Soul Reaping Nerf; It's Staying (from Gaile at GWO)

EDIT: Gaile posted the same post in the other thread. Mods can do whatever's necessary.

Gaile responded to my thread at Guildwars Online and also the othet thread here, which fortells ArenaNet's plan of action regarding the Soul Reaping nerf.

And more importantly...that's it's staying. But in a good way.

From what I can tell, Gaile's post indicates that the Soul Reaping Nerf is indeed remaining intact (and apparently no alterations, i.e. no energy from spirits), but ArenaNet will try to reduce the Energy cost of other skills to compensate. But Gaile's diction isn't always absolute...

I think it's a great move on ArenaNet's part; it shows that they are listening.

Of course, as I said in the other thread, I have had no problems with the Soul Reaping nerf. So it'll be interesting, to say at the least.

But it doesn't make sense PvP-wise. The SR nerf didn't affect SR abuse in HA that heavily...

and I was considering spending my money on a 15k luxon armor for my necro...

because having SR behave differently in PvP than PvE is totally out of the question.

This nerf is too weak to combat the SR abuse in PvP.
I demand a more severe nerf.

No, im not being sarcastic.

I dont think they are as most of us want the different solution, as known as, no energy benefit from Spirit deaths.

I've been tempting to get some more ectos and shards for my Necro FOW armor. However, I think now my monk will get this bonus

Well,that's the thing... despite many in the community reacting "heavily" to words on a web page, I doubt ANet (when they make these changes) want to throw the pendulum from one side of the world to the other.

It's a minor (yes, minor) change to a MAJOR feature (primary attribute.) The only builds that suffer are the ones planned to work with semi-limitless energy.

But I digress, I don't want to spark another debate.

More onto the topic at hand, its good that the developers are taking such an interest (as they usually do) and that gives me a good hope for the greater good of the game.

Well that's very interesting indeed. Now I'm eagerly awaiting to see what type of Necro skills might get a energy reduction. But with that in mind I can't help but think this might open a new can worms just like previous changes have.

For one thing because of SR, alot of necro skills have high energy cost, which was no problem cause SR backed them up. But to reduce the cost of some skills opens alot more options for those who choose Necro as a secondary.

I don't know if that balances it out in anyway, but it could make a necro secondary more rewarding.

I have for one am still playing my MM build which includes Bone Fiend, Shambles, Icy Veins, SoLS, Horror, BotM, and Taste of Death and haven't had any energy issues at all. ( even when some posters said Fiend was useless now, no it ain't, I still can maintain my undead barrage )

In fact now I want to remove Taste of Death all together so I can spam something else along with Icy Veins to spread the hurt around. ( why should the minions have all the fun )

And a guildmate of mine is playing some form of SS and he hadn't had any energy issues either. However we haven't tried out Blood yet, I still plan to try it out the next time I play with energy draining Eles to see how I keep up, it still sounds like it would be tougher. But I still want to try it before I give it a final verdict.

The only thing I fear is that they will change some skills, and not too long after well see something else being exploited and we'll back to square one.

But that is more than expected whenever a change comes, so now I can't wait!!

Leave SR the way it currently is and add a new skill "Animate Zealous Horror".

QFT. In fact, this nerf doesn't go far enough to combat soul reaping abuse in PvE.

Ah ....

And just when I was getting back into playing my necro again......


I did notice a noticable downturn in speed/fun while playing over the weekend because of the nerf.

Don't know why they don't listen to the community on this one.
Just change it so that you don't reap from spirits.
Come on.......... wake up!

I normally don't mind the occasional skill updates that ANet performs, but the nerf to Soul Reaping was devastating.
I have put in over 2500 hours on my main character (Necro) and mostly play MM in PvE. I used to not have much trouble keeping 10 minions and do the occasional damage spell when energy allowed.
Now, I'm sucking at energy trying to save for a minion and not able to cast any offensive or supportive spells. My necro is now useless. This is extremely irritating, and I highly doubt that I will continue playing Guild Wars as I feel I have wasted so much time and energy (no pun intended) only to be punished in the end. Way to go on alienating 10% your clients.
I'm sorry to hear the devs think this is an acceptable action to take on so many existing PvE characters. This changes the necromancer on a fundamental level. Until this is changed, I will unfortunately not play my main character, and may drop GW entirely. Thanks.
To end on a bright spot though, I have throughly enjoyed all my time playing in Guild Wars and hope the other necromancers here are not as disenchanted as I am with the new update.

Considering minion masters are virtually unaffected by the change in SR how would creating an energy gaining minion help considering it would more than likely go into the death magic line and not soul reaping? This isn't a profound change...my concern is that this doesn't fully address the problems in PvP and there will be a harder nerf to come in the future when simply removing SR's effect on spirits would completely resolve the problem.

Changes in GW are always final (unless they issue an apology in forums and revert).

Anyway, guys, do you think that divine favor is overpowered? I think it is the one fueling all the imbalanced monk builds in PvE and it must be nerfed/removed from game.

Re: ANet is listening

"Listen" does not mean "agree". They can listen to your comments, evaluate your arguments, and still disagree with you.

I totally agree. Spiritway is still ran successfully.

The only real nerf that could work in PvP is to remove energy gain from spirits completely.

Zinger.....HELLO are you on the same planet that I am? What do you mean that they are listening? The poll showed that the highest majority by far didnt like this nerf. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...139355&page=33 there is the address if you didnt happen to look at the top of the page, only 23% liked the change. So pray-tell how the hell do you find that as support for the statement that they are listening?

QFT.

Back on topic, Soul Reaping has been broken for a long time. They adjusted it with a minor skill change, and now it's less broken. Now, they're fixing other skills to better reflect the "new" Soul Reaping to help skills that are no longer viable or are severely weakened.

So, apparently Anet listens but the general community doesn't. How many posts of "it killed my build - change it the way I like" without anyone posting said build?

Until you guys show Anet what exactly what is being killed it is not going to be fixed. Too many that *do* show builds have gone through all of theirs and see no problems (none of mine have - and echo SS, FOC spiker, Minion Master, and a few non-standard/non-named ones). I still do not need any energy management skills other than soul reaping.

This is also why they have closed Alpha's and closed Beta's - posts that just complain without the specifics only waste their time. If you want it fixed, post your build with detail on how it fails - if you want to complain keep on keeping on.

they do listen which is why we have gotten most of our recent updates.

there is a certain point that tehy cant act on though. people get upset that theur build is "ruind" (which is funny cause my Necro still works perfectly) if they changed it back, what about the people that do want the change?

fact is most pve players want imbalance cause they want uber builds, which makes the game to easy. god forbid they adjust skills so you cant be invinceable anymore.

People cried the same way 1 year ago when mm's got reduced to 10 minions. funny how people still play them even though they became "useless"

I'd like to join these PvE groups that are wiping multiple enemies within a five second time frame and are somehow being put at a major disadvantage because stuff is dying that fast.

0 energy from spirits; just use that suggestion already. This N/Rt junk is getting old.

Who are you to say that the game is too easy? How many pve pug groups have you been partied with in say....the last 2 months? Maybe you are an above average player. Maybe most of the players are just average players who dont want to build up a sweat to get thru an area which may now be all but impossible for them. You seem to think that it is fine for you to dictate how good a player must be in order to play this game. I have found in my own experiance that many of these leet pvpers, who brag about how good they are, are some of the first ones to die in higher lvl pve areas. Standing around town with their rank emotes trying to impress the newbies and bragging that they are better than everyone else and so on. Go ahead and tell me it isnt the case. The average pvper that I run into on a daily basis has an attitude toward pve players. And basically from my own experiance many of the pvpers dont play pve very well at all. And I am sure that I am not the only one who sees this.

Actually, PvPers are among the best at PvE - Ensign for instance powergames through the campaigns, a PvPer was one of the furthest into DoA when it was released, etc. Because if something's broken against other intelligent people, it's bound to be utterly retardedly broken against stupid AI that you can seriously play Build Wars against.

Sure, it takes a failed or inefficient trip or two to learn the ropes, but once you know that you're going to face an Invoke Lightning + Energy Surge spike, Broad Head Arrow + Epidemic kind of neutralizes it. Every single encounter.

Those 2 examples have nothing to do with it. You can't say PvPers are better than PvEers just because 2 PvPers beat a hard area fast... perhaps it isn't that they are PvPers, but just hardcore GW players who have so much experience and time put into the game they'd naturally be better?

Nah, it's because they play PvP

you can say the same thing of pve players in pvp. whats your point here exactly?

Why is Soul Reaping changed in the first place?

I have been unable to PvE since friday. It is simply not fun anymore to PvE areas when in the back of my mind I know that it takes 20% longer than it did on Wednesday. Across the board. I'm acutely aware of this one extra hour of my time every 4 hours of pure-wastage. See, if I spec in 2 energymanagment attributes just to cast my skills, then the necromancer's lack of interrupts, knockdown, protection, good selfheals, deepwound, snares, and quality damage gets to me.

There are no new skills or buffed skills to play around with either, and the core problems with the class: Why pvp characters use non-necromancer skills only on necromancers, and why pve characters have to be "SS or MM" are not fixed. This problem is acutley felt on any experimental builds: the further you are from minions and SS, the more this change hurts.

I logged on a couple of times over the weekend to play in HA, and when I got to hall of heroes we ran into spiritway (the team runinng the spritway backling held for 4 more games before they lost). Good to know that the pvp problem isnt fixed. In fact the mechanic introduced to cap soulreaping looks suspiciously like a Pve-only nerf in its affect, so splitting the community lying about the reasons for the update is a classless move.

I'm done with pve until anet is done testing and the class is fixed. not even hard mode or more storage excite me anymore. On the plus side, I hear LOTR online is free for the next two weeks at least so maybe I'll try that: the player vs monster pvp seems like a really great way to balance pvp and pve without splitting the community if it works. It'll take at least two weeks for the approach suggested bu gaile in the OP to get done.

A recap of the past couple years on this forum:

Waaaaah, AoE was nerfed, elementalists are USELESS now!
Waaaaah, protective bond was nerfed, monks are USELESS farmers now!
Boo hoo, ridiculous warrior absorption bugs were nerfed, warriors are COMPLETELY WORTHLESS now!
*Sob* Monsters don't latch onto tanks as easily so we can round up aggro PvE IS BROKEN, SEPERATE PvE and PvP!!!!
*Whine* Domination magic was nerfed, NO ONE WILL EVER USE MESMERS AGAIN ZOMG.
*Cry* Secondary energy management was nerfed, MONKS HAVE NO ENERGY
*Scream* OMG YOU GAVE PETS DP PETS SUCK NOW
*Pout* my necros 50 minion army/insane amounts of energy/spiteful spirit loophole AoE was nerfed, now I can only steamroll mobs AT 80% EFFICIENCY WTF FIX IT ANET

and so on and so forth

Damn those pvpers,they always screw things.SR was good for almost 2 years the way it was but now they had to screw it.PVP should be taken out of the game or be a totaly difrent game with seperate servers.Besides i dont get Anet,SR gives energy to both sides in pvp and as stupid as pvpers are,both sides have necros.buh...

I'm at an utter loss of words.

Have my children please. D:

Seriously everyone, quit whining and use signet of lost souls. My Olias can maintain a full MM army with it. If a Hero can use signet of lost souls efficiently to keep his energy up I'm sure you guys can.

When SOLS becomes a core skill then scream that.. until then..

Definite thanks on the notification, I missed both posts on the subject. Updated the other Soul Reaping thread title and opening post to include the quote, with a regular post linking back to here for reference to the content contained within. Thread merging can not currently be performed, as it causes forum troubles. Sorry about that.