Harbinger Feedback Thread [Merged]

[Narrenwinter.2637]

1. Harbinger needs to have its movement range increased to 900 again. I dont know why it has even been reduced to 600.
2. The Elixirs need more interesting effects than just applying 2 or 3 conditions/boons. They also need better visual effects and nicer skill logos.
3. Harbinger needs some form of evasion/tank/sustain. By removing the heal outside of shroud (and the mobility) you removed the only redeeming quality this spec had. Let the movement skills perform (longer) evades/dodges. Or add some healing somewhere. Anything.
4. This spec has so many drawbacks attached to the disappointing "benefit" of blight. If you're removing life force as a means of sustain, necro is left with nothing. The few players actually brave enough to try out harbinger in WvW were completely slaughtered, everytime. Like sitting ducks. After dodging twice, they were free kills.

I like the general idea for the spec, but it seems that the Harbinger comes with so many unjustified drawbacks. Which I could understand if it actually had some "overpowered" aspect to it, to balance it out.

 

I'm not sure what exactly the harbinger brings to the table that would justify sacrificing the only sustain necro has. To make matters worse, necro is a class that is completely built around having a second life bar. All of the core traits, the inherent lack of evasion, stealth, mobility skills. Nothing offers sustain, because there has always been Death/Reaper Shroud or Barrier. The Harbinger has nothing to compensate for that and feels "naked".

 

[Dadnir.5038]

23 minutes ago, Narrenwinter.2637 said:

I'm not sure what exactly the harbinger brings to the table that would justify sacrificing the only sustain necro has.

While it's true that harbinger cost/reward is unattractive, It isn't true that the shroud's health shield is the "only" sustain of the necromancer. The firing rate and torment/condition damage output of the harbinger offer great synergy with the core sustain traits while core utilities/weapon skills still offer their share of blind/weakness output.

As a matter of fact the devs do have to be careful with the amount of sustain they are going to give to the harbinger. I do agree that atm it's not quite there, thought, as the current survivability of the harbinger currently rely to much on the possibility to use runes of torment (and no profession/spec should be balanced around the the possibility of abusing a runeset. If anything they should be balance in such a way that the possible abuses are extremly limited).

[anna.5487]

Harbinger in beta 1 was fun enough to play. Now it's unpalatable. What sane of mind person would use that heal? The elixirs are so meh that there isn't one that's worth taking over core skills. The blight is offering very bad reward for the risk. Look at specter heal and barrier trait, harbinger should have something similar. There are tons to say here, but sincerely, in can be reduced to: What were you thinking, Anet? 

[Feduddle.5209]

Sooo Harbinger basically has more ways to actively get rid of blight than to gain it.  Blight is literally the main mechanic of the specialization, so why are we being given more ways to get rid of the main mechanic than to gain/benefit from it??

I get that a good number of players didn't enjoy the high-risk high-reward playstyle of the previous iteration but this is just a bandaid-fix which literally works against the core mechanic of Harbinger, especially considering how blight was already nerfed to be more casual-friendly.  It's already super tanky now and is literally able to facetank most bounties solo even with full blight.

Please either commit to the core mechanic or consider making a different elite spec for necro.

Also, the halloween mummies on shroud skill 5 are still present, and look tacky as hell on an otherwise great looking skill.

[Drakyrie.5923]

Problem  - there is never a time where someone would mix trains from Trait line 1 and trait line 3. Whilst it is clear one line is for power and the other is for condi, this decision is already made by the player in their gear choice. 
Potential solution - merge trait lines 1 and 3 (and slightly weaken the effects so mixed builds don’t get to double dip) except for column 2. Create new traits to fill in the two gaps (see below). New Wicked Corruption - boost both strike and condition damage per stack of blight
New Doom Approaches - boost power and condition damage while in shroud. Instead of pulsing every 3 seconds, it will pulse damage, poison and weakness every 3 applications of blight stacks to provide synergy with the elixirs. 
Septic corruption and cascading corruption would be replaced completely.
 

Trait suggestions:
Major adept to replace Septic Corruption - while between 5 and 15 stacks of blight, gain superspeed and if not effected by immobilize, cripple or chill gain might every interval. 
Grandmaster adept to replace Cascading Corruption - When you leave shroud you expel up to 10 stacks of blight but you don’t get that health difference back. This blast does damage and applies torment and cripple based on the amount of blight that was expelled.
 

[xfayrox.8146]

19 hours ago, Dadnir.5038 said:

While it's true that harbinger cost/reward is unattractive, It isn't true that the shroud's health shield is the "only" sustain of the necromancer. The firing rate and torment/condition damage output of the harbinger offer great synergy with the core sustain traits while core utilities/weapon skills still offer their share of blind/weakness output.

As a matter of fact the devs do have to be careful with the amount of sustain they are going to give to the harbinger. I do agree that atm it's not quite there, thought, as the current survivability of the harbinger currently rely to much on the possibility to use runes of torment (and no profession/spec should be balanced around the the possibility of abusing a runeset. If anything they should be balance in such a way that the possible abuses are extremly limited).

Torment allready got nerfed in beta 4 compared to beta 1, but id gladly trade torment on shroud auto for poison (increased duration to make up the dps difference) if we would get real sustain

[Captain Wasabi.4167]

I missed the Elite skill that gave you and allies all the boons from the first beta. IT worked really nice with a couple of minions out. The new splash zone mechanic was really fun to utilize. Weighing up if you want to splash your self with blight to get the buff for double damage then firing off another skill to eat up the blight.

 

I would like to see the blight reduce life force instead of health. 

 

or

 

Different mechanic all together... Remove the existing double damage mechanic. The blight corrupts the life force changing the bars colour as it does so. Powering shroud skills with corrupted life force would do increased damage. Splashing enemies with elexirs would give them blight which would temporarily reduce their health in the same way blight reduces your health under the current system . On you blight would not reduce health, however corrupted life force would reduce over time.

 

Hope that makes sense. Just done a night shift and can't  gather my thoughts

 

 

[Captain Wasabi.4167]

What if elixirs could be used as traps (They sit there and explode when someone is near or explode on contact if they hit some one.) I would like to see them animate with a big toxic cloud. As I said in a previous post the Elixirs would really excel if they inflicted blight on enemies health. Load them up with blight then bam move in with shroud attacks. This would also make more sense of the shroud skills that launch you at the enemy.

[Dschromm.2946]

Hi folks,

 

here are my two cents concerning the state of harbinger after the last beta event.

 

First of all, i wanna say thank you to the developing team for addressing many issues we, the players, had after the first harbinger beta. Even if i'm going to critisize a lot, i'm aware of the hard work you put in the harbinger's (and other classes') overhaul. Thank you for listening!
 

1. Pistol

   Pistol is fine as it is and i made my peace with it being a light copy/paste of engineer's pistol. Especially skill#3's stun is very much appreciated. I don't mind that it is a projectile weapon (concerning the projectile hate in the game), it is a pistol after all. But, i find myself hating the sound of the bullets fired being the same to other pistols. We are necromancers after all and kind of imbue our shots with blight/corruption. I would be very happy if we could get another set of sounds – more vile and eery.
   Another problem i see are the core off-hand weapons. In my eyes, necromancers have the very few choices and they are all pretty weak or lacking synergy.
   a) Focus
   Harbinger seems to be designed to be a condi spec, therefore the only thing focus adds to harbinger is a little bit of LF generation. The boon strip is nice, but lacks „oomph“ in condi builds.

   b) Warhorn

   Harbinger's weapon set seems to be designed around ranged pressure leaving warhorn#5 almost useless. The daze is nice, though.

   c) Dagger

   Dagger is the only condi-off-hand option we've got and it could be useful. But concerning that we are nearly defenseless while taking harbinger, please consider reducing the cast and animation time of dagger#5.

   Using either of these off-hand weapons feels either clunky or underwhelming, especially when we got used to a monster-like scourge-torch which synergized very well with scepter as main-hand weapon and even the other main-hand weapons for niche builds. Maybe you can consider buffing core off-hands a little or maybe give them improved #5 skills at a certain blight treshold.

    

2. Elixirs

   Thank you for the rework and making them throwable. It may feel a bitt clunky right now, but i think we can get used to it. Nevertheless, the a-boon-for-me-and-a-condition-for-you mentality is a little bit boring and some of them aren't really worth taking them.

   Heal) E of Promise – In my eyes the best elixir there is. We get an average heal, some regen by regeneration and the according less-healing-for-you-debuff on our enemies by poisoning them.

   U1) E of Risk – I don't really know if i would take this skill except i'm gonna go for a boon share build. Since I don't think harbinger will be a competitive might bot compared to other specs, i would suggest to strip might from the elixir and give it quickness next to fury instead, opening up E of Anguish (U2) for another set of utilities/boons.

   U2) E of Anguish – We get 10s of swiftness and 5s of quickness and some cripple on foes on a 25s CD. Compare it to elixir U from engineer: 6s of quickness, 6s of stability (2 stacks), 6s of vigor and a stun break on a 40s CD. I think in comparison necro gets the short end of the stick and consicdering that you want harbinger to be able to function as a boon support, E of Anguish has to be altered.

   Suggestion: Take the quickness and give it to E of Risk (U1) instead of might making E of Risk the offensive, risky elixir it is by name. Move the swiftness from this elixir to E of Ignorance (U4) (next to the stunbreak and resolution buff it would be the harbinger's „kitten-i'm-outta-here-elixir). This ends up with E of Anguish having no boons for the harbinger left.

   Suggestion: Put the might from E of Risk (U1) here and add 3-5s of alacrity so that we can bestow anguish (i.e. more damage) on our enemies.

   U3) E of Bliss – Good elixir, maybe add 2-3s of Aegis (maybe with a CD increase to 30s?)

   U4) E. of Ignorance – Good elixir, but i would add the swiftness from E of Anguish (U2) here. Also one or two stacks of stability for 3-5s would be nice (increase the CD accordingly, but we really need stab!)

   Elite) E of Ambition – Borderline OP, potentially 10s of every boon is a real monster. If you think it's justified, i'll take it 😄

   
   Over all, I don't see harbinger as a boon support who can provide any boon permanently, but is the one who can jump in, when a boon in a squad is needed still. This gives harbinger the opportunity to compensate suboptimal group composition. I would also be fine with decreasing the base boon durations of elixirs a little bit for giving it a wider spread set of buffs (additonal alacrity, aegis and stability as suggested above)

    

3. Harbinger Shroud

   This shroud confuses me a little bit. Is it ranged? Is it melee? Honestly, i don't know.

   Shroud auto attack and #2 are ranged projectile skills (yet, even more projectiles next to pistol and thrown elixirs). But shroud #2 loses a lot of potential damage when cast from far away. Shroud #3 and #4 are designed as engaging mobility skills, because their effects trigger at the end of the traveled distance. Shroud #5 is a melee CC. Since harbinger loses lots of sustain and defense with its kit, i found myself avoiding melee combat often leaving me with a powerful impression of shroud, but still missing the high reward for the risk by forgoing my denfeses like a second healthbar and damage mitigation.

   What i wish for is access to our utility skills while in shroud, we're a lot squishier now and still got no active defenses yet.

   Additonally, please revert the 900 range of skill #3 at least (skill #4 would be very much appreciated as well).

   Furthermore, i miss fear in shroud. Why didn't you put at the end of shroud #3 instead of torment? Would it be that OP to give a squishy class a little bit more CC? Honestly, i don't get it.

 

Thats it for now. I'll try to post my feedback concerning traits and synergy as soon as possible. Once again, thank you for caring about what players have to say. I love this game and i love this class and all of the above was written in good will.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Dschromm.2946

[Tidalwave.9384]

So, after playing the harbinger for a couple more days during the beta some additional thoughts and comments on the changes with focus on wvw blobs and roaming.

 

With the removal of healing from life-force the desired gameplay pattern of squishier necro is pretty well recognized. problem is that if eles were laughed at from being downed state meta (no matter how untrue that was), harbinger will be just worse version of that. Due to the lack of sustain, large health pool (or atleast what necros have gotten used to) or active defences the harbinger is extremely easy to punish. Simply put, the current version of harbinger is extremely unlikely to see play in any competitive pvp environment due to lacking the defensive tools that other professions have access to and despite this, it follows the necro logic of instead of active defenses it just adds more raw damage to overwhelm the opponents. Problem is that unless this is overtuned, good players can just exploit the defensive weaknesses to force the harbinger out of being able to dish the damage, so you’re left with a worse necro in practically every sense.

 

With that being said, I had more success with harbinger this time around compared to the first beta but I attribute that to two things; first the elite feels extremely over tuned at the moment. Before gaining all boons felt better in defensive sense as it felt hard to go on the offensive even with the boons. Now as the toss gives an extremely strong offensive option the elite is just nutty. It Essentially completely forces the opponents to go on the defensive or die outright due to the massive damage it deals. It feels like the elite is the main thing carrying the spec to being usable. The second thing was that the opponents I was facing felt weaker compared to the first beta who didn’t really exploit the lack of defences of the spec unlike the first time around. Since I had much easier time due to opponents’ skill the spec felt better than before due to the high damage it could deal to end the fight quickly before the opponents could punish me. When people get more experience playing against harbinger, I believe the cracks will start to show and the performance of the spec will plummet.

 

Still, the elixir toss mechanic and blight threshold made the spec play much better in my opinion. While both have their issues, notably the utility elixir tosses being underwhelming and blight threshold running counter-intuitive to the traits, both of these changes are for the better for the spec.

 

With that out of the way, there feels to be few core issues with harbinger now that the changes highlight.

With the lack of healing and no active defences, the harbinger is overly squishy. I’m not talking ele squishy, they feel even squishier. This forced me to utilize more defensive gear as going full offensive was simply suicidal. This makes the pvp/pve performances of the spec vary wildly which is further highlighted still by torment being the main damage source. Moreover, the nerf of mobility of the spec which was the only active defence it had there is very little you can do to play defensive, you simply run out of resources extremely quickly while being unable to counterattack meaningfully. Also, while harbinger is supposed to be more supportive with the boons, the lack of defences makes it very hard for the spec to actually support others without dying itself. On top of that all of the support tools are loaded onto the elixirs which means you don’t actually have to run any supportive elements at all if you want to but the spec doesn’t really excel in selfish choices either so the support part of the spec (elixirs) feels  disjointed from the rest instead feeling like being a part of a whole.

 

Speaking of mobility, the harbingers mobility is now not that much higher compared to reaper due to the reaper shroud #2 having the same distance as the harbinger mobility skills. With the reduction of mobility and the lack of additional mobility tools outside of shroud the harbinger starts to lose its feel of being more fast-paced necro spec. This isn’t helped by the cast time of Voracious Arc as it felt rather terrible to use now, its just too slow compared to its range. Personally, as the elixirs are still rather dull, I’d like more mobility tools being added to them. Maybe instead of a toss one of the elixirs is a leap or gives superspeed.

Also due to the lack of defences, harbinger is in weird spot that the life-force generation feels rather useless. While I could stay in shroud longer than in beta 1, I still never could stay in it for long periods of time so the life-force cost of shroud usage was rather low, most of the time I never used more than a quarter of it at a time and thus never ran out. Due to life-force generation being almost useless, big part of the core necro identity felt rather lost in the spec.

 

Going over the individual parts once more:

 

Pistol

The pistol is till lacking compared to other weapons. Due to how it’s designed and the available off-hand weapons, it will always compete with either axe or sceptre depending on what you’re playing. In both condi and direct damage it’s just worse choice at the moment and I doubt that’s going to change unless the damage is over tuned. Similarly, especially due to pvp damage split it adds very little to the necro toolkit and it’s play pattern is extremely single-minded (#3->#2 or vice versa to maximize the torment damage) and still suffers from the dependence of torment as damage source which makes it nigh useless in pvp. In addition, the auto damage is so bad that it’s impossible to use it with staff since the staff suffers from the same issue and in turn causes you to be unable to keep pressure up on the opponents. The auto really should be reworked as you cannot rely on the bounces to add damage and warhorn should be looked at to make them more universally usable so that using two one-handed weapons would compliment one another properly. Optionally just add off-hand pistol.

 

Shroud

With the blight dumps on shroud skills, I found myself able to stay in the shroud for longer times but I believe that was mostly due to facing worse opponents than during the first beta as none of the people I faced properly punished me from entering shroud. Still the ability to remove blight and not suddenly be 5-7k health down from daring to use the spec mechanic made it more usable. I was also sceptical with the dumps being solely on mobility skills but after playing it didn’t bother me that much as overall it highlighted the more aggressive playstyle of the shroud. Still, when facing more competent players wanting to dump blight offensively is just asking to be punished as the mobility in the shroud was the only proper defensive tool since the Vital Draw is still practically impossible to land, even with quickness. Overall, I’m extremely worried that with the current playstyle harbinger will remain a pub stomper while being unplayable versus more competent opponents.

 

Elixirs

While the heal elixir is decent and the elite over tuned, the utility elixirs are still practically unusable. The tosses are nice additions, especially in scenarios where you could chain them and end with blight dump from shroud but the utility elixirs just don’t add enough to justify using them. While the heal and elite elixir tosses were really good (probably both over tuned) the utility ones were pretty bad.

Notably for harbinger to be the more supportive necro with boons, there’s surprisingly little you actually can add to others, or yourself for that matter outside of the elite. With the mentioned issue of lack of defence and sustain in the harbinger gameplay, this could be alleviated by adding more defensive boons to the utility elixirs to differentiate the defences from raw tankiness to more active defence style.

Also Replacing the heal skills vigour with regen is a terrible trade considering that regen works well with tankier and sustain heavy builds which is complete opposite of what harbinger aims to be. Vigour at least helped with active defences which made more sense thematically. Still, with the removal of life-force id just add both boons to the heal and go from there.

As mentioned before, the ultimate currently is just over tuned and carried the spec single-handedly. All damage boons with 25 might and all defensive boons basically forced the opponents into defence immediately which allowed prolonged stay in shroud to hammer even more damage on them. And that’s without the blight threshold active on the elixir.

 

Traits

I sincerely hope that the traits were left largely unchanged simply because there was more brainstorming going on about changing them which couldn’t make it to the beta. Because while the traits were terrible in the first beta, they’re even worse now.

With the threshold mechanic, the blight damage from the adept traits are rendered counter-intuitive with the specs gameplan as you no longer need or even want to stay at high blight stacks. Making these traits trigger a buff on removing blight instead of accumulating it could work but then you’re juggling two mechanics from simply core and adept traits which might be too much going on.

Similarly, removing the slow from vile vials renders it nigh useless outside of the reduced recharge. Now there really is no good reason to clog the traitlines with two elixir traits and they should be merged. Possibly the vulnerability could be added to the toss part of the elixirs baseline to improve them but generally vuln is so easy to come by that it doesn’t really feel worth a trait slot.

Outside of that, the old issues remain. Masters line is still too dependent on the stat conversions instead of offering interesting gameplay options and the grandmaster damage options still suck because you still can’t stay in shroud in realistic environment due to the lack of active defences.

 

Closing thoughts

 

With the main issue being the survivability, which is simply too low compared to the damage/utility the harbinger brings. I have three suggestions:

1. Revert the healing change. While I do find the life-force healing interesting mechanic, I do think it doesn’t fit the thematic of the harbinger and would like to see it on some other elite spec that was more focused on sustain.

2. Make the harbinger shroud work like other shrouds. Probably the easiest choice but also would just negate the wanted squishiness from the spec without making the blight more relevant again.

3. Add more active defence tools and make heal/utility/elite skills available in shroud. This would make the harbinger still unique compared to other necro specs while also highlighting the squishiness of the spec with tools to avoid the damage similarly to other squishy specs. The main focus would still have to be in adding active defence tools to the kit.

 

The blight and threshold changes are good and a solid direction to take the spec towards, just the traits need to be adjusted to highlight this.

 

Overall harbinger feels like it lacks a proper cohesion between its different aspects. Shroud wants to do one thing, elixirs the other and there’s nothing really tying the parts together. Again, heavy reworking of the traits would solve this but I do think the aspects of the spec need to be made more cohesive e.g., some boon share to weapon/shroud, mobility via something other than shroud, etc.

[Lily.1935]

First the people asking for Harbinger shroud to act as a second health bar like reaper and core, I need y'all to understand that you're making a faustian bargain and it isn't going to result in a functional spec.

 

To understand why, https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/topic/105417-issues-with-harbinger-and-some-solutions-to-fix-them/ The issues I point out with the quarks of how lifeforce interacts with blight and taking damage to your lifeforce will compound that issue. It wont have the results you're aftet.

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by Lily.1935

[LucianDK.8615]

The classic shroud just have too many issues. It makes you too strong defensively and your damage will have to be low as a result. 

I would rather that it was untied to defense like the harbinger and actually giving you decent damage.    Though the later depends on proper tuning from Anet.

Edited December 10, 2021 by LucianDK.8615

[Bale.3851]

1 hour ago, LucianDK.8615 said:

The classic shroud just have too many issues. It makes you too strong defensively and your damage will have to be low as a result. 

LOL. I mean PVE wise could be true but PVP wise its not. Reaper has one of the nastiest burst and over all dmg while having the same shroud ticks (5% lf) as harbinger. So giving harbinger a dmg absorbing shroud could be an easy fix for PVP while also having blight which is kind of a risk and reward mechanic (but a lazy one). But the specc has so many core issues a fix is needed! Even though what @Lily.1935 pointed out is true it would improve the specc a little bit and assuming anet wont totally start from scrap this could be a solution.

 

Again which game mode are we talking about? In PVE yeah, harbinger can work in raids/cm if numbers are tuned. But in PVP its definetly dead (spvp) except you want to play a full cele semi mobile punching bag (wvw) with better specc options as reaper/scourge.

[Puck.3697]

I don't wanna doom a specc. Or just be massively negative on it.

however I do wonder if Anet are setting themselves up for a absolute balancing nightmare. I feel like this specc is simply focusing too much on making the proffession squishy without long term thought. 

change the blight mechanic. The loss of shroud hp / regen ontop of the lack of active sustain the proffession has provided the glass cannon feeling already. 

dropping it to a 14k DPS is absolute overkill here. 

[Esorono.1039]

I just had an amusing thought while looking at the blight mechanics once again. Blight is nothing but a detriment by itself, if thrown elixirs also gave the enemy blight, they would actually be devastating. Using 2 skills to drop an opponent's hp by a flat 30% for 25 seconds with no benefits would destroy most builds. I find it somewhat amusing that if it was possible to give Harbinger's class mechanic to other classes, it would be likely the most powerful debuff in the game and I am sure would be nerfed. Even if they got the trait Wicked Corruption somehow, I would still drop the elixirs on an average hp build of 20k and drop them down to 14k for 25 seconds even if it did give them a 10% increase in damage. And that is just a weird thought honestly, there is so little benefit for the loss that I'd rather give it to my enemy than something to give to myself. Meanwhile instead of losing about 11.4khp for 10% damage, Reaper for example can gain 10% damage for hitting something within 300 range and get 5% healing off that damage.

I'm not saying to actually make it into something to give to an enemy, nor am I saying to get rid of the mechanic. But if this is the route it is going, it needs something more. It only seems effective for Raids, and not even that as it currently does less damage than Condi-Scourge, Power-Reaper, and Condi-Reaper. Also Harbinger should not get a defensive shroud, it was the main reason necromancers were denied active defenses. If Harbingers got a toolkit to actually function as a glass cannon it could actually fill a role it could not before. Something like an Elixir S would be helpful. Also one more thought, why do all the master traits ask you to build for vitality?

I am half asleep, but those are my barely conscious shower thoughts.

[wolfyrik.2017]

2 minutes ago, Esorono.1039 said:

I just had an amusing thought while looking at the blight mechanics once again. Blight is nothing but a detriment by itself, if thrown elixirs also gave the enemy blight, they would actually be devastating. Using 2 skills to drop an opponent's hp by a flat 30% for 25 seconds with no benefits would destroy most builds. I find it somewhat amusing that if it was possible to give Harbinger's class mechanic to other classes, it would be likely the most powerful debuff in the game and I am sure would be nerfed. Even if they got the trait Wicked Corruption somehow, I would still drop the elixirs on an average hp build of 20k and drop them down to 14k for 25 seconds even if it did give them a 10% increase in damage. And that is just a weird thought honestly, there is so little benefit for the loss that I'd rather give it to my enemy than something to give to myself. Meanwhile instead of losing about 11.4khp for 10% damage, Reaper for example can gain 10% damage for hitting something within 300 range and get 5% healing off that damage.

I'm not saying to actually make it into something to give to an enemy, nor am I saying to get rid of the mechanic. But if this is the route it is going, it needs something more. It only seems effective for Raids, and not even that as it currently does less damage than Condi-Scourge, Power-Reaper, and Condi-Reaper. Also Harbinger should not get a defensive shroud, it was the main reason necromancers were denied active defenses. If Harbingers got a toolkit to actually function as a glass cannon it could actually fill a role it could not before. Something like an Elixir S would be helpful. Also one more thought, why do all the master traits ask you to build for vitality?

I am half asleep, but those are my barely conscious shower thoughts.

I'd actually be up for this. The amount of blight you have built upcould determine how much you could spread to the enemy. It'd certainly be different.

[Esorono.1039]

1 minute ago, wolfyrik.2017 said:

I'd actually be up for this. The amount of blight you have built upcould determine how much you could spread to the enemy. It'd certainly be different.

It would be funny, but I don't think it would be wise for balance, it would drop a lot of builds within one shot range of strong spammables for 25 seconds. Like a trapper dragonhunter will drop to about 8k hp just from 20 stacks with no way to recover for 25 seconds. Also in PvE it would have to act differently, as even doing 1% damage to a raid or world boss in a second is a lot, doing 30% with two buttons alone would be beyond broken. So it would need a cap.

[Puck.3697]

10 minutes ago, Esorono.1039 said:

It would be funny, but I don't think it would be wise for balance, it would drop a lot of builds within one shot range of strong spammables for 25 seconds. Like a trapper dragonhunter will drop to about 8k hp just from 20 stacks with no way to recover for 25 seconds. Also in PvE it would have to act differently, as even doing 1% damage to a raid or world boss in a second is a lot, doing 30% with two buttons alone would be beyond broken. So it would need a cap.

Blight is born to not be wise for balancing. 

This mechanic is going to be a headache and they will eventually give up on it. 

It's either gonna be overpowered or underpowered permanantly because how much damage is "reasonable" for a 37% max hp loss... But again how much damage is "reasonable" to do in PvP before it's outright murdering players. 

This is gonna be fiddled with repeatively until they rework it effectively. Why they are persisting with the idea is unknown. This isn't good for the game and it isn't good for the proffession. 

At absolute best. It becomes our new raid specc. But it's got 0 use in spvp or open world content as of current. Which basically means they're developing a full elite specc for like 200 players.. 

The only thing we can be hopeful for at this point is while they're trying to force harbinger in a power PvE DPS, they buff some of the power weapons and traits for necromancer which ends up as a net gain for reaper. 

Edited December 10, 2021 by Daddy.8125

[Bale.3851]

15 hours ago, Esorono.1039 said:

'm not saying to actually make it into something to give to an enemy, nor am I saying to get rid of the mechanic. But if this is the route it is going, it needs something more. It only seems effective for Raids, and not even that as it currently does less damage than Condi-Scourge, Power-Reaper, and Condi-Reaper. Also Harbinger should not get a defensive shroud, it was the main reason necromancers were denied active defenses. If Harbingers got a toolkit to actually function as a glass cannon it could actually fill a role it could not before. Something like an Elixir S would be helpful. Also one more thought, why do all the master traits ask you to build for vitality?

 Thats exactly what im sayin. Add active defense if you to build a functioning specc as it is. And no 2 mobility spells hidden behind shroud is not enough. Or just scrap the whole concept. And the easiest and layziest way to do this would be to add dmg absorbing shroud. Im not a fan of it but anet is running out of time (at this point of development). So solutions to harbinger should be quick to implement and balance. Maybe we get a rework later but i personally dont want to start eod (if i even buy it a this point) with a new specc like this.

[Lily.1935]

On 12/10/2021 at 3:34 AM, Bale.3851 said:

LOL. I mean PVE wise could be true but PVP wise its not. Reaper has one of the nastiest burst and over all dmg while having the same shroud ticks (5% lf) as harbinger. So giving harbinger a dmg absorbing shroud could be an easy fix for PVP while also having blight which is kind of a risk and reward mechanic (but a lazy one). But the specc has so many core issues a fix is needed! Even though what @Lily.1935 pointed out is true it would improve the specc a little bit and assuming anet wont totally start from scrap this could be a solution.

 

Again which game mode are we talking about? In PVE yeah, harbinger can work in raids/cm if numbers are tuned. But in PVP its definetly dead (spvp) except you want to play a full cele semi mobile punching bag (wvw) with better specc options as reaper/scourge.

So Blight + shroud is extraordinarily weird. And I know this wasn't addressed directly to me, however I'll respond. As you're in Harbinger shroud you gain blight. The unusual part of gaining blight in this situation which I alluded to in my post before but didn't mention directly is that gaining blight actually does increase your time in shroud. But the time increase is negligible 1% blight per second isn't going to do much to that. BUT Blight as I mentioned reduces life force's total pool and you might find you're much squishier than you may think you are. You also have to consider the blight you had before entering shroud potentially dropping off which if you're taking damage you could only take 400 damage unplanned before dropping again. That's just an example and I'm assuming we're using current iteration of Harbinger.

 

My preference in all of this is to improve the active defenses of the harbinger. More blocks, evades, vigor and movement. Perhaps even invulnerability or stealth. To me, these are far more fun and interesting to use than shroud and have fewer balancing issues than just slapping on a second health bar to the spec which comes with a whole host of baggage.

[Esorono.1039]

Yeah, Lily is right, with the blight mechanic shroud is actually not going to be all that effective. It scales with HP, meaning each stack of blight also lowers shroud's overall hp on top of your normal hp. Overall it won't really help Harbinger sadly enough, so you can't just throw a defensive shroud on to Harbinger and call it a complete package. I'd rather see something done to Elixir of Ignorance and Bliss. Necromancer at it's base can handle conditions rather well, especially condition builds. Resistance and a stunbreak is rather nice, but Harbinger is not very mobile, so perhaps like Mist Form it could also gain a Super Speed effect. I am saying this because positioning is one of the more crucial parts about playing the class, a good portion of Necromancer defense is terrain. Bliss in a necromancer's kit is surprisingly underwhelming compared to how much other classes would kill to have it, as most necromancer builds deal with them just from doing their normal stuff. It would be better if it had something such as a short duration invulnerability, perhaps a stealth, or even something similar to arcane shield. Also something in the Harbinger shroud should work as a stun break, perhaps devouring cut as it's fairly underwhelming. Not sure, I am tired and I am just tossing ideas at the wall at this point.

[Infusion.7149]

Actually if they want to change blight to be risk/reward , the blight health loss could be lower outside of harbinger shroud and/or in PVP and WVW. However, the issue with that is shroud still remains the risky state for necromancer because you don't have utilities while in habringer shroud. They added blight dumping but since you can't use those while CC-ed the issue still remains.

The mobility is not as bad as people make it out to be if the range nerfs to Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc  are reverted.

[Esorono.1039]

10 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Actually if they want to change blight to be risk/reward , the blight health loss could be lower outside of harbinger shroud and/or in PVP and WVW. However, the issue with that is shroud still remains the risky state for necromancer because you don't have utilities while in habringer shroud. They added blight dumping but since you can't use those while CC-ed the issue still remains.

The mobility is not as bad as people make it out to be if the range nerfs to Devouring Cut and Voracious Arc  are reverted.

It's very rare developers revert changes, it's pretty much admitting they made a mistake. And that is no good for PR.

[Bale.3851]

24 minutes ago, Esorono.1039 said:

Yeah, Lily is right, with the blight mechanic shroud is actually not going to be all that effective. It scales with HP, meaning each stack of blight also lowers shroud's overall hp on top of your normal hp. Overall it won't really help Harbinger sadly enough, so you can't just throw a defensive shroud on to Harbinger and call it a complete package.

Shroud is percent based so it doesnt really matter. Sure blight reduces your over all shroud and reverting blight in shroud results in a shroud loss but the shroud mechanic itself is the same as reaper (5% lf per second). Like i stated before im also for a more active way of defense like invis/stab/invuln on elixiers or more vigor/dodge on skills but anet is already late in development and anet has to fix more than one specc. So i guess take whatever you can get.

 

The easiest 2 fixes that comes to my mind is:

1) Dmg absorbing shroud

2) Comback of the lf to hp mechanic and adjust numbers.

 

I mean this whole thread is about giving anet feedback. And i guess we all agree that harbinger need more survivability to be somewhat competitive in PVP and PVE. So these are my 2 cents maybe you have better / smarter fixes. Btw range nerf on mobility was totally unwanted.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

1 hour ago, Bale.3851 said:

Shroud is percent based so it doesnt really matter. Sure blight reduces your over all shroud and reverting blight in shroud results in a shroud loss but the shroud mechanic itself is the same as reaper (5% lf per second). Like i stated before im also for a more active way of defense like invis/stab/invuln on elixiers or more vigor/dodge on skills but anet is already late in development and anet has to fix more than one specc. So i guess take whatever you can get.

 

The easiest 2 fixes that comes to my mind is:

1) Dmg absorbing shroud

2) Comback of the lf to hp mechanic and adjust numbers.

 

I mean this whole thread is about giving anet feedback. And i guess we all agree that harbinger need more survivability to be somewhat competitive in PVP and PVE. So these are my 2 cents maybe you have better / smarter fixes. Btw range nerf on mobility was totally unwanted.

If Harbinger Shroud absorbs damage, it's no longer purely percentage-based.  The reduction does matter then.