Petition: Soul Reaping

there ok, happy that crippling slash got a much needed buff though

/notsigned

the necro needed to be changed, they were becoming a pool of energy especially in ab. I think Anet have done a good thing in changing what they did so: "Thank You Anet"

I believe that would have been the correct way to handle this issue.

No longer need Sever :P.

Last I heard, this was a trial skill update, and subject to final adjustment. I guess we can wait and see. Maybe this can still happen.

Which is why I came out of Lurk mode to voice my unhappiness at this change.

I'm pretty sure he is better at the game than you are.
Necro's have been able to spam 15-25 energy skills on recharge for almost two years. Does that mean it's either balanced or fair? No. Necromancers just got spoiled with infinite energy and got used to it. being used to something has nothing to do with if it's balanced or not.
I'll say it again, Soul Reaping let necro's use skills from their secondary that otherwise would've been balanced by their energy cost. If spamming Conjure Nightmare and Conjure Phantasm on recharge is not overpowered, please tell me what is.

Quote:

Originally Posted by puhhehehee they never nerfed soul reaping since the release of first gw and now this?

Your knowledge of the history of skill balances is lacking, as they have balanced Soul Reaping on at least one other occasion, when they changed the way it benefited from the "death" of spirits and summoned creatures (half of Attribute level received in energy rather than full attribute level). A little while after this, Jagged Bones, combined with Soul Reaping and Spirits / summoned creatures was a problem, so the skill Jagged Bones was balanced. And now, because of continued abuse of Soul Reaping in conjunction with the spamming of spirits and summoned creatures, ArenaNet has taken a more affirmative action sort of step in the direction of stopping it. It hasn't really effected the Necromancers of PvE on a scale of usefulness, as they have been far outclassed by Searing Flames Elementalists for a good while now. This just makes players of PvE Necromancers realize that they are outclassed (or, that is, they might realize that, if they weren't too busy being stubborn and arguing like children on various forums instead of actually calming down and being reasonable).

As always people, remember, it's just a game. You paid for the access, not the upgrades. If the free upgrades are sending you into a fit of rage, try taking a break, and doing something less stressful.

Now, honestly, this thread is a already pile of borderline flame-bait, and I am going to be watching it very closely to see how far it degrades. If it gets to the "point of no return", so to speak, it's gone. Consider this a formal warning.

GoLE is now Energy Storage attrib

it scales 10-19energy.

and you can equip other classes primary skills.

This was a much needed nerf. Also, the OP is apparently clueless judging by the fact that he posted something about nerfing all the other primary atts. Compared to soulreaping, the other primary atts were insanely underpowered. While I think the nerf may have hit PvE a bit hard, it needed to happen regardless. Maybe they will tweak it a bit later, lower it to 3 seconds but no summoned creatures or something.

/notsigned

I can understand the method they chose being chose over the no SR off spirits. With the way it now is Soul Reaping is also less of a insanely good tool come VoD (NPCs dropping left right and center giving infinited energy at stand).

I saw that as well...

He was doing pretty good, so i think really we need to rethink certain builds. Thing is though i made some "custom" builds that were all about 16 in soul reaping. While the update makes it a little harder for me to run em, I just have to tinker with them to get the bugs out.

But one reason I hate this update is this. Soul Reaping is the only attribute with a recharge time. -_-

But even with this "balance" its still the best form of energy managment in the game.

I did invest in energy management, you fool. I invested -75 hitpoints and 97 attribute points in it. Now you're telling me that this just "isn't enough" and that I need to get a secondary to help manage energy.

This nerf isn't just on necromancers. Every time a minion saved you from taking the force of a warrior, thank a necromancer for doing his job. Necromancers are fragile, yet they continue to come up to the task.

We already have:

No instant interupts
The ability to be easily countered by hex removal
A very large weakness to AOE with minions
To sacrifice health on a large minority of our spells
To stay away from the frontline


Necromancers ALREADY ARE support casters. Weakening them further isn't going to just hurt us—it's going to hurt you when there's no minion to take your damage or no hex to disable the enemy.

As do I. I'm sick of having my necromancer nerfed simply because I'm smart enough to create a multifaceted build. Make this update apply to PvP ONLY. Many missions are already hard enough, even with a fully loaded minion master. Don't believe me? See you in Vizunah Square...

I don't play necro but jeez give them their soul reaping back never had a problem with it

Umm... exactly how many NPCs do you think usually makes it to VoD? Also, do you realise that those NPCs don't always die altogether within a 5-second time frame?

/signed - too drastic a change

That's the idea!!! Then the ABUSE of SR will stop.

/notsigned

Necros were overpowered and in all the past skill balances, they've always seemed to be the least nerfed class.

That's not entirely true. Many Necromancers stick to their primary so they can be more effective by not scattering their attributes too thin by utilizing them in other secondary professions.

Granted, you're probably more likely to find secondary professions being utilized for energy in a PvP situation, but ANet needs to realize that a big part of their meal ticket is being paid for by PvErs.

It's good to know that when I'm playing my Necro that I'm really nothing more than support for my Heroes and Henchmen, since, of course, I "never play alone" anymore. :\

Can any other mechanic in the game give you these amounts of energy in exchange for 97 attribute points, -75 HP and ZERO skill slots? No? Rite, then it's imbalanced with the rest of the game.
The PvE'ers need to realize that PvP balance is more important than PvE 'balance' (which doesn't even exist because the game is built to make you stronger than the mobs)

Do you realize that you are still gaining 3 or 3.2 energy every second if it triggers every 5 seconds? That outclasses most of the energy management skills in the game combined. Most energy regain offers less than 1 pip of energy, including elite energy management skills, when this level of soul reaping that you mentioned(15 or 16) provides 9-10 pips in addition to your inherent 4 pips.

Also, what's wrong with being a support class? Support doesn't just mean healing. It includes most things that don't directly involve killing things.

Concerning the suggestion of nerfing other primary attributes, fast casting is already weaker than others. Spawning power is absolutely useless for all but one build in terms of its passive benefit, and that one build, the Ritual Lord, is barely surviving. Energy storage honestly isn't that important except for its skills, although about 9 or so's usually a good idea if you've not got more important things to put attributes in. Expertise is sweet, and honestly, the rangers would die without it, because most of their useful skills are 10 or 15 energy, and they've got 5 less energy and 1 less pip of regen than casters. Strength is utterly useless, except for its skills. In pve, it's useless because not many warriors are built for damage, and for those that aren't see the pvp section of my explanation. In pvp, strength's passive benefit is useless because it doesn't stack with things like Sundering. Divine Favor's pretty important, both for making mo/ monks better than /mo monks and for its skills. Critical Strikes is an assassin's energy management. Their skillbar usually has no room for survivability, much less energy-management, so they bring about 13 critical strikes and get 3 energy when they crit, which isn't much energy, but it's better than nothing. Mysticism is good for skills and has a decent synergy with low duration enchants and things like aegis chains. Leadership is nice energy management, although fairly conditional, and has some good skills. Soul reaping, by contrast, not only has some decent skills, but is absolutely the best energy-management in the game, if it's triggering even once every 5 seconds.

If soul reaping doesn't trigger once every 5 seconds for you, the change has no effect on you, so stop complaining.

I gave Olias my regular MM build, and Master of Whispers a standard SS build, BOTH of them had NO energy problems, if they can manage, I am pretty sure a human player could do it also. (Unless of course you think that the AI can play a necro better than you, in which case, please play a different profession.)

im pretty sure a bot MM is better in most cases anyway - they are godlike at death nova microing

But, when the ai is managing energy better than you, you are doing something wrong.

/signed to change this back to the way it WAS.

I could go on and on and on why it needs to be the way it was and nerfing it is needless but I'm at work at the moment ~(-;

lawl... When you get back home don't forget to edit your post and tell us why SR needs to be returned to previous state ^^

First, I agree that A change was needed in the Soul Reaping mechanic for balance purposes. However, this change was overkill. I noticed the change immediatly when I played with my necromancer (favorate class). I did not have any problems with energy management - but that is due primarily to my play style (I have never had energy problems without an e-denial harrassing me, and I rairly play with more than 4 or 5 in Soul Reaping).

The problem with Soul Reaping was its ability to be abused when used with spirit spammers. The solution should have been quite simple. Make it so Soul Reaping does not provide energy from spirit deaths. If minions were still causing a problem, reduce the energy gain from minions to half. This would have fixed the balance problem effectivly, without causing the mechanic significant harm.

And just another bit of information for all of you concerned about your precious minions (worst necromancer setup ever) - the minion master setup is the build LEAST affected by this change.

On making Soul Reaping not work when minions or spirits died:
So you think the way to go is to make this primary attribute REALISTICALLY useless for PvP, so you and all your other whiners in this thread don't have to work to tweak your precious Necros and actually have to manage energy effectively like every other class? I have a Necro and, as i said before, don't play him very frequently because SR was overpowered. It was boring for me to play a Necro, everything was way too easy. I rarely ever ran out of energy. It wasn't challenging.

I do not PvP at all. However I fully understand that PvP is WAY more important in terms of balancing than PvE. PvE is easy no matter what Anet does to it.

This game is all about adapting. Anet changed it, deal with it. If you want to get back at em, then prove to them you can succeed even with their, as you call, crappy "update". I may not necessarily agree with every update they have made, but I'm not gonna sit in a forum and whine about it, I'm gonna go out and fix my builds to work with the updates.

PvE never care about overpowered stuff until it's nerfed.

There's a reason everyone and their mother asked for a MM in PvE.

I agree, although I do enjoy playing MM from time to time. I just went through Vizunah Square on my Necro as an MM. I went straight Death and SR, with 13 in SR. I brought Taste of Death with me and Consume Corpse, and used Reaper's Mark for a bit more energy management.

That said, there were times even in Vizunah where I had to wait for enough energy to 'Taste' a minion so I could boost my energy levels. I admit, I went with my two favorite minions (mostly because it pains me to know that ANet reduced the cost of minions that I rarely use or see used in PvE) which was more energy intensive.

In missions like that, I rarely heal my minions, since I try to raise them as soon as a corpse becomes available (which in turn allows me to gain energy from the dying minion - if this weren't the case and SR stayed nerfed, this build probably wouldn't be viable in a lot of places.)

A friend in my party, who set up as an SS, was regularly suffering from lack of energy despite the massive amount of deaths taking place in that mission. He claimed he regularly hovered around 15 energy, and found himself waiting for another death that happened to coincide with the 5-second rule.

I'm going to have to start from scratch learning how to play necro again. Nothing works any more.

Ok I keep seeing that many people have the same point which is "it just makes the game harder"...well thats not the point I'm getting at. The point is PvP wanted the change, they got what they wanted but it screwed with PvE. Now would it be so hard for Anet to make it so that Soul reaping isn't triggered from souls? you see anet just goes and nerfs and it seems that they dont even think about PvE...yeah so what I have to manage my energy with an energy skill, I dont care about that. My point is that Anet could have come up with a better way to "dumb" down soul reaping...but instead they just slapped on a 5 second cool down...its like saying mesmers can only fast cast every 5 seconds...or a sins critical hit can only take place every 5 seconds...Anet just didn't seem like they actually thought this through.

/signed

There's been too much news coming rgarding GW in too narrow a time span. A lot of the stuff that's happened is stuff I dont support dont like. I liked 6v6, I liked kill count (soon to go we all know it), I dont like the fact that there are no new expansions, and I liked my primary character necro, even though I knew that there were aspects of the game that she couldnt take place in because her skills are too weak to compensate for a good primary (ever seen a Necro FOW chest runner?). The builds she used are dead to me now.

If I have to play "BiP" to get into a group for hard mode, that will make me quit entirely. After reading the posters on this board (at least those posters who anet listens too), I dont think I'm the type of player that anet wants to have in its game.

Nothing works? Just because you cant spam all those high energy spells doesn't mean nothing works, all you have to not do is not spam them every bloody second.

You people honestly complain like no other class has ever been nerfed, and no one else understand what it's like.

SR was honestly killing PvP, and I'm happy to see that something's being done with it. You all complain about having to relearn how to play a necromancer? That seems a bit extreme and over-dramatic. Stop complaining and figure out a solution for your problem: I'm sure there are plenty out there.

yeah first dont tell us not to complain...because this all started with the complaining of PvP players and we have the right as costomers to complain about whatever we want(in this case soul reaping nerf). I know other classes have been nerfed...but has their primary attribute been nerfed? I think not. I'm not going to lie soul reapping was getting bad in PvP because of spirit spammers....but how hard could it actually have been to just make it so that spirits dont give energy after their death?

Before spirit spammers Soul reaping was never a problem but when it becaomes a problem Anet nerfs the hell out of the whole thing instead of just fixing the current(and only) problem.

mhh to have 10 in soul reaping is only 9 + 1.

now i dont have the game now but it think is about 45 point of attribute.

you can have easly

12+ 4
9+ 1
9 +1

and yes , you cannot pretend to make a build who have a attribute to 16 and other 3-4 attribute at decent level

No other class has had its primary nerfed. So, yes, no one else would understand what its like.

My main char is a nec, and I'm primarily PvE only, and the change to SR has crippled the use of my character. I can no longer churn out minions the way I used to be able to, but I don't just MM all the time either. My SS build will have problems maintaining energy, the increased cost to Reckless Haste makes it worse. I'll never be able to be my own battery. Yeah, there's Offering of Blood but I'm sure every other necro out there has some other elite they'd rather use. And how often do you see two necs in a party just so they can put Blood Ritual on each other? In my opinion, the change to SR has ruined what made it so great to be a primary necromancer. I can understand though why this change would be needed in PvP play, but not everyone who plays GW cares about PvP. I don't. Everytime there's a "skill-balance" change, it seems to benefit PvP only, and messes up things for PvE, so I think the only good way to keep everyone happy is to create two seperate skill sets, one for each. Till then I think I just might turn my ele into a minion master and have some poor, energy-drained necro give me BR every 5 seconds.

all skill balance benefic pvp mostly because a overpowered skill don't bother pve.

infact having a overpowered skill make the pve more fun for a large base of player.