Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Vancho.8750]

The pistol stun should probably get a really noticeable sound queue like the Mesmer pistol stun pling pling before it fires. 

[Avenrise.3592]

A lot of people have complained that the Harbinger just seems a little... bland in terms of traits and the elixirs. Those elixirs are essentially just boons in exchange for Blight. Boons for HP loss. I personally like the idea of Blight but I feel more needs to be tied to it.

 

Instead of just having elixirs gain you Blight for a boon, base those boon effects on the level of Blight you already have. Have 5 stacks of Blight instead of 25 (but still with 50% HP loss) and have each 1 stack give you x-amount of a boon. Higher the stacks, the more boons. At 4 and 5 stacks have the elixir give in addition to the boon self-condi's (thematically can be explained by 'being more sick'?). Why self conditions? You can then trait towards spreading those conditions (condi-specs) as per other necro traits/skills or have Harbinger traits that use those negatives to create a further power-based positive such as, I dont know, 'gain x-amount of barrier for each stack of bleed and Blight on you' (just an idea off the top of my head). 

 

The risk is higher but the reward is very high if you can 'use' the self conditions effectively. Why is this better than the current system? It ties in to other trait lines and skills creating more buildcraft. Its not just a 'lower health, higher damage' black and white mechanic anymore. You dont just pop all your elixirs and reap the rewards so long as you can stay on your feet... you have to weigh up when you want to use the elixirs. 1-3 stacks where you're gaining all positive effects to stacks 4-5 where you get higher positives but have another form of damage to get rid of/use effectively.  

 

Okay feel free to pull apart my idea. I'm not a theorycrafter, I literally just had the idea an hour ago and had to put it to 'paper'. I'm a PvE player only so in reality this idea may not work for all modes without some major changes but hey, having ideas is never a bad thing!

[Avenrise.3592]

Sorry to double post but I wanted to keep this separate:

 

I'd like in general to see more traits give positive effects based on defensive attributes such as Vitality, Toughness and Healing Power. I can only really speak as a PvE player but giving people more choice when it comes to attribute combinations is never a bad thing. I'd love to see traits that, for example off the top of my head, give an extra chance of bleeding a foe the higher your Toughness is. I'll leave you to figure how to thematically fit it in though! Sharp armour? 😄

[digoblack.6739]

the style of elixir doesn't match the character who uses the pistol, it would be more interesting skills that change the type of ammunition in the pistol, such as piercing bullets, freezing bullets, different types of bullets, and an ultimate with a shower of bullets would be more interesting

[Bookah pls.9352]

Please just open up the option to use pistol offhand with this, i cannot stomach another minute of warhorn/focus any longer.

 

It doesn't have to be a meta pick, just give us the option to dual wield pistols for this pistol based elite spec, single 1h weapons on an elite spec are always disappointing to me for this reason, it feels lazy and just kills potential build diversity for no good reason.

Scourge got away with it due to how radically different it was to other necro specs via the shroud skills. This one feels like a bland unrealised potential cheap option, it will always feel thematically incomplete to me in it's current state without an OPTIONAL offhand compliment.

[nopoet.2960]

Pistol skills

1. Harbinger bullets shouldn't bounce they should splash.

2. Harbinger bullets shouldn't pierce the should infect and spread.

3. Shattering is acceptable.

[Wintermute.5408]

On 8/28/2021 at 8:13 PM, Healy.9537 said:

It doesn't have to be a meta pick

It's going to be PVE meta the moment it's even remotely useful.

[Silvax.8145]

On 8/29/2021 at 3:13 AM, Healy.9537 said:

Please just open up the option to use pistol offhand with this, i cannot stomach another minute of warhorn/focus any longer.

 

It doesn't have to be a meta pick, just give us the option to dual wield pistols for this pistol based elite spec, single 1h weapons on an elite spec are always disappointing to me for this reason, it feels lazy and just kills potential build diversity for no good reason.

Scourge got away with it due to how radically different it was to other necro specs via the shroud skills. This one feels like a bland unrealised potential cheap option, it will always feel thematically incomplete to me in it's current state without an OPTIONAL offhand compliment.

I 110% agree with this. The potential for diverse builds would get me super excited and the warhorn/focus is killing me at this point. Off-hand pistol with 3 ability changing depending whether you’re holding a second pistol or not. 3 ability rapid firing from both pistols very much like thief dual pistol would feel absolutely amazing. I know it’s stealing the uniqueness from thief but would be nice to see something close to that at least. 

 

Harbinger Potion abilities are pretty lacklustre aside from a few. Pressing 1 button (elite skill) for extremely high tier boons feels a bit cheap. 

 

I also feel Harbinger bullets shouldn't pierce, I don’t feel like I’m actually hitting the target. To be honest any ability in the game that pierces doesn’t feel good. Mainly core necro shroud has this problem with its 1 skill. Looks like a near miss and doesn’t feel impactful at all. Should explode on target and AoE. (Obviously not related to Harbinger but thought I would slot that in.)

Edited September 1, 2021 by Silvax.8145

[Uete.3805]

I know I'm probably late to the party, but I've been thinking on how to improve the traits and I'd like to share those ideas. The Major Adept traits felt uneven, since 2 of them were giving a particular playstyle benefits based on Blight and the power one seemed lesser than its condi option:

• Wicked Corruption: Shroud skill 2 now grants you 0,5 seconds of fury (on top of the previous 25% strike dmg on Blight). Besides focusing more on crits, it would give that first line more of a "selfish" boons focus.
• Vile Vials: Elixirs gain reduced recharge based on amount of Blight (sth like 10% baseline scalable to 35%? Too much?)

Septic Corruption and all Major Master traits seemed to work well enough and provided good theorycrafting possibilities and unique playstyles. The Grandmaster traits felt too samey, however.

• Cascading Corruption: Instead of granting an Aura, it could be renamed to Corrupting Shards and have more of a bursty functionality. You gain a Corrupted Shard stack each time you would gain Blight (1 stack when in Shroud and as many stacks as the elixirs give you). When entering or leaving Shroud consume all the stacks and send them with the next attack.
• Doom Approaches: The more Blight you have the greater the radius of the skill and the deadlier its conditions. Basically you are a jade reactor exploding. Include Poison 1 sec after the initial pulse at >10 Blight and after that Burning at >20 Blight, but only closer to the Harbinger (180).

Deathly Haste was lovely, but maybe could have a special effect, sth like at 15-20% Blight increases its radius? I'm in love with that trait. Seriously.

In any case thank you so much for letting us play with this great spec!

 

[The Boz.2038]

On 8/28/2021 at 5:44 PM, digoblack.6739 said:

the style of elixir doesn't match the character who uses the pistol, it would be more interesting skills that change the type of ammunition in the pistol, such as piercing bullets, freezing bullets, different types of bullets, and an ultimate with a shower of bullets would be more interesting

Jesus christ what is wrong with you

[ZDragon.3046]

On 8/28/2021 at 6:21 AM, Vancho.8750 said:

The pistol stun should probably get a really noticeable sound queue like the Mesmer pistol stun pling pling before it fires. 

Mesmer pistol has no noticeable sound queue when it fires btw at least not from the foe's side. Both pistol stuns need a visual rework with a swirly animation similar to point blank shot so you can just STRAIGHT UP  see them coming. As of right now its kitten near impossible to accurately judge when you will be stunned by necro pistol or mesmer's magic bullet. 

[ZDragon.3046]

My personal thoughts on harbinger 

 

- The shroud itself

Its 1 and 2 skills are too strong while everything else in the kit is super lack luster.

Rebalance these skills and consider removing torment from some skills for more strike damage potential to make its power options more viable. 

The lack of defense in exchange for power and mobility seems off after all there is only 1 extra mobility skill which is not much to scream about. No mobility is provided via weapon skills which really does not sell the class as being more mobile if you ask me. The same was sold for willbender and it ended up with like 7 or 8 mobility skills (way too many) but necro only ended up with one extra. Please make some of those elixirs more creative a shadow step on use or evade backward on use would be a nice touch to some of them you intend to keep the blight cost on them. Particularly on the condition clear and break stun options. 

Consider making utility skills available in this shroud as health is not protected

Additionally the way lost health from blight is displayed could be done better. Consider removing the green filter when this shroud is active as its easy to consider it too close to the other shrouds where your health is protected. In pvp specifically I shouldnt be able to see the targets life force pool on their health bar with harbinger. I dont need to see that information I need to see their hp more than their lf.   

 

- Blight last too long and is not very interactive with the class in anyway at base level. Not good balance of risk for reward. 

Blight stacks for too long and there are no ways to remove or spend it in a rewarding manner. Harb. is very close to being a good concept similar to Holosmith. Holosmith builds heat which is a negative mechanic but there is not instant negative impact unless you over cap on it and there are methods of being rewarded AT THE BASE LEVEL (no traits required) for building this mechanic.

With Blight it is just a pure negative concept at a base level that feels thrown in for no real reason other then thematic which is very bad design. Im ok with risk vs reward but this is just all risk at the base level with no real reward. There are only 2 traits that interact with blight and you can only pick 1 of the 2 at any given time. 

One of these traits is stupidly strong while the other does not live up to par. The 25% boost to all conditions is likely too strong while the 25% boost to strike damage is not nearly enough.  There is no point to focusing an entire line of traits to power damage if its not going to out do reaper when this elite is being sold off as "more of a dps than reaper" while lacking the defense that reaper has.

 

- Elixirs, the good and the bad but mostly the questionable.

Right out the gate like so many other players have commented those icons are not going to work. They feel extremely lazy and hardly make any of them seem different. Even recolors of the Engineer elixirs would have looked better.

The heal elixir has 0 worth in pve aside form abusing blight stacks for your dps modifier. This is not good design. Other elixirs kind of suffer from the same problem. The elite elixir seems to be very strong but even then its just consume plasma but slightly better nothing to be super excited about. Where is the potential for evading back and drinking an elixir? Where is the extra mobility? 

Not a single elixir removes blight.... this is bad too... you would think the healing skill would at least do this and heal based on blight removed which would have been more baseline interactions with blight. 

 

- Overall

Harbinger is a spec that feels close to being finished but then all heck just got thrown to the way side near the end. Blight feels like its there just for thematic purposes and not as a actual class mechanic THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE make it similar to holo heat where it either does one of two things.

- Add methods of spending blight stacks for something rewarding

Or

- Make more things like shroud skills, elixirs, weapon skills, etc become empowered to stronger abilities above certain blight thresholds... (WITHOUT THE USE OF TRAITS) These should be base level things much like holo weapon and utility skills are.

This turns blight into more of a class mechanic rather than something that is there for thematic purposes 

 

Traits that work with fear have no effect on harbinger skills and likely need to be modified specifically when in use with harbinger to say when you disable a foe instead of specifically fear.  Unless you make one of the shroud skill change into a fear (skill 3 or 4) above a set number of blight stacks (coughs loudly) 

 

Turndown the torment and turn up the strike damage! They are considerably imbalanced and condition is way too good on it atm for something that is suppose to be good for both.  The grandmaster traits feel lackluster and need a rework. a single pulse every 3s is not going to really cut it especially for the power option.  This could easily be another thing where the frequency of the pulse depends upon blight stacks for more interaction tbh. 

 

There are some noticeably good things about harbinger however

The lack of boon corrupt filler on their skills was noticed and I thank you for not filling boon corrupts and rips which would overbloat the skills even more. Stop making necro the only anti boon handler 2022

 

The shroud auto feels very nice to use keep that... just make sure the other skills feel useful I would like to do combos not just 11111111111 and occasionally throw out a 2. 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by ZDragon.3046

[Vennyhedgie.5369]

If blight is to stay as it is or in any variation it 100% needs its own unique UI element. A barely visible buff on the UI feels like such an amateur mistake. Both blight and the elixirs just straight up sound like mechanics a random person with no professional exprience in design would create. "I press this button and get all boons" is such a joke elite I can't believe we've waited almost 5 years for this elite spec. 

 

Elite specs are the oportunity to introduce brand new concepts and mechanics. Harbinger has none of them. Even baseline necro elite skills have more personality than the elixir. 

- Create an area that pulses conditions, becoming increasingly more dangerous as time passes. No other skill in the game has this ramp up effect. The closest are Chrono wells having a final more powerful impact and even so it's not exactly the same.

- Become a lich form and get new skills. There are other transform skills in the game, but they're fairly sparce and each of them is unique.

- A relatively strong minion you can command. While granted, this is probably the least impressive of the 3 in terms of theme, I often find it the most useful for the CC alone, and having a pet to take aggro can be helpful as well.

 

Now you look at Harbinger and:

- Gain all boons. 

 

Like WHAT? Is this the best you can do? This is just save yourselves but without the condi absorb, which already makes it even less impressive and this is an ELITE.

The key art for Harbinger gives off such a cool vibe, the green elixir looks like a menacing toxic concoction you can easily see the necromancer just lobbing around the battlefield. I feel like they were so hard pressed for a support line on this spec that they forced themselves into the boon corner, making the most boring utility skills imaginable. 

 

While I think Virtuoso needs some tweeking, it has a pretty well defined theme and it mostly executes well with it (bugs not whitstanding). Willbender as a theme feels pretty muddy and I don't particularly find it enjoyable, but I know some other people will so it's fine by me. But Harbinger I would just straight up go back to the drawing board with the developers if I could. 

 

Blight

 

Blight should have an inherent beneficial effect. You shouldn't have to trait for it in order to not just be a detriment. Not having shroud as a defense is already a huge tradeoff of Harbinger. As per the Harbinger presentation "These skilled alchemists have developed elixirs to inflight blight upon themselves, converting their own pain into power." This entire sentence is untrue. 

First of all I don't feel like an alchemist when playing this spec at all. Second, blight does NOT grant you extra power unless you trait for it.

 

Elixirs

 

These need to have new effects, period. Some people have suggested having an F2 skill for combined effects but I realize this doesn't make much sense because you could easily not have any equipped elixirs. However, the idea of combining elixirs is absolutely something you should play with. Each elixir could grant a buff that enhances the next elixir you use. That way, if you have no elixirs you don't have useless UI elements, but the moment you have a single one, you can start toying with elixir combinations (an elixir could be combined with itself). This system would benefit from an ammo system, which immediately gives you ideas for trait augmentations increasing ammo charges and the like, and would feel like a proper alchemist theme.

 

Shroud

 

Shroud is okay, but I don't see the point of having two mobility skills. Doesn't help that shroud 3 is virtually identical to shroud 2 on reaper but on a different button. Messes with muscle memory honestly and I'm not a fan. Simlarly, as someone who plays daredevil a lot, shroud 4 feels out of place. I realize this is mainly a personal issue but it still bothers me. 

 

In any case I feel like shroud 3 and 4 serve almost identical purposes but the fact that they work slightly differently (one being ground targetted, one not), makes their usage back to back kinda weird. It doesn't flow particularly well and honestly I just think they should be combined into a single skill and leave room for a new, more unique one.

 

Pistol

 

Pistol is... strong, but again, incredibly boring. This is straight up just engineer pistol but with no offhand. On second thought this elite spec borrows so much from engie I now realize why I find it so unoriginal. Something that really bothers me about the pistol though is its lack of unique sound effect. It sounds exactly the same as engineer and thief pistols (although incredibly loud for some reason?), but the bullets are magical jade shards. I feel like this weapon should have unique firing effects, like Deadeye's rifle.

Also, necro's offhands are probably some of the weakest in the game, and none mesh well with the mainhand pistol. While I would've loved a double dagger on virtuoso, at least pistol works well with the mainhand dagger it got, but Harbinger desperately needs an offhand pistol to round out its kit more. I feel like only warhorn kinda fits and only because both pistol 3 and warhorn 4 are CC skills that can be used back to back to break bars.

Traits

 

I'm not gonna go much into these because the main issues lie in the new abilities more so than the traits, but one thing I absolutely do not understand is why is a spec with a RANGED weapon and a RANGED shroud getting 3 MELEE range only grandmasters. And to further add to the question, why are these the grandmasters and the build-defining traits that give you POSITIVE effects on blight, one of the main new mechanics, on the adept tier? These should be swapped around.

 

Honestly if you're gonna stick around with the pulsing area idea I'd actually like them to be split in the 3 different tiers, so you can build for a massive pulsing area monster, combining all 3, at the cost of having to A) Stay in shroud, which is inherently dangerous on Harbinger and B) Stay in melee range.

 

 

PD.: Sorry to sound harsh or negative, but after the incredibly possitive reception of reaper and the uniqueness of scourge, Harbinger is just such a massive let down for the longest waitime between expansion we've had that it's kind of frustrating. Most of its kit is reused engineer stuff.

[Aravind.9610]

The grandmaster traits are disappointing, since they force us to remain in melee with a ranged shroud and ranged weapons like scepter and pistol. My idea to change them would be:

Cascading Corruption: Your power is increased. While in Harbinger Shroud your attacks hit twice. ICD: 0.25 seconds.

Doom Approaches: Your condition damage is increased. While in Harbinger Shroud your attacks inflict one stack of torment. ICD: 0.5 seconds.

[MrClassy.4028]

I ran around EBG and PvE a bit with Harbinger but just kinda smashed things and did damage with whatever base condi gear I changed a bit. What stood out to me though was that:

• This is a condi dps with extra boons spec
• Pistol is condi
• I was very very fragile
• The lack of interesting blight and elixir interaction with the Harbinger traits is a big missed opportunity (though this isn't the only elite spec to suffer from this)
• Mighty Teapot, other people I saw trying stuff out on Twitch, and a lot of other feedback I've seen all comment on how in PvE/Raid/Fractal content, it's just a dps rotation with elixirs being hit off rotation if traited for sharing. There needs to be some exciting options for different playstyles. Also Scourge exists, and Firebrand, and Alac Ren

 

I have been playing a lot of Chrono and Tempest lately with not much Scrapper/Holo recently (too lazy to finish new builds and characters I have everything for) so I don't have exact suggestions on what to do about Harbinger/Necro. I also see how hard Scourge can carry and thanks to some breaks, how power crept things have gotten once people figured out PoF specs. Any meaningful changes will need more information based on planned power creep rollbacks and what the other elite specs are.

•  

[Silvax.8145]

15 hours ago, Vennyhedgie.5369 said:

Also, necro's offhands are probably some of the weakest in the game, and none mesh well with the mainhand pistol. While I would've loved a double dagger on virtuoso, at least pistol works well with the mainhand dagger it got, but Harbinger desperately needs an offhand pistol to round out its kit more. I feel like only warhorn kinda fits and only because both pistol 3 and warhorn 4 are CC skills that can be used back to back to break bars.

This. Harbinger doesn't feel finished with just a single pistol. We need more to the kit and an off-hand pistol would give that. Let us be free from warhorn, focus and dagger off-hands.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Silvax.8145

[dceptaconroy.7928]

Great ideas and tweaks here. Putting my +1 on offhand Pistol. Anet kindly take these ideas into consideration. 

[XECOR.2814]

This is my list of suggestions hopefully doesn't go in the trashcan. Just putting it out there hoping for the best.
1. Blight lasts too long in pvp/wvw. Make it last 15secs long in competitive game-modes.

2. Blight needs baseline(untraited, instant, defensive) positive effects based on how high the blight stack is. Currently Blight is an instant punish mechanic which has an upside of self healing out of shroud. The nature of healing being overtime is not balanced in terms of risk vs reward considering the healing overtime is a strict downgrade to any other defense in game, especially when paired with no Life force as hp shield + You have an addition hoop to jump through which is the Life force requirement to gain the reward part of the tradeoff, but it also reduces the life force. So, even if you jump through the hoop to get a downgraded defense, it still hurts you when you land.

3. Elixirs needs better icons period, they are not up-to the company's standard. If Arenanet decides to keep them it will be a testament to how far the company has fallen. I feel sorry for the artist that designed them but they really missed the mark by a long shot here. As a consumer this is infuriating tbh but since its a beta everything goes i guess.

4. When we are done with the blight changes then we can start looking into traits.
Like every other person says here, we need  to get away from pulsing aoe stuff.
I get that the harbinger design needs the pulsing aoe stuff in melee range to peel for itself but it does not need to be in grandmaster.
I think the traits needs a serious re-look, they are well thought out for sure but they are just not interactive and game changing and thus not fun.

My suggestion would be to remove the top line which is power based at the moment and change it to completely quality of life based traits.
These traits can interact with blight more and help expend blight actively and gain effects like % cd reductions on specific elixirs, get cleanses, stunbreaks or gain a f2 that gives different effects on different blight stack level which can be instant peel in melee range which the original design meant to do but is in a more active manner.

5. Please add a small radius aoe fear on shroud3 end. The animation begs for it and no fear on harbinger shroud makes many build synergies just not work. It can be a design choice to not add fear in shroud whatsoever but personally i think it would be a massive let down if we just throw all these fun concepts away. Fear based builds are one of the most fun builds to play on necromancer.

6. Warhorn 5 was reworked and it was mentioned that they will keep an eye on it how it performs but no further tweaking was done. I refuse to believe that arenanet thinks this skill is performing anywhere near the effect a 5th skill on a weapon should.
No offhand weapons work as well as warhorn with harbinger. So this would be a good opportunity to look back at long forgotten mistakes.

Edited September 8, 2021 by XECOR.2814

[Tails.9372]

This spec was really fun to play, especially the new Shroud which essentially solved one of my biggest problems with the game: underwater combat.

 

The new weapon was essentially what I would have expected from it and having troment as the featured condition was also a good choice as is opens up some build options I would otherwise not be considering and it's something that (unlike some conditions people have been asking for, i.e. bleeding) isn't already heavily featured by other main hand weapon choices.

 

Some people seem to take issue with the heavy focus on condi but I prefer that some specs have a clear direction and I'd rather see them providing a proper condi spec than something that's neither here nor there.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Tails.9372

[Aplethoraof.2643]

IMO:

• *Blight should be replaced with one of each (non-CC) condition. So poison, burning, bleed, torment, and confusion. One stack each per stack of blight. Then reduce the self-blight a little to compensate. Another idea is to have blight pulse these conditions every second or so instead of being -max HP.
• *The support tree (or boon-giving tree) should be more attuned to turning conditions into boons and then transferring boons to allies (similar to how necromancer can transfer conditions). The necromancer thus becomes sort of a "glass support", giving lots of boons away, turning conditions into boons, but always having some conditions on them thanks to blight and never keeping boons for themselves (unless no allies are around, in which case why are you running support?).
• *Instead of a power tree, there should be an offensive support tree where you get more abilities to inflict conditions (instead of blight) on yourself, take conditions from allies, and transfer it to enemies. These should supplement (instead of replacing) abilities necromancer already has for transferring conditions.
• *Instead of +condi damage for blight, you should get +condi damage per stack of each condition you have on you. This gives you an incentive not have them cleansed as soon as you get them.
• *The heal should give you conditions, and give you barrier + vitality per condition for X seconds (as well as a small heal so you don't die if you use it at the wrong moment).
• *Each elixir should give you conditions, then do X effect which is dependant on how many conditions you have. You could have one elixir where you replicate and bottle the conditions you have when you initially use it, then you have Y seconds to throw it at someone and spread them. Just as an example. Maybe the elite elixir could freeze condition timers on both yourself and enemies nearby you for X seconds (they can still be cleansed, but they'll continually tick then when those X seconds are up they'll count-down like normal - effectively adding on X seconds to all their condition stacks).

 

This will focus the spec around what I think they were going for (thematically, since they balance around themes). Putting conditions/damage onto yourself, and getting a benefit from it (this encouraging you to do it, making you into a glass cannon).

 

Shroud 3 should definitely have some condition transfer as well. Pistol's 2 or 3 should also transfer conditions.

 

One other thing that this spec is missing (that is rather core to necro's identity, given every weapon can do it nearly) is boon conversion. Maybe one of the elixirs converts X boons, where X is the number of conditions the necromancer has on them. As well, maybe pistol #3 converts 3 or so boons (in line with other weapons).

Edited September 9, 2021 by Aplethoraof.2643

[Wintermute.5408]

On 9/8/2021 at 8:32 PM, Tails.9372 said:

Some people seem to take issue with the heavy focus on condi but I prefer that some specs have a clear direction and I'd rather see them providing a proper condi spec than something that's neither here nor there.

It's almost like we already have a proper condi spec with clear direction and focus on torment, and HB is painfully redundant next to it. Even if numbers are higher, it's more of the same.

[ZDragon.3046]

2 hours ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

It's almost like we already have a proper condi spec with clear direction and focus on torment, and HB is painfully redundant next to it. Even if numbers are higher, it's more of the same.

Excactly this... we have gotten a condi spec i think it would have been nice to see another power spec that could actually outperform reaper but is more dependent upon allies to do so much like almost every other power build in the game right now. but nope... the power direction on harbinger is a complete flop and the torment is overloaded if you want a torment condition dps just play scourge.... further more anet should have just made scourge the support they originally tried to sell it as. Support seems so misguided on harbinger and just thrown in. 

 

Cmc sold harbinger as a dps "more so than reaper" but half way through "its a boon support too????"  this is recipie for disaster if you ask me. You should never be trying to mix pure dps roles with boon support roles as they end up over performing and usually will be heavily be nerfed as a result. Unlike guardian necromancer does not have a history of being able to keep good things aka high dps numbers and strong boons.

[KrHome.1920]

8 hours ago, ZDragon.3046 said:

Excactly this... we have gotten a condi spec i think it would have been nice to see another power spec that could actually outperform reaper but is more dependent upon allies to do so much like almost every other power build in the game right now. but nope... the power direction on harbinger is a complete flop and the torment is overloaded if you want a torment condition dps just play scourge.... further more anet should have just made scourge the support they originally tried to sell it as. Support seems so misguided on harbinger and just thrown in. 

Harbinger's direct damage can still be buffed (and has to be buffed, while condi has to be nerfed slightly). That's an easy task as it's just number tweaking.

I am sure that the 45k dps build won't survive until the release of the expac. That's objectively a too high number.

Quote

Cmc sold harbinger as a dps "more so than reaper" but half way through "its a boon support too????"  this is recipie for disaster if you ask me. You should never be trying to mix pure dps roles with boon support roles as they end up over performing and usually will be heavily be nerfed as a result. Unlike guardian necromancer does not have a history of being able to keep good things aka high dps numbers and strong boons.

It depends on how you support. Scourge supported with its dps kit and that's the problem and one of scourge's two big design fails (the other one is its aoe). A harbinger will lose its utility slots for dps, when it wants to use the support elixiers. That is inevitably a damage loss (and btw. game design done right).

 

Edited September 11, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[Tails.9372]

12 hours ago, Wintermute.5408 said:

It's almost like we already have a proper condi spec with clear direction and focus on torment, and HB is painfully redundant next to it. Even if numbers are higher, it's more of the same.

Necro also has an e-spec that's primarily focussed on power damage so that's a rather moot point to bring up especially since most of the main hand weapon choices were already power focused and the torment is on an off-hand weapon which, as I said: "it's something that isn't already heavily featured by other main hand weapon choices". Complains about harbinger having a weapon which heavily focuses torment cause "scourge already has one" ring nothing but empty as the things people want to replace it with are already heavily featured by other main hand weapons. Giving pistol a strong focus on bleeding like some people suggested would be something that's actually redundant as that's already what scepter, a weapon the harbinger has also access to, does.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Tails.9372

[ZDragon.3046]

15 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Necro also has an e-spec that's primarily focussed on power damage so that's a rather moot point to bring up especially since most of the main hand weapon choices were already power focused and the torment is on an off-hand weapon which, as I said: "it's something that isn't already heavily featured by other main hand weapon choices". Complains about harbinger having a weapon which heavily focuses torment cause "scourge already has one" ring nothing but empty as the things people want to replace it with are already heavily featured by other main hand weapons. Giving pistol a strong focus on bleeding like some people suggested would be something that's actually redundant as that's already what scepter, a weapon the harbinger has also access to, does.

Yes and it lacks behind the condi one by a pretty heavy margen.

However do not sell something as more of a dps than reaper when it has

less of a safety net  but also less power dps than reaper. 

You could argue that harb is not meant to be a power dps but it has 3 power dps traits which defeats this argument entirely. 

 

Reaper is held back because its a safe power dps option thats not very dependent on allies to perform well. which is why you dont see it at the top of the top levels of play when it comes to end game content where people are less likely to make mistakes.

If you firebrand is ontop of their job with quickness and fury etc other power dps rolls will generally outperform you as a reaper.

If the firebrand dies or forgets how to boon upkeep then you will see reaper out scale other power dps options because it can generate its own quickness. 

 

It would really be nice to have a pure power dps on necro that has to depend on others like ranger does, like ele does, like warrior does etc etc. all of whom need their supports to be on their a game to really shine. In either case throwing more torment on necro feels like a mistake to me. The condition is a bit boring now cause everything has so much of it. It went from being unique to being a bit too common if you ask me. While you may not agree we just had multiple years of scourge some of us dont want another torment heavy spec.