Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Kilty.4906]

I don't really know where to post this but some of my concern right now is that character animation across beta e-specs are very under tuned while particle effects are somewhat over tuned, take for example Voracious Arc, it's clearly a copy-paste of Daredevil's Vault as you can clearly see at end of the animation they were supposed to be holding a staff.

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Harbinger Shroud

·       change % of health loss to -1% to -25% per +1% of Strike or Condi damage

 

Harbinger Weapon and Blight Skills.

·       Increase range to 1200

 

Elixir’s

·       should provide boons for up to 5 players on use passive, up to 10 with trait Twisted Medicine (see below).

 

Traits

·       Vile Vials                           Elixir skills gain reduced recharge and inflict both poison, and slow on nearby enemies.

·       Twisted Medicine            Elixir skills increase boons to players from 5 to 10. Gain concentration based on your vitality.

 

No other suggested changes and I think the class would work great in both PvE WvW and PvP environments if the above is implemented.

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Tungsten Monarch.6058

[cloudsareyum.8120]

It's alright in pve, I don't really enjoy it in pvp (silver 2/3). I'm not a necro main so i'm not sure if I can say exactly

playstyle wise feels 'okay', not particularly as fun as the other necro styles .  It works okay in pve though.  It feels boring for me, but other people may feel differently.  I don't feel like a necro.

 

I'm honestly pretty disappointed with the concept and playstyle feel.. feels lackluster.  Virtuoso is cool, fits with Cantha and has a very fun playstyle.  But like, Cantha is based off various east Asian countries which ALL have various pretty awesome ghost and spirit lore and in Cantha I hear there are Ancestral Spirits and...

necromancer is just a pharmacist? 

Nothing to do with death. Nothing to do with spirits. Nothing to do with the mists.  Not even like, new canthan-style minion/spirit things (what if we had an army of jiangshi? and various other zombies, ghosts, angry spirits etc from the countries Cantha is based off of? horrifying, but cool - unless it would be a no-no step on superstitious toes).   I'm a self harming, overdosing drug addict/mad scientist who shoots drugged bullets at people. (also, personally that's kinda uncomfortable to play.)   I mean I know Revs already did the spirit channeling thing, but surely there can be something cooler?  Maybe it has something to do with the Afflicted or something lorewise; I'm not feeling it though.   Also, it just doesn't make much sense. The guardian elite spec makes sense- they use martial arts as those to protect, the mesmer elite spec makes sense, where does the harbringer fit in? And why would it be called harbringer if https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Harbinger_of_Nightfall

exists and it seems to be something completely different?  (also what's the story behind that too?)  Are there ties to that?

 

Like, does some gw1 player feel it makes sense? maybe i'm wrong i mean.

 

Maybe it'll grow on me, but for now it feels not up to the same level of fun-playability or cool concept of any of the other elite specs.   It feels kind of boring honestly. That said, I do get that there are a lot of superstitions about death and maybe the reason why necro's elite spec has a pretty boring concept is to avoid stepping on toes and mentioning death, but this feels really lackluster.   I don't hold out hope the concept would be reworked to something more interesting, but I do hope some improvement would be made in the gameplay so it feels more fun.  

 

And it seems some people here like it, so lol, don't listen to me about the concept thing.

Edited August 24, 2021 by cloudsareyum.8120

[Desaita.3792]

The idea of giving players bonus ferocity based on vitality while being a class with already high damage and vitality is a little overkill. the shroud lacks defensive ability which is good in concept but perhaps replace skill 5 float with a defensive ability for better balance. the pistol overall looks balanced but with mainhand axe skill 2 can hit up to 8k while you still have a health pool over 20k. overall i think the damage boost from blight is a great concept just creates crits that are simply way too high.

[Riot Inducer.8964]

1 hour ago, cloudsareyum.8120 said:

It's alright in pve, I don't really enjoy it in pvp (silver 2/3). I'm not a necro main so i'm not sure if I can say exactly

playstyle wise feels 'okay', not particularly as fun as the other necro styles .  It works okay in pve though.  It feels boring for me, but other people may feel differently.  I don't feel like a necro.

 

I'm honestly pretty disappointed with the concept and playstyle feel.. feels lackluster.  Virtuoso is cool, fits with Cantha and has a very fun playstyle.  But like, Cantha is based off various east Asian countries which ALL have various pretty awesome ghost and spirit lore and in Cantha I hear there are Ancestral Spirits and...

necromancer is just a pharmacist? 

Nothing to do with death. Nothing to do with spirits. Nothing to do with the mists.  Not even like, new canthan-style minion/spirit things (what if we had an army of jiangshi? and various other zombies, ghosts, angry spirits etc from the countries Cantha is based off of? horrifying, but cool - unless it would be a no-no step on superstitious toes).   I'm a self harming, overdosing drug addict/mad scientist who shoots drugged bullets at people. (also, personally that's kinda uncomfortable to play.)   I mean I know Revs already did the spirit channeling thing, but surely there can be something cooler?  Maybe it has something to do with the Afflicted or something lorewise; I'm not feeling it though.   Also, it just doesn't make much sense. The guardian elite spec makes sense- they use martial arts as those to protect, the mesmer elite spec makes sense, where does the harbringer fit in? And why would it be called harbringer if https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Harbinger_of_Nightfall

exists and it seems to be something completely different?  (also wha'ts the story behind that too?)  Are there ties to that?

 

Like, does some gw1 player feel it makes sense? maybe i'm wrong i mean.

 

Maybe it'll grow on me, but for now it feels not up to the same level of fun-playability or cool concept of any of the other elite specs.   It feels kind of boring honestly. That said, I do get that there are a lot of superstitions about death and maybe the reason why necro's elite spec has a pretty boring concept is to avoid stepping on toes and mentioning death, but this feels really lackluster.   I don't hold out hope the concept would be reworked to something more interesting, but I do hope some improvement would be made in the gameplay so it feels more fun.  

 

And it seems some people here like it, so lol, don't listen to me about the concept thing.

I can't speak for what has been officially said about the lore of this spec so far as I've not looked into it, but as a GW1 player the vibes I am drawing are it being related to Shiro's plague from the Factions storyline, specifically groups that studied/used the plague for their own ends, namely the Am Fah. I feel this way mainly due to the blight effect looking quite similar to the effect players can get in GW1 during a quest involving the Am Fah.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Drink_from_the_Chalice_of_Corruption

[FalsePromises.6398]

I've already made a post on the shroud skills and traits yesterday, but I was running out of inspiration so I just stopped there. Now, I came to a realization of why harbinger has felt so non-necromancer-ish without really being able to pin it to anything in particular, and it's because of how blight and the new regeneration effect don't thematically match nor synergize. Stylistically, an offensive necromancer wants to be the first to hit, taking initiative by debilitating or making enemies vulnerable alongside doing so, whether it be CC, conditions, roundups, cleave, etc. and they usually use shroud to do this, which protects them from incoming damage while they are outputting their hardest damage and debilitations. The problem with harbinger's design is that harbingers don't have the front loaded defenses a necromancer almost always has while unloading their shroud skills, be it barrier or shroud health, and instead they gain a regenerative effect out of shroud that costs their life force.

 

This life force consumption out of shroud is ironic because one of the selling points of harbinger was that you wouldn't be booted out of shroud early for taking damage due to shroud health eating it for your own defenses, but consuming life force for healing out of shroud not only is basically the same as expending shroud health to absorb damage (just now far less controllable), but also completely uproots the style of necromancer. This instead rewards you for hanging back and being passive when you're pressured, focusing on generating life force for your recovery. Basically, if you are pressured you have to give up your sustained offenses. That's very inefficient and not thematic with necromancer.

 

I think the solution to this is to do away with the regeneration out of shroud completely and also do away with the third minor trait that grants you life force on entering shroud which was intended to counterbalance that. Instead, turn that trait into a bonus barrier on gaining a stack of blight, somewhere in the 250-500 range per stack with no internal cooldown. That would not only grant you back some of your passive, offense-complementing defenses on necromancer but it ALSO resultantly makes some point to elixirs granting you blight. You'd be able to give yourself a solid, selfish chunk of barrier by applying multiple stacks of blight on yourself with elixirs, be it as part of an in-combat bonus shield or for preemptive pre-combat defense windup to be able to charge in with barrier. THAT is thematic to necromancer, and would make the blight mechanic FAR more reasonable and synergetic with your offensive style, much like a scrapper's impact savant or a thief's invigorating precision (which many use in PvE to counterbalance their low healthpool and complement an offensive and aggressive style, which is what harbinger most likely is). Of course, this barrier wouldn't be near as powerful as either, but that could be the elite spec's tradeoff-- immediate, static shroud health given up for passive barrier gain based on how aggressively and frequently you use shroud and/or elixirs. 

 

On the note of elixirs, those definitely need to be toned up in some fashion, and maybe have some venom style effects attached for sharing with allies or they simply should interact with blight. They could possibly even scale stronger for how much blight you have? I know one great idea I heard was to make the healing elixir not only have a stronger base heal, but also consume blight stacks for bonus healing. That in my opinion is a great "oh shoot I pushed a little too far with my offense, lemme back it up" button you could optionally take. 

[LucKreck.8724]

7 minutes ago, FalsePromises.6398 said:

This life force consumption out of shroud is ironic because one of the selling points of harbinger was that you wouldn't be booted out of shroud early for taking damage due to shroud health eating it for your own defenses, but consuming life force for healing out of shroud not only is basically the same as expending shroud health to absorb damage (just now far less controllable), but also completely uproots the style of necromancer. This instead rewards you for hanging back and being passive when you're pressured, focusing on generating life force for your recovery. Basically, if you are pressured you have to give up your sustained offenses. That's very inefficient and not thematic with necromancer.

 Would it perhaps be an idea to move the 'life force consumption to regain health' mechanic to shroud instead of out of shroud? If you were to make it so that your life force pool doesn't decrease while you suffer from blight, shroud would be your main source of sustain and make you less shy towards inflicting more blight on yourself

[RyuDragnier.9476]

2 hours ago, Desaita.3792 said:

The idea of giving players bonus ferocity based on vitality while being a class with already high damage and vitality is a little overkill. the shroud lacks defensive ability which is good in concept but perhaps replace skill 5 float with a defensive ability for better balance. the pistol overall looks balanced but with mainhand axe skill 2 can hit up to 8k while you still have a health pool over 20k. overall i think the damage boost from blight is a great concept just creates crits that are simply way too high.

The idea they're floating with how it works currently seems to be that Shroud is high risk high reward. Your defensive ability isn't being in Shroud, it's being OUT of Shroud, where your life force is constantly degened to heal you back up. And the healing is rather substantial at high health, I'm talking over 1K per tick here since it's (seemingly) based on max HP. This spec is reversing the norm and making it so being out of Shroud is in fact safer than being in it, because being in it you have no defenses, no safety net, just pure damage coming at the cost of your Max HP.

Edited August 20, 2021 by RyuDragnier.9476

[Kitty La Boom Boom.4065]

On 8/17/2021 at 4:03 PM, Telgum.6071 said:

I found hard to use the shroud skills as the generation of life force seems really low, unless I'm doing something wrong.

What other 2 trait lines do you have set up?  Regardless of my elite spec, I always run Soul reaping and carry a staff as an alternate weapon.  I have had no issues maintaining life force regen on harbinger at all.  I’m currently running my harbinger as a minion bomber and it’s a blast.  Between the speed of killing things with a miniature army of anywhere from 5-20+, all the carapace stacks that go with that, and nearly infinite life force regen, I feel like a bloodthirsty goddess.  My friend and I are playing on our most hated maps and feasting on sweet, sweet, revenge, bwahahaha!

Go for a base vitality that will give you about 33k HP, and make sure you take advantage of specs that renew your life force.  

[Desaita.3792]

i saw and understood the mechanic i just think the reward portion is too high and the risk is easily avoided when you can gain quickness for entering shroud, and pop a 15k damage combo in 2 seconds then exit back to your 20-34k health pool. the damage and cc is simply too high with easy constant healing when combined with life force generating utilities. i think as i started previously if ferocity per vitality is removed and the cc skill five is changed the class might have a better balance.

 

The elixers were an interesting and very unexpected utility addition, gives a mad scientist vibe. I think the elixers currently lack the same power as other utilities though but if made stronger would tilt this class further into the overkill. Id suggest a general increase of elixer potential but a general decrease of the critical damage potential through other means. maybe a passive that causes elixers to grant a stacking ferocity buff in place of the ferocity based on vitality. this way the class synergizes less with other utilities that cause unnaturally high life force generation. 

 

As another general comment on the necromancer is perhaps lessen or change the life force gain on fear through the specialization. the cc power of aoe fear is already so high that also gaining high ammounts of life force is a little too strong. perhaps replaced with a heightened life force generation on auto attacks as a specialization causing less burst gain alongside cc but more general gain.

[Face Eater.6179]

 

There needs to be more interaction with blight. Right now, outside of two traits, blight is a purely negative mechanic with nothing interesting about it.

 

Elixirs are functional but boring. Providing something other than just boons and other ways of interacting with blight is needed.

 

The boons from elixirs don't last long enough. 5 seconds of boons when blight lasts 25 seconds is not high risk-high reward, it is short term gain for long term frailty.

 

Giving Harbinger a ranged weapon and turning necro into a glass cannon, but then multiple traits require you to get close to your enemy or stay grouped with allies to benefit from them (as the effects happen in an aoe around you) just requires you to position yourself where you will most likely take more damage.

 

Torment stacking is something that scourge does. I feel like Harbinger should apply poison instead.

 

The healing from lifeforce drain is very small and does very little to actually help with survivability.

[Hellissane.3041]

My take:

 

Functional opinion:

 

PVE(Fractals/Raids):

The Quickness/cDps builds work well enough in terms of upkeep and dps.
However why push this to be the squishiest spec in the game?
Harbingers spend the majority of their time in shroud making them max blight quite fast and keep it maxed for the rest of the fight. As a result they have the lowest ingame hp, the lowest armor and the lowest self sustain in game. During shroud your only way of sustain is blood fiend. Signet of vampirism doesn't work in shroud and you have no aegis, no in-built in the rotation evades and not even barrier generation. If elementalist needed a buff to their sustain as weaver, then harbringer needs a major buff. Sustain needs another look.

 

PvP/WvW:

In terms of 1v1 harbinger seems to work fine - it has quite fair self sustain, fair amount of mobility and cc.

However I don't see this spec doing well in any fights involving more players. While harbinger has sustain in the form of regeneration, they have too limited arsenal to defend from focused team bursts. While previous necro specs can tank through bursts with their shrouds, harbinger can't. If your wurm is on cooldown your ability to avoid bursts is insanely limited. Sustain needs another look for team fights.

For zerg fights this spec also provides little, compared to its predecessors - no good aoe potential, lack of evades, invulnerabilities or second health bar forces it to stay at range and combined with low range it really brings the spec down in effectiveness. Harbinger needs a whole look when it comes to zerg fights.

 

Mechanics/Theme opinion:

 

Elixirs:

Why are these utility only?
No good offensive options, no good defensive options. A single stun break in a 25s elixir is not though to count for either offense or defense. In engineer we have elixir X for offense, Elixir S for defense. They all generate blight, and none of them consume it. Very uninspired. Needs another look.

 

Theme - "Blight":

Why when the harbinger is supposed to be "blight"/corruption themed, its Blight only comes as a debuff that IF traited gives you some increased damage? Why not being able to transfer it, spread it, make it pulse around(Major Grandmaster traits style) in the form of conditions? If Blight its supposed to be in the Corruptions theme, being  both negative and positive, I expected harbinger to also have some boon corruption mechanics, why it has none?

 

 

 

 

Edited August 20, 2021 by Hellissane.3041

[anduriell.6280]

From a WvW perspective. 

I don't know if this has been suggested before but HB would benefit from having smaller CD in the elixirs and smaller boon / effects duration. 

Right now the skills have too long of a CD which makes the e-spec feels clunky, it plays really fast but then the utility forces you to slow down. 

 

I would give 50% of the effects (heals, boon duration, etc...) and reduce the CD a 50% as starters and check how it goes from there. It would make the flow of the class much  better.

 

The condi pressure seems a bit strong for WvW or PvP but that is balanced by the fact the e-spec is glassy so maybe some fine tuning so it does not stack so many stacks so fast.  

[Aravind.9610]

I feel as if the grandmaster condition and power traits are against the theme of the Harbinger since they require us to be close to an enemy. Whereas all the other skills except shroud 2 can be cast at range easily. I would change the traits and shroud 2 to work effectively at range so that we can stay at range so we can have a full range theme instead of half and half.

[Lily.1935]

I Do think the Harbinger needs to interact with the shroud much more and not just "Dip" into shroud which negates much of the negative effects of the shroud. There are a few ways to solve this, one of them being that you can't exit for about 5 seconds and you automatically stack blight as you enter. 5-10 would work. Its supposed to be a risky spec to play and there just isn't a whole lot of risk in the way I've seen and heard people playing it.

Harbinger with that change would also need access to their elite, heal and utility while in shroud. This would mean they would be able to get around the extra blight the restriction from exiting would provide with lich Form, but considering that's on such a high cooldown that's not too much of an issue. Of course locking Lich form out for 5 seconds with it could also be an option.
 

I do think the Grandmasters need a bit of work. Copy paste pulses are a bit uninspired and could provide something else. They're all good but I'd personally like to see something that can dramatically change how I play the spec. Power didn't feel different from Condi for example.

 

Further I do agree that many of the elixirs are a bit underwhelming baring perhaps the Elite which is oppressive in competitive modes. Elixir of Promise has healing that I feel is a bit too low. it doesn't need to be super high, but base 2.5k would help it a lot. Elixir of Ignorance Should also have Aegis with it as well. I feel the reactionary defenses of the spec should be a bit stronger while the passive defenses should be weaker which will lead into my next point.

 

The Passive healing and drain of Life force into health is way too strong as a passive effect that occurs. The life force drain, since its not extra health, should be slower and the healing needs to either be reduced heavily or the timing for healing ticks needs to be much slower to come out. Dedicating Nothing to get such strong healing while also having low risk high mobility skills rewards players for playing the class with a risk aversion which seems to be against the entire spec's general philosophy.

 

Lastly I want to talk about the Visuals and sounds. Blight as a Visual is cool at first, but after playing the spec and trying to build blight focused builds its an eye sore to look at when it clashes so heavily with how my character looks. I do feel blight as a visual needs to be toned down, perhaps a bit more transparent. You could have it glow in shroud. I'd also Like to see some unique animation for when you drink an elixir to share its boons with allies. Perhaps a transmutation circle sorta like how we see when we enter shroud but just a flash and less extreme. It would be nice to have a strong visual representation to show off the aid I'm giving allies. Another thing I noticed was that Pistol doesn't use the Super pistol sounds when you fire it, which is really disappointing.

 

With my criticisms out of the way, I just want to say the spec still feels pretty good. its extraordinarily strong and some of those numbers might need to be toned down slightly, but overall I do enjoy it. Its refreshing to play it since it does feel like necromancer taking engineer as their secondary like how secondaries work in GW1, and those are my 2 favorite professions in GW2, so I've just been having a lot of fun.

[hugo.4705]

After playing more the Harbringer; I think the specialization should focus on one theme and not melting several elements together that have nothing in common. What is the theme of this elite specialization? Anet should know which one it is:

 

1- It is an Alchemist. The elixirs are not drunk but thrown, are renamed potions, create AOE fields that give condis to foes who pass through and boons to the user who pass through. The weapons skills give additional conditions. There is no shroud acrobatics / martial have no link with alchemy, stupid to use those, but a tool-belt like, F1-F4 skills that consist of Self-Skills like Adrenaline syringue (EG: Give Quickness-Fury-Stability-Might) , Pain Killer (Remove all condis on you) , Healing flask and Stealth Mixture (Give some stealth).  Well you get it, in sum condis aoes and potions. See https://www.diablowiki.net/Alchemist_Skills .

 

Pros: Elixirs can stay and weapon skills need a little tuning, exploit well the alchemy/alchemist aspect, specialization icon is kept.

Cons: Shroud and its skills is completely removed and new skills with new icons have to be created, 4, as F1-F2-F3-F4, no blight. Specialization name is changed to Alchemist.

 

2- It is an assassin. Then the drunk elixirs makes 0 sense and have to be changed to something else: Thief like, stealthy moves, throwing a mixture in the face of the foe, throw a jade shard, pulsing aoes. It keeps martial moves and shroud, but it makes the necro not a necro anymore and more of a thief. Very bad idea to follow.

 

Pros: Shroud is kept.

Cons: No more elixirs, specialization icon doesn't make sense anymore, no more elixirs, no more blight mechanic. No alchemy theme anymore, may feel like a thief bis.

 

3- It is a plague doctor/ jekyll and hyde style. Most of skills, including elixirs that are now injections consist of self inflicting ton of conditions to become more powerful and throwable condis flasks. The blight mechanic is conserved but appear with very long duration/infinite duration conditions stacking on the player instead of removing health. Once enough blight is accumulated, the player can use the blight icon that will deplete the bar like engie photon forge, during that period, weapon skill/utilities gives addition boons/ inflict more conditions. Heal skill aka "The Cure" clear all conditions and blight. https://www.ign.com/wikis/darkest-dungeon/Plague_Doctor Frankly, just follow this to redesign.

 

Pros: Alchemy like theme is kept, more conditions on you = more blight = you are more powerful. Spec icon can be kept.

Cons: Shroud is removed, now a photon forge like bar. Renamed Plague Doctor.

 

4- It is a gunner. Elixirs are replaced by vials that are thrown by the pistol appearing in the chest armor as utilities and shot on foes. Fast recharge, apply conditions. Shroud is now kits, Gun and Vials based skills like a storm of corrosive bullets shots, charged shot that create a line of parasite/plague/bacteria; acrobatics jump and moves again, involving bullets or throwing jade shards.

 

Pros: Alchemy like theme is kept. The pistol/ shooting theme has a bigger meaningful place.

Cons: Shroud is removed, now being an engineer like kit featuring vials and several dynamic skills. Need to be recreated.

 

 

What I would choose? Frankly, my choice would be between 1 and 3. But going more to the Plague Doctor (3). Why? It keeps the blight mechanic, elixirs are now flasks, flasks that I should remind you, appear on your artwork https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Harbinger#/media/File:Harbinger_concept_art.jpg on the belt with several others. The hat medallion could be a sample of "The Cure" and be the heal skill that cleanse all conditions. It is a waste to not have throw-able flasks whereas the artwork have them. Self inflicting conditions to unlock a devastating aura bar that deplete with time during which you deal more conditions and gain more boons is better than another regular shroud requiring life force.

 

I don't speak of damage tuning or anything, I let the specialists speak about those, I am speaking of overall theme, and currently, it is several rushed ideas glued together: Some elixirs, Some martial arts, Some guns

I tried Harbringer with Grieving stats, ferocity-might-condi-precision at Tarir Meta, kept dying during pre event, didn't liked a lot the specialization overall because feel like a draft. And the HP reducting thing is just complety skritt! Better as self-conditions.

[antidote.7201]

PvE

I tested Harbringer for about 10 hours with several stats combinations and traits. First of all, I think there is a synergy with all class traits. It's kinda a vampiric build where you can tank up using barriers and deal with damages easier using high mobility skills and regeneration. It's a good idea that bring several gameplay styles possibles. And the animation push the concept to a good point. I would still add some animation for the elixirs. We need to feel the difference between one and another, since all utility skills are about Elixirs. We could even add a synergy between 2 elixirs, like if they were mixed up and brought to a new level of Skill, a little bit more offensive or defensive. There's a potential in my opinion, that could bring elixirs to a next level gameplay for large scale fighting.

 

WvW

Althought I feel it very challenging and fun to play in PvE, I think we also need to take in consideration the large scaling fight aspect. For example, elixir are good in pve, they can be very key-fighting for any situation where enemies are overwhelming. But in wvw, Elixirs and pistol lack of real utility. The area radius is only about 240 for the elixirs with the traits "Twisted Medicine". I would easily bring it to 600 it, since our allies are often here and there. Also, as you know we can't really downscale our life pool in wvw. Since this game mode is highly related to survivability, I would scale down both the overall burst damage and the life pool decrease when using the shorud, and make the pistol area related. Lots of damages sources in wvw are area related, and I feel like single target (or2) is kinda too low for being really impacting and decisive. Sometimes I shooted with the pistol and I didn't know on who I was shooting.

The good point of this new elite is the high level mobility, this is good since we can trait our shroud activation with Stability.

 

I think we need something more area related with pistols, like a zone on the ground. This will fix immediately the deal with WvW and PvE that we have to find, small and large scale.

[wetwillyhip.7254]

Just to reiterate some important points here...

 

Harbinger should not just focus around one single condition and it shouldn't be torment. Torment, burning, boon corruption, and cripple are a theme of Scourge. Please have the Harbinger primarily use a different theme of conditions like a buffed up Poison, Slow, and Blind (maybe confusion?). Thinking about PVP/WvW too--if all we do is torment primarily, it's not much of a threat and can get removed easily.

 

Don't push the use of 3 different roles with Harbinger. Power feels too weak. Stick with Condi & support at the maximum. Revise the top trait line for more synergy and flavor with a condition or support build and create them in line with the thematics of Harbinger. I would say make the adept top and bottom 1% dmg+ per blight traits be a standard inherent baseline of blight. It shouldn't have to be something you choose in a trait line.

 

Elixirs feel incredibly bland, insufficient, and disjointed with the class and its theme. Elixirs should imbue our attacks with more damage or conditions while benefiting us with longer lasting boons. I think this class should really be strong in playing around with combo fields and finishers, especially poison and smoke fields. Add fields to the utility skills and finishers to the pistol and shroud abilities. Different combos = different styles and "recipes" that Harbinger can pull off that could result in stealth, blinding bolts, area blind, area weakness, etc.

 

Maybe make some traits that play off of combo'ing. Since we have a good amount of built in stuns/dazes/float--make some traits proc something when we cc--like Insidious Disruption. Play with improving poison in Harbinger traits, I hate to only find that in Death Magic trait line. 

 

Make blight look visually the opposite of barrier where it rises from the bottom of your health bar.

 

Maybe make blight something we can apply to other foes to help cleave them down quicker. Have it be a cc to defiant champs.

 

Add fear into the class some how so 3 different traits that have synergy with fear can be considered.

 

Dhuumfire is overnerfed. 

Edited August 20, 2021 by wetwillyhip.7254

[Surolam.1490]

I thought the balance was good, and liked the options in Shroud.  Being able to tune on-the-fly between "glass cannon" and "tank" feels good, kinda like Holosmith's "overheat" mechanic.

I was disappointed in the pistol and utility skills though.  I felt they were effective but uninteresting.  The pistol skills felt very similar to Engineer's main-hand pistol skills, and all the elixirs were just boons.

What about an elixir which gives you a pulsing poison field? or an aura similar to Fire Shield / Frost Shield, but doing bleeding & poison to attackers instead of other conditions.  Maybe a thrown elixir that does something similar to Illusion of Life or gets actual corpses up and active for a bit?

To make pistol skills feel a bit more interesting, maybe one of them could trail a narrow poison field? They were visually good, but felt overly familiar.

[jpsssss.7530]

Ok I have some thoughts and comparisons having fought as and against Harbingers in PvP and small-scale WvW.

 

1) I'm still of the opinion that blight is too punishing.

a. I think the blight disincentiveizes the use of the elixirs and shroud in competitive game modes. I realize that the goal is a trade of health for damage, but its honestly too steep of a cost for the payout

b. we have no interaction with blight other than passive interaction, but no way to control it finely like holosmith.

c. It lasts far too long. 25 seconds has made it so that I've had some stacks carry over to the next fight. If we shrugged it off at out-of-combat, it's be fine. or setting it to like 13-15 second would probably be fine.

 

2) Torment. not too many points here. Torment is great in PvE content like raids, fractals etc, but in PvP and WvW it is awful. Having it as the primary damaging condition with almost nothing else makes it pretty terrible outside of PvE.

 

3) Pistol. Torment is also my main complaint with pistol. Outside of PvE it has really bad power scaling and the second worst damaging condition. I like the design of renegades short bow where it has 2 conditions and solid power scaling so it can be a power weapon or a condi weapon. It feels like a waste to give an elite spec a power increase, a ferocity increase and a strike damage increase, but not be able to have its weapon use it all.

 

3) Shroud. I think its pretty solid. Skill 4 feels like it has a second animation that locks you in for too long. It just feels off in terms of skill flow. Skill 5 seems counter productive. It feels like there's a delay to it that's more than the casting time. Other than those and blight its fun.

 

4) Elixir. They feel really bad to use unless you're playing the boon variant. They feel like underwhelming without an elixir throw. Maybe take a page from Druid and make it so the elixirs appear in Harbinger Shroud and have a thrown skill there that shares a cooldown with the elixir?

 

5) Traits. The only I think are wonky, not even bad, just kinda backwards, are the top and bottom grandmaster skills, because their AOE is too small. If you're going to give us 900 range, try and maintain that theme. Maybe instead of giving an aura, it improves certain skills in shroud to be better suited to the damage type the trait gives. All of the other traits are good *chef's kiss*.

 

I think it's a good start, but I feel like its too reliant on having a lot of defensive stats outside of PvE in order to function as an effective damage dealer. The most effective non PvE strategy I've found is as a tanky kiting duelist, which seems backwards given how its supposed to be a damage dealing elite spec...

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

On a much smaller note, what is going on with the 1 second of poison on Vile Blast in PvP/WvW?  Anyone hit by it is stunned for that duration anyway, so they aren't healing.  Having the single stack is fine, but at least let it linger a bit beyond the stun to actually make it good at disrupting rezzes.

[CallMeSam.6507]

PROBLEMS:
 

Skills are repeatitive and don’t synergize well. An example of skills that are fun to combo together would be DH Procession of Blades, GS4, & GS2. Another is Reaper GS4, wells, and shroud 4. Those skills flow into each other and is fun to rotate. The cooldowns feel like a string of fluid actions.

 

Harbinger felt like I’m just constantly spamming a few basic skills, with now flow. The elixirs make this even worse.

 

On the topic of elixirs, they are great conceptually, but are just NOT FUN TO PLAY. I can already imagine just spamming buttons off cooldown, with no considerations for combo or the state of the battle whatsoever. And the balance would be tricky: too overtuned and harbingers would be forced to run this all the time, and its a really boring role; too undertuned, and no one would play it.

SUGGESTIONS:

 

I suggest adding some fields to pistol, shroud, and instead of the elixirs.
 

Fields to the pistol and shroud to help with the flow in and out of shroud.

 

But mainly, ELIXIRS SHOULD ACT AS COMBO FIELDS. How about this? Splash your elixir on to the ground in a line or a circle, and buff allies in it. Shooting through the field would give different effects.

[CallMeSam.6507]

It feels PASSIVE to play

 

Elixirs skills are boring to use because its literally press a button to drink pots and gain buffs. Other class would need to put down fields, and even splash in them to get the desired effects. More active decision making there.

 

Main attack skills are boring to use because its just shooting bullets and, oh, shoot even more bullets. Shroud 3 and 4 and alright, but nothing exciting. Shroud 5 is the only unique thing.

 

Some skill ideas:

-spin around and fire bullets

-fire a poisonous bullet that leave a poisonous trail ok the ground

-splash elixir on the ground in a line, creating different fields

[Tidalwave.9384]

I played harbinger mostly in wvw ranging from solo to big groups and tested both condi and power builds. As overall thoughts, the harbinger is lacking in almost every regard. The gameplay pattern seemed to encourage dipping into the shroud for a max of 4 seconds at a time and utilizing the lifeforce heal to reach surprisingly high and somewhat comparable sustain to core necro while being much more vulnerable to burst damage. Prolonged sitting in shroud basically always concluded in gameplay pattern of both players spamming all the damage they could muster at each other while harbinger - due to lack of access to utilities, raw tankyness and avoidance- tended to lose the DPS race. On top of this, outside of building the LF bar before the fights, it was rare to be able to have access to even halfway LF bar as the vast majority was drained for healing anyways.

For the focus of the spec, I found it rather dull that it’s another torment build as scourge already heavily focused on it, plus the inherent problem of balancing heavy torment damage between PvE and PVP modes. I think poison focus would work better for the spec overall while matching its flavour. However, I did like the access to stuns alongside torment as it gave more skill expression as you could force the enemies to stop moving. I would like to see the fear traits being made to work with hard-cc skills too to better accommodate for the lack of baseline fear from the spec. Similarly, I’d like to see access to immobilize to allow more skill expression without hard-ccs as necro feels more like a condi-focused ccer, but this would fit scourge more so if they ever decide to rework that due to the torment change.

Outside of the shroud gameplay, no matter which builds I was running I was having greater success the less I ran the new tools. Essentially the only thing that I felt that the harbinger brought to the table is access to greater mobility, which I suppose was designed to be used offensively, but I found greater success using them to kite the opponents due to the lack of tools to withstand and evade damage. The increase in mobility traded off for squishiness doesn’t pay off due to the lack of other crucial tools that other normally squishy professions have access to. Simply put, harbinger lacks the tools to realize its supposed gameplay. Going over each aspect of the specialization, I think all of them require work.

 

Shroud

The shroud looks great but due to the nature of the blight mechanic and lack of active defences, I was unable to stay in it for a long time. When quickly popping into the shroud, I simply used #4 to reposition (and heal, transfusion felt great with harbinger) while saving #5 for safety and #3 for possible escape mechanic. However, due to the lack of movement impairing removal in either of the mobility skills, it was really easy for my opponents to lock me down in shroud which in turn forced me to drop it immediately. It was simply too easy to force me out of it due to the lack of evasion tools. And even when I could stay in the shroud for longer, the gameplay consisted of spamming #1 & #2 over and over again. While they could be traited to hurt a lot, it felt extremely boring to use. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with 1,2 and 4 skills outside of tuning the numbers and smoothing the animations, the 3 and 5 and lacklustre by design. The #3 does very little outside of the movement part of the skill so there simply was no point in using it unless I needed the mobility. The #5 skill’s area is small enough and since it doesn’t move with you, I found it to be a mediocre safety tool at best. I couldn’t use it as a setup as it was both too small and slow, so the best I could do with it was trying to interrupt enemies damage windows which seems counterintuitive for what the shroud tries to do.

Due to how squishy the harbinger is, the harbinger shroud might be THE shroud skill that could include the heal/utility abilities in it to give it better active defence tools to offset the squishiness.

 

Pistol

I initially liked the pistol but the more I played with it the blander it got. There’s nothing interesting that the weapon does or enables outside of the stun on #3, it’s simply another damaging tool and it’s not even good at dealing damage. For power, it was pitiful enough that I had more success just switching to dagger/axe as MH weapons and for condi it was by far outdone by the sceptre, especially if traited. Notably, the pistol #1 condi damage was so low that the weapon lacks steady pressure made a pistol/staff setup no-go as a well-timed condi cleanse could buy the opponent roughly 6s worth of essentially no damage. The lack of 2^nd condi based offhand weapon also meant that it felt bad running two MH/OH weapon sets as it felt like one of the OH sets didn’t click with what I wanted to accomplish. Even with power when running axe/pistol setup felt like it lacked properly synergistic 2^nd offhand (which I simply solved by switching the pistol to a dagger or staff). Also, it feels weird that necro gets access to yet another 900 range MH weapon especially when the pistol competes with both of the others. The range of the pistol could be increased to 1000+ to make it more unique.

 

Elixirs

The elixirs outside of the elite are some of the blandest skills I’ve seen in the game. The only one of them that was even slightly interesting was the elixir of bliss but even it feels like a modified spectral walk. In smaller-scale fights, the anguish and bliss elixirs were a no-go from the get-go due to the lack of survivability when trying to run non-defensive utilities. Ignorance was fine as a short cd stun break more so than anything else and bliss itself could be seen as a trade-off to the mentioned spectral walk but again due to the lack of survivability, the ability to kite with spectral walk made the choice rather easy in favour of the spectral walk.

The heal skill felt terrible the more I used it. when looking at raw healing values it’s pretty high if you let the LF transfer to health but constantly applying more blight on yourself for it made it better for me to just run either signet or consume conditions. It feels weird that the heal skill, which would be a perfect place to naturally reduce the drawbacks of the spec, rather just pile on it. Why not make the heal reduce your blight stacks?

The elite elixir I found to be was worth using for me as it works as both defensive and offensive cd and if running only one elixir skill, the blight stacks rarely got high enough to make me too squishy while using it. Even still, the ability to share the boons from the elixirs feels like it makes the balancing act of the elixir skills a nightmare as they will likely suffer from being unusable if playing in a small scale or alone due to the inability to stack to other people and the durations likely would be too long if they were balanced for solo use.

 

Traits

As with elixirs, the traits are extremely boring. They streamline you to a certain playstyle, generally don’t do anything interesting and, with few exceptions, don’t synergize with other necro traits. What’s worse is that losing access to baseline fear invalidates the fear traits. The flat stat increases included in the traits makes them feel lazy especially when they could be done interestingly, just look at the death magic trait line. On top of that, the traits play extremely similarly, while what they want you to do doesn’t match with how I needed to play the spec to have success. Overall, the traits feel like a complete mess of ideas smashed together with no proper thought put into it. Similarly pigeonholing you into certain traits for any playstyle is terrible as it kills creativity, just look at reaper how one singular trait can turn it into a condi spec. Why do we need 3 of each condi and power traits for harbinger? it’s supposed to be high damage spec why aren’t the current flat damage traits merged to allow for more traits that can synergize with other playstyles and train lines?

 

Alchemic vigor: Okay, this being a minor tells me harbingers are supposed to be high health/survivable character, which is not really the case. Why is a minor trait wasted on something lessening the drawbacks of the spec instead of focusing on what the spec is supposed to do? If you want to reduce the risk of blight just have a major trait for it. for example, it could still give vitality and reduce blight health % or something similar. Point is, focus on the supposed strengths of the specs in minor and leave drawback reductions to major traits.

 

Corrupted Talent: Arguably the best harbinger trait overall with how I played it, allowing you to dip into the shroud for few seconds even if (or rather despite of) your LF bar being at zero. With how much success I had with dipping into shroud anyways no matter how much I had LF this trait highlights that kind of gameplay pattern. With how LF works for harbinger I think this is a perfect example of a minor trait, it’s a necessity to make you able to use your class mechanic.

 

Wicked corruption & Septic corruption: Cool, bonuses for blight. If I want to highlight harbinger being a high risk/high reward spec why isn’t this a minor trait? you could just combine them with a reduced amount and have a single trait to make it work like they currently do. There’s no point in these traits being separated outside of the shroud poison part which could be elsewhere anyways (though the poison part is strong enough that it could likely be its own trait).

 

Vile Vials & Twisted Medicine: Here are two elixir traits that do very different things but both are mandatory for boonsharing. Both of these traits are interesting in their own regard but together they simply clog up the trait line. Technically they could be merged but I think it would just result in a trait that’s too busy for its good. On the other hand, elixir boonsharing could be made baseline. These two require some work in any direction as I do not think they should exist together as they are.

 

Master line vitality converts: I don’t think it’s a good idea to have converts attached to every trait, they take power allocation away from the traits themselves and being on the whole column, it feels like there’s an attempt in forcing me to play with gear including vitality.

 

Implacable Foe: It’s the old foot in the grave without a stun break, it’s solid but not interesting. Due to the lack of defensive abilities in the shroud and being extremely squishy in it, this felt great as it allowed for some safety in the shroud.

 

Dark Gunslinger: outside of potentially giving like 18% condi duration, it's a rather basic weapon trait. Still, even with a condi build, I was rather tempted to take implacable for just for the stabi but again, the stat conversion felt like it forced me away from it.

 

Cascading corruption & doom approaches: Again, practically the same trait with just different damage output and again, due to the inability to stay in shroud they both felt terrible. Even when staying in the shroud for longer they felt lacklustre. The raw stats in these feels lazy and the effect could likely be merged with slight nerf is and be fine. There’s no reason to have two traits benefit us from staying in shroud doing the same thing. Give us more options in the grandmaster, want us to stay in the shroud? cool have an option for constant damage. Can’t stay in the shroud? give us functionally something else to use.

Deathly Haste: This quickly became my go-to trait in grandmasters no matter what I was running. Mostly because the benefit was more instantaneous while also helping with using the shroud skills to get out of it again. It should speak volumes that choosing essentially a worse reapers onslaught felt like the best choice for me. Overall, with all boonshares the range felt too small due to the squishiness of the class, I can’t be in the thick of it to boon people, especially the shroud quickness.

 

Closing thoughts

All in all, the spec needs to refine its identity and focus on it more while opening up the trait line to give more options and synergies with core necro tools. The biggest problems being blight mechanic, which should be adjusted to include positive elements (as I proposed making the damage & condi damage increase per stack a minor trait) to encourage utilizing blight instead of avoiding it as much as possible and the active survivability outside of sustain should be increased as it’s currently impossible to utilize the shroud for longer periods of time in damage heavy environment. The power scaling needs to be adjusted as it feels like a bad reaper damage wise. The condi damage feels fine but the application could be smoothened out.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

I played around a bit with this espec and found it okay.

 

The life force to life mechanic is interesting, and the blight mechanic is interesting. I couldn’t figure out if these really made much difference in my gameplay. 
 

The shroud skills are okay, and the pistol skills are also okay. They don’t really add much to the espec,  the elixirs are a fine skill type assuming most builds will only use one or two.  
 

I did find the actual gameplay pretty okay, enjoying the mobility and resilience the harbinger offered. I did not find it at all compelling to play though. 
 

I’d give this elite special a 7/10 overall based heavily on the playstyle and less so on the values and interactions. It isn’t something I would decide to play but can see it being engaging for some.