Harbinger is unusable aside from open world, Change my Mind!

[LucianDK.8615]

People dramatically overstate how much defense you alone can get from two dodges when necros have nothing else. The profession was built to facetank.

[schokelmei.8271]

On 8/17/2021 at 6:55 PM, Cyninja.2954 said:

Necros over the years:

Shroud is useless. It provides near no additional survivability. Buff necro and give us more damage. Take our shroud and additional vitality if you want.

 

New elite spec doing just that and the gut reaction is:

We are to squishy! Give us back shroud. Blight is far to penalizing and puts us at a healthpoint pool of an elementalist. Please fix.

 

The main issue here is:

After years of whining and eventually becoming THE problem profession in multiple game modes requiring subsequent nerfs of scourge (it's been 4 years bois) the expectations are totally out of whack as far as survivability and performance go (not only on necro).

 

That is not to say some other classes do not deserve a good toning down. Which I am sure will happen once EoD launches as to incentivize the new elites.

 

Why would a Mesmer main get into a Necromancer forum to complain and tell Necromancer players what they think? 

[Cyninja.2954]

6 minutes ago, gebrechen.5643 said:

 

Why would a Mesmer main get into a Necromancer forum to complain and tell Necromancer players what they think? 

and you are getting that I am a mesmer main from what? My profile pic? Cute.

 

I have 4 necros. In fact I play necro regularly and have been actively defending the class and encouraging players play it in the past even while forum warrior necros were dead set that the class was trash (power Reaper after the initial rework but before it was OP and nerfed again).

 

That doesn't mean I need to agree with nonsense arguments. 

[Warscythes.9307]

9 minutes ago, gebrechen.5643 said:

 

Why would a Mesmer main get into a Necromancer forum to complain and tell Necromancer players what they think? 

You can play more than 2 classes.

 

I am a necro main, this is a topic that has been talked about for years. People have asked for this.

[schokelmei.8271]

5 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

and you are getting that I am a mesmer main from what? My profile pic? Cute.

 

I have 4 necros. In fact I play necro regularly and have been actively defending the class and encouraging players play it in the past even while forum warrior necros were dead set that the class was trash (power Reaper after the initial rework but before it was OP and nerfed again).

 

That doesn't mean I need to agree with nonsense arguments. 

 

That's why I saw you posting mostly mesmer stuff over the years, right?

[schokelmei.8271]

10 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

You can play more than 2 classes.

 

I am a necro main, this is a topic that has been talked about for years. People have asked for this.

 

Yes, as a trade-off for real defense maybe? As a necro main you should know that shroud was sadly mostly your only defensive cooldown (ie second hp bar) which needed to be used for offensive too, while all other classes are loaded with teleports, invulnerabilities and mobility without having to sacrifice anything.

Harbinger is a bad version of Condition Core right now and a terrible version of Reaper, because it sacrifices the Shroud for nothing in exchange. This "may" work in a closed environment with crippled stats like PvP, but will never be viable in any form in WvW. The elixirs aren't worth taking, the pistol yells for being reflected and the mobility is worse than Wurm or Spectral Walk.

 

[Warscythes.9307]

Just now, gebrechen.5643 said:

 

Yes, as a trade-off for real defense maybe? As a necro main you should know that shroud was sadly mostly your only defensive cooldown (ie second hp bar) which needed to be used for offensive too, while all other classes are loaded with teleports, invulnerabilities and mobility without having to sacrifice anything.

Harbinger is a bad version of Condition Core right now and a terrible version of Reaper, because it sacrifices the Shroud for nothing in exchange. This "may" work in a closed environment with crippled stats like PvP, but will never be viable in any form in WvW. The elixirs aren't worth taking, the pistol yells for being reflected and the mobility is worse than Wurm or Spectral Walk.

 

I don't talk about WvW because I don't participate enough in it. But to completely dismiss a spec because it can't perform in one mode in the game is nonsense. There are plenty of specs that really only do well in 1-2 areas of the game. Even when spellbreaker was overpowered, when do you see them in PvE? How often do you see druids in PvP? etc 

 

[Cyninja.2954]

23 minutes ago, gebrechen.5643 said:

 

That's why I saw you posting mostly mesmer stuff over the years, right?

 

Yes, I post in multiple forums (and ironically I haven't been posting in the mesmer forum in decades, but that is beside the point I guess. After all, you have seen me post there at some point in time), usually related to classes I play.

 

Your point besides grasping at straws?

 

EDIT:

Here, I'll do you a favor. I summed up the time I have spent on my necros: 1,048 hours total. That's 43.6 days played on the class. In general strait in content without idling somewhere. That's around 1/10th of my account age.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Wintermute.5408]

I just can't get any hype for HB damage, because we've been through all this with Scourge. "Hey look, shroudless necro with support! Here comes the damage! Finally". It took a rework of the whole kittening torment for Scourge to get decent damage. And along the way it got swamped in survivability despite not having shroud.

 

While I still maintain my position that HB is squishy beyond reason, it also seems to combine that with utterly idiotic levels of sustain that put Scourge to shame. First of all, this is terrible survivability balance. Second, you can bet this will be counted against its damage potential when the nerfs to 45k DPS inevitably happen. I don't believe that it will retain anything close to 40k.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Wintermute.5408

[Warscythes.9307]

14 minutes ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

I just can't get any hype for HB damage, because we've been through all this with Scourge. "Hey look, shroudless necro with support! Here comes the damage! Finally". It took a rework of the whole kittening torment for Scourge to get decent damage. And along the way it got swamped in survivability despite not having shroud.

 

While I still maintain my position that HB is squishy beyond reason, it also seems to combine that with utterly idiotic levels of sustain that put Scourge to shame. First of all, this is terrible survivability balance. Second, you can bet this will be counted against its damage potential when the nerfs to 45k DPS inevitably happen. I don't believe that it will retain anything close to 40k.

Here's the funny thing, scourge is still doing too much damage. It is benching 36k which is insane because the rotation it does is actually very practical compared to specs such as DE or weavers. It has a very simple rotation, still provide some barrier via F3 and has incredible dps uptime because it functions completely fine ranged while being incredibly tanky. Don't use scourge as an example because in theory it should have one of the lowest dps in the game. However that is another topic entirely, but try not to think too hard on scourge at the moment.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Warscythes.9307

[Wintermute.5408]

Just now, Warscythes.9307 said:

Here's the funny thing, scourge is still doing too much damage. It is benching 36k which is insane because the rotation it does is actually very practical compared to specs such as DE or weavers. It has a very simple rotation, still provide some barrier via F3 and has incredible dps uptime because it functions completely fine ranged. Don't use scourge as an example because in theory it should have one of the lowest dps in the game. However that is another topic entirely, but try not to think too hard on scourge at the moment.

Who are we kidding, as long as guardians are up to their usual kitten, any necro is fine -_-

[Asum.4960]

16 hours ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

My feeling right now is that you are vastly overrating the amount of defense ele gets from geo and barriers in comparison to constant 12.5%-25% damage reduction modifier for blight were it introduced. Ele has the downstate meme right now for a reason, but they have always been this squishy, they just did overwhelming amount of damage to make up for it. "Bringing harbring" up to ele level so people will not get randomly one shot means nothing because if ele gets one shot then your proposal would still mean harbringer get one shot. It is why I am saying we either buff everyone or we just leave it be, because I don't want the other classes who had this issue for years get shafted.

 

Until then if you want one shot buffer? You can actually do it yourself, take trailblazer. Dps tradeoff is minimal and then just replace as you see fit as you get more comfortable. I did dhuum green kite for a long time at the raid release with trailblazer because I wasn't used to the fight, slowly replaced the pieces with viper and voila. Nowadays you just run torment runes though.

 

Rotation difficulty wise? Absolutely, is not fair comparing weaver rotation to harbringer rotation. The question though is how much dps. How much dps should a class do if the rotation is so much harder compared to a spec that work by pressing 2 buttons? Like say condi thieves. I have my opinions but I don't really have an exact number, but I do think it should be included when factoring balance because real fight is not golem benchmark unless we are talking about chess. You have to think about things like range, movement, mechanics, if you can trade your dps utility for other utility for minimal dps loss etc etc.

 

I think the crux of our difference right now is this "Harbinger's squishyness is an extreme." I think I agree in the sense that yes it is extremely squishy but no I don't think is extreme. Because I think this is about on par with ele level of extreme squish and you can offset it with trailblazer. So if you want to buff Harbinger defense, buff ele and thieves as well, they need it just as much as Harbinger does and adjust dps accordingly.

 

Yes, the spec will still get oneshot after a small passive mitigation addition enough, so what's the harm? It least it will get oneshot less in entirely unfun ways by attacks that were never meant to have that potential in terms of (lack of) telegraphs and counterplay. 

 

As for trading in damage for more innate tankyness on Harbinger via stat sets, the problem with that line of thought is that you are then just better off playing Scourge (or Reaper, or another profession) all together. You don't have to worry about toughness tanking (which these days is generally kept to an absolute minimum of toughness), you get more tankyness out of it, you get additional group support in form of Barrier and Cleanses, and, especially after damage nerfs that will come for Harbinger, probably do around the same or more damage. 

So.. why do we have Harbinger again in that world? To stroke the dps peen of <0.1% of the player base? That's the entire niche for the spec? 

Even being part of that 0.1% that can and will utilize Harbinger to that effect, I think that's silly. 

 

You can be sure there will be a lot of complaining about the Harbinger simplicity, and it will lead to nerfs to it's damage, along with a general tune down from the ~45k currently.

Then there will be further complaining about Harbinger's sustain (even though tankyness and sustain work together like Precision and Ferocity, with Harbinger in that analogy basically being a spec with insane crit damage (sustain) but no crit chance (extreme squishyness) to make it work well). But just the fact that it has that sustain, will lead to further tune downs of it's damage to appease the whining.

At the end of those nerfs, if you have been watching Anet's balancing at all over the years, you'll end up with a squishier Ele that does about the same or lower DPS - which is imo why it's better to call for at least defensive parity before the damage tune down of Harbinger happens, because then it at least has that. 

 

Last of all, it's not like Weaver can't also wear Trailblazer (with 75% of it's damage being condition based), in addition to at least having a minimum of passive defense. So I'm not sure how that's an argument against Harbinger at least having the same amount of passive damage mitigation, especially since it has less active options on top of that as well. 

Geo is literally a 10% passive mitigation, so I'm not sure how I'm "vastly overrating" that compared to the idea of giving Harbinger a 12.5%, in combination with Weaver's small, sure, but existing Barrier buffers, as well as sheer countless optional picks to quickly slot in for general play, from Lava Skin to Stone Resonance to Earthen Vortex to Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh and on and on and on, which Necro simply has sheer non of in it's core.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Kronos.2560]

Speaking in PVE at least. Just want to say while we you do loose quite a lot of health and you cant just face tank things as easily you do have quite the burst and healing ability with torment runes. Multiple hits per shot from Shroud 1, shroud 2 fans with torment. You now have a shroud 4 dodge/evade. As well as pistol for multi shots dealing torment. 

 

Yes you cant just stand there and hit 1 but this spec can still quite easily solo HPs and in a group hit hard not to mention group quickness and might. 

 

While I would like to see things like Fear added to shroud 3 or shroud 4. I think this spec is in a decent place after playing it. My fear is that its DPS is too high and it will get nerfed to be comparable to the shroud specs. Once that happens it will be useless because you give up shroud face tanking for nothing. But for now I think the tradeoff is worth it. 

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

1 hour ago, Asum.4960 said:

Yes, the spec will still get oneshot after a small passive mitigation addition enough, so what's the harm? It least it will get oneshot less in entirely unfun ways by attacks that were never meant to have that potential in terms of (lack of) telegraphs and counterplay. 

 

As for trading in damage for more innate tankyness on Harbinger via stat sets, the problem with that line of thought is that you are then just better off playing Scourge (or Reaper, or another profession) all together. You don't have to worry about toughness tanking (which these days is generally kept to an absolute minimum of toughness), you get more tankyness out of it, you get additional group support in form of Barrier and Cleanses, and, especially after damage nerfs that will come for Harbinger, probably do around the same or more damage. 

So.. why do we have Harbinger again in that world? To stroke the dps peen of <0.1% of the player base? That's the entire niche for the spec? 

Even being part of that 0.1% that can and will utilize Harbinger to that effect, I think that's silly. 

 

You can be sure there will be a lot of complaining about the Harbinger simplicity, and it will lead to nerfs to it's damage, along with a general tune down from the ~45k currently.

Then there will be further complaining about Harbinger's sustain (even though tankyness and sustain work together like Precision and Ferocity, with Harbinger in that analogy basically being a spec with insane crit damage but no crit chance). But just the fact that it has that sustain, will lead to further tune downs of it's damage to appease the whining.

At the end of those nerfs, if you have been watching Anet's balancing at all over the years, you'll end up with a squishier Ele that does about the same or lower DPS - which is imo why it's better to call for at least defensive parity before the damage tune down of Harbinger happens, because then it at least has that. 

 

Last of all, it's not like Weaver can't also wear Trailblazer (with 75% of it's damage being condition based), in addition to at least having a minimum of passive defense. So I'm not sure how that's an argument against Harbinger at least having the same amount of passive damage mitigation, especially since it has less active options on top of that as well. 

Geo is literally a 10% passive mitigation, so I'm not sure how I'm "vastly overrating" that compared to the idea of giving Harbinger a 12.5%, in combination with Weaver's small, sure, but existing Barrier buffers, as well as sheer countless optional picks to quickly slot in for general play, from Lava Skin to Stone Resonance to Earthen Vortex to Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh and on and on and on, which Necro simply has sheer non of in it's core.

I want to say something that I think people don't even realize.
Say you want to use shroud to burst someone down? At the eyes of a good player, you just given a ticket to locking you down, and bursting you down. And if the burst somehow didn't kill you, they will pressure you to finish you off, and There is almost nothing you can do about it. You don't have access to your utility skills while in shroud. I mean, you can turn off shroud while stunned, so at least anet were generous enough to give us that, but that doesn't stop the lockdown problem we necro had for YEARS! And some idiot in the gw2 discord were telling me to "Git gud." and to bait people's cc. Like great, yeah. That's the solution. Like it does anything remotely note worthy of our lockdown problem, our survival problem. But hey, we can do 45k dps, so harbinger don't need the survivability....

Despite the fact that thief can easily burst people down while having, Perma stealth, evade, vigor, blind, mobility and shadowstep, and a extra dodge bar. So you know, we necro gotta have to deal with another 3-4 yeara until we get a expansion that has the chance for a elite spec that actually protects you like thief, mesmer, warrior, and so many others. Harbinger makes Necro's weakness far more apparent, it's painful.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267

[Warscythes.9307]

1 hour ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

I want to say something that I think people don't even realize.
Say you want to use shroud to burst someone down? At the eyes of a good player, you just given a ticket to locking you down, and bursting you down. And if the burst somehow didn't kill you, they will pressure you to finish you off, and There is almost nothing you can do about it. You don't have access to your utility skills while in shroud. I mean, you can turn off shroud while stunned, so at least anet were generous enough to give us that, but that doesn't stop the lockdown problem we necro had for YEARS! And some idiot in the gw2 discord were telling me to "Git gud." and to bait people's cc. Like great, yeah. That's the solution. Like it does anything remotely note worthy of our lockdown problem, our survival problem. But hey, we can do 45k dps, so harbinger don't need the survivability....

Despite the fact that thief can easily burst people down while having, Perma stealth, evade, vigor, blind, mobility and shadowstep, and a extra dodge bar. So you know, we necro gotta have to deal with another 3-4 yeara until we get a expansion that has the chance for a elite spec that actually protects you like thief, mesmer, warrior, and so many others. Harbinger makes Necro's weakness far more apparent, it's painful.

I don't know if you are talking about PvP or WvW, but I don't know WvW well so I am going to talk about PvP. But harbringer is pretty tanky in PvP, you just take carrion and the scourge build. The only difference is that if you are super focused, you TURN OFF your shroud when getting focused after using your dashes. Because turning it off lets you start to regen. If you are getting focused on so many people that you are getting melted even with 30k hp then you are in the wrong spot. Spectral walk and wurm are default builds at the moment and they are both pretty good escapes. 

 

I am not going to claim the spec is like SB tier of tanky but it is nowhere as squishy as people thinks judging from playing.

[Warscythes.9307]

3 hours ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

Who are we kidding, as long as guardians are up to their usual kitten, any necro is fine -_-

Let's not think too hard about FB either because that is the other POF spec that's problematic ever since release.

 

3 hours ago, Asum.4960 said:

Yes, the spec will still get oneshot after a small passive mitigation addition enough, so what's the harm? It least it will get oneshot less in entirely unfun ways by attacks that were never meant to have that potential in terms of (lack of) telegraphs and counterplay. 

 

As for trading in damage for more innate tankyness on Harbinger via stat sets, the problem with that line of thought is that you are then just better off playing Scourge (or Reaper, or another profession) all together. You don't have to worry about toughness tanking (which these days is generally kept to an absolute minimum of toughness), you get more tankyness out of it, you get additional group support in form of Barrier and Cleanses, and, especially after damage nerfs that will come for Harbinger, probably do around the same or more damage. 

So.. why do we have Harbinger again in that world? To stroke the dps peen of <0.1% of the player base? That's the entire niche for the spec? 

Even being part of that 0.1% that can and will utilize Harbinger to that effect, I think that's silly. 

 

You can be sure there will be a lot of complaining about the Harbinger simplicity, and it will lead to nerfs to it's damage, along with a general tune down from the ~45k currently.

Then there will be further complaining about Harbinger's sustain (even though tankyness and sustain work together like Precision and Ferocity, with Harbinger in that analogy basically being a spec with insane crit damage but no crit chance). But just the fact that it has that sustain, will lead to further tune downs of it's damage to appease the whining.

At the end of those nerfs, if you have been watching Anet's balancing at all over the years, you'll end up with a squishier Ele that does about the same or lower DPS - which is imo why it's better to call for at least defensive parity before the damage tune down of Harbinger happens, because then it at least has that. 

 

Last of all, it's not like Weaver can't also wear Trailblazer (with 75% of it's damage being condition based), in addition to at least having a minimum of passive defense. So I'm not sure how that's an argument against Harbinger at least having the same amount of passive damage mitigation, especially since it has less active options on top of that as well. 

Geo is literally a 10% passive mitigation, so I'm not sure how I'm "vastly overrating" that compared to the idea of giving Harbinger a 12.5%, in combination with Weaver's small, sure, but existing Barrier buffers, as well as sheer countless optional picks to quickly slot in for general play, from Lava Skin to Stone Resonance to Earthen Vortex to Arcane Shield, Mist Form, Obsidian Flesh and on and on and on, which Necro simply has sheer non of in it's core.

I wrote an entire essay and I think I can condense it a lot better.

 

tl;dr: I am not opposed to adding defense to harbinger, but it need to be done to ele and thieves as well because their survivability is just as bad especially because of how long it is. If that cannot be done then harbinger, ele and thief dps need to be brought to the amount of dps that is worth the trade off.

 

Also this is more of a nitpick but ele getting one shot is not often you literally die from full hp from one attack unless is a big attack like KC slam, which you should dodge. It is more you take maybe 7k from a hit and your healer does not heal you fast enough. Then you just die from raid aura, harbinger doesn't care about this because it sustains quite a bit due to torment runes and shroud healing. HB is a lot more defensive than you think. 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Warscythes.9307