Vile Vials, Implacable Foe and maybe Approaching Doom? 

 

Perma Prot from DM, maybe Barriers from Blood Bank with the Shroud degen healing ticks and constant active Siphons, spamming out weakness and slow, and getting Stab on Shroud. 

In theory seems more interesting to me than going for a hyper glass (both ways) oneshot build.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Dschromm.2946]

wow, the stream has been a journey. regarding all the topics that pop up in this sub forum, players have a lot to talk about 😄
here are my five cents regarding my first impression.

I. theme
i suspected the harbinger to be a van helsing-esque class and your turn on that going into magitech is highly appreciated. i flooded my basement as soon as the first pictures rolled over my screen. 
II. pistol MH

i haven't done any calculations about physical and condition damage yet, but pistols looks really powerful. the bouncing effect on AA is good for tagging ans ramps up against your primary target if you fight against only two enemies. i suspect it will rely on your second weapon set which aa you will use in what kind of build.
the second skill remebers me of the old engineer pistol #2 which was altered because the shot were too unreliable. don't get me wrong, the spread might be nice for tagging, but in a fight i would prefer it to focus on one target (we also have the better shotgun effect on h-shroud#2).
the third skill is a very much appreciated CC with a short daze. hell yeah! thank you for the short cast time and CD. since many players whine about loosing fear in shroud and the necro imbues their bullets with magic, maybe you could switch out the short daze against an equivalent amount of fear?!? both are countered by stability nevertheless and it would give us the opportunity to get a little bit more distance to our foes. the downside would be that fear is negate by the new boon "resistance" (except if you've treated for terror, i guess).
III. matching OHs

here's where i get my headache, because i find every off-hand weapon of necro to be a little bit underperforming. OH dagger could be nice for condition builds, but dagger#5 is clunky as hell and has an insanely long cast time. for an elite specialization that's high risk the cast time's just too long. warhorn's daze is good defense on a reasonable longer CD, but warhorn#5 is underperforming. the damage is very low compared to the bit of utility it gives. i rarely use it and as a harbinger i won't be in melee as long as any other necro profession, i guess. concerning focus#4, i'm sure you already know how the necromancer community feels about that skill.
IV. second weapon sets

i think sceptre as as second weapon set is fine and let us stay in range even if projectile blocks and reflects are up. staff as a utility swap is also possible, but like the core off-hands it's lacking nowadays. i'm not a concerned about condition specs as about power specs.
axe is very bursty but unrealiable over time and has almost no utility besides a boon corrupt on skill#3. it will end as a burst switch in like in pistol stuff>swap to axe>axe#2>shroud... the problem here is that you are either forced into staying in shroud for at least 8 seconds so that you can axe#2 burst again and switch back to pistol (which decreases your health's max by 16% at least) or you are forced to hit your foe with a wet noodle when you come out of shroud early and weapon swap isn't ready.

dagger as a kind-of-melee weapon forces you to go into the thick of the fight to get most out of it's primary use - life force regeneration. as squishy as harbinger seems to be, dagger will be very risky and it's damage is pretty low for that. but i can see some potential in taking bloodbank, inflicting blight and bumping up barrier with dagger#2 and an old heal skill. we'll see how it plays out.

V. harbinger shroud

 to be honest i never expected these kind of martial art animations and i'm so glad you did this. it was a big surprise to me and looks so satisfying. but that's just the looks. skills#1  and #2 look really strong and if i image that we can bump up the damage by up to 25% with blight, 10% by spiteful talisman and another 20% with close to death. boy oh boy.
i love the mobility skills #3 and #4 and i am thankful that none of them seem to require a target and one of them got an evade. we won't catch up with a willbender and cannot run from them, but ... who can?!? *jk*

#5 looks sick and the AoE CC on a 20s CD will be used a lot, i think. as squishy as we are, it'll give us the opportunity to pack our things and run if the fight gets too hard too handle.
to sum up, h-shroud looks promising, but i think, that it'll need a tune-down damagewise.

VI. torment
this is the only thing i'm a bit disappointed about. why yet again? scourge is build around torment. why did you choose torment over poison, which would have been my favourite? don't get me wrong, torment is nuts ATM, but poison fits the theme better IMO. whe could have trait synergy with death magic for once and reducing the enemies healing would be so fitting theme-wise.

VII. elixirs

i was hyped seeing harbinger getting elixirs as utility skills and your intent to give us the opportunity to play as a boon support is very much appreciated. concerning this is 2021, i would have hoped for better animations for drinking elixirs and their effects.

the heal skill seems to be way to weak for a 25s CD. we loose 10% of our health for a heal that gives a little bit of life force and heals for 2k? 2k?!? why this small number? i don't get it. honestly, i've been thinking about it since the stream ended and i have no clue. why should i take it over consume conditions? consume conditions heals a lot more, cleanses all conditions on my heals me additonally. all that with a CD that's only 5s longer that the elixir. if the heal of the elixir would be stronger than our other heals it would compensate the health loss caused by the blight debuff.

the other elixirs are great buffing opportunities and i'm excited about to find out when to use them effectively, but i'd hoped they'ld give a little bit more survivability against mobile foes and CC. the stunbreak one and the condition cleanse elixirs are great, but i's hoped we'd also get a defensive one with protection or, better, stability. short amount would be sufficient, i guess. and maybe superspeed for 2s on elixir use or something like this. i know we're necros and we are meant to be susceptible to CC, but with the blight debuff and no second healthbar we are way too squishy without oh-kitten-buttons.

VIII. blight

speaking of blight. i really like the idea of inflicting a harsh debuff on myself to boost the rest of my kitten up like hell. but with the potential to lose 50% of my health as a scholar class with comparatively few active defenses, i would have suggest shroud to allow me to use my utility skills 7-9 at least. imagine that i get caught in shroud and my health's max is already lowered considerably i need to have a stunbreak ready. when i have to leave shroud first, i'm probably already dead.
IX. traits

i like the traits concerning the elixirs a lot and being able to keep up quickness on my friends is a group-oriented alternative for necromancer. thank you!!! but please consider that boon support builds get nothing out of accepting blight. while the damage builds get damage per blight stack, the support varaint gets nothing. 
the other traits seem to be strong, but very uninspired. the traits for power or condition necromancer a pretty much the same which is really boring to me. deal 1% more damage per stack of blightness you have (direct damage or condition damage), convert 13% of vitality to x (and THB, even condi builds will probably pick the power trait) and pulse damage/torment while in shroud... sorry, but that's lame. it evokes the feeling, that power and condition harbinger will play almost the same when on pistol set or while in shroud and that's not what you wanna sell to us, am i right?

to sum up, i'm still excited, but also a little bit worried. harbinger, to me, lacks identity in its power and condition builds. furthermore, i'ld have hoped for more active defenses outside shroud. elixirs look fun, but the animations are very underwhelming. for condition damage builds i'm a little bit disappointed that we once again focus on torment.

nevertheless, thank you for the hard work you put into the expansion. even though i have plenty to critisize on the first look on the  harbinger, i'm well aware of the effort it takes to create new elite specs besides all the other stuff for EoD. i main necro since i started playing again 2,5 years ago and i love this class. there's no ill intent in the points i've made, i just wanted to communicate my thought to fellow players and you, the developers. thank you for your time and hard work!

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Dschromm.2946

[LucianDK.8615]

Harbinger definitely doesnt need its damage skills toned down. Its clearly supposed to be a glass cannon. If we dont have the damage then what are they?

[Za Shaloc.3908]

12 hours ago, Eros.6801 said:

I'm fine with the concept and mechanics, it is interesting tbh but please, please rework on Harbinger's weapon and utility icon it looks so cheap, that cyan/blue hue is just not go well with the green/black hue of the overall necromancer theme. Just by looking at the icons i got a straight up downgrade feeling, so unpleasant.

 

Yes please. I am telling myself they are placeholders, I just hope it's true. Pretty sure the pistol sound effects were the exact Engi pistol sounds too, so my guess is that there is still some stuff that is a work in progress.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Za Shaloc.3908

[Aplethoraof.2643]

On 8/11/2021 at 11:31 AM, Agrippa Oculus.3726 said:

Wow, I really like what I see, and it almost sounds like it's exactly giving that what I've been asking for, for a long time now.

It almost looks like a more mobile, glassy, pure cDPS spec with some self-inflicting/punishing mechanism. In other words, not the easiest to play class anymore, but in the right hands absolutely devastating. 

 

The only thing I don't get is that it looks like a condi dps spec. Scourge is finally setting some good condi benchmarks now, could it receive the nerf-hammer?

Presumably there can be more than one spec with a condi DPS build. It'd be pretty silly if that wasn't the case, no?

 

Though knowing Anet, anything is possible. And next year, whatever that "anything" is will be completely different.

 

------

Personally, I'm more worried that the risk won't justify the reward.

 

Necromancer seems to have been built up and down around having a strong defence (shroud, high HP, or barrier). Suddenly many of its defences are stripped away (heavily reduced HP in this case, enough to get 1 or 2 hit), but its other weapons/traits/skills all remain the same (build around having a strong semi-passive defence). So unlike other classes with their active defences, who are build around this lack of semi-passive defence in mind, necro is left with just pure squish.

 

I'm skeptical what it outputs will justify the risk. And I'm skeptical that necromancer's other skills with sufficiently synergize with the sudden lack of defence. It really does seem like an odd design choice, given how they've built necromancer as a whole.

 

I guess we'll see next weekend though.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Aplethoraof.2643

[felincyriac.5981]

two trait lines for dps, that's a big oof 

[misterman.1530]

On 8/14/2021 at 11:45 AM, Aplethoraof.2643 said:

I guess we'll see next weekend though.

I thought beta was on the 17th. Not next weekend. Did that change?

[LucianDK.8615]

39 minutes ago, misterman.1530 said:

I thought beta was on the 17th. Not next weekend. Did that change?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/youre-invited-to-the-first-elite-specialization-beta-event/

 

The first Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons™ elite specialization beta event begins next week! From August 17 to August 21, log in and play three of the brand-new elite specializations coming in Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons™.