Necro Elite Spec: The Harbinger

[Sigmoid.7082]

5 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

That's just the invulnerable dev test golems repeatedly "dying", you can see the LF uptick everytime a golem does the death flinch, which, since they don't heal up, happens repeatedly.

So a golem is dying at the exact time quickness refreshes every time and only when quickness refreshes every time? I don't think so personally.

 

If it is something like that though that means you can gain LF while in shroud from deaths which is something else thats interesting. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Sigmoid.7082

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

3 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

After seeing it I'm excited for this elite spec, however I do personally feel they should have access to the utility skills since they're not giving an extra health bar. This spec seems exceptionally frail.

Agreed.  This spec is so frail, it will need any bit of advantage it can get.  5 seconds of Vigor on heal (with an absurdly weak heal) and Elite are nowhere near enough to keep Harbingers alive in any competitive mode.

[LucianDK.8615]

So if Harbinger shroud is tied to lifeforce. Is there normal lifeforce degeneration, and reduced by being hit?  You can only stay in the shroud as long you have lifeforce?

[Sigmoid.7082]

Just now, LucianDK.8615 said:

So if Harbinger shroud is tied to lifeforce. Is there normal lifeforce degeneration, and reduced by being hit?  You can only stay in the shroud as long you have lifeforce?

Degeneration yes, but it no longer shields health. Getting hit does not reduce it

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 minute ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

So if Harbinger shroud is tied to lifeforce. Is there normal lifeforce degeneration, and reduced by being hit?  You can only stay in the shroud as long you have lifeforce?

Harbinger Shroud doesn't shield your health at all, so damage doesn't reduce your life force in it.  It decays at 5%/second.  Run out of life force, Harbinger Shroud ends.

On the upside, thanks to one of the minor traits, you can enter it with 0 life force for a few seconds.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[LucianDK.8615]

Just now, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Degeneration yes, but it no longer shields health. Getting hit does not reduce it

 

I asume that the shroud duration is tied to lifeforce, since you gain powerful attack moves in shroud.

[Sigmoid.7082]

1 minute ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

On the upside, thanks to one of the minor traits, you can enter it with 0 life force for a few seconds.

Means you always have access to a dash and a leap, LF or no LF, which is nice. 

[LucianDK.8615]

Hum, so you build blight in both shroud and outside it? Do you have means of cleaning the blight from yourself?

[Asum.4960]

4 minutes ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Means you always have access to a dash and a leap, LF or no LF, which is nice. 

Yea, as predicted it seems mobile as hell with two mobility skills at 5 and 10 second cool downs. 

 

2 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

Hum, so you build blight in both shroud and outside it? Do you have means of cleaning the blight from yourself?

 

Blight builds up every second in Shroud, and a static amount on Elixier (Utility) use. 

Out of Shroud it ticks away again every second, with Lifeforce depleting to heal you back up out of Shroud as well. 

Edited August 13, 2021 by Asum.4960

[LucianDK.8615]

What offhand would people use the pistol with a condi build?

[Infusion.7149]

1 minute ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

What offhand would people use the pistol with a condi build?

My guess is dagger and/or warhorn for CC.
Focus is strictly a power offhand weapon.

[Asum.4960]

5 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

What offhand would people use the pistol with a condi build?

Necro Off-Hands, outside of Scourge's Torch, don't really matter/don't have skills worth using (if we are talking PvE). 

Dagger Off-hand is a natural fit with at least some condi on there and a condi Transfer is always nice, but Focus and Warhorn could be used as well for LF gain/CC.. or potentially non of them will be used, and you can pick any of them as Stat-Stick.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Asum.4960

[SummonMinion.7306]

We lose the second LF health bar and the inherent damage reduction percentages on the LF health bar. The survivability tools we gain are 2 movement abilities (1 with small duration evade frames) and more built in cc than other specs. The trait to apply AoE slows on elixir uses could help with survivability/lockdown but the attached blight stacks makes them so undesirable in any solo/competitive setting. The current balance between 10-20% health reduction per elixir seems off with the boons that they give (excluding the elite). Those current values really only make sense if the elixirs were AoE baseline. 

[LucianDK.8615]

Just now, Asum.4960 said:

Necro Off-Hands, outside of Scourge's Torch, don't really matter/don't have skills worth using. 

Dagger Off-hand is a natural fit with at least some condi on there and a condi Transfer is always nice, but Focus and Warhorn could be used as well for LF gain/CC.. or potentially non of them will be used, and you can pick any of them as Stat-Stick.

 

Yes, dagger offhand was my first impulse, together with warhorn for cc and faster runspeed. 

Would you think it needed at all to have scepter on swap for mh?

[Sigmoid.7082]

7 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

 

Would you think it needed at all to have scepter on swap for mh?

With the changes to lingering curse , probably not?

[azarhal.3086]

My take, they wanted to punish Necro for having Shroud, but didn't know what to do so they tripled on the punishments:

- Shroud decay while not in it

- Lose HP pool max while in Shroud or drinking Elixir for a max of 50% reduction to your HP pool

- Shroud doesn't make it so life-force take damage instead of health while in it

 

What the Harbinger gained from that:

- a potential max 25 damage boost once they reach 50% HP pool reduction (%1 per Blight stack, there is a power and condi version, I'm not sure why they didn't make a single trait for that)

- Shroud decay healing for a bit every seconds when not in Shroud (I'm not sure if healing while in Shroud is there or not).

- useless Elixirs that give you -10% HP pool for 25 seconds on usage, stack to -25% (it would make more sense to have the negative on the traits, not baseline currently).

 

It also seems like the devs who designed the e-spec aren't aware that Necro have zero blocks or invulnerability abilities and Harbinger isn't getting any..so that 11k HP pool isn't going to be that different than having 1 HP past Core Tyria content.

- LF generation in 1v1 is not great and while Harbinger has a bit more LF generation on its weapon, it doesn't look enough to counter the decay.

 

As it is, the trade-off isn't worth it.  That's not a glass canon, that's a corpse being carried around.

 

The pistol looks fun and the Shroud skills have potentials thought. I'm not sure about all the Torment, poison would have made more sense thematically.

[felincyriac.5981]

Quite disappointed. The utilities are all very uninspired and boring, here drink this and gain a boon, I thought there'd be a more flavourful tradeoff for loosing half your hp? Nop just a 25% modifier (same as willbender?). No utilities in "shroud"? Sounds like a tough sell for pvp

Edited August 13, 2021 by felincyriac.5981

[LucianDK.8615]

People have always complained over necromancers being too tanky, and why they couldnt get upper tier competitive dps.

[Anchoku.8142]

Additional thoughts

When you know a lot of damage is coming

* Necromancer, Reaper, Scourge -> Use F1 to hide from the damage

* Harbinger -> Dodge or hope to get a heal because F1 is a wasted keystroke

 

Having a keyboard shortcut to refill the LF bar looks like a handy skill to have but I am a little worried CMC had to use it so often.

 

 

 

 

[Asum.4960]

23 minutes ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

 

Yes, dagger offhand was my first impulse, together with warhorn for cc and faster runspeed. 

Would you think it needed at all to have scepter on swap for mh?

That would require some extensive rotation testing once available ingame, but glancing at Pistol in combination with the 200 Condition Damage increase of Lingering Curse becoming global, it doesn't look like Scepter will see much play on Harbinger. 

At most it will be a quick swap to spam just before and after Shroud, before camping Pistol again, but maybe, probably, not even that. For general play, definitely not.

 

17 minutes ago, azarhal.3086 said:

It also seems like the devs who designed the e-spec aren't aware that Necro have zero blocks or invulnerability abilities and Harbinger isn't getting any..so that 11k HP pool isn't going to be that different than having 1 HP past Core Tyria content.

- LF generation in 1v1 is not great and while Harbinger has a bit more LF generation on its weapon, it doesn't look enough to counter the decay.

 

As it is, the trade-off isn't worth it.  That's not a glass canon, that's a corpse being carried around.

 

The pistol looks fun and the Shroud skills have potentials thought. I'm not sure about all the Torment, poison would have made more sense thematically.

 

For general OW content you will comfortably able to not take the 200 Condition Damage from Lingering Curse and use Parasitic Contagion instead. 

The spec being Torment based allows for Runes of Tormenting, so actually on further thinking, you'll probably be quite immortal on this spec, even more so running Trailblazer, if you are willing to sacrifice Damage. 

 

As power spec though, yea, that's going to be rough.

[Sevans.4619]

I think the Harbinger will get focused to death immediately by any player but it might be fun in PvE.

 

Feels like the best bet in terms of WvW or PvP might be stacking heal over time as much as possible since LF now heals you regularly and you still get healed while you're in Harbinger Shroud. Things like Tormenting Runes, Dolyak Runes, health every second foods, Parasitic Contagion, Blood Magic traits will be working 100% of the time.

[Sodeni.6041]

I'm disappointed by the utilities, they feel very uninspired, most lackluster utilities ever if you ask me.

I would have preferred some offensive potions, throwing gas potions to injure enemies for example would have been nice.

 

I think they will have a hard time in pvp due to no second health bar and even getting damage for staying in shroud but we will see.

[Asum.4960]

20 minutes ago, Sevans.4619 said:

I think the Harbinger will get focused to death immediately by any player but it might be fun in PvE.

 

Feels like the best bet in terms of WvW or PvP might be stacking heal over time as much as possible since LF now heals you regularly and you still get healed while you're in Harbinger Shroud. Things like Tormenting Runes, Dolyak Runes, health every second foods, Parasitic Contagion, Blood Magic traits will be working 100% of the time.

My current guess is that for PvP you'll likely completely ignore the Damage increase for Blight Traits (unless for +1 burst builds, taking the role of a Thief), taking the Slow on Elixier Trait, while avoiding stacking much Blight. To counter focus fire, you got the Stab on Shroud Trait into two short CD 900 range mobility skills (you'll be able to cover 2700 range in 5 seconds with Devouring Cut - Voracious Arc - Devouring cut, which you can repeat cycle every 5 seconds as long as you got LF, which is insane [and will so get nerfed, although the CD's likely will be higher in PvP as the skills already have a Unique per Gamemode tag]), as well as a nasty AoE Float protected by the stab should you get ganged up on. 

 

You'll probably speed around via Shroud flashes, fueled by the GM Minor, jump into fights late/+1 at opportune moments, unload and fly away again.

 

I don't think people realise how insanely mobile this Spec is with the current CD's they showed - with full LF, not even Thieves will catch a Harbinger.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Asum.4960

[ovenglove.9528]

26 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

My current guess is that for PvP you'll likely completely ignore the Damage increase for Blight Traits (unless for +1 burst builds, taking the role of a Thief), taking the Slow on Elixier Trait, while avoiding stacking much Blight. To counter focus fire, you got the Stab on Shroud Trait into two short CD 900 range mobility skills (you'll be able to cover 2700 range in 5 seconds with Devouring Cut - Voracious Arc - Devouring cut, which you can repeat cycle every 5 seconds as long as you got LF, which is insane [and will so get nerfed, although the CD's likely will be higher in PvP as the skills already have a Unique per Gamemode tag]), as well as a nasty AoE Float protected by the stab should you get ganged up on. 

 

You'll probably speed around via Shroud flashes, fueled by the GM Minor, jump into fights late/+1 at opportune moments, unload and fly away again.

 

I don't think people realise how insanely mobile this Spec is with the current CD's they showed - with full LF, not even Thieves will catch a Harbinger.

For this to work it seems like the damage would have to be insane, like pre feb nerf power mes level of one shot dps. If it is great, otherwise it seems not competitive with will bender considering the mobility it odders and the denfensive kit with guardian.

[Xaylin.1860]

Mechanically the most interesting e-spec of the ones presented today. It looks like it could fill roles that Reapers and Scourges can't which is nice and I very excited about Harbinger Shroud. I'm a bit iffy when it comes to Quickness because Harbinger might still be able to bring (too much) damage. But CMCs comment sounds like this at least won't be a thing in PvP/WvW.

 

The only somewhat disappointing things are the Elixir. Unless one wants to share boons, they don't look too exciting.