Petition: Soul Reaping

Well, Master of Whispers never seemed to have a problem with energy. I'm not going to say either way, since I haven't actually played my Necro yet, but if a Hero can manage energy almost exactly the same as he did before, casting the same spells (Minions, even Heal Area which he spams too much), then maybe people need to rethink their strategy of casting?

first off im not suprised i run out of nrg, i was running it effectively with out problems especially since when a minion of mine died i could collect nrg off it. 2 i can still use it just takes slightly longer. you didn't need nrg skills before cause we hardly have any and sr took the place of those skills. and both of those sigs are nf only i started as a factions necro then moved on, what about those that don't have nf, and some1 said use consume corpse why would you use that. in situations where bodies are hard to find it'd be a waste of a corpse. some1 else said use mesmer skills, all mm know the true build for a mm is n/mo for the use of healing circle to help mantain minions especially while waiting for other pple to do their things in mishes or waiting for waves of nmes ect ect... and for self heals as mm is a death magic build and not blood. and besides tell me why sr needs a nerf when it is mainly used for mm which is 90% of the time+ used for pve need a nerf? and if it does need a nerf they could adjust it. its a lil too harsh, mean at least recycle the nrg from your own minions dying. or i like the idea of it like that for pvp and stay the way it was for pve. and lastly of all the mm builds i've seen i've yet to see one that has any nrg management skills. i mean if its not going to be changed a death/blood/curse attunement should be added like eles or something of the nature or more sigs. the fact is of the skill list in any 1 campaign if that person has just that one there is hardly anything really useful for nrg management for an mm other than sr

so... soul reaping takes 5 second to get the energy from the dead monsters. gailey gray said: "for balance". now, what balance? they never nerfed soul reaping since the release of first gw and now this?

i did try MM, SS, and some blood builds. i realize during the critical moments, not enough energy. signet of lost souls do help, but not quite. most of necro builds rely on soul reaping attribute and some of those builds are quite useless now.

maybe gailey gray was talking about overall balance of all classes in GW, but not when you look at necro skills. fine, 5 second, i can deal with it, but i reckon make minions live longer or perhaps lower the cost of curse skills? then make 5 second delay on soul reaping make sense. they even raise the reckless haste to 15 energy cost. yes, they lowered the energy cost on 2 minions but not all. bone fiends still need 25 to cast. i can't really say this new nerf on soul reaping is "balance" when i look at necro skills.

whoever came up with this idea really need to reconsider. if and hopefully Anet is reading this, either take off 5 second delay on soul reaping or if you think this idea is unchangable, then lower the cost of energy on skills!
then i can call this "balance"

guys and gals, how do you explain this going on for so long? how long has GW been up and running? why did they change it now? skill balancing does really only effect PvP, which is more or less controlled by arrogant players in the ranked guilds (and yes they are arrogant, i saw a few spamming all chat selling guild invites for 100k a month, not the best way to get good players, anyone can make 100k a month), and lets just say all those guilds had max ppl, 100, that still makes them the minority. so why is it that the minority affects the majority? coz everyone knows minorities whine and complain endlessly until the get what they want. simple as that. and soz if that sounds racist but its unfortunately the way it is...

Funny how my PvE SS necro can't do that. I only gain +6 energy every 5 seconds and with RH costing an extra 5e this nerf is a piss take. I'm always having to wait for my energy to build up now. Hoping that a monster dies every 5 seconds. It's like playing my mesmer ffs

Nobody can deny that PvE got the shitty end of this stick! All it needed was zero energy gain from spirits.

To all those who are bashing the necro's as 'lower mages', 'people who need to learn how to play/manage their energy', and other nice names:

I'd like to see how you would react would it have been your primary attribute.

To all the others:
Thanks for discussing this with us.

Good day.

good point make minions last longer, or raise the lvl of them so they don't get messed up in battle so ez

Off topic: They can nerf strength and spawning power all they want, it will not make a difference.

On topic: I played my necro, and managing energy is ALL it comes down to, it just seems people are unable to adjust their builds at all, which is sad really, since this game has gone through a good deal of skill balances, AI updates etc. and the only people that are complaining about the SR nerf now are the people who refuse to change their builds or tactics to adapt. The people that have adapted are having NO problems with energy, so it is pretty obvious the nerf is not that big of a deal.

Just make spirit and minions doesn't trigger soul reaping. and we will be fine. stupid spirit way.. lol

That is because your builds were bad.
It's like saying "I inherited lots of money and sat on my ass doing nothing for years. Now that the money is gone, life is unfair and I can't do anything anymore!". I hope you understand why what you just said is absolutely retarded.

The conceptual design of necros is different than what you people think. Necros are not supposed to be able to spam 15-25 energy skills on recharge, and soul reaping is (mathematically) an insane passive energy management attribute, superior to all other forms of energy management in the game.
We can all agree that the elementalist, by design, should be able to spam the most energy intensive spells in the game. Yet, all elementalist builds usually have an attunement and a glyph of lesser energy, and sometime even an elite energy management skill to boot. Don't forget that elementalists usually have to deal with skills that cause exhaustion, and exhaustion from one skill takes 30 seconds to make up.
Elementalists also have to put up with the AoE scatter to a much more serious degree than SS necros.
Common PvE necros are running bars with an insane amount of high energy spells, and are able to spam them on recharge due to their broken attribute.

Let's do the math and calculate how much energy necros actually get if they trigger soul reaping every 5 seconds.
With 10 in soul reaping, triggering soul reaping every 5 seconds means that you have an average gain of 2 energy per second. This is the equivalent of 6 EXTRA energy regen. This is post nerf.
Let's say you were triggering soul reaping every 3 seconds before (which you should have if you are complaining). 10 energy every 3 seconds is equal to a bit more than 3 energy every second, which is the equivalent of 10 EXTRA energy regen.
Getting 10 EXTRA natural regen for an investment of 10 in soul reaping is imbalanced. Even 6 extra natural regen is still imbalanced.
To get the same effect as an ele, you have to invest a lot into energy management, and you have to run an elite skill (Ether prodigy), which happens to cause exhaustion and do damage when it ends. This also limits the enchantments you can cast.
So comparatively, eles have less room in their skill bars and a tied up elite, less attribute points, have to deal with exhaustion and damage, and have higher energy nukes. All this and they STILL cannot spam 25 energy skills like a necromancer can, because eventually the exhaustion will be too severe.
Necromancers get this free natural regen passively, without doing anything.

In response to the soul reaping nerf, the energy for some necro spells has been lowered. Before the nerf, minions were very expensive (in terms of energy) because you had to pay a "soul reaping tax" to cast them. Eventually, when this minion dies, you get your energy back. In the meantime, this one minion helped you kill dozens of foes and partially contributed to the energy these foes gave you.
Now, because the soul reaping will trigger less than it did before, the soul reaping tax has been lowered, and some of those energy intensive skills have been made much more sensible.

I hope this helps you understand why soul reaping was (and still is) the best energy management, and why it needed to be toned down.

EDIT: To all you childish people bashing each others profession and defending your primary attribute, please remember that you are not necros, you are players. You use your necromancer to accomplish a goal, be it in PvE or PvP. Also, if your entire guildwars experience consists of playing a necro in PvE, then you do not have enough perspective to judge whether something is balanced or overpowered compared to other professions. To the person saying "don't bash us as lower mages who need to learn to manage our energy", keep in mind that everyone else has to learn to manage their energy, and that making good use of your energy is all part of being a caster (and everything else xD) in guildwars.
Thank you and good day.

I was disappointed when I saw this update. They could have eliminated energy gain from minions or spirits to help balance it in pvp without it really affecting pve. The idea of increasing minion's life span sounds good though, since it wouldn't really affect PvP negatively at all since depending on where in PvP you're playing, you're not expecting to live long anyways so a buff to minion lifespan wouldn't help in pvp but would help in PvE.

I just ran my mm through part of the Jade Sea area to cap a skill. I didn't really see too much of a difference. Mind you in neither map I ended up building up much of an army before I zoned or capped the skill I wanted so a full mission or map of mming would be in order to see how it affects overall.

The decrease to energy for Bone Horror and Vamp Horror sort of balances it out though I rarely use Vamp Horror and Bone Horror I only use when I'm recycling minions or waiting for Shambling to recharge. Somehow I doubt the nerf of SR will greatly affect my minion build. Minions still give off energy when dying. I'm more concerned how my blood and curses builds will be affected especially Curses line skills. I just hope it doesn't ruin my Orders build...

Load up your favorite build - MM, SS, SV...you name it, and step out into any zone where energy management will be an issue - say somewhere on the other side of the Vortex in NF, The Gate of Secrets, for example - even though there are many places in all three chapters where players can suffer from energy-related environmental effects.

See how far you get there casting skills.

The first three skills on my skillbar when I'm playing SS (forget trying to Arcane Echo that now) use 15 energy each, thanks to the nerf. In a zone where I'm struggling for energy in the first place, I am now pretty much having to wait for any target to get below 50% so I can hit them with my Signet of Lost Souls. If I'm heavy on Blood and Curses, that doesn't give me many points in SR (6 or 7)anyway, so SoLS returns a mere 5 energy on most of my builds.

Even in areas where there aren't energy-related environmental effects, my regular builds now suffer from lack of energy - and it's not because of poor energy management - it's that the skills I use most often in PvE have been nerfed and my Soul Reaping has been tampered with to the point that I have to wait for my energy to come back, or for more targets to die in a timely manner so that I can get enough energy to move on to another target.

If I have the misfortune to be on a team that kills quickly, I might be lucky to get an SR boost twice during a battle, and manage to spam my hexes on one target, maybe two, for the whole battle. Even with 7 in SR, that's not much of a benefit.

For the record, I have been using SoLS since NF was released; and Reaper's Mark has been the elite on my MM skillbar since I capped it.

For many builds, however, the only viable option to get any energy at all is going with SoLS; Consume Corpse, Offering of Blood (with its tasty little built-in nerf), and Reaper's Mark just aren't alternatives.

Instead of changing SR to the point where Necromancers are nearly crippled in their builds, why not remove the energy gained from spirits dying? If, indeed, that was the issue at hand - sprits dying in PvP*. Ritualist spirits weren't around in the beginning, and the few Ranger spirits that were to be found in PvE and PvP were no big deal for necros where energy gain was concerned.

I'd much rather have my SR working like it used to and not gain energy from spirits then be hamstrung like I am now.



*I'm a huge fan of PvP, but I also enjoy PvE. Thanks to the SR nerf, though, I think it's time to move on to other toons, because playing a necro just isn't as enjoyable as it used to be.

SR was changed because of spirit spamming builds wasn't it? So why not follow the above suggestion so pve isn't affected...

edit: argh been mentioned several times already, but ah well repetition is useful in making a point.

Go complain somewhere else it was nerfed for PvP reasons because people were abusing it deal with it.

Edit: Just because you can't manage minions doesn't mean that soul reaping or the other PSA needs to be changed just take something for energy management such as [skill]Signet of Lost Souls[/skill] or put more points into soul reaping. Also this game is getting worse and worse because of complainers who complain about stuff such as this or how overpowered skills are deal with it and if ANET thinks its to powerful they will come in with the nerf bat. If you can't handle playing with different skill sets like how all the assassins in Random Arenas use [skill]Shadow Prison[/skill] as their elite and I run [skill]Shattering Assault[/skill] I suggest you play something else.

/endrant

why would PvP players complain about farming nerfs? farming has nothing to do with pvp really. soul reaping affects the whole class

Have people just completely disregarded my post?
Five minutes after I post I see someone posting that he is running into energy management issues in "areas where you suffer energy-related environmental effects" and he cannot cast all his 15 energy spells.
Seriously people, get a clue before complaining about something you barely understand.
Welcome to reality?

hmm acualy the guys at anet is pretty smart...
its the lil apes that work at anal-net,the ones in charge of skill "updates"

Someone who gets it <3.

Scrub, I would like to see you attempt to balance PvP.

Barely understand? No I understand quite well what is going on here. However, I refuse to stoop to your level in my response. It is quite possible that I was in the middle of writing my post when you posted yours, you know....

Oh, and I'm not a 'he'.

Edited to respond to Mendes' earlier post:

"With 10 in soul reaping, triggering soul reaping every 5 seconds means that you have an average gain of 2 energy per second. This is the equivalent of 6 EXTRA energy regen. This is post nerf"

I don't know many PvE necros who have 10 in SR. That's a luxury that many builds simply cannot afford.