Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Xanadrine.4352]

1 minute ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

I know 43k is not realistic, is called a benchmark for a reason. You use it as a metric to compare it to the others and have a general idea.

 

Yes HB does not play like Ele at all, it is much easier and actually do those rotation in a real fight scenario. Ele has a high requirement on alacrity and any different attunement to say water requires a much higher down time to get back to dps rotation. The benchmark for HB is unironically much easier to pull off compared to ele. Your biggest concern is taking damage which means your LF drains to heal you, so your shroud timer is likely to be lower as a result but that is minimal because you can still get off the shroud 2 you need.

Im going to wait to see how it does in end game. I cant imagine it will out perform condi weaver.

[Matt H.6142]

I feel the harbinger will have two stories.  In pve, it is an absolute monster, especially with that default loadout we first get with it; full carrion.  I see why Infinite Life was added to the game recently.

In PVP and WVW (which my experience is just the practice npcs and lord) and running a signet dhuumfire condi variant, things change very quickly.  I'm sure a lot of this is true for core necro too.  Chain CC absolutely murders harbinger.  I can see why you'd trait for stab.  And it's absolutely possible to lose all your life force with it healing you out of shroud.  In the very unlikely case you were running all untraited elixir skills, you very much feel like there's nothing you can do.

I still see the point in this playstyle for necro, and its boon support potential.

I still wonder if vile vials and twisted medicine shouldn't swap places though.  I think reducing cooldown on elixirs for more blight out of shroud for wicked and septic corruption damage boosts makes perfect sense.  If you know it to be giving too much access to blight uptime, that's fair.  Vile vials making elixir skills throwable is probably what people are asking for, and I can get behind that in the adept tier.

[Burnlit.1796]

To me Harbinger is a melee necro spec with high risk high rewards. The Blight mechanic makes a more viable daggers dmg build, with marauders. There seems to be a very even 

I wish there was a charge though; I guess you could use a pull. The Shroud seems to be a melee focused too, with a cone atk, charge, leap and a self aoe, but makes the torments it gives useless. Despite the lose of health there is a lot self heals.

 

The constant heals is pretty good, from the shroud and Blood Magic. I don't like that you lose life force for a little healing. When Blight expires you only recover a small portion of your health back. I think how it works, you regain the % of your current health when it expires, instead of the max health. Idk if this is a bug or not.

 

Condi Harbinger feel pretty bad though. Blight make you very fragile while only doing a little bit more dot dmg. You are at a high risk of dying while waiting for your target(s) to die.

 

I guess it can be turn into a powerful snapshotting build If they:

- change the Blight stack into one duration instead of each stack on it's own duration 

- added a way to cleanse the Blight restoring health.

 

A snapshotting gameplay could be: building up the stacks, applying all your torments and removing Blight asap, maybe prevent applying Blight for a bit. 

 

Support Harbinger seem pretty cool to me able to apply almost every boon in game to the party. However, seem very fragile with the lose health. I think the loss of health makes this type of support necro very bad as the other necro support;  like scourge can literally take so much dmg, they are usually the less ones to go down and the ones to bring everyone back up. 

 

Maybe this can add a concentration or healing for each Blight Stack. If it stacks with concentration, then make Twisted Medicine vitality -> healing

[noiwk.2760]

24 minutes ago, Zuldari.3940 said:

I will try that combo tonight , what gear did you use? Pure zerk? Also how was survivability in that spec against other players? 

i only tried in pvp so im clueless outside pvp.. 
however i actually used marauder ammu for the virality and i used divinity rune for the all stat and +10% HP yes i know it sound weird but HP % scale so well on this elite.

then for traits i chose  the new elite power based so basically all the 1 1 1 choices  240 base power? why not.. not even in shroud
i took soul reaping  3/2/1 meaning the clean cc when entering shroud and speed.  the 180 vit and extra healing and eternal life ofc constant regen of life force and protection on shroud  then blood magic 2/3/1 as in movement speed + dagger cd reduce trait to get the movement and also the dagger 33% is really nice .   some spell vamp  and ofc blood bank i know it souund weird but worth try. 

for weapon i use main damage axe + focus  (with the base 240 power it hits hard)
and second set i use dagger + dagger .   i think dagger is underated but..  it has transfer conditions which is useful for necro .. 
and 3 is immubilze and improve healing from dagger 2 dagger 2 is really strong healing and good damage both are 600 range. 

how the build work is .. basically i try go in shroud as less as possible i mainly go into shroud for either escape or close gap  or for free 15% life force + clean cc  and free swiftness basically enter and leave..     also sometimes i use it for the cc or to just burst when i know im safe. 

so you keep getting life force and you keep converting life force into hp so your Hp almost always full so you use dagger 2 to fill barrier with blood bank  it works for me overall good damage.. .  for utility i use consume condition well of power spectral armor and spectral walk and lich form.    you basically have 32k base life and 2400 power base.  60% crit   lich form gives 1k vit taking you to 42k life  and if you have life force you recover life on lich form  so you can stack up blight then go ino lich form and do crazy damage .. also even with 20+ stacks of blight you have like 19-20k life  and your axe/dagger hit reallllyyyy hard..   

[Xanadrine.4352]

15 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

I know 43k is not realistic, is called a benchmark for a reason. You use it as a metric to compare it to the others and have a general idea.

 

Yes HB does not play like Ele at all, it is much easier and actually do those rotation in a real fight scenario. Ele has a high requirement on alacrity and any different attunement to say water requires a much higher down time to get back to dps rotation. The benchmark for HB is unironically much easier to pull off compared to ele. Your biggest concern is taking damage which means your LF drains to heal you, so your shroud timer is likely to be lower as a result but that is minimal because you can still get off the shroud 2 you need. People already ran raids with HB, you can just lookup teapot's videos. It works fine.

I just watch his video, he just said it seems perfectly balanced and not op but needs work . He even said you can not get hit because you lose your shroud/life force and everything plummets. Partially why people in wvw said it kinda sucks, You get hit and poof goes the shroud. But overall in raids he said its not op. He said HB is good design , but that the current meta just blows away not only HB but all the new elites. So tend to listen to him because he knows his stuff.

[Feduddle.5209]

To preface, I am a long time PVE player of mainly glassy classes who has always found necro to be a very easy profession to play.  I do plenty of group content including raids, fractals, strike missions, etc., but my main interest is making builds to solo group content such as fractals, dungeons, and bounties.
 

My first impressions upon seeing the Harbinger were that it looked terrible with lazy reused animations and a weird combination of potions plaguedoctor and kung fu that probably wouldn't be good. 

Boy was I wrong... mostly.  These are my opinions on the Harbinger.

 

Harbinger is an adrenaline rush of a specialization, a true embodiment of risk versus reward.  It's easy to suicide if you're not careful with corruptions, and it requires active condition management in order to be effective.  I threw together a build to solo a few bounties and wow it felt good to play.  It wasn't too tanky like scourge, had better sustain than reaper, and was much more rewarding to play well by maintaining maximum blight stacks as often as possible.  I then took it into group content with a proper damage build along with some friends, and we were able to go all out on damage with a proper support character in the party.  We even had around with boon harbinger which was another pleasant surprise.

Overall, I love the playstyle of harbinger.  I see a fair amount of people complain about how Harbinger is too hard to play with its new shroud mechanic being too unforgiving.  Well I hate to say this, but maybe this elite specialization just wasn't made for them.  It's a very high risk high reward playstyle that plays very differently from other necro specializations.  The pistol feels great, the new shroud is loads of fun especially with the added mobility, and I will definitely be playing around with different builds for Harbinger in the upcoming expansion.

Lastly, the visuals.

The visuals were terrible.  Harbinger is all reused animations from other professions, and it really showed.  Blight and the shroud visuals felt cheap almost as if a filter was just slapped over the character model.  My biggest problem with the class was the visual design for shroud 5.  Mummies??  Really???  The jade pillars in the animation are really cool, but the mummies are obviously just cheap Halloween assets slapped on and it really takes away from how cool the skill really is.  

Please get rid of the mummies.  They are extremely tacky.  If this game actually supported modding, I would gladly go so far as to make a mod to delete the mummies.  Necromancer deserves better animations than this.  In its current form, Harbinger visuals are on par with spooky Halloween decorations sitting in the yard of that one neighbor who gives up halfway through decorating.

In summary, Harbinger is mechanically fantastic, but visually terrible.

[Xanadrine.4352]

2 minutes ago, Thanatos.2691 said:

In summary, Harbinger is mechanically fantastic, but visually terrible.

But I love the green! 

[InsaneQR.7412]

Overall solid.

 

The elixirs feel heavily out of place and seem like low effort copy paste skills.

 

1. Change the icons so that they are better to differentiate

2. Give some of them an offensive effect, like boon corrupt, Conditions etc.

3. Either make some of them throwable or give us the option to make them throwable with the vile vials trait and put the elixir CD reduction on twisted medicine.

 

The pistol bullets are hard to see and better visibility would also be nice. Especially on the AA and the skill 2.

 

The range on the shroud skills are to high for PvP but otherwise most of Shroud is fine. The shroud skill 5 is a tid bit to slow for PvE.

 

Lastly, i woul like to see more synergy for boon support for shroud and pistol.

Pistol and shroud are mainly damage focussed while the elixirs are mainly focussing on boon support which does not mesh well with the rest of th kit.

 

 

[Warscythes.9307]

44 minutes ago, Zuldari.3940 said:

I just watch his video, he just said it seems perfectly balanced and not op but needs work . He even said you can not get hit because you lose your shroud/life force and everything plummets. Partially why people in wvw said it kinda sucks, You get hit and poof goes the shroud. But overall in raids he said its not op. He said HB is good design , but that the current meta just blows away not only HB but all the new elites. So tend to listen to him because he knows his stuff.

That's not actually how the shroud works. You don't instantly lose your shroud if you get hit, you just start to regen your hp and lose shroud. How it happens is if you take a hit, your shroud suffer 1-2 ticks and you get healed back to full from torment runes and your healers.

 

Don't worry about what he thinks, look at how the spec performs. Is he exploding randomly so often compared to specs like eles or thieves? No he's not. That's the main thing to focus on. Damage rotation when he was playing was not perfected, hell he was running elixirs at certain points. The main takeaway is to understand that you are not going to get one shot anymore than an ele of thief will and the shroud loss is nowhere near the level of you get hit once and all your shroud is gone.  

[Will.9785]

Xiuquatl matches the in-game aesthetic of a Harbinger with blight so well... but it will likely be used sparingly because pistol is the main weapon for the spec.

 

It almost makes we want them to move pistol to the off hand (lets face it, our off-hands kind of suck anyway).  Ditch the auto, convert the pistol 2 to pistol 4 and increase the life force/damage/cooldown, convert the pistol 3 to pistol 5 and increase the stun duration/life force/damage/cooldown.  Almost.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Will.9785

[Gregg.3970]

On 8/17/2021 at 5:54 PM, Sunshine.4802 said:

While shroud and pistol skills are great, elixirs just feel incredibly boring and unimpactful

^^ Totally this, I literally spent less than 3 mins on Harbinger: Looked at the Elixirs *yawned many times over* and logged. 

 

I really hope Elixirs are binned. They just seem an extremely easy to implement, can't think of anything better, "copy-paste-all" boring mechanic, and imo are no way anywhere in comparison to Reaper/Scourge.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Gregg.3970

[EuronTheCrowsEye.5106]

Harbinger is fun to play in PvP, I like the design.

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Loss of Shroud for Harbinger Shroud does not justify a loss of vitality without damage mitigation.

a few suggestions.

1) enable normal skills during Harbinger shroud

2) reduce strike damage by a % equal to vitality loss. As it stands the Necromancer does have a way to mitigate condition damage, and yet be vulnerable to it.Thus you retain a risk reward system with damage mitigation.

3 increase the range of Harbinger Shroud skills and Pistol skills to 1200 to match offhand weapons, and normal shroud ranges.

 

I believe if you just apply these three mechanics to the Harbinger it will do well as a class build option.

Edited August 18, 2021 by Tungsten Monarch.6058

[schokelmei.8271]

After about 2 hours on harbinger it feels mediocre at best (roaming)
Basically like all the new elites "you have to sacrifce x while gaining y", but x is too much while y is too bad. This may be a great thing in PVE but cannot work in pvp/wvw without giving the same treatment to old elites. I mean you get "being more squishy than core for maybe 10% more damage. While on core you have no trade-off.
Harbinger condi damage is pretty much the same as on core with the downside that the shroud kills me for no measurable benefit (and having to watch out for reflects)
Similar issue on power compared to Reaper
It feels underwhelming to be honest.

 

Maybe there is a way to make it work, but at the current status I really don't think so and I don't really see a place in WvW besides roaming. 

[Gatimax.9836]

I'm a WvW player, although I also do PvE to farm resources. I spent yesterday playing only with Harbinger and noticed several things already mentioned in this post by other players. My observations are focused on WvW, because in PvE it is always easier to find viable options.

 

BLIGHT - Strength 💪🏼

 

Problems: I feel that the design does not work with execution. If I should be punished for using this feature, shouldn't I be highly benefited by using my own life? After all, why would I do that if it wasn't worth it? As already said, the punishment is extremely excessive for a very low gain.

 

Suggestion: Someone who uses his own life as a resource should  be dreaded for your power. The power that blight provides should be insane strong, to the point of being highly feared by enemies. The suggestion here is that the power gain is exponential, the more you corrupt, the stronger you get, to the point of bordering on insanity.

 

BLIGHT - Management ⚙️

 

Problems: there is no management of this feature other than waiting for it to exit until the cycle starts again. The scale is slow to reach the maximum level, and after the fight ends, you sit a long time waiting until you can return. If you use your life to acquire power, shouldn't you do it efficiently? After all, it's your life we're talking about.

 

Suggestions: there needs to be a way to clean up the blight, because if you start a fight and decide that you need to retreat, shouldn't i be severely punished for it, or even when I'm facing more than one enemy and I can kill one of them, shouldn't I have a way to refresh and keep in the fight? Maybe put the healing skill to clean this up and some elixir of utility also giving access to this feature.

 

PISTOL 🔫

 

Problems: in addition to the animations being repetitive and not unsatisfactory, I feel like it's condition weapon and it frustrates Harbinger Power a lot. I also expected to see something involving the concept of corrosive as you said in the teaser, and in reality I feel like Mesmer borrowed his offhand for the necro to use on the main hand. 

 

Suggestions: in addition to bringing new, more interesting and cohesive animations to the class, I feel that power needs to be increased to be viable in power-based builds. As something unique that only this specialization does, I would like to see corrosive projectiles that ignore reflect. This would bring something really new and very welcome in WvW that is full of reflections. No active buffs here, I'm talking about native passive corrosion, no need to trigger anything for it. Not to be unbalanced, it can be supplied for a grandmaster trait.

 

ELIXIRS 🧴

 

Problems: poor and disconnected icons of necro visual identity. I hope it's only temporary and that the artwork is still being produced. The animations and sounds are boring and not fun. Besides the aesthetic aspect, exilirs are not desirable in consistent builds. Very high cooldowns, unnecessary time casts, effects disconnected from the concept of someone who plays dirty.

 

Suggestions: rework the elixirs from scratch. Unlike the engineer he uses to benefit, the Harbinger should use poisonous and deadly potions to harm his enemies. Here there is plenty of room for creation: application of conditions in area, crowd control, prevent the enemy from receiving boons? (that would be new and wonderful) The elixirs of Harbinger should bring different mechanics than we already have, I should feel that there is something new that is no longer in the kit to consider using.

 

SHROUD 🔋

 

Problems: this may be the point with the least problems. I really liked the kit in general, I just think it needs small polishes to work well, like improving the skill #2 and adding some form of blight management without leaving the shroud. 

 

Suggestions: the necro is known to be a class that applies fear, and even if Harbinger brings new opportunities, I think something of the necro could be preserved here. I miss the fear in the kit very much and I think it could easily be embedded in the #2 skill, using the blight to apply fear in area, consumed the blight stacks and applying more fear seconds as more stacks are consumed. The skill #5 could also have a higher range and here I think it fits the same concept of using stacks to increase its strength. Really, this is a concept that would be welcome in the kit as a whole: how much blight, much more powerful your shroud skills. 

 

TRAITS 🟩

 

Problems: the boon line needs to be improved to be minimally viable and the other two grandmaster traits in addition to giving quickness need to be buffed to become viable options as a choice. I also don't like that the condition construction is based on torment, after all Scourge is focused on that. I'd rather see a poison-based construction that would fit a lot more into the whole concept. 

 

Suggestions: all other classes that give quickness, additionally, give some other boon that makes the kit cohesive. Healbrand provides quickness + aegis, Mesmer provides quickness + alacrity, Scrapper provides quickness + superspeed. To be considered in this role, Harbinger needs to provide something more than quickness, some other rarer boon that makes a difference in fights, and as the options of boons are already well covered, I imagine that providing unblockable attacks for you and allies beyond quickness would be very interesting.

 

That's my considerations for now. In case I feel there's anything else to be added I'll come back here and say it.

Edited August 19, 2021 by Gatimax.9836
Bold

[Exzen.2976]

From a WvW perspective: I genuinely love the way Harvinger plays and its great to have a mobile necro spec. Ive been trying power harbinger (which I really like) and find it does reasonable damage, the sustain is pretty good and you can escape many situations another necro spec would have zero chance of escaping. 

 

I would just echo the other people stating that the elixirs feel a bit unimpactful - it feels like they are lacking interesting effects. 

[Maven.1690]

My guess is things were purposefully under tuned at the start.

But here are my takeaways of minor tune ups and quality of life improvements

 

Since Harbinger shroud does not act as a second life pool we should have access to the utility skills when in it.

Would be nice to be able to heal and or boost stacks of blight while in shroud and even condi cleanse.

 

All the grandmaster trait aoe skills should be 300 radius not 240.

The pulses should not be every 3 seconds but the same stats tuned so a pulse goes off every second.

The pulsing AOE quickness gm trait also needs something else added to it. My suggestion would be super speed.

 

I also suggest the top master trait that gives stability in shroud also make shroud a stun break.

 

Master Pistol trait needs to add an additional condition to pistol 3 skill like chill or torment.

Elixir of ignorance should provide stability over resistance

 

Shroud 5 should be a dark combo field

Shroud 4 should be a blast finisher

 

Maybe have the elite elixir skill also provide super speed

 

Add to one of the offensive utility elixirs to give unblockable for a few attacks.

Overall Power coefficients are quite low PVE WVW and PVP

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Maven.1690
Adding additional feedback

[Urgot.9084]

My Feedback and Ideas to Change Elxier to make them more powerful and some Changes.

 

Shroud : Skill 3 : Now its Leap finisher and also Removes Immoblize

 

                 Skill 4 : now its Blast finisher and increase Cooldown to 20(pvp)

 

                 Skill 5 : Increase Cooldown to 30  now its Poisen field (pvp Wvw)

 

Traits:  Vile Vials: Slow and Invul are removed. each stack of blight reduce your Touhgness by 5. Now Elixiers deals on activation area   of effect damage and apply 1 Condition based on used Elixer. also they create around you a field for 3 second if you have 15 or more stacks of blight.

 

lixier of Promise: chill (2s) on 15+ blight: Water field that removes 1 Condition from you and your allies

 

Elixier of risk: Burn (3s) on 15+ blight: Fire field that deals up to 3 times damage.

 

Elixier of Anglusih :  2x Confusion (3s) on 15+ blight: ethereal field gain 3 times for you and your alies on the field random boons.

 

Elixier of Bliss: 3x Poisen (3s) on 15+ blight: Poisen field apply up to 3 times vuln. and poisen to enemies.

 

Elixier of ignorance : Blind (5s) on 15+ blight: Smoke field: blocks projectiles for 3 sec while you and your allies are on the field.

 

Elixier of Ambition:  all conditions (0,5s) on 15+ blight: lighting field that grants Super Speed 3x you and your allies.

 

Alchemic Vigor : reduce the Vita in all game modes by 40.

 

Dark Gunslinger : no longer grants expetise. Now if you CC an enemie apply Confusion on Enemies (10 sec Cooldown)

 

deatly Haste: reduce the quickenss to 1,5 sec. Now gives 5 Healpower and 0,5% Boon Duration per Blight stack. Entering shroud lets you Evade attack (0.5s).

 

Cascading Corruption: Power removed. now gives 5 Power and 0.5% crit chance per blight stack. Entering Shroud also gives super Speed (2s).

 

Doom Apporoaches: Condition Damage removed. Now gives  5 Condition Damage 0,5% Condition Duration per Blight stack. Entering Shroud Removes 5 Blight and you gain Torment.

 

 

Out of Shroud Reduce the Life force lose to 3,5%. (to reduce the out of shroud Sustain.)

 

 

[Phazon.3975]

1 hour ago, Thanatos.2691 said:

To preface, I am a long time PVE player of mainly glassy classes who has always found necro to be a very easy profession to play.  I do plenty of group content including raids, fractals, strike missions, etc., but my main interest is making builds to solo group content such as fractals, dungeons, and bounties.
 

My first impressions upon seeing the Harbinger were that it looked terrible with lazy reused animations and a weird combination of potions plaguedoctor and kung fu that probably wouldn't be good. 

Boy was I wrong... mostly.  These are my opinions on the Harbinger.

 

Harbinger is an adrenaline rush of a specialization, a true embodiment of risk versus reward.  It's easy to suicide if you're not careful with corruptions, and it requires active condition management in order to be effective.  I threw together a build to solo a few bounties and wow it felt good to play.  It wasn't too tanky like scourge, had better sustain than reaper, and was much more rewarding to play well by maintaining maximum blight stacks as often as possible.  I then took it into group content with a proper damage build along with some friends, and we were able to go all out on damage with a proper support character in the party.  We even had around with boon harbinger which was another pleasant surprise.

Overall, I love the playstyle of harbinger.  I see a fair amount of people complain about how Harbinger is too hard to play with its new shroud mechanic being too unforgiving.  Well I hate to say this, but maybe this elite specialization just wasn't made for them.  It's a very high risk high reward playstyle that plays very differently from other necro specializations.  The pistol feels great, the new shroud is loads of fun especially with the added mobility, and I will definitely be playing around with different builds for Harbinger in the upcoming expansion.

Lastly, the visuals.

The visuals were terrible.  Harbinger is all reused animations from other professions, and it really showed.  Blight and the shroud visuals felt cheap almost as if a filter was just slapped over the character model.  My biggest problem with the class was the visual design for shroud 5.  Mummies??  Really???  The jade pillars in the animation are really cool, but the mummies are obviously just cheap Halloween assets slapped on and it really takes away from how cool the skill really is.  

Please get rid of the mummies.  They are extremely tacky.  If this game actually supported modding, I would gladly go so far as to make a mod to delete the mummies.  Necromancer deserves better animations than this.  In its current form, Harbinger visuals are on par with spooky Halloween decorations sitting in the yard of that one neighbor who gives up halfway through decorating.

In summary, Harbinger is mechanically fantastic, but visually terrible.

 

I 100% agree with this post.

 

When the spec was first teased with the silhouette, a necromancer getting pistol just made no sense to me but it did have the sorta "witch hunter" or perhaps sort of a plaguedoctor (the more traditional ones) look to it, especially with the flask. So I gave it the benefit of the doubt and was hoping they could get creative with the spec. Perhaps it would toss acid vials or vials full of diseases/miasmas/plagues as it would fit Cantha because if I remember correctly in Shing Jea the necromancers studied diseases.

 

What we got was the most basic thing possible with almost no creativity to the skills, traits, and overall theme/flavor.

 

I actually didn't even want to try it, but I decided to bite the bullet and check out last night. And admittedly, I hate that I like it lol. The gameplay I mean is very fun. It's a rush. And quite powerful for PvE. I didn't find myself using any of the elixirs however. They are way too boring (icons too) and feel rather lackluster compared to other utility skills. And being able to use HOPE on a Necromancer is always a perk.  😛

 

The thing is what is preventing me from getting on my Holosmith and equipping a pistol and a bunch of elixirs? They have a form. They are just as tanky. They have a gap closer and AoE knock-up while in forge. It's pretty much the same.

 

Honestly, and without hate as I loved this franchise since Guild Wars, these new elite specs just feel like a situation where it's "let's just use whatever we have and try to make something "new" out of it." These specs just don't feel like there's anything new or fresh. They straight out feel lazy. And I'm not a fan of let's "fill in whatever a class can't do yet." Every class should have an identity and it's strengths and weaknesses. That's the imagination one gets when they get into the game for the very first time and looks at his or her class choices. You choose the profession for it's theme, not mechanics. And Necromancer is a class of dark magic and attrition. If every class plays the same, then I feel they lose their point.

[Razariel.5091]

Feels like a weaker, squishier, much younger sibling of the other necro specializations, who finally gets to go outside and join big bro because they wouldn't stop pestering, but then when they finally go outside they get beat up, and realize that they weren't as ready as they thought that they were to play with the big boys. 

Edited August 18, 2021 by Razariel.5091

[trixantea.1230]

Tried a full celecstial harbringer with firebrand runes as a PvE condi quickness build. Ther results were better than I expected and I had 99.93% quickness uptime. I can also garantee that this build has at the very least 20k dps on golem.

 

Scepter/Pistol + Dagger

Elixir or Promise + Elixir of Anguish + Summon Shadow Fiend + Blood is Power + Plaguelands.

Curses: 2-1-3

Soul reaping 1-1-3

Harbringer 3-2-2

Condi + expertise food.

[KarlFranzOtto.7863]

in my opinion the exciting mechanic of Harbinger is the blight stacks....

 

But it feels really boring and not punishing at all. if you get blight you lose some max health, but you get damage for it. and if you are at max stats you dont really care if you get more blight stacks or not, you cannot get punished more.

In my opinion it should be really punishing if you go to crazy with blight. so for example:
max blight stacks are 30 stacks. 
you lose 2% health each stack(so on max stack only 40% health).
But you only get for up to 20 blight stacks a damage increase.
 

that makes the play with blight way more interesting, because to deal good damage you want to have 20 stacks, but you do not really want to have more blight stacks, because than you just lose more health. So you need to play more around the blight to keep the stacks only on 20 and not higher. 
 

Second example with the same throughts behind it:

max blight stacks 30 stacks

lose 2% health each stack but only until 25stacks

POWER trait: gain 1% bonus strike damage for each stack to a max of 20. deal 2% less condi damage for each stack over 20 to up to 20% less condi damage at 30stacks of blight 

Condi trait: gain 1% bonus condi damage for each stack to a max of 20. deal 2% less strike damage for each stack over 20 to up to 20% less strike damage at 30stacks of blight.

this example forces you to care about your blight stacks in the way that to get the max damaeg bonus you only want 20 stacks and not more to get even less health. But to prevent that people that only want to deal the best damage just still take the max blight stacks you actually deal less damage if you have to many blight stacks. its not much of a damage loss but its a damage loss.

 

these are just examples and i hope they give some new way to look at the blight mechanic. So that i hope you will make the blight mechanic for inteesting and really punishing in the way that you really care and dont want to be at max blight stacks.

[Kolzark.8569]

I dont like necro being a glass cannon ive not been a necro main for 6+ years because i want to be a glass cannon thats ele job, i know new specs need to feel different but harbringer dont feel like necro at all, ok that was my rant and now for what i think could be better, i think we need our shroud second hp back because that would give us some protection but still make us squishy when we go out of shroud, also blight needs to be lower 50% less hp at max blight is too much and elixirs need some change maybe make some elixirs able to be thrown that remove boons or give conditions. ( I know my grammar is horrible but please bear with me)

[wickedkae.4980]

After playing with this class I must first say that the dev team has lost the basic concept of what a necro is and why it is played.  This new class adds nothing to a necro for reasons why people play a necro.  No new pets, nothing that deals with the concept of the undead and nothing at all makes you think "ya, this is what a necro is supposed to be!"  I showed 2 friends this class as they were thinking about playing a necro and they were utterly confused what was going on.  They then asked if there we real pet builds and of course I had to say no.  Pets have been abandoned by anet for some reason.  I can not stress that this direction the devs have taken with the necro is many steps backwards to the point is befuddling.  This class makes it very clear the devs do not understand the basic mindset of a person who plays a necro.  I understand that the hot new thing in media is to subvert people's expectations and I can assure you this mindset has destroyed many beloved properties.  Anet appears to have ignored these lessons to the fullest.

 

So how is the actual class?  Feels like I am just playing a new thief variation.  Everything I was doing as a harbinger made way more sense for a thief to be doing.  The elixirs are absolutely ridiculous and pointless.  The engineer and thief were simply robbed and I have no idea why.  I have no clue what they were going in this design choice for a necro.  Imagine if they had given us the ability to customize new pets instead of whatever these elixirs do.  Jumping around like a thief was fine and was doing good damage, but it just isn't fun to play.  If I wanted this type of play style I would be on my thief.  I'm now wondering if the thief will get pets.

 

I understand none of these design choices will be changed, so once again the necro gets an expansion that has nothing to do with a necro.  We can summon sand for some reason like an elementalist would and now we can jump around like a thief, but we do nothing regarding playing a necro.  Maybe the next expansion 5 years from now will introduce a real necro class, but seeing as this is the direction the powers that be at Anet are taking, I have little hope that the current devs can achieve the original dream.  How unfortunate. 

 

[vilkanor.3072]

I rolled an Harbinger after playing a Willbender.

TLDR: WOW! it's like having godmode on permanently,  in WvW is just a beast

if the plan was to design a completely overpowered lootbags-collector then you definitely achieved this goal