Soul Reaping and its abuse

I (along with many Guild Wars players) have found it rather annoying that the Soul Reaping attribute has been grossly abused in the fact that when anything dies (teammates, team-created spirits, enemy spirits, enemies, pets, etc) you gain back partial to all the energy Soul Reaping specifies. I understand that the mechanics ingame are according to balance and skillful talent, but I feel Soul Reaping requires the least talent of all the primary attributes (Strength is pretty lame too). So I've devised a balanced way to fix all the imbalanced Soul Reaping abuse and hopefully bring an end to the already gay and annoying N/Rt bullshit.

Sould Reaping: Whenever a hostile creature within Earshot dies, you gain 1 point of energy for each rank in Soul Reaping.

This is balance in that 1) you may no longer score the energy gain from allied spirits that die as well as your team has to successfully be able to kill enemies in order for you as the Necro to gain back your energy and 2) the huge range of Soul Reaping's triggering was unfair but reducing it down to Earshot makes the Necro push up a little more in order to gain the energy he's starving for.

I don't propose this as a method of butchering Necros because Necros have a lot of high-costing energy spells (especially in Curses). Why couldn't they make Divine favor just as godly as this and make it to where whenever you heal a teammate you gain some energy back. Pretty imbalanced eh?

If you want your Necro to get his energy back from deaths, actually be a good team and kill things. If you can't do that why should you be rewarded for your own teammate deaths?

So in my opinion I think Soul Reaping should be changed to the above description I wrote out.

just an FYI its now only spirits you control/created give you energy, even if someone on youre team created one it wont give you any energy.

Yea I forgot about that, it's only spirits you control. Regardless though, I think my newly created one makes things a lot easier. Anet's been struggling with finding a way to fix it. I just say do what I posted. It's simple. It's totally fair. It's realistic (you feed off the souls of your enemies, not so much your friends/allies jeez haha).

/notsigned

but willing to compromise. the range is fine. its been hit on the range before. used to cover the entire mini-map range. now its half that. and it already has a timer built into it. perhaps have it trigger on non-party member deaths. that way a necro will still receive the SR from their minions.

Nerf it anymore and it will become useless.

Please be a little more specific on where and how SR is still overpowered and how adjusting SR is the only right way to fix the problem.
Remember, SR already got hit by nerf bat earlier this year and while it still might be overpowered I'm not certain if nerfing more is the best way to fix the game without breaking the necro.

Yes, because playing my Divine Favor and Energy storage required me to learn it for 2 years, since it takes so much skill. And I'm still working on mastering expertise. That one is really hard.

????

How exactly is SR overpowered? Where? In PvE? In GvG? RA? AB? Pre-searing? How is it abused?

If you take a look at necro spells, you'll see that many of necro spells are very expensive. Already, many necros need energy management. And if BR and BiP were once for non-necros only, it's quite common to see it applied to necros.

/not signed

Not the best idea I've heard regarding SR. There were far better solutions posted in the massive SR nerf thread from the time of the SR changes.

Well think about it. How lame is it for Soul Reaping to trigger only 3 times in 15 min? I think that gives a more restricted feeling than being able to sap unlimited amounts of energy as long as your team is killing. Thats the note I'm trying to hit on. Why be rewarded when your team is losing?

The range then can stay. That's fine. And with your proposal about non-party members then we still have the spirit problem. There are so many spells and effects that say "Non-spirit allies" so why couldn't this get applied here as well?

I'm just not a fan of the idea that if your team is doing terribly and your party members are dying, why be rewarded with free energy? I see it as a motive to try harder and push with a stronger force to get that precious energy back. Do you understand what I mean?

I just think that where it's at now its not the best way because that's more of a restriction than what I propose.

And my specifications on where it is abused is mainly in the pvp world, with all the lame Spiritway bullshit. I am by no means arguing this because I lose to it because I don't, we roll these builds. BUT I propose this because a lot of brainless thugs who can press 1-8 to place spirits and win are winning fake points in any arena. You can't tell me this isn't happening because it is..... I see it on a daily basis.

I'll be honest in that I think the N/Rt or the N/Mo healers are awesome ways for healing because OF Soul Reaping. However, like I said, your team can be dying and you're getting energy. Why the reward in that? Reward for keeping the team alive and being able to KILL your enemies. Isn't that what the game is about? Forming groups and destroying the opposition?

Well, it would have saved a lot of time, if the post were just "Nerf Spiritway".

As much as I would love it mainly for t hat reason, I cannot justify on those grounds. Spiritway is overly abused and yet nothing recent has been implimented to solve this ongoing problem. I wanted to bring SR before you guys on the grounds of how the mechanics of it should be fixed to better fit the natural element Necros should be (feed off the agressors not your friends).

I'd like to see a change whereas SR grants no energy from spirit deaths, period. It honestly seems like Necromancers are better at playing Ritualists than Ritualists themselves. (On that same thought, I wouldn't mind if they threw Spawning Power a bone for once. And Strength, too.)

Other than that, I liked that one suggestion a while back about SR granting bonus energy regeneration on (non-spirit) deaths; far more elegant than the current model while accomplishing much the same thing. Though reaping the souls of allies still doesn't sound very friendly at all, I can understand if it's necessary to the current balance.

/notsigned

Soul Reaping is allready quite conditional, unpredictible and restricted in its occuring, as something has to die for it to trigger, whereas other primaries always can meet conditions. If allied or neutral creatures no longer attribut an energy gain to the Necromancer, not only would it cut the chance at meeting conditions in half, but it would make the attribute near useless when the team is losing.
As for the range: I think it would be most detrimental to decrease this attribute's range for one of the least armored professions.

I love how the ones who were hardcore against this are core Necros themselves. A little bias are we here? Haha.

But yeah I totally agree with Aethon, seems Necros are better Rits than the Ritualists now. Why don't they give Ritualists the ability to gain energy from spirit deaths and the Necros gain energy from fleshy or near-fleshy creatures (allies, enemies, pets, minions, etc). I would love that if that came in effect.

Yay. Let's keep the nerfs coming until we make it so that necromancers can only get energy from soul reaping which has been nerfed to hell and back.

WTH?!? Didn't they already gimp soul reaping and people are still whining about it? I mean seriously they put that stupid timer on it a while back. Just get over it already and find something new to whine about people.

seriusly if they nerfed soul reaping 1.5 year ago making it work only for player, pet , npc guildwars pvp would be much happier for it

Is this a joke?

Exactly how are MMs going to play if they don't receive energy from their minions dying?

And yeah, you're god damn right I'm biased. I'm biased because the people working for A-net have been hitting my favorite class with the nerf bat for 2 years now, and you want them to get even more trigger-happy?

Bah.

/notsigned

Now, I play a rit (and also a Necro ) and certainly am pissed that 2 builds in the team, using full rit skills, need soul reaping and so are used by necro primaries (though I certainly see why it works best with soul reaping) but that gives you no excuse to demand a nerf that will affect PvE too. That's right. Nerf Soul Reaping and it will carry over to the majority of the player base, aka PvE. Particularly it will hurt MMs.

Whine less, stop trying to get classes nerfed. Soul Reaping has already taken hits. Leave it alone.

/quick rant over

well, for the start they could have lowered most of minion summing skill, then your should do pretty fine with normal regen + mobs dying.

i will also add, even with nerf minion master are still pretty good compared to everthing else (just boring, for that the hero is an awesome mm)