Soul Reaping, Spirit Spam and Abuse in general

As you can see I'm newly registered, but I read this forum from a long time.The main idea to start this thread is to address a balance problem that is in the game from the beginning, but recently is getting more and more abused.

The Soul Reaping attribute by itself has major problems and I'm not the only one complaining.Not so long ago before [skill]Jagged Bones[/skill] got nerfed, there was a build of 8 necros based on the idea of minions enchanted with jagged bones which you can kill and they are replaced with new once giving your team energy from the soul reaping.This was imbalanced energy management in any way.The energy management in this game is something very very important.It's not a surprise that most good energy management skills are elite ones.With something so trivial like soul reaping you could get better energy management than any skill in the game if properly abused.

Now there are many builds based on spirits and soul reaping.Despite the fact that this type of energy management was nerfed once already it still in my opinion is a major imbalance.Honestly I'm tired of playing against abusive builds,but they are there since the start of the game.I've been playing for two years now mainly GvG and we always have been a top 100 guild,which I will not mention,but I'm telling this in order to take my opinion more seriously.

I think that most of this abuses could be fixes easyly, but for a reason I don't know it always takes a very long time.The spirit spam in his first form (old Tombs now HA) was nerfed months later and there are many more examples.For this one to be fixed I have a suggestion.

I've always had the opinion that the whole conception with spirits is wrong.There shouldn't be spirits in this game,but since they are there my suggestion is to put a limit on their usage,not only in the count of the spirits from same type (already done), but on their count overall.For example a team can not have more than two spirits up at a time and if third one i summoned the first one dies without giving soul reaping energy bonus.In this way I think are solved two problems.The first is the soul reaping abuse and the second is spirit spam, witch still has no valuable counter even with all the anti spirit skills and you could still have a team build based on spirits for example [skill]Tranquility[/skill] and [skill]Nature's Renewal[/skill].

As for the other type of abuse: the skill abuse,there are things that could be done too.Here I'm talking about skills that alone are not imbalanced,but in many copies have devastating effect.Skills like Searing Flames etc.On the NF preview I spotted a skill that I hoped will solve this once and for all.The skill is : [skill]Xinrae's Weapon[/skill], but in order to do so this skill needs a huge buff.which I hoped will be done on release of NF,but futile.This skill's idea is exactly to punish such type of multicopies abuse,but it's parameters are laughable: 25eng, elite, 30s rech. and all that for a short weapon spell and 5 to 13 seconds of additional recharge.First you have to cast it on a party member witch you should be somehow sure,that it will get target on an skill abuse and if you do that the reward is negligible.We already have skills like diversion and distracting shot I don't think that boosting this weapon spell will make it imbalanced.On the counterpart this is the only skill in the game that could handle this type of abuse,so this skill needs some major buff.I can't tell exact parameters but surely the energy cost,the recharge and the disable should be tweaked.

These are my suggestions feel free to comment or criticize.

P.S: Sorry if my style of writing is not readable, but normally I don't write in forums.This is only to show you how desperate I am about this changes

As far as I'm concerned, spirits are far from a problem. You seem to simply lack the proper counters, as many who post about PvP balance changes do.

It takes 3-5 seconds to cast them, during which time they are very open to being interrupted, so take a Mesmer or Ranger.

Spirits are rather low level (max is around level 13 at 16 attribute points), and so can be killed very easily. I'd suggest skills like [wiki]Unnatural Signet[/wiki], or [wiki]Spiritual Pain[/wiki] (both Mesmer skills) to take them out fastest.

Also, if your problem is that your opponent has too much energy at their disposal, then I have two words for you: Energy Denial. Mesmers are the masters of preventing their opponent from having energy.

So it seems to me that what you need, is a mesmer, not a change to the game mechanics.

P.S. Mesmers wipe the floor with spammers.

No whats broken is soul reaping, not spirit spamming. Spirits are viable and balanced for 8vs.8 what Is broekn is soul reaping, it has been abused twice now and will continue to be abused while not nerfed.

T_T posts like this make me cry so i am not going say one thing
what would happen to many many rit builds with a two spirit restriction?

Agreed... but I don't see a change coming.

Say E-denial to necro spamming spirits must be best joke ever.

Well two is rather drastic suggestion,but my point with spirits is that you cannot simply nerf soul reaping,it's a primary attribute so if you can't fix it you could fix the way it is abused.As for the rit builds there are many many builds that could be valuable even with two spirits only and this is my opinion but spirit spam in general ruins the gameplay and it's not fun especially in arenas,where the number of players is limited to 4 vs 4.Try to handle 6-10 spirits from 2 rits if you are not build for that.The best thing to do is to stay away and this kills all the fun,but this is not the topic of this thread.

if soul reaping if bad, (which i think it is not) then the tweak must be there, modifing anything else is wrong, you are imbalancing spirits for something that does not have anything to do with spirits.

an example to a posible fix, soul reaping dont benefit at all from spirits.
(which i /not sign because actually the benefit from spirits on soul reaping is intended for necros being useful on pvp.)

You shouldn't have to be forced to take something like unnatural signet to counter a spiritway. It's way too specific of a skill, and would be fairly useless in the absence of spirits. Energy denial against soul reaping necros with spirits? That's gotta be the best counter to it! Why hasn't anyone else thought about e-denying a necro who gets 25 energy every 5 seconds? Genius!

Nope, not in pvp at all. Everyone in pvp knows that Soul Reaping is broken in pvp with infinite energy by spirit spamming.
The reason ANet doesn't have any nerf is mostly because it will affect the PvE a lot. You will see 23980989 threads complaing about it like warriors cried about armor and skill nerf before. And because ANet doesn't want to separate PvE and PvP update, they will satisfy the majority of community ( which is killing pvp by the way).

I dont think necros should get any energy from spirits. Minions yes, spirits no.

I think necros should only get energy from dying players.
The attribute is soul reaping and minions and spirits dont have a soul ...

There are several threads already about this.
One of the propositions i liked the most was to link the Soul Reaping gain upon the level of the dying creature (max= Soul reaping score; gain=creature/player level or gain= pet/minion/spirit level/2). This way necro/rit spamming lvl 6 or lesser spirit/minion wouldn't gain that much of energy. It would still be imbalanced IMO.
As many stated before, being able to counter something doesn't mean something is balanced.

Soul Reaping is possibly the strongest primary attribute in the game. It would still be very good if it did not trigger on spirits. Some arguments in favor of this solution:

1) Easy to implement, as spirits are a separate class (see how hexes dont affect them).

2) Few complaints from PvE crowd, as I think very few people would choose to go through the campaigns by tediously setting up spirit forests at every encounter.

3) Ends the thoroughly un-fun combination of teams camping in spirit fields while spamming skills with the SR gains. Leads to very stale games, I cannot stress this enough.

If this is thought too radical, then maybe no SR gain when a spirit is replaced by its own copy? And no SR gain when it expires perhaps?

/signed

~the rat~

This made me laugh. There is a perfectly viable skill that would counter Spirtway yet people "shouldn't be forced to carry it".

I'd love to hear why..

For the abuse I'm talking about it doesn't even matter if you bring antispirit skills or not.There are only 4 antispirit skills one of which is elite, so OK [wiki]Unnatural Signet[/wiki] is a viable skill for killing spirits (and that is after the boost),but even with it you can not cope with the spirit forest 2 or 3 spirit spammer may unleash and even when killing the spirit they get their energy from soul reaping.Not to mention the spirit range and if clever a spirit spammer may put spirits in such a way that you either overextend or don't get them at all.Still I'm not talking about that there are no counters to spirits,but in my opinion if abused they are imbalanced and adding soul reaping to that makes it very ugly.That's the reason I added them to one discussion,because I feel that with one change here are solved 2 problems one of witch major.

I like the idea of energy scaling based on level. For example, assuming 10 soul reaping:

lvl 20 necro and a level 8 spirit dies (8 is the max for most spirits, IIRC)
8 / 20 * 10 = 4. Normal would be 5 due to the half-from-spirits rule.

lvl 20 necro and a level 18 minion dies (std 16 death)
18 / 20 * 10 = 8. Normal would be 10.

However, in PvE you'd get more from higher level mobs.
lvl 20 necro and a lvl 24 mob dies
24 / 20 * 10 = 12 instead of the normal 10. This could actually be a buff for PvE MMs, especially end game.

I don't know if this would be enough of a nerf for PvP, though. Lvl 6 spirits, which are probably a little more common, would drop from 5 energy to 3 energy gained on death.

Another option might be to reduce the SR range to earshot.

What about, you know, interrupting the person casting the spirit? It does take 3-5 seconds to make a spirit, not exactly fast.

Really, having to take a counter to a highly used (apparently) build, is so absurd. I mean, people didn't start bringing blinding skills to protect against heavy melee builds, of course not!

Don't really care about spirit spamming because HA is going back 8v8 (thank god was about to rage and go play WoW or something). Spirit spamming has been nerfed twice (i think) necro's only get half of what they have in soul reaping and you can't have more than one of the same spirit up at a time for your team.

Having trouble killing these N00b\/\///-\\Y teams? Run a mesmer with spiritual pain.

I dont think itll be a problem much longed with 8v8 coming back =D

Can you interrupt 2 spammers? Can you interrupt them *all the time*?

can you interrupt 3 spammers? or even 4?

even if you could, this would be a build dedicated to the idea of spirit-spam-interrupting....which will have it erased from the face of the earth by any other type of build.

spirits have always been the weakness of GW, from the very first moment a team of 8 rangers entered Tombs back in 2005. spirits have to be *erased* from GW, simple as that. the whole idea of spirits is retarded in a first place, not to mention the retarded gameplay it provokes. do you want to play a game for retards? I surely don't.

I want to make something clear - my guildie, the OP, and I, do NOT say that there's no counter to the spam. If you wish to beat a spamming team, you can and you will. But this will render you useless versus any other type of build you meet.

Spinal Shivers + Shivers of Dread + Echo + Archane Echo + cold damage weapons/AoE water magic attacks, beg to differ.

Interrupt, Disrupt, Disable, Energy Steal, Energy Punish, Spirit Punish... the skills are there already, use them.

It already triggers half on spirits... you always have to know that Necromancers will when energy on deaths. So you have to act as if you know it, it their specialty.

Good Joke lawl! But too bad there are things call physical attack else your idea would become realistic lol! Absolute maybe?

Anyway! Soul reaping is fun to play with. I do agree with you in some of the builds, it really become overpower. But that does not mean you can not anti it. In practice of Soul reaping there are serveral builds:

1. Spirit spammer:
- Pros:
+ Give multiple spirits that when they die, it gives energy to healer N.
+ Make the map become crouded. Well if you play melee you will find this is really annoying >_^.
- Cons:
+ If the other team have something that deal area dmg such as Fire E, Melee with Scythe and so on. Spirits will be dead in no time and only give the heal N energy in bad time.
+ Slow in casting >_^ can be shutdown easily by choker or PD mes!
+ Of course if your comp is weak it causes lag KI Ki ki...!!!

Opinion: This is for noobs to play, take no skill and can be killed easily. Playing this only make you become a worse player after the nerf. Considering nerf always exist >_^

2. Heal/Prot N:
- Pros:
+ Have a lot of energy managment.
- Cons:
+ Passive in knowing when energy will come.
+ Less effective in heal/prot.
+ Have to spread atribute and can not do the heal/prot monk!
+ Can not use good elite in divine such as Spell breaker (Believe it or not one of my favorite skill in my r10/12+ team >_^)
+ Can not use combo such as channeling/Glyph when use spammable spells/high energy spells.

Opinion: Well nice to have a lot of energy but oh well too risky. You never know when energy come! In the order word, too dependable. Can not count on this when doing 10+ consecutive runs! Waste of time for noobs!

There, those are the most practical use for Soul Reaping. When making a build, be ready to see all kind of possibility. You may face lame builds such as NR/traq, spirit spammer or even dump Iway using R/W with scythe and paraway. That is when the fun of PvP come. If for everything in GW you ask for a nerf then at the end only balance build exist. No fun! No fun when entering the battle and you already know what will they play. So boring!

If need a nerf, I would suggest only spirit that die from being dmg to dead (not even expire) will give energy, else won't!

1. Give necros a new primary attribute

2. Buff Xinrae's weapon

And, and remember the force exhaustion skills!
They can't get a single energy point from a death if they have an exausted energy bar.

The easiest and best solution to the soul reaping problem is to change soul reaping so no enery from spirits and half energy from minions is recieved.

Stupid skills like Xinrae's Weapon are not needed.

Certain spirits, such as the eilte nature rituals are actualy underpowered.

Soul Reaping - For each point of Soul Reaping, you gain 1 Energy whenever a creature near you dies. You gain half that amount for Spirits

for those of you crying that Soul Reaping is broken, the attribute discription is clear. Soul Reaping does exactly what it is suppose to do. it is not broken at all.

*correction* - spirit spaming is that a spirit can not be created if a spirit of the same type already exists.

btw, correct me if im wrong, but isn't Soul Reaping the only primary attribute that is CONDITIONAL? the correction i stated above, in the end, is a means to curb teammates from the conditions of death other than flat-out killing the enemy. i have said it before, and i will say it again. people complaining about Soul Reaping need to think about ways of solving the real problem, which is the manipulation of death by friendlies. death from the hands of the enemy is one thing. death from the hands of friendlies.....



Jayce Of Underworld

------------------------------------------------

Animate Soul Lich
Energy: 25
Cast: 3
Recharge: 0

Elite Skill. Animate a level 1...14 Soul Lich
at your location and you lose all energy. You
suffer -1 energy regeneration for each Soul Lich
you control. Whenever a Soul Lich you control
deals damage, you gain 2 energy.(Soul Reaping)

There are those that say "Soul Reaping should only apply to those that die, whether it be animals or humans".
Then there are those that say, "There's nothing wrong with SR, you can take the soul of a dead creature that has been summoned, and a spirit that has not soul as well. Just take a anti spirit spammer in your build".

Well, i am for those that say that SR should only apply to those that die that had a soul(life). A spirit does not have a soul, neither does a summoned creature that was ressurected who lost it's soul the first time. Do you get what I am saying? Sure you can go to the ol' "this is a fantasy type game bub, get over it", even fantasy needs it's balance. Don't get me wrong, I like the SR attribute, but to tell you the truth, even in PvE, SR isn't even needed so bad as you would like to think. Us Necros get enough of our energy from all of the dying foes we kill. NOW, that brings me to another excuse, i mean err... aw hell it's gonna be an excuse from you anyways, so i'll go ahead and say it. You'll say, " So that means you won't be able to get energy when you kill an Aatxe or smite or undead from kryta because they are already dead too!!!!" Well, that's PvE monsters, not human players. We still won't be able to get the energy from the spirits or minions we create. You don't see PvErs running spiritway builds just to have unlimited energy in PvE. In PvP you will get enough energy from killing your foes, and any fallen allies. You shouldn't have to run a build that involves spamming spirits, and your foes shouldn't have to run a build that is devoted to stop your build. It's not like every team you encounter will run spiritway, so that anti-spiritspam will pretty much be useless for the rest of the journey.

There are two problems with Soul Reaping.

The first problem is how much reliable energy can be gained from the spirit spam. Even with half soul reaping, a single spirit can fuel the rest of the team with 5-8 energy, and they can be re-built every 15 or 30 seconds. That's more potent than anything else. For comparison, simply creating 3 or 4 spirits gives as much energy as a maxed out BiP cast on every Necro on the team.

I like some of the previous ideas, especially the one where Soul Reaping is based on the level of the creature that dies. My tweak on that would be that Soul Reaping is normal on non-summoned creatures, and modified by creature level divided by 20 for summoned creatures (both minions and spirits).

The Second problem is that SR effects all necros. A single death can fuel 1 necro or 16. With all this talk about "Things without a soul shouldn't give soul reaping"... well... I think this argument is more practical. A single soul shouldn't give more net energy arbitrarily because of how many Necros are hanging around.

The solution to this would be to limit the number of necros that a single Soul Reaping can effect. If a soul reaping death only effected the nearest 3 necros, I could see a serious decline in all-necro teams abusing it. For the PvE folks, we could make it so that hostiles don't steal your Soul Reaping unless they are the same species.

Suggested counters like Unnatural Signet and mass interrupts don't work as well as implied. For example, Spirit range is a little bit longer than Unnatural Signet range, and many spirits are usually in the same area. If the Signet, which is being cast repeatedly and predicatably, is interrupted by Disonnance, Wonderlust, or any other interrupt then it becomes useless for 40 seconds. If you face a team without any spirits, then it's a wasted skill slot. Even if you do kill the spirit, you're still fueling the enemy team. Having enough interrupts to stop four or five spirit casters is not practical and very difficult.

Didn't you read what he wrote ? Of course there are skills can counter spirits spam but they are too specific, and if you don't meet a spirit team, it will be waste of skill slot. Bringing specific skills to counter a specific build also makes this game RPS, which will sucks.
Lol, dude. People are saying that SR is broken, aka overpowered, not broken from its description. What people suggest is SR should gain full e from dead monsters or human, half from minions and 0 from spirits.

im starting to understand why people are really complaining about Soul Reaping and its shocking the hell out of me. its really sad, and funny at the same time, considering the company of pvp players in general.

thank you for proving my point. i know full well what people are saying. now go and read the rest of my post.



Jayce Of Underworld

------------------------------------------------

Animate Soul Lich
Energy: 25
Cast: 3
Recharge: 0

Elite Skill. Animate a level 1...14 Soul Lich
at your location and you lose all energy. You
suffer -1 energy regeneration for each Soul Lich
you control. Whenever a Soul Lich you control
deals damage, you gain 2 energy.(Soul Reaping)

as PvE and PvP are conjoined at the hip. Few PvE would like their necros bludgeoned by the nerf hammer especially since soul reaping has been updated before. i say deal with this obsticle with team strategy and not asking for a primary attribute downsize.
i want updates to buff not nerf once awhile.