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Guild Wars 2: Don't Fear the Reaper - The Necro Elite Specialization
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The third in a series of articles designed to reveal the Elite Specializations coming to all classes with the Heart of Thorns expansion has debuted on the official site. This time, the Necromancer's specialization is revealed. Called The Reaper, Necros will have the ability to wield a two-handed greatsword to become a devastating melee brawler facing off against as many foes as can be gathered.
According to the blog post, the Reaper was designed around unstoppable monsters from horror movies "like Pyramid Head and Jason Voorhees" to give the feeling of endless pursuit, boundless energy and terrifying attacks. To provide the right sense of dread, developers assigned the Reaper a greatsword to inspire fear.
Using Shroud Knight, necros gain a melee set of skills and equip a shadow scythe, truly becoming the Grim Reaper embodied.
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Death's Charge propels the Reaper forward through enemies damaging them with a spinning attack and as the attack ends, erupting into a poison cloud. Death's Charge is a movement skill closes distances between the necro and the enemy and will gain more power while Path of Corruption is active.
Many of the Reaper's skills will take on the cold of the grave and apply chill effects. Shivers of Dread inflicts fear and chill on foes. Chill slows enemies to enable the Reaper to chase them down more easily.
Cold Shoulder allows cold skills to last longer and protects the caster from a certain percentage of damage.
The Reaper's signature is, however, the greatsword. To evoke the sense of dread and impending doom, Reaper skills have a bit longer cast time, though with greater effect once landed. The heart of this is seen in Gravedigger where the Reaper accesses dark energy that will hit all enemies in the vicinity with a strong blow. Enemies below 50% health will reduce the cast time of the next Gravedigger.
Reapers will also have new shouts that are considered attack skills that hit up to five enemies with significant damage rather than buff party members as with Guardian or Warrior shouts.
The Guild Wars 2 team will be on hand during a special live stream event to show off The Reaper on Friday, May 15th at 12:00 Pacific / 3:00 Eastern in the GW2 Twitch.tv channel.
Read more on the Guild Wars 2 site.
Comments
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
"Using Shroud Knight, necros gain a melee set of skills and equip a shadow scythe, truly becoming the Grim Reaper embodied."
What part of shadow scythe did you not understand?
Let's wait until the stream before complaining it's all the "same old".
Perhaps actually read the entire article next time?
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I want a necrodancer specialization with adding pvp mode "beat the grove or die !"
That only really applies to dungeons though. There's quite a bit of variety in pvp and even in some openworld encounters.
I had fun once, it was terrible.
Wow the misinformation in this thread.
First off, poison is not (and never has been) a primary source of damage. People focusing on poison only for it's DPS are completely missing the point of that condition. Poison is mostly there for anit-healing, and as a 'condi-cap' (i.e. you have to remove it before getting to the ones that actually dish out a lot of damage).
This is why poison is actually really good for power builds. You dish out a bunch of burst damage + poison, and they have to remove it first or they can't heal the damage up. This is what makes some builds that have spammable poison so obnoxious to deal with (unless you're a guardian / ele).
- That said, Power necros are actually very strong in PvP. It's weird that they are giving them yet another power spec, which sounds very similar to the one necros already have, but more melee focused. It will be interesting to see how the 'charge-up, but powerful' attacks compare to the already present life blast / death shroud abilities.
Considering you can already spam 4-9k cirts with life blast / lich form (which are ranged attacks), it's going to be interesting to see how a melee version of that can compete.
Either way, it does look fun.
Yes you are right this is not a solution . But we don't know for sure how reaper works , wich abilitys based on condition or power . Anyway , i believe this will bring the game more versatility . Hope they do somethink about condition builds soon ..
meaningful combat? what is that?.... oh wait you mean mindless heal and taunt spam with zero strategy? no thank you. Id like to have a healing based weapon added to GW2 but not the fake "meaningful" combat that most mmos have.
In the last playable version to the public (that I saw), the Revenant had two stances: DPS and Tank. With the tank being able to taunt monsters. If this remains the case, then it is a step in the right direction as a whole, even if they will be optional since the devs will likely keep zerging, stacking, dying, respawning and the occasional dodge as an option (with nothing more than stacking power or beserker and other uninteresting gameplay mechanics it currently has).
While "meaningful" is different for different people... I believe most of us will agree that -- when it comes mechanics, fights, strategy and stat theorycrafting, Guild Wars 2 is subpar right now. Everything is one sided, and it's even more simple than World of Warcraft at present.
In a lot of ways, having meaningful combat means the developers have a lot of control -- tools to give the player so that they can form dozens of strategies, thousands of skills (as in GW1) and builds, and many ways to defeat encounters. Taunting and Healing would provide these tools in abundance; perhaps a living dungeon that adapts to the classes you have and sets different parameters depending if you have a Revenant tank or -- if there's a healer in the future -- one of those (or both). Irregardless, I believe anything is better than what is current with just stacking beserker and enduring the poorly scripted (I say poorly as in no real ideas due to limitation of player tools to solve matters) boss fights that are a result of 1) Having few skills to choose from and 2) There being no roles other than DPS and the myriad mechanics of having one or two tanks interact, swap, lead, etc. With three different roles having different roles to complete in robust mechanics that allow for such. It is less chaotic and thus more can be done with it. Both in theory and in practice.
My only worry is that this would actually give people a challenge in game, which may cause people to quit. Though an expansion would be the best place to implement change, as a lot of people will come back to see what's new. Dungeons will also have to have complex mechanics rather than just a group running forward and eventually completing something due to attrition and infinite lives (as is perceived by the many who got to 80 / did all the leveling dungeons and then quit). Having meaningful mechanics in every group setting (especially if you have to be reliant on others other than just healing yourself and avoiding / zerging something = win) would be a welcome change.
Though I say this with full well knowledge that the current system could have interesting things about it if the devs really wanted to. But, as stated above, more options and tools means... well, more options. More ways to play -- especially if one of those tools means a second stance for a class that includes specific stasks. It will be interesting how they handle the Revenant tank stance.
Edit: In addition, it's also possible for the mechanics of other classes to be more entertaining, efficient and or useful with these things implemented. They may be able to make really powerful melee based skills -- or make most current ones -- quite meaningful. This is especially true with the Reaper class with it's melee AoE focus attacks -- as well as their reworking of Blood Magic to be allow for more support.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
While this specialization is clearly geared towards Power builds, I wouldn't underestimate its value to a condition damage build:
- It applies all Life Blast traits in an AoE. That includes Dhuumfire for AoE burning at a much faster attack rate. Burning will stack intensity (with reworked numbers) in Heart of Thorns, so this may become extremely effective.
- It also has superior Might stacking thanks to faster, AoE application of Reaper's Might and the new Chilling Force. Might, of course, is important to Power, Condi, and Hybrid builds.
- It has the unique ability to turn Chill (which it excels at applying) into a damaging condition. It also applies this Chill when it applies Fear. Staff applies Chill and Fear, for two Chill applying skills (and Fear is also one of a condi Necromancer's primary damage sources).
Playing: varies every day it seems.
Nobody used necros in WvW , all mesmers and elementalists, they needed a good shove, now we just need see if they are long gone, give them a time to test.
Mr. SBFord, some we recognized the reference to Blue Oyster Cult, you're great!