Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Doggochills.5710]

I have overall loved Harbinger.

I feel like it needs to be tuned a little bit more since it feels too powerful in some occasions, specially in competitive play like PvP.

I also feel like elixirs need something else to make them feel like a greater part of the Harbinger experience, as I don't find myself using them as much as I would like to because I just don't find them super interesting.
This being said, I really enjoyed the different playstyles the elixirs provide thanks to the trait that shares the buffs to other people, it feels refreshing and extremely fun to play around with it.

Something I've heard some people talk about is Blight and how it's displayed in the health pool. I feel that Blight could be displayed like the Scourge's shield, but instead of being yellow and at the top of the health pool, it could be purple and at the bottom of the health pool. This would ease out calculating how much health the player has left, instead of having to do math in your head to determine how much health you can play around with.

Pistol feels good, it's the right combination between condi and power damage. The only thing I find a bit off is the auto-attack. Maybe after the third auto-attack you could shoot a bullet that inflicts torment or poison or something like that.

Again, I have really enjoyed Harbinger so far, and apart from the above mentioned, I feel like this is a great elite specialization! 😄

Edited August 19, 2021 by Doggochills.5710
Forgot to add information about pistol and formatting edits.

[Ballistic.2570]

WvW feedback for Harbinger.

It's pretty much all bad. In it's current state this spec will not be welcome in any guild or blob fights. There are a number of issues with the spec. The basic playstyle that evolved in my group was to buff with Elixer of Risk and Elixer of Ambition, then pop shroud to enter your 'dps phase'. The first issue is that the skills are condi and we are in a cleanse meta, so they get cleansed very quickly. The second issue is that Tainted Bolts and Dark Barrage are both projectile skills and there are rather a lot of reflect skills in the game, making it very easy for enemies to completely mitagate your ranged potential, and in full release you will see idiot pugs stacking a bunch of torment on their own group as they spam those skills into various reflect abilities. The third issue is the lack of synergy between the remaing skills in shroud, 2 leaps and one AoE, so your thinking, leap in, drop AoE, then leap out. But neither leap has the ability to "remove movement impairing effects" so in reality, you leap in, drop aoe, get stunned, try to drop shroud to pop Elixir of Ignorance for a stunbreak but too late your dead. Also the AoE Vital Draw is quite finnicky, it has to be targeted AND it has to hit, meaning the cast can be blocked or evaded etc so it only goes off about half the time. And on top of all that when you go into shroud you quickly have your HP pool halved. Making it quite high risk with pretty low reward on offer. 

 

To be clear the biggest issues are the fact that it's a condi spec (easy to cleanse) that relies on projectiles (will be reflected) to inflict most of it's damage.

 

I hope this helps and thank you for the beta.

 

[Pooh.6897]

i only play PvE open world with sometimes fractals or dungeons so view my feedback in that light.
Pistol - the weapon felt quite fun. I did find the power potential quite underwhelming. To me it feels that pistol is innately a condi weapon. I still think either mace or sword would have been a better choice but pistol feels unique. However it is clear to me that the power/condi duality just does not work which is also apparent in staff. I was bummed to see that scepter still easily outperforms pistol and even axe on powerbuilds is a better choice.

elixers - sorry Anet but I need to go hard on this one. When compared to other skills, all i can say is that elixers feel incredibly underwhelming and weak to use. Actually reaching 25 stacks of blight is extremely difficult unless you pick 3 potion skills, leaving only 2 spots for blood is power and then signet of undead. While the idea of boons for necro is fun, even for an open world player like me, the tuning felt unnecessarily cautious.

traits - feel heavily balanced towards condi damage. 180 power for a GM is also incredibly low and I would like to see it raised to 300. The damaging pulse is a joke, it would be more beneficial to pick the condi one instead because of the giant damage difference. Same goes for the trait that gives power for blight. The added poison damage on the condi counterpart just tells me that Anet intended this as a condi spec.

shroud - kung fu necro is fun, but only spamming skill 1 and 2 is not. I think it is an enormous mistake that i cant access my other skills while in shroud. If you really want to make the shroud stand out do this change. Also dhuumfire nerf is not needed imo.

edit: now i think about it, introducing a melee weapon would also make me feel the downside much more. Missing half of my health while far away is not really a problem at all. It would be more interesting if I had to get in there with less health. Also as others pointed out, none of the offhands are that great. So finding something that pairs well with pistol is hard. I take the horn and the dagger offhand, but they dont feel strong at all. As others pointed out, im more compelled to stay with scourge or reaper. Celestial gear should be really good for harbinger yet that too falls flat.

Edited August 19, 2021 by jiggle puff.9347

[Allium Cepa.6927]

From a PvE perspective, using the beta gear. Would have jumped in T4 Fractals to compare with my scourge, but you know, Agony.
I will be trying out PvP with it later.
Good things:

1. Dark Disciple. Using life force to heal out of shroud, and managing life force as more than a panic button is fun. Survivability with trailblazers felt great with low blight. With Vital Persistence, Just running around out of shroud and no concern for chip damage while still having decent condi damage output. Over all it felt very comfortable to play casually.

2. I like the concept of blight. Risking max Hp for some reward, in this case mostly condi damage.

3. I like the attempt for another Necro support option now with the middle line and elixirs, spreading boons around. But I feel it could be done better.

4. Shroud skills 1,2 and 4 feel fun and simple to use. I think it's ok to have a little bit of braindead spam 2 off cooldown type builds. It shouldn't be common, but a few are fine. Something feels off about shroud 5 to me. I cant explain it. It just feels "wrong"

Bad things:

Top line: 
Power line just feels bad. Even going full glass cannon zerker, you get less damage than a condi setup with some vitality in it. I feel no real reason to use pistol over axe here. I tried going hybrid with celestials, and that worked somewhat, but still felt like just a worse version of  pure condition setup with a bit more survivability and up front damage.

Vile Vials:
Conceptually it is a good idea. Adding some  slow and vulnerability to a support setup.  There are several problems though.
1. Range. You need to stand on top of the thing you are trying to apply the conditions to, on an elite specialization with a 900 range gun. Why?
2. It takes 2 seconds to work from pressing the button. You can't attack or dodge roll after using the skill before the animation of throwing the potion on the ground or nothing will happen. This INCLUDES using another elixir.  It is very easy to spam all 5 elixirs in a row into 1 auto attack and get literally zero benefit from the trait. The trait effect needs to happen at the end of the skill progress bar, not a full second after that, or at the least not be animation canceled. 
3. No benefit from blight. A trait that requires to you use elixirs, that give blight, on a specialization around blight,  gets no benefit from it. Where is the risk/reward here? Something like boon duration/concentration from blight, aoe heals, life steal buff, temporary vitality for the party, reduced condition duration on the party. Something to make blight worth it on this trait.
Cascading Corruption/ Approaching Doom:

The 3 second pulse effects on these feel useless. You probably wont get more than one pulse out on a target and that is negligibly useful. Otherwise these are just boring +Power or +Condition damage. They need to be more impactful and there needs to be an opportunity cost here. If I'm playing a condition build there is no reason for me to take Cascading Corruption at all. I lose nothing by not taking it. The same the other way around. If you want traits to meaningful they must all be good choices for most builds and require to you choose one at the expense of the others.

Fear:
Fear is important to the necromancer. Not having it Feels like missing something important. In understand that it would not work well with shroud 3 and 4 that are gap closers, but even reaper has a fear. Necromancer not having fear built in to shroud makes Terror and Fear of Death hard to take. 

Pistol:
The pistol on necro feels ok to use, but just doesn't have the oomph  to make it stand out from scepter. It's auto gets 3 targets, while scepter gets 1,  but scepter also gets  50% condition duration from lingering curse. Pistol has lower cooldowns and better lifeforce generation + a stun though. Not the most important in PvE.
The strike damage on pistol is terrible. No where near enough to justify using it on a power build like the top line suggests. I think pistol has potential. It just needs a slight boost to power coefficient and some more condition duration on its 1. Although an attack chain would be a lot more fun/interesting.
Torment:
As said by many others here. Please replace torment with poison. We have scourge for torment/burning. Swapping torment for poison would keep damage more consistent on moving targets and give Death Magic a bit of love.

Elixirs: 
They feel much like "Push button, receive boon". They are not that interesting. Outside of some organized groups where you can all stack and have a harbinger sharing some quickness I don't see them getting any use. Any condition setup is going to want Blood is Power, Signet of Undeath for lifeforce and possibly Shadow fiend or Epidemic. Take some inspiration from the GW1 sacrifice skills.  Make Elixir of Promise act similar to Blood Renewal. Make it give you a good chunk of blight in exchange for a reasonable heal over time. At the end, it would remove all blight with another heal. Allowing players to control the blight level more. Have another flask act like Contagion. While the effect is up, any time you get a condition, you get some blight and copy the condition to enemies near you. once again, allowing carful players to stack blight with corruption skills, or punish close range aggressive condition pressure, but with extra risk. There is so much potential here not taken.
Blight management:
Blight feels too hard to build when you want it. To get 25 you need to spend 90% of your time in shroud, thus losing life force and limiting skills, or be using the elixirs non stop as they are off cooldown. There is no tactic to this and it limits build diversity.

Over all I think (PvE) harbinger has a lot of potential. It's fun, has better mobility and a cool idea with blight risk/reward. But it doesn't take it far enough to provide a compelling alternative to scourge/reaper/core necro. Using half your skills and elite specialization to get -50% hp and (potentially) +25% damage just isn't worth it to me.

[kireikai.3605]

I feel the elixers should interact with blight more as currently blight has really no reason to purposely gain it.

The healing elixer should heal more based on the amount of blight you have, and be used as a way of cleansing blight.

The others should off more buffs or duration for yourself based on the amount of blight you have.

 

Some of the traits also fell a bit flat in terms of flavour as many of them do very similar things with little variation. 

[EvGenius.6208]

Tried out Power build in Unranked sPVP

 

Thoughts - pistol is fun. Shroud is fun. Agreed with virtually everybody on this thread - elixirs are useless\bad. Even with CD reduction.

 

GM traits - a bit bland. Also Quickness seems the strongest by far.

 

With pistol\focus + staff the amount of both soft and hard CC is great.

 

Blight - mehhhhhhhhhhhh. Stacking might = uber bad in sPVP. 25s to fall off = very long.

 

Healing\sustain = fun. Vulnerable to burst but survivable over time with constant healing.

 

Side note - can Lich be visually reworked into something strong and scary, not a walking meme?

 

Next up - going to try condi build.

[FalsePromises.6398]

Been a bit of an avid necro fan for quite some time (reaper, scourge, core, you name it), and I got more than a few things to say. Note: these are from a PvE perspective, I've taken harbinger into raid dps testing and fractals to try to get a feel for it, and this is what I found.

 

1. Harbinger shroud itself has a lack of offensive diversity: there's a lack of skills worth casting even with the bar of five of em. It runs into the same problem lich form does, where the autoattack and one other skill are just about all your offensive power. At least one if not both of harbinger shroud's 3 and 4 skills need to be buffed to deal more damage or worthwhile effects so they're actually worth casting in an offensive manner and not just for mobility. They simply need to hit harder in PvE to break the monotony of spamming 1 and 2. Just look at reaper's Death's Charge, it's not even really part of the dps rotation but it still hits hard enough to not make you feel like it exists purely as token mobility. On that note, the harbinger shroud 3 skill, the sliding charge with explosion at the end, needs a little better tracking with target hitboxes. It's sending me nearly to the center of my enemy's hitbox when I cast it, which can sometimes make trying to properly cast ranged skills troublesome without immediately backpedaling. 

 

2. If harbinger is to take up a condition damage role, it'd be best to have it NOT be another torment-focused enemy-leghumping spec. We already have scourge for that, and given scourge hits well enough on its own, there'll be little reason to swap to harbinger just to squeeze another what, 3-4k dps, with the consequences being half your lifepool, a shroud that now decays when you're NOT using it, and all the exact same drawbacks of torment's lower damage vs moving targets. Harbinger should have uniquely focused on any other damaging conditions, or even debilitating ones... bleeding, poison, slowness, confusion, chill, all of these could fit the theme of an elixir lobbing necrotic gunslinger... matter of fact I'd say they fit better than torment that seems to have just been haphazardly thrown onto every single skill. 

 

3. Why no fear? Fear is integral to multiple core traits that involve life force generation, self buffs, and bonus condition damage. Even if it doesn't fit the theme, the least that could be done is to allow a trait to modify a skill to apply fear. No fear at all in harbinger shroud is a problem. Speaking of related traits, Dread's (quickness/fury on fear, 50% cooldown reduction of shroud 3 skill on kill) effects, particularly the cooldown reduction, should either be doubled for harbinger, or harbinger's skills should be rearranged to make that skill make more sense. For scourge it can reduce the cooldown of a team barrier by five seconds. For reaper it can reduce the cooldown of a stability and fear shockwave by 10 seconds. On harbinger it reduces the cooldown of a mediocre dash attack that applies one torment stack by 2.5 seconds. That trait has been one of the highlights of fast paced offensive necromancer in open world ever since its rework, and making it simply not click with one of the fastest paced necromancer specs to date is ridiculous. 

 

4. The consumption of life force for regenerating health while out of shroud seems incredibly ironic: a spotlight of the harbinger shroud was supposed to be that it didn't use life force as health and therefore didn't get cut short by incoming damage, but when your life force is consistently consumed just by virtue of existing outside of a damage-free vacuum chamber, you run into a very similar problem. Something should probably be done about that, but I haven't given much thought as to what. Mayhaps make it an optional defensive trait, and make room for it by just scrapping the power traitline since harbinger power builds don't even outperform reaper at this point? The power traits already were kinda a barebones transmutation of the condition damage traits, and to be fully honest I think harbinger would benefit from being able to trade off some damage traits for defensive traits, or perhaps the dps traits should be just integrated into the minor traits and further damage/defense traits could replace their empty slots. (Note: I find it plausible that harbinger DOESN'T compete with reaper power-damage-wise by virtue of reaper having superior burst and sustained out-of-shroud damage with reaper shroud and greatsword respectively. Harbinger is simply not equipped for competing with reaper, and the only way it could be done is if the power aspects in harbinger's largely condition-oriented kit were hellishly inflated) 

 

5. A lot of people said this to me, and I'm not a HUGE stickler for it, but blight mechanic being strictly harmful baseline with no other redeeming mechanics seems uninspired. I get there's traits that modify it, but there's only two that exist and you have to pick between them, and neither of them synergize with the boon style so it becomes offputting that your boon style becomes the one that accumulates the most blight yet doesn't benefit from it at all. If this game's history of elite specs has taught me anything, it's that "tradeoffs" like this don't ever pan out very well unless they're VERY potent and powerful effects that fully and completely counterbalance them in a holistically satisfying manner. Trading half your healthpool and all your shroud health (mathematically totals to ~80% of your total incoming damage cushioning if we double count life force pool to account for the fact it halves all incoming damage) for a 25% damage modifier and a life-force-decaying selfish regeneration is not a satisfactory concept. As I'm sure many have said before me, too much risk for not enough reward. 

 

6. Make the traits feel more impactful. As it stands, all the damage-oriented traits are simply stat modifiers, damage multipliers, and passive effects. There's very little unique flavor between the power and condition damage traits, and it makes buildcrafting rather boring. This is a little bit of speculation on my part, but if the torment was toned back and poison was applied more liberally in its place, and there were more poison modifiers in the harbinger condition damage traitline, it'd make for some interesting synergy with the pitifully underused damage aspects of death magic, such as putrid defense, deadly strength, death nova (if comboed with bone minions), etc. and possibly make that line capable of competing with soulreaping in terms of minmax condition damage dps (given dhuumfire near entirely carries that traitline for condition purposes, and that particular trait has been nerfed in harbinger shroud). 

 

7. This is just a specific sentiment, but Vital Draw, harbinger shroud's fifth skill, should have its radius expanded. It's too small for such a powerful point blank area effect. It's the same size as a guardian symbol, but its supposedly a powerful CC and life force siphon, as well as notable damage skill, inside a violently defensively handicapped harbinger shroud? Seems subpar. At least 300 radius would make it feel a little better, but 360 would be optimal since it's just point blank, you're making yourself vulnerable to be casting it in such a range. 

 

8. This is also more a personal thing, but also partially rational: blight seems like it wasn't created with necromancer itself in mind. It seems like it was made by someone who took a cursory glance at the class and said "If someone wants this thing hitting numbers comparable to the top dpsers, they need to get rid of that huge healthpool", which is flawed because the huge healthpool and life force backup healthpool exists due to their lack of defenses. Necromancer is basically a hyper-offensive glass cannon that makes it by by sheer virtue of having a lot of health to spare, usually shroud health which is far more recoverable than normal health given necromancer heals are always kinda weak in that regard. Other classes with lower healthpools and higher benchmarks have access to invulns, evades, powerful heals, blocks, boons, stealths, etc. that necromancer has no access to baseline and doesn't obtain with harbinger in a comparable manner in the slightest. 

 

I'm sure I have more ideas but that's all I can really pin down and put into words as of right now. 

[Tyrallyn.3769]

First and foremost, I have really enjoyed this elite spec so far!

Second, I mainly played as power and mainly in WvW but dabbled a bit in open world PvE.

 

Lets start with the bad:

 

• Elixirs:

First, could we get some more interesting icons that fit the necromancer? I'm sure they might be placeholders but I'd thought I'd just add this note.

The elixirs seem to be more focused on the support and boon generation role, this could be made more interesting with unique skill interactions with our traits and or other skills. Instead what we get right now are just a bunch of uninteresting boon spam that doesn't provide much to the other two roles (power and condi) and IMO are not worth taking over other more useful and interesting skills. On top of that, the Healing elixir should really not detriment the player even more. Either use it to remove blight(all or some) or remove that part entirely and add something else. In comparison to Virtuoso's healing skill (which does a bit of everything it seems) a healing skill that heals you but also gives you -10% HP seems counterintuitive.

If we look at the engineer for example, because of their toolbelts, Elixirs have a lot more functionality. Could the harbinger elixirs also apply e.g. auras, superspeed, invuln, stealth, blocks, modify next x attacks, reveal, etc.?(just to be clear, I wouldn't want them to apply all these are just examples of what they could apply) . Maybe some could be tossed on the ground for AOE effects?

 

We also have space while in shroud as our healing, utilities and elite are locked away. Could Elixirs have extra function there? Or could we have that space back for our skills as we don't have a second health bar anymore?

 

Blight:

While blight is an interesting mechanic, it really does not interact with the class at all. Apart from two traits at the start of the line which only increase the players damage, there is nothing to play around this mechanic. More could be done to engage the player into sacrificing their Health to dish out more damage or recovering their health to go into a more defensive role as an example. As it is right now, there is some slight management of how much blight is applied but I feel theres potential for how Blight could be managed and treated.

 

Traits:

When you have such limited space to play with traits, giving a class "increase damage by x%" traits are not really fun. We see this with skill trees of other games (Path of exile for example) but they have enormous skill trees. They have minor lines to fill in the gaps but can end with something that can change gameplay dramatically. Like mentioned above, elixirs and blight really sees very little in terms of interaction. IMO this is what the traits should modify. 

 

Pistol:

Power scaling for pistol seems to be fairly underwhelming.

 

Power in PvE:

For a Glass cannon spec I was expecting the class to dish out a lot more Damage than it did when I played around with it in PvE. Especially vs my Reaper which definitely hits a lot harder in open world PvE (yes both Reaper and Harbinger are running full zerks, This is only about power damage and not condi I did not play condi at all) .

 

The Good:

Shroud skills:
I have really enjoyed how shroud plays. Giving Necro more mobility is something I've wanted for a long time and its been a blast bouncing all over the place. Its a culmination of things I've really wanted in the past and while I was expecting the class to be a lot glassier given blight and only one extra active evade, it didn't feel like it in the time I've played with it (that said, its still early days so things may change)

 

Misc thoughts and notes:

Just random thoughts.

Range:

This is more of just a personal annoyance, but I really wanted a longer ranged spec. We have too many weapons in the mid to low Range and I really wanted something at 1200 range.

 

Bug? 

Possibly a bug but when fighting a harbinger, I'm unable to see Necro HP while they are in shroud form. I only see their shroud bar which is not useful as it does not function as a secondary health bar anymore.

 

Shroud CD:

OP? possibly. But as shroud is not treated as a second health bar could we have the CD reduced? this would give us more play with this new found mobility and more access to its evade.

 

This may have felt very one sided as "The Good" is much smaller than the bad but overall I've thoroughly enjoyed playing the Harbinger and will definitely be playing it throughout the launch of EoD but there's a lot of potential still left in the spec.

 

 

[Naxos.2503]

I kinda wish there was a bit more play with Blight somehow, either something that increases the limits of blight (thus the risk reward) or something that plays additional effects with blight. As it stand it is a very simplistic mechanic of "less health more damage", which is fine, but could be much more. 

 

The Shroud is really quite powerful, but is it really necessary to have it drain in combat without using it, ontop of draining when using it (even if not in combat) ? It was established that it doesn't actually serve as a secondary healthbar, so why also drain it while in use if it already drains in combat ? I'm genuinely perplexed by that choice.

 

It is already fairly strong, so obviously changing anything that would further strenghten it is a bad idea, it's just that I dont think some of the tradeoffs make that much sense to be honest

[Galmac.4680]

Does this blight thing really have an effect? I just auto-attacked (pistol-1) a moa without blight and then with 20 stacks of blight - and saw really no difference. Even the tooltip stays the same.

Even the other pistol-skills show no difference with or without 20 stacks of blight. 

(Yes, I had in the build "Wicked Corruption" or "Septic Corruption" selected).

So I really can't get the idea of blight. It just caps my maximal life and I don't have any nice for that.

 

Also, life force generation is weak with the pistol, without that "Eternal Life" (Soul reaping trait line) I always run around with no life force. I think the devs knew that so that they included this suspicious "Corrupted Talent" mid-trait-thing for 15% life force when entering the shroud.

 

And I miss some attacks in WvW. Pistol 3 doesn't male damage, Shroud 4 and 5 won't make damage, auto attack (pistol and shroud) just make normal damage, thus the second skill for shroud and pistol are the real damage makers.

 

Elixiers… yes… I really don't know why I shoud use them. The healing elixier is a joke, the others are… well… and even the elite elixier, 5 seconds of all boons. They are faster gone than I could start laughing.

 

If the specialization stays like that I won't use it later. 

 

 

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Galmac.4680

[Nimon.7840]

I was thinking about replying to some of the posts here, but I think it's better to just write down my opinion and I'll try to remain objective:

 

Pve:

-condi DPS:

seems very unreasonable (45k+ DPS is just too much). I think maybe give shroud 2 +1 second more cooldown would already bring down the dmg by a lot. But maintaining this damage is pretty hard in an actual raid encounter and you literally have zero defenses other than your two dodges + some vigor uptime.

I went downstate quite often, but it might be a " get used to it"

And on some bosses it's mechanics+ are DMG tick = downstate. Nothing you can really do about it.

 

-power builds:

Are extremely bad in pve, because all core weapons aren't really good for power DPS, and the pistol isn't eighter.

Mainhand weapons only can maintain really low DPS, and necro basically has no power offhand weapon. I'd like to see some reworks here.

Main contenders for a rework:

Dagger Mainhand

Warhorn 5 revert back to it's former version or a version, that does anything. Right now this skill is only used for the swiftness in any Gamemode.

 

- boon builds:

While I know that harbinger can give permanent quickness on 5 players while maintaining 25-29k DPS, it doesn't give other boons permanently.

It feels like we are missing a stat combination like main: power/precision + condition damage minor: expertise+concentration

Having 100% uptime of fury for example is basically impossible right now.

Also this spec doesn't give any defensive boons other than from the elite elixir, but that has a pretty high cooldown, and you would loose a lot of DPS by not taking Plaguelands.

Right now it feels like a much weaker version of condi quickness firebrand.

 

-Shroud:

feels extremely nice to play.

Nice animations.

 

-elixirs:

Some of them feel pretty underwhelming, especially the stunbreak one.

 

WvW:

I think this build is basically useless for zerg fights - which is absolutely fine, because necro has access to scourge.

 

I absolutely disagree with most people, saying that this spec is way to glass.

I absolutely agree with @KrHome.1920 that you can build some crazy sustain builds.

Or you can build for extremely high damage builds with almost zero sustain - if everyone plays the DMG version right now, I couldn't wonder less, that players are saying, that it's too glass-y.

 

I managed to be pretty much on par with a ranger in regards of sustain.

Which is crazy (pls nerf ranger as well).

 

With this I want to highlight the healing elixir, that is an extremely powered up version compared to it's pve version.

I think reducing the lifeforce gain to 10 % would be a reasonable nerf.

 

On the other hand, the stunbreak elixir is just bad. Sure it has a low cooldown, but the effects are extremely underwhelming.

Stunbreak + resistance isn't really something to aim for. Either give this another defensive boon as well, or maybe 2 seconds of superspeed?- to make sure you have a disengage tool. It might even be reasonable to give this 1 or 2 stacks of stability (that would also make it very interesting for pve boon-harbinger), or even some protection on it.

Keep in mind that this elixir has the blight on it as well, so breaking a stun with this one is like taking a hit from the enemy. 

 

All other stunbreak on necro have a higher cooldown, but much stronger effects. 

This elixir just needs a tiny something more to be played in my opinion.

 

Anyone that says, that blight is too punishing in duels or roaming clearly isn't playing this spec to its fullest potential.

That's how I see it: reduce your max health now, to gain that health as "healing" when the blight stack runs out.

 

That's it for the first two days of playing harbinger. I might do another post after the beta is over.

 

 

[Galmac.4680]

That shroud-5 animation is just too much in WvW for just stunning….

[Redsnabba.9172]

I pretty much hate everything about this new specialization and i kinda wish there would be a complete rework

First of all I think there's somewhat of a consensus that the elixirs are underwhelming in every way and the icons visually look pretty meh

Second i don't really see the point in making the harbinger into another quickness firebrand. Even if there were a possible build it'd just be redundant.

Third harbinger atm does quite a lot of condition damage but i honestly don't see the point of that either. What's the difference between this and the already existing builds? There's a clear overlap of this and condi scourge/condi reaper essentially just making harbinger either useless or replacing one of the two if not both

Further because of the mechanics of the shroud it looks like a nightmare to balance for any competitive area of the game so i feel like it's either gonna end up being a complete carpet or way too strong but nothing in-between. It just doesn't look like it was made to be used against other players despite the additional mobility of the shroud skills.

The ONLY clear advantage of this spec i can see is sharing swiftness to your allies giving some additional way to speed up npcs other than trail of anguish from scourge

tl/dr: Harbinger adds nothing new to the game and is completely redundant

[LucKreck.8724]

Quick note beforehand - I'm very excited about the Harbringer, I want to give as much feedback as I can, so... this is going to be a long post.

 

First of all, I'm very pleased with the concept of the Harbringer. There are a lot of things I already like about the spec and it feels fresh. I like the concept of a vitality focused spec that sacrifices health for power, and I'm mostly positive about the way Harbringer Shroud feels in play. There are just a lot things that still need to be improved, tweaked etc. in order to make this spec reach its full potential. From what I've heard/seen other people say about it, there are some things that I don't need to say anymore as it's already been said before. (like the bland elixirs and lack of blight management) However, there are some things I'd like to ask and give some input on.

 

Theme & Flavour
The first thing that struck me as weird when the Harbringer was fully revealed on stream was how much it's revolved around torment. Scourge already seems like the spec that focuses on inflicting torment and burning, and has the increased torment damage trait as well. There's also the following line from the Harbringer preview:

"A harbinger makes no clean kills, wielding a pistol to devastate their enemies with noxious, corrosive bullets. These skilled alchemists have developed elixirs to inflict Blight on themselves, converting their own pain into power. In Harbinger Shroud, they gain devastating abilities while suffering from Blight."

Noxious is literally a synonym for poisonous. As others in this thread have said, I think the Harbringer shoud focus more around poison rather than torment. The preview gave me the impression that the Harbringer was to be a poison and vulnerability based spec. Necromancer already has a trait to improve outgoing poison damage and it would've also fit the alchemist archetype better. I was also looking forward to a poison spec seeing as, with the current lineup of professions and elite specs, there's very little options available if you want to make a poison build.

 

Blight
There have been multiple posts addressing the Blight mechanic. It's a good concept and it fits the archetype, but there's no way to properly manage the mechanic, and the rewards you get doesn't yet feel like it's entirely worth the risk of sacrificing half your max health for 25 seconds. This is mainly due to the fact that hardly any of the core Harbringer skills synergize with Blight. There's only two traits that actually synergize with blight and they're pretty much the same thing (I'll get more into this in the traits section). The thing that I've talked about with other and have already seen others mention is that is would be nice if the blight mechanic would function a bit like the heat mechanic from Holosmith. Right now a very popular way to use Harbringer's mechanics is to ignore Blight and only make use of Dark Disciple's passive healing mechanic. Constantly regenarating somewhere between 4 and 5% of your max health is pretty neat to compensate for the lack of a second health bar, but it makes Blight a less appealing mechanic to utilize, since you'll be giving up half your health bar and thus also half your passive healing. Perhaps an idea to give players more control over Blight might be to give the Harbringer an F2 skill that consumes blight without restoring their negative health to create an aoe effect, which gives you a choice between getting rid of blight and healing back the lost health yourself, or waiting for the blight to wear off to get the negative health back in an instant.

 

Harbringer Shroud
Like mentioned before, Harbinger Shroud feels great in play. The mobility it offers paired with the shotgun skill 2 makes it engaging and a nice switch between the pistol gameplay, especially in PvP. First off, there's one issue however that shows itself more in PvE gameplay, which is that most of the damage is tied to skill 1 and 2. I believe if the damage output was to be more spread out over the 5 skills, the rotation of shroud in PvE would be more engaging that simply spamming 1 and 2, and 3 on occasion to close the gap between targets. And, like mentioned before, I dont get why all the condition output equals torment.
Secondly, there's one big issue, that has been posted by others already, which is the lack of fear in shroud. Fear is such a key condition on Necromancer, and not having it feels wrong. Many of the traits synergizing with fear become somewhat useless on Harbringer because of this. I'd suggest looking for a way to implement fear into Harbringer Shroud, perhaps by changing Voracious Arc's daze to a fear.

 

Traits
The main issue with the traits is that they're too... basic, they try to give you three very distinct build paths which in turn gives you no choices when making a build. With the exception of the elixir traits, they basically boil down to 'get a stat increase, and give yourself a pulsing effect'. I'm not saying it's bad, I like the idea that harbringer can focus on more that one role, but there's very little diversity between these builds. The fact that you get a copy paste version for each 'build route' makes them feel very much the same. This means that the traits themselves aren't bad, but they feel like maybe five selectable traits scattered over nine. I'd say it's best to find a way to merge some of the existing traits and make new ones to get a new trait lineup that offers multiple options for each 'build route'. Examples of these changes could be (and please take in mind that these are just ideas and speculations);

Adept Traits
Wicked & Septic Corruption - Instead of having two separate traits that increase either increase condition or strike damage, maybe one trait that increases crit chance based on blight, since both builds thend to profit from this. It also struck me as weird that Septic Corruption additionally adds poison to shroud 2, but Wicked Corruption just increases damage.
Vile Vials - The problem I see with this trait is that it's the only adept trait that doesn't synergize with Blight. I'd say it would make more sense if Blight affected the cooldown rate of elixirs.
Third Adept - This would be the place we can put another trait in. It would have to be one that synergizes with Blight of course. Perhaps a trait that decreases the amount of health reduced by blight, or increases it and lets you heal a percentage of damage dealt based on blight.

Master Traits
I'm actually quite allright with the Master traits. The one issue that I can see in them is once again that they offer little choice between builds. The idea behind vitality increasing certain stats is very thematic though.

Grandmaster Traits
This feels like one trait. All three do the same thing in a different way and more importantly, it's not engaging. To be honest, looking at the name of these traits they sound more like traits that would affect Devouring Cut (shroud skill 3).
Some ideas/suggestions I would have for Grandmaster traits:
Vile Corrosion - Vulnerability deals damage. This would go nice in hand with other necromancer traits like Terror and Deathly Chill, and it would suit the idea of the Harbringer attacking with corrosive attacks.
Cascading Corruption - This could be a trait that synergizes with the potential F2 skill mentioned before, making it pulse damage and poison for instance.
Deathly Haste - If fear were to be attached to shroud 4, this could be a trait that applies swiftness and quickness on shroud 3, it fits the name of the trait and would make the rotation of a boon-focused Harbringer more engaging.
Death's Embrace - Increase maximum Blight (like 30-33 maybe), you heal for a portion of all damage dealt based on blight. This bonus increases while in Harbringer Shroud

 

Pistol
A lot of comments I've read and heard is that the pistol feels a lot like a copy paste from the Engineer's pistol skills, and I can definitly see where this is coming from. It would be nice to see the pistol have some form of interaction with blight, like perhaps another version of skill 1 while at max Blight. The pistol also suffers from the problem that the skills feel like they boil down to just doing pew pew until your target dies. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the skills have no unique audio or enough visual feedback that indicate you're using a different skill. The audio is also a bit of problem due to the fact that the pistol shots don't really sound like a necromancer weapon, but more like... another pistol. There's also once again the question why this applies all that torment. Here's some feedback I'd like to give on the pistol skills:

Vicious Shot - The auto attack skill is fine, seeing as most ranged weapons don't really have an attack chain. I would say that an AoE effect would make more sense than a bouncing projectile in light of the alchemist archetype. The reason it feels a bit bland is probably due to skill 2 and 3 feeling a little similar.
Weeping Shots - This is where most people draw the comparison between the Engineer's pistol. Weeping Shots feels like a piercing, different version of Poison dart volley. I think this is mostly due to the way the skill is executed. Something I've seen someone mention is that the concept of the Harbringer being a ranged dps that switches between close(r) combat in shroud with skills more centered around engage mechanics is a great concept, but that the one issue with that is that the Harbringer has no disengage skills. Perhaps this could be a skill that made you do a small step/dash backwards to get you out of melee range. Maybe to balance it out the skill could be toned down in damage slightly or the cooldown could be slight increased, but it would already make the skill feel different. The application of vulnerability falls nicely in line with the supposed corrosive nature of the harbringer's bullets.
Vile Blast - The concept of this skill is great, though it is a bit weird that it applies a 1 second stun if it's simply supposed to be an interrupt skill. All I'd have to say about this skill is, like mentioned above, to give the skill a more unique and recognizable visual feedback and audio.

 

Elixirs
Finally the Elixirs. This one is probably the most universally agreed upon issue, due to the simple fact that they're too bland. The icons look practically identical, and their effect basically all boil down to 'chug potion, get boons'. Especially because this is an elite specialization, these skills deserve to be better executed. They should feel more fun to use and have more of a visible effect beyond giving you yellow icons on top of your skill bar. A good start might be to have at least one of the elixirs be a throwable, have elixirs that give a beneficial effect other than boons, or have one that gives a special effect like a transform. They should also have more synergy with Blight. Here are some suggestions of what these elixir changes might be based on the names and effects that the current elixirs have:

Elixir of Promise - This elixir might give you a bonus for a couple seconds that gives you increased healing from your passive life force drain based on Blight, to allow for some upkeep of your survivability while suffering from Blight.
Elixir of Risk - Inflict Blight on yourself. Grant yourself might based on Blight stacks. Temporarily increase the effectiveness of Blight (-2.5/-3% health per stack of blight) and gain pulsing quickness for the duration.
Elixir of Anguish - Inflict Blight on yourself. Throw an elixir that detonates in the target area, applying fear and torment/vulnerablity (or other fitting condition). The duration of the inflicted conditions is increased based on Blight
Elixir of Bliss - Inflict Blight on yourself. Gain resolution and convert your conditions into life force. Life force gained is based on Blight.
Elixir of Ignorance - Inflict Blight on yourself. Gain resistance and break stuns. Gain increased movement speed based on Blight for a short duration.
Elixir of Ambition - Inflict significant Blight on yourself. Gain all boons. The effectiveness of blight is temporarily decreased. (-1.5/-1% health per stack of blight)

Once again, all of these are suggestions and meant to give ideas rather than make demands. With changes like this the cooldowns would probably have to be increased to make up for the extra effect. A thank you to those who read through the entire thing and I would love to hear your own feedback on these ideas and suggestions.

[Halikus.1406]

Leaving my 2 cents after reading half of the thread til here.

 

First of all I want to start by saying that I love that anet thought outside of the box and gave something different for necros and mesmers. Both are really good ideas and have good play styles that just need a few tweaks to feel like its own thing. So to the feedback:

1. Power vs Support vs Condi: Harbinger tries to be all 3 but it obviously fails and miserably in specially one of those aspects, Power. Because of that the traits feel pretty week and mostly just stat boost because of it. In my opinion I would say to scrap the Power part of it entirely and make it condi / support centric, either that or the opposite Power / support but it cannot be all 3 because its simply not working here like it did on Renegade and that is because the traits just feel like straight up stat boost as I said before.
2. Traits: As I said above, the traits dont feel special or exiciting at all other than stat boost and that is because it's trying to catter to all 3 playstyles at the same time but it feels like the designers are afraid of trying anything to crazy on them. So as I said before, I would like to see it focused on 2 playstyles instead of 3 so as to give the designers more space for good traits instead of traits that tries to catter to everything at the cost of being simplistic and boring.
3. Elixirs: This one its pretty much a consensus among players that it feels uninspired and boring, honestly it just feels like an engi kit 2.0 and that's bad. Elixirs dont feel unique at all and they feel punishing for what they do when you add the blight mechanic. For elixir I would honestly like a full rework, maybe make then offensive skills but single target to avoid mimicing Engi's kit, I would like to see anything other than just boons personally.
4. Pistol: The pistol skills feel good to use for the most part, except for the number 2 which takes us also to the shroud 2 skill which do pretty much the same thing and are both a volley. A single main pistol also feel kinda out of place without another on the off-hand, so either add an off-hand pistol to go with it like spellbreaker daggers or make the main hand pistol feel more stand-alone and unique.
5. Blight: From a PvP PoV I could barely feel it and that is because, as I said before, elixirs feel boring and I just didn't feel like using them at all since the core kit of the class was better. Blight feels pretty punishing in PvE for sure if you camp shroud but in PvP you just go in, use a few quick skills, then drop it and you'll be fine and barely feel it as a punishiment. Now If I were to use the elixirs and accumulate blight then it would feel punishing, which makes me add that the time for the stacks are a bit too long lasting. Blight also has no interaction with the skills or the traits, save for a minor stat boost, as an active debuff or part of the kit. I'd would like to see more interactions with the mechanic on the skills and the traits, something that allow us to make use of it for example: Blight creates an area around in which players are also affected by it, or in case of PvE grants a stacking debuff that damages enemies in range.
6. Harbinger Shroud: I've been having a blast with this one while testing it. I love the idea, the mobility it brings to necro, the shift in playstyle to a much more glass cannon and high risk necromancer but the one thing that caught my attention was the life force starvation. In PvE when in prolonged fights it starts getting its toll the longer the fight lasts, which forces the player to take traits or utilities to fix that issue. I honestly have no idea how to go about this one, either increase LF generation for Harbinger or change the constant LF drain while in combat, but something has to be done about this.

This is it for my feedback. I hope anet can get something useful out of it and I would like to say that you are on the right track with the shift in playstyle this time for the new specs. As loong as you listen to feedback and make changes around it, they are sure to be very good additions to the game.

[LucianDK.8615]

Well, wouldnt it be a needed self-nerfing point for the Harbinger if they pretty much are locked to things like Eternal Life? Reining in their potential dps because of lifeforce lack?

[Halikus.1406]

That's the point I'm trying to make yea.

 

In Pvp in particular it felt good to use on the arena because I had ppl dying left and right supplying me with LF constantly lol, but as soon as I got into a match it started to show how LF starved it is in certain cenarios.

 

Also, @LucKreck.8724 made a good point at theme and flavour that I forgot to mention myself. I also felt by the trailler showcase that Harbinger would be centered around poison and vulnerability, maybe also bleed, more than torment since that's already Scourge's territory. I would definitly like to see some other condition used here instead of torment. 😪

Edited August 19, 2021 by Halikus.1406
typo

[fototo.7306]

Incredibly disappointing spec I had high hopes for.

Here's a list of problems I have, put together as coherently as I can, from an endgame PvE perspective:

1>Traits are uninspiring.
You know somethings wrong when the choice between traits is "power damage based on blight vs condi damage based on blight" or even more on the nose, "fero based on vitality vs concentration based on vitality vs expertise based on vitality"

 

Surely there have to be more interesting things to do with these traits?

which brings me to

2>The lack of interaction with Blight

The only thing that is affected by blight is your damage based on the trait you chose, and your health pool.
There are no interesting blight mechanics like elixir cdr based on blight or increased elixir boon duration on blight or even things like a trait to increase the speed at which you gain blight, a trait that might make your heal skill reduce blight instead of increase it, or a trait that reduces health lost per stack of blight or even increase the maximum stacks of blight or any combination of these things. Theres so many cool things we could do with blight and we've done nothing and instead we get boring traits that are just flat dps modifiers. Also the power dps modifiers are flat out wasted because core necro doesnt have any useful power weapons and the shroud and pistol skills dont have good enough power coeffecients to mean anything.

 

3>The lack of variety and use of elixirs
As bad as the elixir icons are for color blind people, they can take solace in the fact that it doesnt matter which elixir they take since they all serve the exact same purpose, to get free +5 blight. They all have the same cooldowns and all give a piddly amount of boons that are almost irrelevant with the exception of quickness, except the elite elixir, which brings me to 

 

4>The elite elixir

who's drunk aunt made this?
"oh yea lets just add every single boon in the game, that won't be literally impossible to balance at all"

as it stands its basically useless but because of the incredible effect it provides, about 2 seconds of thinking and you realise this skill is either going to be the most broken skill in the game or the most useless skill in the game and there's basically no in between.

 

5>The shroud.
Harbinger shroud is incredible, you have the one skill which is decent damage , the 2 skill which is a bonkers amount of damage, the 3 and 4 skills are basically troll and the 5 skill which is good cc. While in shroud , the necro has no access to utilities and the shroud skills themselves dont have any sort of evade or stun breaks, so they're left to just 2 dodge rolls and prayers. The maximum dps rotation ( which hits 45k) is basically open shroud at max duration, spam 2 till you run out, close shroud and repeat. the weapons you use are almost irrelevant and again there is a lack of traits that directly affect shroud skills ( anything like using shroud 3 increases damage for 5 seconds or anything at all) that would motivate us to use shroud 3/4 , instead of just spamming 2. The damage on 2 definitely needs to be nuked and the other shroud skills need to be more useful for something of an interactive rotation that isnt spam 2 off cooldown. the utility of shroud needs to be increased a bit and the damage needs to be evened out a LOT.

 

Was so hyped for this, ended up being another boring necro spec where you just spam buttons to deal condi damage like scourge (but stronger) , 1/5 rating.

[Modliszka.5027]

+1 to idea of poison instead of torment. 

[marixon.6754]

7 minutes ago, Halikus.1406 said:

Also, @LucKreck.8724 made a good point at theme and flavour that I forgot to mention myself. I also felt by the trailler showcase that Harbinger would be centered around poison and vulnerability, maybe also bleed, more than torment since that's already Scourge's territory. I would definitly like to see some other condition used here instead of torment. 😪

 

2 minutes ago, Modliszka.5027 said:

+1 to idea of poison instead of torment. 

I'm all for it. I think it would fit way better to the theme of the harbinger, and I honestly was expecting to see more poison on his skills.

[Sigmoid.7082]

1 minute ago, Modliszka.5027 said:

+1 to idea of poison instead of torment. 

Its a -1 from me and one of the things I hope they do not change. 

[LucKreck.8724]

Something I forgot to add that has also been said by others like @Galmac.4680 is that it's hard to build up blight outside of shroud, and that life force is hard to build up due to the the passive consumption. They'll need to find a way to build up both blight and lifeforce more effectively for Harbringer, otherwise builds for this spec will be hardstuck to the soul reaping tree and going full shroud or elixirs to keep up their blight

[Copyright.9082]

First, of all thank you for doing beta phases and creating feedback sections. 

 

My first impression is this feels like an alpha more than a beta even though Harbinger feels the most "finished" spec. 

 

This is a WvW and PvP feedback. 

 

1. Point of reference when designing Harbinger : Ignoring Scourge

 

Scourge is broken (even after recent nerf). It has been taking over every game mode in a kittenous way, barrier being very uninteractive and unfun to play with and against. 

 

Consequently, scourge should obviously be fixed, but more importantly, it shouldn't be a point of reference when designing Harbinger.

 

2. Harbinger : Lack of innovation in class design

 

Multiple streamers have reported disappointment regarding class design. 

 

Harbinger shroud system, namely blight,  is very interesting. It's in line with the idea of having trade-offs. 

 

However, adding 1 pistol with 3 projectile skills, n°3 shroud which is rush with different colors, n°4 shroud which is vault with different colors, and n°5 which is gravity well with different colors, is very underwhelming. 

 

Except for the blight system, nothing feels new for the players, which is a shame after so many years. 

 

2. Condi harbinger : Passive blight HP regen may need balancing

 

Taking pvp as neutral stats, the condi build which was crafted has 35K hp (40k hp on eternal colloseum with shield) with carrion amulet. 

 

The catch is, with blight, you can regenerate 1K hp/sec. 

 

Blight never runs out with the elixir heal, which you can spam on cooldown. 

 

From a healthy gameplay point of view, this is kitten especially if you combine it with pulsating weakness on gm traits. 

 

Taking these elements into consideration, passive regen, potential life pool, shroud movement (kiting) skills, I strongly disagree with some posts that mentionned that Harbinger is squishy. 

 

3. Unhealthy GM traits : 

 

Pulsating passive quickness or passive weakness in shroud is obviously very uninteractive to play against and not healthy for the game. 

 

Conclusion : I think players want a lot more innovation in terms of class design, especially the weapons and shroud skills.  Also, splitting the regen and/or the gm traits between game modes will probably be necessary. 

 

[sniperman.1738]

Honestly after playing Harbinger for a good portion in pve, pvp and wvw I have to say after figuring out the intended idea with the spec the only thing that may need looked at and reworked is elixirs, the blight isn't an issue if you play it as intended because I know some people say its too squish, but it can definitely be built to hold its own in a fight and if played properly. Overall the pistol skills are good though the animations and or sounds could be more unique to necro if that makes sense just cause it shoots green doesn't make it necroesque. 

[SkinnyT.5382]

The Harbinger, to me, felt "meh".

The elixirs are lack luster, though I have to admit I never liked elixirs. I find them lackluster with engi too. But I give you that I think these are more versatile than the engie's elixirs.

Now the shroud effects are ok, they are unique BUT the skills; those felt rel bland. It almost felt like the skill animations and effect were a simplification of the reaper mixed with some of the core shroud skills. It didn't feel new.

I'm not a necro main, and I get that it's suppose to be a high risk high reward Spec, but honestly if I wanna play close range I'll just stick to the reaper.

Edited August 20, 2021 by SkinnyT.5382