Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Kalocin.5982]

8 minutes ago, Methuselah.4376 said:

I dunno man. For me the point of taking Harbinger over Scourge/Reaper was its sheer damage. Some of the best testers on SC are having a hard time breaking through the 35-36k barrier. Yes, the Elixirs are better now. But, who in their right mind will ever pick Harbinger as a DPS over Scourge or Reaper when Scourge brings more utility and Reaper is much safer? 

I hope the devs don't take this as an opportunity to nerf Scourge and Reaper into the ground. 

Lol if they nerf Reaper after finally making it playable I think I might honestly just quit. It was such a confused spec back in the day and I feel like they've finally gotten it at a good place. I'd rather sacrifice Harbinger entirely. They probably should have some interaction with pistol where higher blight makes it do more damage or something. At least you'd get a bit of an ebb and flow going from shroud and out

[Methuselah.4376]

1 minute ago, Kalocin.5982 said:

Lol if they nerf Reaper after finally making it playable I think I might honestly just quit. It was such a confused spec back in the day and I feel like they've finally gotten it at a good place. I'd rather sacrifice Harbinger entirely. They probably should have some interaction with pistol where higher blight makes it do more damage or something. At least you'd get a bit of an ebb and flow going from shroud and out

Yeah I'm pretty much playing ESO full time now. THEY know how to do necro AND how to keep great balance. 

[Doctor Hide.6345]

17 minutes ago, Methuselah.4376 said:

I dunno man. For me the point of taking Harbinger over Scourge/Reaper was its sheer damage. Some of the best testers on SC are having a hard time breaking through the 35-36k barrier. Yes, the Elixirs are better now. But, who in their right mind will ever pick Harbinger as a DPS over Scourge or Reaper when Scourge brings more utility and Reaper is much safer? 

I hope the devs don't take this as an opportunity to nerf Scourge and Reaper into the ground. 

 

Honestly, I like Harbi now that I got my hands on it. I like it more than reaper and scourge just for the sheer fact it uses a gun which is always my preferred weapon in any game. Granted, I am still learning it's ins and outs, but this is making me want to become a Harbinger main because I find it so fun.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Doctor Hide.6345

[Voidrunner.5093]

have Elixir of Ambition apply fear

Edited November 30, 2021 by Voidrunner.5093
new info and corrections

[hugo.4705]

So still a few things to fix:

1- The elixirs skills icons are UGLY don't tell me this is the definitive version?!!!! A JOKE. Really, should be replaced by potions, they are on the class artwork, why sticking with elixirs, rename them potions.

2- I think that the elixirs should display clearer AOE where thrown. Hard to know where they hit if thrown. (Not green targeting), i speak, when it splat on the ground or enemy)

Apart that i like better this second version good job. I like a lot that espec, very good job Anet 😄

[Neilug.7935]

That new version of blight & thresholds is as expected way more fun to use, so I don't have much to say. It's also hard to design so I can understand the whole struggle haha. But here my thoughts anyways : 

- Elixirs still are too similar to one with the others, even with blight thresholds : 
I know it can be a design purpose, but then, it feels kinda boring which one we need to use ? ("Do I use the condition one ? The breakstun one ? The damage one ?")
I don't mind for example them having a similar base effects without blight threshold, but all of them having actually new additional effects could be very satisfying to use : one could create an area of effects for x seconds, one could create x new minions, etc...

By the way, I believe adding a new minion to this elite spec would allow more traits to combo with, that has been seen with Reaper where you can do something fun with Death Magic and Death Nova. I really hope this will be taken into consideration, why not a decomposing new minion, that could explode on death (similar to the one created with the Lich Form) ?
 

-  Traits are still very linear, this makes it feel boring : 

Again, can be a purpose of game design, but I believe the traits don't combo very well with what has to offer the core Necromancer. There is too much similarities between the Pure DPS, and Condi DPS, and that makes it very linear to play (this is why it can be a design purpose)
One solution could be to look at other spec lines of the necromancer, and design some traits based on them, but again it's kinda complicated.

 

That said, I think that's it for Harbinger from my side. Thank you for reading, and keep up the good work dear devs ! 😄

[Atille.5047]

Blight thresholds did very little good. The secondary effects are nigh-worthless (token bit of power damage + throwaway blind/cripple or a weak effect we could get from anything else like 1 boon corrupt), whilst them spending blight effectively made you generate half as many stacks per each elixir. It just made managing blight more annoying, and by "managing" I mean "staying topped off". Which is what you want in PvE. Visually, blight looks like your character smelling really bad in a cartoony way (with green clouds surrounding you), which is hilarious until you realize that you're going to look like that pretty much at all times with Harbinger. Talk about visual clutter!

The boons on elixirs still mostly suck, and I would urge you to consider the aim of each elixir. Why stunbreak one is the resistance-granting one? Why it's not stab? How are we to offer better boon support if we're very, very limited on sources of things? Maybe some could be merged? It's just very shallow and feels like giving up a utility slot for a weak button that does one or two yellow icons and nothing else of note. Not only that, but you're also forced to use these still-underwhelming skills, because blight. 

No, Ambition is not a good elite skill design-wise, it's literally the most boring thing one can come up with - "slap all boons" will never be good design.

Harbinger Shroud is still not distinct enough from Core Shroud. Not having unique sound for it isn't helping, but it's the gameplan that is setting it in stone - you still spam 1 and fill with 2s. "Buffs" to 3 and 4 made them apply torment by giving up 5 stacks of Blight, which makes them kind of not worth pressing still, but also range nerf on these mobility skills just cripples the already shabby identity of Harbinger further. 5 still looks like leftover Halloween decorations. No idea why it eats as much life force per second as Reaper's Shroud - wasn't "more drain per second" thing peddled as Reaper's tradeoff for having melee skills? 
Shroud 4 still uses Daredevil's Vault animation, during which you're holding an invisible staff. Combined with the lack of new voicelines or sound design for Harbinger's Shroud, this makes a very, very bland impression.

Mechanically speaking, Harbinger removed Necromancer's main survivability source - LF/vitality tanking - without introducing some cool dodge abilities, only giving us 3 and 4 that are pretty much meant to engage and for dps purposes - aren't worth pressing. I don't feel like I'm getting something new when playing it, I feel like I'm playing core but faster, I guess. If anything, core has a bit more intricacy in it's rotation that Harbinger does still. 

Removal of passive LF to HP conversion also removed the actual unique thing about Harbinger, so that's sad in it's own right. 

Pistol is still tremendously boring, having all 3 skills being different varieties of  "pewpew", almost exactly copying Engineer's pistol. Problem is, Engineer's pistol been this way since 2012, you'd think for an elite spec in 2022 we'd get something cooler than 3 pewpew skills with same character animations. 

We still have no good offhands in the entire class to use with it. 

Last but not least, trait design is really, really bad. It has no interaction to already established traitlines, which makes it that much more boring - there's no synergy to be found or a cool build just waiting to be plucked up if you try running Blood Magic with something, it's just "that's dps, that's boons, that's condi". Traits do nothing to maybe make us build not Soul Reaping/Curses for once, which in my book means that they fail the whole "bring diversity" thing for us in PvElands.

Oh, and Power Harbinger is still a joke nobody really wanted to exist. Just buff Reaper a little more (cough cough critcap it out of shroud already) and give Harbinger some PvP/survivability traits instead of power ones, thanks. 

My overall impression is pretty disappointed, because I've honestly expected more changes - yet a good chunk of the spec still feels like it's placeholder for something later. 

[Rym.1469]

Okay, first thing that became very apparent to me after trying the beta 4 version:

We will need a proper indicator of how much Blight we have instead of a small pale purple icon with even smaller number on it - its hardly visible in combat. It's no longer just HP we can look at and care about, but now Blight stacks as well.

My suggestion - take Celestial Avatar bar and split it into clear 5 sections - each corresponding to 5 Blight stacks for a total of 25. 

Edited December 1, 2021 by Rym.1469
-

[Sifolstour.3210]

1 minute ago, Rym.1469 said:

My suggestion - take Celestial Avatar bar and split it into clear 5 sections - each corresponding 5 Blight stacks for a total of 25. 

That sounds good

[SirRocket.3516]

Hello 🙂

 

The Feedback:

Harbinger trait: Twisted Medicine

Elixirs buffing allies shouldn't be a trait and should be tied to how they work as a mechanic.

 

Maybe instead, sacrificing applying conditions on enemies with Elixirs for buffed effects to allies.

 

Really loving it overall and super interested to see where you take this spec 🙂

[Asum.4960]

40 minutes ago, Atille.5047 said:

Blight thresholds did very little good. The secondary effects are nigh-worthless (token bit of power damage + throwaway blind/cripple or a weak effect we could get from anything else like 1 boon corrupt), whilst them spending blight effectively made you generate half as many stacks per each elixir. It just made managing blight more annoying, and by "managing" I mean "staying topped off". Which is what you want in PvE. Visually, blight looks like your character smelling really bad in a cartoony way (with green clouds surrounding you), which is hilarious until you realize that you're going to look like that pretty much at all times with Harbinger. Talk about visual clutter!

The boons on elixirs still mostly suck, and I would urge you to consider the aim of each elixir. Why stunbreak one is the resistance-granting one? Why it's not stab? How are we to offer better boon support if we're very, very limited on sources of things? Maybe some could be merged? It's just very shallow and feels like giving up a utility slot for a weak button that does one or two yellow icons and nothing else of note. Not only that, but you're also forced to use these still-underwhelming skills, because blight. 

No, Ambition is not a good elite skill design-wise, it's literally the most boring thing one can come up with - "slap all boons" will never be good design.

Harbinger Shroud is still not distinct enough from Core Shroud. Not having unique sound for it isn't helping, but it's the gameplan that is setting it in stone - you still spam 1 and fill with 2s. "Buffs" to 3 and 4 made them apply torment by giving up 5 stacks of Blight, which makes them kind of not worth pressing still, but also range nerf on these mobility skills just cripples the already shabby identity of Harbinger further. 5 still looks like leftover Halloween decorations. No idea why it eats as much life force per second as Reaper's Shroud - wasn't "more drain per second" thing peddled as Reaper's tradeoff for having melee skills? 
Shroud 4 still uses Daredevil's Vault animation, during which you're holding an invisible staff. Combined with the lack of new voicelines or sound design for Harbinger's Shroud, this makes a very, very bland impression.

Mechanically speaking, Harbinger removed Necromancer's main survivability source - LF/vitality tanking - without introducing some cool dodge abilities, only giving us 3 and 4 that are pretty much meant to engage and for dps purposes - aren't worth pressing. I don't feel like I'm getting something new when playing it, I feel like I'm playing core but faster, I guess. If anything, core has a bit more intricacy in it's rotation that Harbinger does still. 

Removal of passive LF to HP conversion also removed the actual unique thing about Harbinger, so that's sad in it's own right. 

Pistol is still tremendously boring, having all 3 skills being different varieties of  "pewpew", almost exactly copying Engineer's pistol. Problem is, Engineer's pistol been this way since 2012, you'd think for an elite spec in 2022 we'd get something cooler than 3 pewpew skills with same character animations. 

We still have no good offhands in the entire class to use with it. 

Last but not least, trait design is really, really bad. It has no interaction to already established traitlines, which makes it that much more boring - there's no synergy to be found or a cool build just waiting to be plucked up if you try running Blood Magic with something, it's just "that's dps, that's boons, that's condi". Traits do nothing to maybe make us build not Soul Reaping/Curses for once, which in my book means that they fail the whole "bring diversity" thing for us in PvElands.

Oh, and Power Harbinger is still a joke nobody really wanted to exist. Just buff Reaper a little more (cough cough critcap it out of shroud already) and give Harbinger some PvP/survivability traits instead of power ones, thanks. 

My overall impression is pretty disappointed, because I've honestly expected more changes - yet a good chunk of the spec still feels like it's placeholder for something later. 

 

Pretty much agree with everything except Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc (mainly the latter on CD) not being worth pressing/still wanting to stack Blight in PvE - they are DPS increases when meeting Blight Threshold over Maintaining Septic Corruption (although you still want the Trait for the Poison on Shroud 2). 

That almost makes things worse for the Spec's design though, as that means both the whole mechanic of Blight, as well as the Corruption Traits increasing damage per Blight stack, are now pretty much completely redundant mechanics. 

 

You just build Blight to immediately dump it again for Torment bursts via Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc. 

 

They could remove Blight, Blight removal and Damage per Blight Stack Traits as a mechanic, make the Blight Threshold effects baseline, and the spec would literally play and perform the same - while freeing two currently bland passive Trait Slots for something interesting and making the spec a lot easier for players to understand, without all these mechanics layered on top of each other, which in practice just cancel each other out anyway. 

Considering the poor state of Harbinger's boon support, that basically means Harbinger currently has 7 (6 if we count Septic Corruption just for the Poison on Shroud 2) dead Traits out of 9 - as well as 5 out of 5 useless Utility skills and a terrible Elite, the only okay one being the Heal for the Poison and Blight to fuel Voracious Arc.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Tobias.8632]

Feels homogenised as hell. Harbinger is supposed to be about becoming vulnerable with reduced defences in exchange for high damage and mobility. I think a one size fits all solution to this is to raise the blight cap from 25 to 50, or even higher. Make blight management something you have to always be thinking about rather then the current system where you get to 25 blight and just stay there and still have like 18k health and mediocre damage.

[Zero.3871]

in wvw perspective:

harbinger after the change feels useless.

the whole concept of trade offs is just non existing:

1. you removed shroud protection on harbinger for ....? right, nothing. we get 1 dodge on 18 sec cd as compensation. and since regen by shroud got removed the interaction between harbinger and life force got deleted completely.

2. we stack blight and reduce our max life. making us even more vulnerable we already are without shroud. and we get...? double dmg on exlisiers? the dmg is just bad from elixiers. the only halfway useful intertaction here is the dmg increase on shroud 3 and 4. but a whole mechanic just to boost up 2 skills a bit?

3. we loose so much sustain on necro to get mobilty? in wvw shroud 3 and 4 have 10 and 18 sec cd. with 600 range leaps. that is less then reaper has. even core necro can teleport until 1200 range on shroud 2 every 16 seconds. so harbinger is not even faster then core.

harbinger seems to have no defense, no moblity, mediocre dmg and no life force interaction. a class that doesnt interact with its basic core mechanic???? cant be good...

imo the changes that were made till beta made a cool spec i enjoyed a lot while testing in beta 1 to a useless unfun spec. every other class runs around spamming dodges, invulns, dodges, invis, blocks and 3k healper second. while harbinger just has ...simply nothing. this class has nothing unique. nothing worth to be taken.  i wont waste more time into this. dead e-spec. probably a pve dps only class. sadge...

Edited December 1, 2021 by Zero.3871

[Atille.5047]

44 minutes ago, Asum.4960 said:

Pretty much agree with everything except Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc (mainly the latter on CD) not being worth pressing/still wanting to stack Blight in PvE - they are DPS increases when meeting Blight Threshold over Maintaining Septic Corruption (although you still want the Trait for the Poison on Shroud 2). 

Yeah, that's fair. I didn't torture golem on it yet because there's kinda no point, it won't be significantly better than Scourge in DPS - in normal playing pressing 3 and 4 to move around felt like I was constantly resetting my blight for nothing, which sucked. 

[LucianDK.8615]

35 minutes ago, Atille.5047 said:

Yeah, that's fair. I didn't torture golem on it yet because there's kinda no point, it won't be significantly better than Scourge in DPS - in normal playing pressing 3 and 4 to move around felt like I was constantly resetting my blight for nothing, which sucked. 

One can now wonder why Harbinger exists at all with all its major tradeoffs, competing with Scourge damagewise. And Scourges can do so much more, and not being ridiculously fragile.

 

Necros were designed to be a facetank class.  Take that away and we have absolutely nothing on a serious level to help with defense and avoiding damage..

 

Why is it there when Scourge is better in all regards?

Edited December 1, 2021 by LucianDK.8615

[Squigglez.1236]

Still casting my vote for removing the power trait line, replace with traits that give support or condition damage versatility. The elixer buffs were a start but double condition duration on non-damaging conditions is pretty much useless, I actually laughed when I saw that one elixer gives blind and still gets the double duration (you could make blind last till it activates or is removed and the difference to gameplay would be minimal, blind rarely lasts it's duration as is). Consuming blight to charge things is definitely less static but it conflicts with septic corruption, which just incentivizes you to sit at the blight cap for max damage. At least make septic corruption apply a condi damage buff when you consume a blight stack, then the entire spec would be geared towards building blight to improve skill performance. It'd be better if it wasn't a static threshold either, in my opinion, and each blight stack made the skills a bit stronger somehow. Would still like the deathly haste to not just be passive generation. I also think blight generates too slow in shroud if the goal is to consume it for more conditions.

Edited December 1, 2021 by XDeathShadowX.2619

[Aedil.1296]

Tested harbinger and really liked the changes. So far the only elite spec where I never used the heal skill on my testing ground! 

Catalyst on the other hand.... 

But good job on harbinger I really like it! 

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

35 minutes ago, Aedil.1296 said:

Tested harbinger and really liked the changes. So far the only elite spec where I never used the heal skill on my testing ground! 

Catalyst on the other hand.... 

But good job on harbinger I really like it! 

Is your testing ground the golems?  Harbinger needs its healing skill more than any other Necro variant.

[Krysard.1364]

With the removal of healing when out of shroud (pretty much the only interaction the spec had with life force) harb is worthless in PvP. You just sit with full shroud and die, it makes no sense. Feels like a downgrade from previous beta. Elixirs are much better now, even tho they still feel a bit samey.

Edited December 1, 2021 by Krysard.1364

[Lily.1935]

38 minutes ago, Aedil.1296 said:

Tested harbinger and really liked the changes. So far the only elite spec where I never used the heal skill on my testing ground! 

Catalyst on the other hand.... 

But good job on harbinger I really like it! 

You actually need to use the heal for the DPS rotation. I'll be doing some testing tomorrow after work, but from what I can tell you need to use 3 elixirs to keep blight up and one of those needs to be the heal. Alacrity might help but that would reduce it to 2 and the heal is the only open spot. Since epidemic is a must for some fights but it's a DPS loss not to take blood is power. 

 

And the power build isn't worth it.

[Lily.1935]

The Beta 1 Harbinger had some problems but the builds were smooth to use and quite easy to understand and grasp. If you ran torment runes it satisfied that monkey brain of ours and you still were sizable dps.

 

As for beta 2? Its extremely clunky with a lot of moving pieces which might make it too difficult to use given the requirements you have to make it work for you. Overall, far far worse. More complex but not deep. Just bad design. 

[Aedil.1296]

7 minutes ago, Drarnor Kunoram.5180 said:

Is your testing ground the golems?  Harbinger needs its healing skill more than any other Necro variant.

No not the golem I usually go in dragonfall there is a cliff with 3 parties of shadow mobs roaming with monks, from the start of the map take the bridge on the right go under the tail of kralk, you will see a another bridge after, don't cross it. Take skyscape and climb the tree and get on top of the cliff. U will find 3 groups roaming. I usually aggro 1 group first, then 2 together, and the 3 together and I see how much I can survive/do damage. I'm using a condi harbinger with the trait that heals from condi damage and was really great at wiping out the mobs staying alive. 

[Kronos.2560]

Was looking forward to see how blight interacts. But found the threshold and new using of blight so lackluster for an almost non-existent payoff if over threshold. Not to mention the dps was completely gutted. Overall any sense of payoff is now gone. I was looking forward to this spec but if this is how it's going to be I am doubting I will ever play it.

 

Usually I play around for a bit to get a feel for it but these changes took me ten minutes to realize how insanely simplified and worthless this spec became. Bad dps, no real need for using shroud as it doesn't feel like a dps increase, boring elixers and I feel like all you do is a different auto attack with the weapon/shroud skills, the gap closer/escapes are jokes now and no real group utility aside from quickness which feels like now using it brings a large dps loss.

 

Before this you at least kind of had to watch blight so you didn't end at 11k hp squish. But now it's just a mild debuff with no upside.

[Winter.7390]

Why play Harbinger when you can just play Specter which is basically the same deal with added mobility and sustain.

 

Watched Harbinger lose to core necro that had no traitlines equipped on Naru's stream.. z e r o traitlines. It's just a joke.

[Naxos.2503]

I found a fairly enjoyable build mixing Death Magic, Curses and Harbinger with pistol where the condi output is strong enough to get full carapace stack within 3 seconds and each condi regenerating me. I'm not clear whether or not it's a clear competitor to existing builds, but it felt fairly ok.

The changes to elixirs makes them more interesting, I just wish they had more diverse icons now.