Harbinger, the good, the bad, forseeable nerfs

[Dadnir.5038]

The harbinger offer a new take on the necromancer and what seem to be a true "glass canon" e-spec for the necromancer. I won't comment on the damage because without tests, it's hard to get a good idea on the true capabilities of the spec in this area.

 

Sustain:

Life force being drained while out of shroud to heal the harbinger is great, the healing value seem nice as well. A very interesting addition.

 

Blight:

The corner stone mechanism of the harbinger. I like the idea behind this mechanism, it truly give the feeling of sacrifice defense for offence and support. There is nothing to change there, it seem obvious that the devs made it so the harbinger have the same base health pool as the elementalist, guardian and thief when at full blight and that's very neet.

 

Harbinger shroud:

Shrd#1: The long awaited splash damage on shrd#1 with what seem to be a decent attack speed. Thank you! Possibly overloaded skill with the shrd#1 core traits and various procs (I mean 2 hits per cast potentially mean: 2 torments, 1 might, 4 vulns, 2 burns and if lucky 2 bleeds on crit).

Shrd#2: 4s CD rain of torment and damage, quite nice in itself. Coupled with path of corruption that affect shrd#2? I can already see it becoming an issue.

Shrd#3: 5s CD movement skill. Nice, nothing to complain about.

Shrd#4: 10s CD movement/evade/daze. Main issue here is that it's a Shrd#4 skill and thus affected by the trait transfusion which mean high aoe heals that can potentially be done every 7s... This will definitely need some tuning down, the support/sustain potential of this skill is insane.

Shrd#5: 20s CD CC skill. It's fine in itself, it bring out some part of GW2 design that I do not like much but, overall, it's ok.

 

So the shroud itself already show things that will need nerfs or at least aren't designed with the core traits in mind. I can already say that the core traits will suffer some nerf or "e-spec specific tweak" to accomodate and that's poor design. Unyielding blast, Dhuumfire, Path of corruption and Transfusion, you poor traits, harbinger will make you suffer yet again...

 

Pistol:

AA: It's fine, neither bad nor good.

Skill#2: By itself it's fine, maybe a tiny bit to much conditions on it. Main complain is that it's an out of shroud shrd#2, making it redundant.

Skill#3: A CC on a main hand weapon, very interesting.

 

At this point I'd say that it's clear that the e-spec have hard CC powercreep.

 

Elixirs:

The idea of taking in blight for boon is nice in itself, I expect the spec to be played mainly with full blight in mind so the elixirs have a high probability of being very important for any harbinger build. The elixirs offer a wide array of boon and, let's be honest, it's nice. Now, I'm a bit more skeptical on the boons durations which seem already over the top.

 

Quickness/support:

As it stand, with what we know at this point, Harbinger will have absolutely no issue keeping up quickness, fury and decent amount of might on a 5 man group all while providing a lot of healing through abuse of transfusion, vampiric aura and regen... I think some serious tuning down is already needed, this spec will be the death of every other 5 man quickness dealer in PvE as it stand.

 

Unknown:

- How will the spec interact with Unholy sanctuary which is the main barrier to such design?

- Will there be enough LF gen out of WvW zerg/open PvE zerg farm to sustain such spec?

 

Gampeplay:

- I can't see such spec becoming meta in WvW large scale fight, to squicshy, not enough range. I see this as a good thing.

- I think it will be pretty fun to use in small scale teamfight with a good healer behind the harbinger.

- It will probably see some use in roaming but I doubt it will shine to brightly there.

- It will most likely be very nice to use in open world group event.

- In open world it probably won't shine for soloing things except with some smart abuse of some runesets.

- I can see it be wildly popular in 5 man PvE group content (dungeon/fractal/other)

- It will probably also shine brightly in 10 man PvE group content.

 

Conclusion:

While it need some tuning down on some aspects as there are forseeable abuses to squeeze out of the harbinger, the aim of the e-spec adress some long seating grief of the necromancer and against the necromancer in a very creative way. From my point of view, the devs did a very good job on the overall design of the e-spec.

[DragonFury.6243]

1 hour ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

this spec will be the death of every other 5 man quickness dealer in PvE as it stand

with quickness FB being a thing i highly doubt that

it offer quickness and aegis and stab and reflect for mechanics 

[susana.7814]

10 minutes ago, DragonFury.6243 said:

with quickness FB being a thing i highly doubt that

it offer quickness and aegis and stab and reflect for mechanics 

Yeah i was thinking that as well. FB just has some op utility. it wont replace fb totally but it does give u another option to play with instead. so that's nice

Edited August 14, 2021 by susana.7814

[Asum.4960]

On 8/14/2021 at 10:42 AM, Dadnir.5038 said:

The harbinger offer a new take on the necromancer and what seem to be a true "glass canon" e-spec for the necromancer. I won't comment on the damage because without tests, it's hard to get a good idea on the true capabilities of the spec in this area.

 

Sustain:

Life force being drained while out of shroud to heal the harbinger is great, the healing value seem nice as well. A very interesting addition.

 

Blight:

The corner stone mechanism of the harbinger. I like the idea behind this mechanism, it truly give the feeling of sacrifice defense for offence and support. There is nothing to change there, it seem obvious that the devs made it so the harbinger have the same base health pool as the elementalist, guardian and thief when at full blight and that's very neet.

 

Harbinger shroud:

Shrd#1: The long awaited splash damage on shrd#1 with what seem to be a decent attack speed. Thank you! Possibly overloaded skill with the shrd#1 core traits and various procs (I mean 2 hits per cast potentially mean: 2 torments, 1 might, 4 vulns, 2 burns and if lucky 2 bleeds on crit).

Shrd#2: 4s CD rain of torment and damage, quite nice in itself. Coupled with path of corruption that affect shrd#2? I can already see it becoming an issue.

Shrd#3: 5s CD movement skill. Nice, nothing to complain about.

Shrd#4: 10s CD movement/evade/daze. Main issue here is that it's a Shrd#4 skill and thus affected by the trait transfusion which mean high aoe heals that can potentially be done every 7s... This will definitely need some tuning down, the support/sustain potential of this skill is insane.

Shrd#5: 20s CD CC skill. It's fine in itself, it bring out some part of GW2 design that I do not like much but, overall, it's ok.

 

So the shroud itself already show things that will need nerfs or at least aren't designed with the core traits in mind. I can already say that the core traits will suffer some nerf or "e-spec specific tweak" to accomodate and that's poor design. Unyielding blast, Dhuumfire, Path of corruption and Transfusion, you poor traits, harbinger will make you suffer yet again...

 

Pistol:

AA: It's fine, neither bad nor good.

Skill#2: By itself it's fine, maybe a tiny bit to much conditions on it. Main complain is that it's an out of shroud shrd#2, making it redundant.

Skill#3: A CC on a main hand weapon, very interesting.

 

At this point I'd say that it's clear that the e-spec have hard CC powercreep.

 

Elixirs:

The idea of taking in blight for boon is nice in itself, I expect the spec to be played mainly with full blight in mind so the elixirs have a high probability of being very important for any harbinger build. The elixirs offer a wide array of boon and, let's be honest, it's nice. Now, I'm a bit more skeptical on the boons durations which seem already over the top.

 

Quickness/support:

As it stand, with what we know at this point, Harbinger will have absolutely no issue keeping up quickness, fury and decent amount of might on a 5 man group all while providing a lot of healing through abuse of transfusion, vampiric aura and regen... I think some serious tuning down is already needed, this spec will be the death of every other 5 man quickness dealer in PvE as it stand.

 

Unknown:

- How will the spec interact with Unholy sanctuary which is the main barrier to such design?

- Will there be enough LF gen out of WvW zerg/open PvE zerg farm to sustain such spec?

 

Gampeplay:

- I can't see such spec becoming meta in WvW large scale fight, to squicshy, not enough range. I see this as a good thing.

- I think it will be pretty fun to use in small scale teamfight with a good healer behind the harbinger.

- It will probably see some use in roaming but I doubt it will shine to brightly there.

- It will most likely be very nice to use in open world group event.

- In open world it probably won't shine for soloing things except with some smart abuse of some runesets.

- I can see it be wildly popular in 5 man PvE group content (dungeon/fractal/other)

- It will probably also shine brightly in 10 man PvE group content.

 

Conclusion:

While it need some tuning down on some aspects as there are forseeable abuses to squeeze out of the harbinger, the aim of the e-spec adress some long seating grief of the necromancer and against the necromancer in a very creative way. From my point of view, the devs did a very good job on the overall design of the e-spec.

 

Agree on the Blight in theory, but we'll have to see how it plays out. Not gaining Shroud (with it's innate 50% damage reduction) or any Barrier already is a massive survivability loss. Being a 11k low HP Light armor class on top then is pretty harsh, considering those other Low HP classes have a lot more ways to defend themselves (be it Mobility + Stealth + Blinds, Aegis Spam, Invulns, Barriers, much more evades). 

Maybe 25 Stacks at 1% each might be more appropriate for general play, making it still extremely glassy, but at least at medium health, considering lack of active defenses. 

This would also provide more visual clarity for the (de)buff bar, meaning, 1 stack is 1%, which at a glance is just cleaner design.

 

As for things like Dhuumfire probably being overtuned, CMC stated in the stream that these have been preemtively nerfed for Harbinger already. 

 

For the Quickness support, I'm not sure what you are seeing that I don't to make you think it blatantly invalidates other specs in that role. 

Considering the amount of boon duration present in the preview, you will have to have ~100% Boon Duration to get 3 seconds of Quickness every 3 seconds from the Trait while in Shroud, as well as to get the 10 second quickness from the Elixiers to just so to cover the out of Shroud CD. 

A single second in your rotation off, a person outside of your 240 range for a single second during mechanics, etc., and Quickness drops. 

Meanwhile the spec has no Aegis spam, optional Stab sharing, Reflects, etc. - I have no idea how Quickbringer is supposed to compete with Quickbrand. 

To me, as it stand from the video, it will have to invest vastly more into BD with therefor likely lower personal Damage to provide much less consistent/tighter Quickness with much less additional Utility. 

If we are considering dumping even more damage and running Blood, at that point it starts competing with Healbrand and that looks even much, much worse for Harbinger. 

So at best to me currently, it seems like a very, very niche pick for Quickness and res support, if you don't quite need a Heal Scourge and really can't find a Quickbrand.

Edited August 15, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Dadnir.5038]

1 minute ago, Asum.4960 said:

As for things like Dhuumfire probably being overtuned, CMC stated in the stream that these have been preemtively nerfed for Harbinger already.

Then this is bad design 😉. They should be able to come up with spec that don't need them to nerf core traits for them specifically.

[WindBlade.8749]

28 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

 

Agree on the Blight in theory, but we'll have to see how it plays out. Not gaining Shroud (with it's innate 50% damage reduction) or any Barrier already is a massive survivability loss. Being a low HP Light armor class on top then is pretty harsh, considering those other Low HP classes have a lot more ways to defend themselves (be it Mobility + Stealth, Aegis Spam, Invulns, Barriers, much more evades).

Since when ?

- Ele main

Seriously you guys gonna get on ele lvl of sustain for few part of your dmg "rotation" so if dev think ele is fine i guess it's will not change i guess ?.

 

But honestly everyone could predict that, you can't give a necro as much dmg as an full dps without removing his sustain ...  (cause why play another thing).

Edited August 14, 2021 by WindBlade.8749

[Asum.4960]

36 minutes ago, WindBlade.8749 said:

Since when ?

- Ele main

Seriously you guys gonna get on ele lvl of sustain for few part of your dmg "rotation" so if dev think ele is fine i guess it's will not change i guess ?.

 

But honestly everyone could predict that, you can't give a necro as much dmg as an full dps without removing his sustain ...  (cause why play another thing).

It will be a even slightly more squishy DPS than Ele, yea (at least as power variant, condi with Tormenting, and Parasitic Contagion for general play, will be just fine). It'll have to be a very clear top DPS to be worth it, but that's just fine with me. About time for Necro.

In any case, I'm not complaining and am going to rock this thing at max Blight all day - for the average playerbase and average play though and considering the QQ on eles in the community, I'm just very much so expecting this feedback, and I don't see this spec being too much at 15k health either, - losing Shroud/Barrier and 25% Health would already a very significant Tradeoff. 

 

Where it does get concerning though is the idea of it supposedly being aimed at to compete with Quickbrand.

Having a 11k HP Quickness bot with no defenses or self sustain, support a bunch of 11k HP DPS eles with no Aegis spam to block attacks, no Stab to prevent CC, and no Barrier or Protection to provide oneshot buffers or anything else either is going to be quite the sight, and I imagine not exactly popular^^

Edited August 14, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Naqam a.6521]

Yeah for PvE . they will keep using Firebrand . He is the king of quickness .

If he can reach  20 blite can he "poison" the boss and other teamember do 8-10% dps ?

 

 

About PvP , i can see either  a tanky build with signet of vampirism and the heal from new shroud  and if they feel chicky they will use Minions .

Or 1-shot , Axe/Focus with the Blite and Might and Shroud

 

Pistol 3 needsto be instant if its 1 sec CC .

Auto attack need an Repeater after dodge or 10 blite have been reached  , or after a dodge or exit shroud , should teleport you 240 yards backwards .

 

The potion part , like Engineers will a long forgotten spell . Maybe the behave like Dodge(travel 300 yards)  without the evade in the direction of your keyboard  ? Or they do 0.75 sec cast time attacks with 1500 damage  ?

 

 

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Naqam a.6521

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Not a Necro main but I would still like to give my thoughts. 

 

In general, the spec looks really fun and I appreciate that ANet is being more bold with how Harbinger is to be played. I'm not going to comment much on the overall balance of the spec, but on its overall vision.

 

It seems like the spec is trying to be too many things at once: power, condi, and boon support. This makes the traitline very bland and unvaried. It just doesn't seem like there will be very many interesting ways to build within the spec. Additionally, two traits are occupied by elixirs which is a totally optional skill type to take. Part of the enjoyment I have in making builds is having competitive choices for traits that have similar or neighboring roles/purposes, but this doesn't really have that. You have your power line, your boon line, and your condi line.

 

The blight mechanic feels unfinished. I really like the idea of it, but IMO they need to build on the mechanic and have the spec interact with it more, rather than have it just there as a debuff that you have to sit and take. The grandmaster line would be the perfect candidate for this as the traits there are all very uninspired. Personally I think it would be cool to give each trait a "when you reach 25 stacks, Harbinger Shroud skill X will be enhanced. Using this enhanced skill will cause blight to decay rapidly over time." 

 

Elixirs are the most boring version of elixirs they could do. I thought that by giving Necro elixirs, they would go really left-field with them, but nah. It's literally almost completely just boons, boons, and more boons. Aside from the elite, none of them seem worth taking unless maybe you are going for a quickness build. What could they change? Well I would like for them to all have an offensive/negative effect on nearby enemies too, to give them more appeal and make them feel more Necro-y. I would also like them to then condense the elixir traits to one that simply reduces recharge by 20% and gives the boon sharing effect (300-360 radius) since the negative effects on enemies would be baseline (and all unique, unlike the trait). Also god I hope the icons are all placeholders. Probably the worst skill icons I have seen in all of GW2.

 

Despite the cirtiques I have, the spec seems extremely fun to play and I can't wait to try it out.

[Dadnir.5038]

27 minutes ago, Za Shaloc.3908 said:

The blight mechanic feels unfinished. I really like the idea of it, but IMO they need to build on the mechanic and have the spec interact with it more, rather than have it just there as a debuff that you have to sit and take. The grandmaster line would be the perfect candidate for this as the traits there are all very uninspired. Personally I think it would be cool to give each trait a "when you reach 25 stacks, Harbinger Shroud skill X will be enhanced. Using this enhanced skill will cause blight to decay rapidly over time." 

 

I think you just don't understand the dynamic of the spec.

 

The whole spec revolve around a single idea: stacking blight and staying at maximum blight as long as possible.

 

To suggest traits that would make the harbinger deliberatly give up on the blight is like denying the intent of the spec's design. Also, what you suggest lack even more inspiration than what the devs did...

 

I get that most player are scared of having a lower health pool, but the harbinger aim at making a low health pool something that the player want. Having a low health pool in case of the harbinger mean that your regen will bring you to 100% faster. It mean that your damage will be higher. It mean that using your big "heal/siphons" to recover will have a higher probability to trigger blood bank and generate barrier... etc.

 

It took many month for people to start using Blood Bank properly because they didn't have the proper mindset and simply didn't heal themself pre-emptively. The Harbinger seem to be in the same line of thought, if you refuse to see the blight as something that you want to have on you and see it as a shackle, you'll have an horrible game experience with the e-spec.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

If you trait for elixir cooldowns, you DON'T want blight.  Yet, you just traited to get it more often.

 

This is very much a design problem.  If Blight is supposed to be a tradeoff mechanic, then that needs to always be the case.  Right now, if you go for support rather than DPS, it's purely a drawback.

[Infusion.7149]

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

The harbinger offer a new take on the necromancer and what seem to be a true "glass canon" e-spec for the necromancer. I won't comment on the damage because without tests, it's hard to get a good idea on the true capabilities of the spec in this area.

 

Sustain:

Life force being drained while out of shroud to heal the harbinger is great, the healing value seem nice as well. A very interesting addition.

 

Blight:

The corner stone mechanism of the harbinger. I like the idea behind this mechanism, it truly give the feeling of sacrifice defense for offence and support. There is nothing to change there, it seem obvious that the devs made it so the harbinger have the same base health pool as the elementalist, guardian and thief when at full blight and that's very neet.

 

Harbinger shroud:

Shrd#1: The long awaited splash damage on shrd#1 with what seem to be a decent attack speed. Thank you! Possibly overloaded skill with the shrd#1 core traits and various procs (I mean 2 hits per cast potentially mean: 2 torments, 1 might, 4 vulns, 2 burns and if lucky 2 bleeds on crit).

Shrd#2: 4s CD rain of torment and damage, quite nice in itself. Coupled with path of corruption that affect shrd#2? I can already see it becoming an issue.

Shrd#3: 5s CD movement skill. Nice, nothing to complain about.

Shrd#4: 10s CD movement/evade/daze. Main issue here is that it's a Shrd#4 skill and thus affected by the trait transfusion which mean high aoe heals that can potentially be done every 7s... This will definitely need some tuning down, the support/sustain potential of this skill is insane.

Shrd#5: 20s CD CC skill. It's fine in itself, it bring out some part of GW2 design that I do not like much but, overall, it's ok.

 

So the shroud itself already show things that will need nerfs or at least aren't designed with the core traits in mind. I can already say that the core traits will suffer some nerf or "e-spec specific tweak" to accomodate and that's poor design. Unyielding blast, Dhuumfire, Path of corruption and Transfusion, you poor traits, harbinger will make you suffer yet again...

 

Pistol:

AA: It's fine, neither bad nor good.

Skill#2: By itself it's fine, maybe a tiny bit to much conditions on it. Main complain is that it's an out of shroud shrd#2, making it redundant.

Skill#3: A CC on a main hand weapon, very interesting.

 

At this point I'd say that it's clear that the e-spec have hard CC powercreep.

 

Elixirs:

The idea of taking in blight for boon is nice in itself, I expect the spec to be played mainly with full blight in mind so the elixirs have a high probability of being very important for any harbinger build. The elixirs offer a wide array of boon and, let's be honest, it's nice. Now, I'm a bit more skeptical on the boons durations which seem already over the top.

 

Quickness/support:

As it stand, with what we know at this point, Harbinger will have absolutely no issue keeping up quickness, fury and decent amount of might on a 5 man group all while providing a lot of healing through abuse of transfusion, vampiric aura and regen... I think some serious tuning down is already needed, this spec will be the death of every other 5 man quickness dealer in PvE as it stand.

 

Unknown:

- How will the spec interact with Unholy sanctuary which is the main barrier to such design?

- Will there be enough LF gen out of WvW zerg/open PvE zerg farm to sustain such spec?

 

Gampeplay:

- I can't see such spec becoming meta in WvW large scale fight, to squicshy, not enough range. I see this as a good thing.

- I think it will be pretty fun to use in small scale teamfight with a good healer behind the harbinger.

- It will probably see some use in roaming but I doubt it will shine to brightly there.

- It will most likely be very nice to use in open world group event.

- In open world it probably won't shine for soloing things except with some smart abuse of some runesets.

- I can see it be wildly popular in 5 man PvE group content (dungeon/fractal/other)

- It will probably also shine brightly in 10 man PvE group content.

 

Conclusion:

While it need some tuning down on some aspects as there are forseeable abuses to squeeze out of the harbinger, the aim of the e-spec adress some long seating grief of the necromancer and against the necromancer in a very creative way. From my point of view, the devs did a very good job on the overall design of the e-spec.

It's probably 80-100% boon duration just to upkeep quickness on a subgroup with no alacrity provided. In order to reduce the survivability and life force deficit I think that plaguedoctor will be the predominant stat choice  if not lich runes for the condi DPS ones.

The new scrapper change should put it on par with Firebrands when the target has phases (see KC, CA, VG, Gors, Samarog, Sloth, Deimos, etc), although you don't have aegis to share (full DPS scrapper is ~32K right now , cQB Is ~32K with allies and ~30K solo). If the shroud can't be maintained then the only quickness you're getting on Harbinger would be from the elite skill and the quickness elixir when traited.

There is more or less no way this is going to be a WVW spec since the shroud mechanic is going to make you implode when focused and the pistol is projectile an the bulk of the damage is torment (which isn't great in WVW anymore). It could be okay in PVP though with Wizard or Carrion amulet probably.

Edited August 14, 2021 by Infusion.7149

[DraconusShade.4590]

8 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

Quickness/support:

As it stand, with what we know at this point, Harbinger will have absolutely no issue keeping up quickness, fury and decent amount of might on a 5 man group all while providing a lot of healing through abuse of transfusion, vampiric aura and regen... I think some serious tuning down is already needed, this spec will be the death of every other 5 man quickness dealer in PvE as it stand.

 

No nerfs are needed. Absolutely none. FB offers perma quickness, aegis as well as reflects and other OP utilities for free. Meanwhile harbinger loses 50% max health while in combat and taking damage to give perma quickness. The massive trade off means the payoff must be massive too, especially since it wont be supplanting FB due to their OP utility.

[felincyriac.5981]

15 hours ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

If you trait for elixir cooldowns, you DON'T want blight.  Yet, you just traited to get it more often.

 

This is very much a design problem.  If Blight is supposed to be a tradeoff mechanic, then that needs to always be the case.  Right now, if you go for support rather than DPS, it's purely a drawback.

They suggested that the elixirs will be stronger than the usual utility skills because they have the tradeoff of giving blight. I don't about you, but they don't seem very strong to me, let alone stronger than normal lol

 

But you are right, if you pick the adept potion trait there goes any interaction with blight.