Meet the Reaper: Necromancer’s Elite Specialization

[zito]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAo...+jfKBJFg5KtA-e

Here is a quick full build I made, without testing of course.

The idea is to take as less damage as possible and become unstoppable while still doing respectable damage. Are you doing max damage? No. Are you going to stay alive no matter what and revive glass cannon allies in literally one sec so they can do what they do? Yes.

In shroud or reviving you'll have over 3k toughness. While still maintaining 66% chance to crit at all times and a high level of power thanks to deadly strength.

Going in each line blood magic is self explanatory. You revive allies better and teleport them to safety. While also picking up some passive healing to yourself and allies. Since reviving downed allies better needs you to be in shroud it's only complimentary to pick up soul reaping. Death perception vs soul reaping is a personal choice, I'd rather not having shroud skill 4 get interrupted so I like death perception. Strength of the undead gives you a passive damage boost as long as you are above 50% life force. Unyielding blast is required. It's sole purpose is to keep stacks of corrupters fevor up.

Corruptors fevor is self explanatory. More toughness but now we get to the juicy bit which is Dead strength. The more toughness the more damage you will do which is doubled in shroud. This trait single handling keeps your damage up to par since we are getting so much defense. Fevor gives more toughness so you get more power, armored shroud gives you more toughness so you get more power, your runes give you more toughness for more power. It's bread and butter of this build. Putrid defense is the best of the 3 imo and works well with poison cloud.

I think the runes are self explanatory. More revive speed and more toughness.

Off hand can either be dagger or focus, if you pick focus drop poison cloud for well of darkness. If you pick dagger you use dagger 4 to get rid of bleeding and weakness you get from corruption skills. Which in turn activates Fevor for more toughness and power

Protection from wells is weak, it last 3 seconds (it's not per pulse) and if you are full zerker that buff isn't going to help long term or short term. One shot you will still be one shot.

Players will get downed, in an organized group setting though the rest of the team can focus on the boss and designate the necro for revival when that happens. Because the necro won't die from the boss while reviving while other players could get downed with their low defense. So necro becomes the designated reviver in a organized setting.

[Deleted]

Or you can just bring Signet of Undeath. That coupled with the teleport on 4 will make instant revival on a 3 minute cooldown.

[zito]

Or you can just bring Signet of Undeath. That coupled with the teleport on 4 will make instant revival on a 3 minute cooldown.

Are you guaranteeing that nobody else will get downed in 3 minutes? Reason I brought poison cloud over that is because of the long CD and cloud gives poison which reduces damage taken by 10% thanks to your trait and the weakness. Combined with offhand dagger to get rid of the self inflicted weakness to give the foe more weakness which in turn gives more stacks of Fevor. It just flows better. Signet and shroud 4 is a viable combo but long term it's pretty meh.

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http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAn...+jfKBJFg5KtA-e

axe/focus build instead if you don't want d/d. Gives regen and vul over weakness, blind and extra cond removal.

[Deleted]

I'd probably use this, Shortened Link, with the Reaper traits holding the last slot. The plan would be to inflict a lot of bleeding to trigger healing from Parasitic Contagion. Bleed, Vulnerability & Chill and transferred Poison/Weakness/Torment conditions increasing critical chance and Fury whenever I enter Reaper/Shroud, to feed more and more bleed applications.

Depending on it's usefulness, and how much self healing is required from Parasitic Contagion, it might be useful to take Weakening shroud. This will almost auto apply with the high level of crit the build has, and it will add to the permanently up conditions for Target the Weak.

When I have no life force and am forced to range I can use Scepter and either Focus or Dagger to keep spamming bleeds from a safe distance, to regenerate it. I can then swap to Greatsword and use F1 > 2 to charge back into range.

For Reaper Traits:
Chilling Nova: Critical hits against chilled foes causes an explosion that chills adjacent foes.
I should have over 60% crit chance, especially with Target the weak up and,

Decimate Defenses: Striking a foe with vulnerability increases your critical hit chance.
Fueled by the fact that chills add vulnerability, crits apply chills, it's self-feeding.
(Chilling Force only gives 5 seconds of might, Siphon Power in Spite is 10 Seconds, but it is an alternative if I find myself capping out on crit)

Then obviously,
Deathly Chill: Chill deals damage, with additional damage to foes below the health threshold.

However, depending on life force generation, and depending on what counts as a 'Boon' (the extra crit from hitting vulnerable targets may not count) it may help to choose Blighter's Boon, to reduce time out of Reaper's Shroud.

I don't really know what to make of the shouts, "You are all Weaklings" being the only one that I feel is on a par with Blood is Power and Epidemic.

[Deleted]

Arrgh tonight can't come fast enough. I have so many souls to reap in the mists!

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First few hours of testing: I'm actually finding staff kinda meh. The greatsword is very low on lifeforce generation so the axe/focus compliments it well, staff just felt like it was holding me back as I really was needing two weaponsets to play offensively.

That being said the reaper is way fun, takes a lot of getting used to and IMO has a bigger skillcap than some of the other new specs. Some things I am finding though are I still feel quite easy to kite, having low/no life force is absolutely crippling, and reapershroud #2 skill is like the only charge skill in the game that doesn't stop at it's target, it keeps going through it, it's got a super long travel distance and tbh I'm actually finding myself not wanting to use it because it will actually end up taking me further away from my target than I was already, do people think this is intended?

[PACOX]

I played this spec a lot, the concept is there (unless you're one of those people how just want another speed clearing toon) but they need to do a balance pass. The after cast are too long, damage needs to be higher if they want GS to be slow (which is fine if dagger is the opposite of GS). The Wells are cool but their cast times are terrible. GS5 is clunky, maybe swap the last hit in the AA chain with the second skill. The DS is awesome, needs a balance pass but it's the bread and butter of the spec. DS 4 is ridiculous.

Reaper synergies well with blood magic and soul reaping, lots of time in DS and life steal. Shouts would rival the current signet build in PVP if they didn't have the stupid cast times and cooldowns.

I played with a chrono and it was a good duo as expected. Actually the Reaper seems to we'll in duos if it can harass it's opponents while the partner finishes the job. Even if the numbers are right yet and it being slow, you still don't want to take a hit from the GS AA in PVP because fights tend to be over if it lands. If you let the Reaper gain life force then it's going heal the duo with DS4.

[Deleted]

Did not see this posted here though a lot of us have probably read it.

Still concerned that people who stick to the Meta will still snub Necromancers in PvE

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post5382776

[Vizardlorde]

Did not see this posted here though a lot of us have probably read it.

Still concerned that people who stick to the Meta will still snub Necromancers in PvE

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post5382776

The vampiric aura is not enough, necro/reaper can't blast reliably, cant stealth a group, cant reflect destroy projectiles, cant provide significant group might, cant provide group fury. The most supporty thing they have are permanent 25 vuln and high weakness uptime for high lvl fractals.

[Deleted]

Yeah, I really wish there was something Necros had that made people think "Hey we should get a Necro in the group to bring ______". Same for rangers. Every class should have something.

One thing that I think would be awesome is a skill like Epidemic, except for boons. That way, a Necro who can build up their own stack of 25 might, then spread it to the party would be really useful.

[Arlee]

One thing that I think would be awesome is a skill like Epidemic, except for boons. That way, a Necro who can build up their own stack of 25 might, then spread it to the party would be really useful.

Sort of hilariously, one of the warhorn skills for Elementalist does exactly that.

[zito]

Didn't I just go over Necros unique "thing" they bring to dungeons? Or was that all in my head? Necros have amazing group recovering, can teleport downed allies to safety (this is big because that happens a lot where you can't get in and revive because of bad aoe or the boss) and rez allies in like 2 seconds. They also stop health loss over time when downed.

Majority of players though don't really care because they either think it's negligible or they don't know about it.

[Deleted]

No, you were quite clear before. However, the problem is the opportunity cost. In order to bring this Necromancer, who's ability only works when things go wrong, you will be bringing a Necromancer who's very presence may cause things to go wrong. You are doing less damage, and the group is doing less damage, than either a damage specced Necromancer or some other class who will bring group buffs.

Secondly, if this "thing" Necromancers had was as useful as you suggest, then we wouldn't have the current Necromancer shunning problem. I can't rightly believe that after 3 years of the game it is only coming up now on this corner of the Internet. No, the thing is not that they don't know about it, it is that given that the meta is about steamrolling easy dungeons with full berserker gear, the need to bring someone along who will act as an anti-wipe mechanic IS in fact negligible.

Just like their ability to absorb and clear conditions is, on paper, great, but in practice completely unnecessary since all content can be cleared without it. The only time I've actually made decent use of the Necromancer's ability to transfer conditions is in the Fractal with the Grawl Shaman. On the boss fight we had everybody stand still and build up fire stacks, using plague signet I transferred many many stacks of fire and then pushed them onto the boss, using the signet, Dagger 4 and Staff 4. But that's just one single fight in a randomly assigned Fractal.

Necromancers need something reliable they can bring to any dungeon and complement any group composition (so as not to have the scenario where you do X, but class Y already does it, or does it better).

[zito]

The oppoortunity is there, it's weather you use it or not. Support in general can be said about every proffesion in the game. Why should I bring support if I could just bring berserker? Yet you still get people who bring support? Berserker isn't the only way to do things it just ends up being efficient because fights in general don't need support outside reflects but the only fights you really see this are below level 35 fractals and dungeons. Like I said before people over look some things because they believe zerker or go home but you don't need to go zerker it's just highly efficient.

I belive in my top post I went over things where you are not doing max damage but you are still doing high damage thanks to a combination of traits and gear. The only thing missing is crit damage but imo trading only crit damage for an amazing revive tool which is AMAZING in organized group play where everyone does not have to stop DPS to revive when you revive people in flat out 2 seconds is well amazing.

[Deleted]

I get what you mean, however there's a problem currently that the Reaper Elite spec doesn't fix. You see the problem is not "Zerker Necromancer or GTFO" it is, "Necromancer, GTFO". That most other classes can bring their support/group buffs while at the same time fit the Zerker meta is a secondary problem.

The Meta is the problem and Necromancers are fine as they are, mostly. Something simple like reducing the CD on Blood is Power (even though 20 seconds (traited) for 8 Might is not bad in itself) would go a long way.

[Deleted]

BWE updates:

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/foru...st#post5491452

[zito]

with the changes to poison cloud necros utility in PvE just shot up crazy time. Currently working on a condition corruption build and it's turning out interesting . Gotta figure out if healing power is worth anything but very promising utility. Currently difficult to choose between offhand dagger and focus. Focus has the regen and vul with situational boon removal but dagger has aoe weakness and condition transfer with blind.

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So it really is interesting how my support build evolved. Not specifically for reaper but hey the necro thread is buried. I made 2 variants. Power and "Hybrid".

Here is my power variant.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNAn.../QlK/IFgYjsA-e

Advantages over Hybrid: High vul stacking, High vul up time, High regen up time, High burst with lich form, boon removal.

And the Hybrid.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQ...EsR1fIFAEjsA-e

Advantages over Power: Condition damage for foes who are immune to direct damage, near perma fury, condition removal for the corruptions, reduced CD on corruptions (20 sec poison cloud over 30 sec), can maintain an extra 15-20% crit chance in a group thanks to target the weak, better spread of stats thanks to celestial, +crit damage, better survival thanks to celestial, racial elite.

Personally I'd lean towards the hybrid as it is a lot more versatile and better self sustain. The power version is "glassy"

So the obvious support is well healing. There is some generic healing but the unique thing is being able to teleport downed players to you (while simultaneously putting down a healing well), stopping natural downed health degeneration loss and healing with shroud skills. Shroud 4 has an extremely high healing coefficient . Above 50% health it's about a 5k heal and below 50% health it is a 6k heal aoe heal with a 600 range on a 34 sec CD. It's as strong as a personal heal and it's aoe and with a huge radius. Amazing. Though it can be interrupted which is why foot in the grave is taken. Leaving death shroud also heals for about 2k.

You will not be using shroud for damage but for utility. The 2k heal can be activated every 7 seconds just pop right in and out of death shroud.

You'll also have 30% increased revival speed thanks to runes and your trait. Ritual of life also adds a well of blood which will heal you for around 6k and an additional 600 per second for 5 seconds which also heals allies. I testing reviving someone from half health and it took 3 seconds. Also the runes will revive them with increased health making them come back with 80% health.

On top of all that you will also be putting out serious competitive damage. In the power build the only thing you're missing is the crit damage, in exchange for amazing group utility. In the condition build you lose out on some added crit chance and condition damage but again exchange for great utility and survibility.

Utility's can be swapped. I picked signet of vamp for the group healing though consume conditions is a perfect alternative. Poison cloud is a must have. It destroys projectiles. If there are none it at least poisons and weakens. It should never leave your bar. Blood is power can be swapped if there is a might stacker in the group and the last utility slot is up in the air.

I can't wait to test this out when my necro hits 80.

[thewallofsleep]

I've never been concerned with high level pve in GW2, but have any changes been made which allow a Necro to pug dungeons or lower level fractals? The lack of group support and the condition cap is pretty crippling if you don't have a set group of friends. Getting denied purely based on your profession is pretty disheartening, especially when you've spent dozens of hours leveling up, crafting and gathering gear.

[Arlee]

I've never been concerned with high level pve in GW2, but have any changes been made which allow a Necro to pug dungeons or lower level fractals? The lack of group support and the condition cap is pretty crippling if you don't have a set group of friends. Getting denied purely based on your profession is pretty disheartening, especially when you've spent dozens of hours leveling up, crafting and gathering gear.

They've removed the condition cap and buffed the damage conditions do, but you need to gear for it to get the real benefits.

[thewallofsleep]

That's good to hear. I haven't played in quite some time, but would like to come and main Necro for HoT, as Reaper looks too cool. My ranger and warrior just don't have the same "cool" factor.

[zito]

Necro support is severally underrated. I'm running the hybrid support build above and it's amazing