Remove the Timer from Soul Reaping

You're never played a necromancer before, have you? I say this because Necromancers have some pretty high cost skills that only work well when used repeatedly, as most people who have played a necromancer would know.

Are you playing in PvP or PvE?

If you're playing in PvP, then that's actually a reason to get rid of the timer, since it would mean it's not really making a difference.

If you're playing in PvE, then you've obviously not tried to use a MM (without SoLS).

i dont think it matters they still have the best primary in the game...

I would lower the timer but I think 15 seconds is pretty high now that spirits don't count, I would say lower to 5-10 seconds.

Pretty much sums it up.

Just leave it. If you can't e-manage then you fail.

But it works and you're still getting more than enough energy. I see no reason whatsoever to remove the timer.

I have a feeling Izzy will end up changing it back in a few months. Look how long it took him to realize disabling energy gain from spirits ... a suggestion from the community months ago.

My Olias is already sitting at near full energy from the current SR. He doesn't experience any problems. Then again, he is also really good at using GoLE and SoLS

Reduce the timer to 5-10, or at least reduce the cost on skills commonly used by pve necs. SS used to cost 10e for a short while but went back upto 15e after Soul Reaping was changed to what it is now:

That's from Izzy....I do HM often, and while it can be a very great skill, I've been in many situations where it's not very effective. A good skill, but I'm not sure about it's 15e cost.

Animate Bone Fiend is another common skill used in pve. There's no reason it should cost 25e and should be changed to 15e - they can put out pretty high dps with many of them around but still have many weaknesses. In HM, they become nearly useless because of how fast they die.

Izzy ran 4 SS necros? How was he sure that he didn't just overlap the hexes? More than 2 SS sounds retarded to me...

/sign for removal of SR Timer

Maybe meant he had 4 different SS builds, but im not sure

Heroes know what hex is on which guy. Afaik, they will never overlap hexes. The only problem is when you cast SS on a target that already has SS from a hero.

At the time of the timer nerf, I heard a rumor that Izzy wanted to remove the energy gains from spirits back then, but he was overruled/outvoted/whatever and we ended up with the timer garbage instead. I have no idea if that rumor is true or not, but that's what people said. At any rate, he'd have to have been totally ignoring both the forums and Gaile to be unaware of the idea of removing SR triggers from spirits at that time.

Except Bone Fiends, which still cost 25 energy for no damn reason especially considering how hilariously fragile they are...

/signed

if only because SR basically is Nec e-management...Ele's get to increase their energy pool and then get attunements on top, monks have divine favor to get bang for their buck out of their spells making them have to use them less if they're payin enough attention to them, mesmers....well..they sorta just sit back and drink cappuccinos anyways right? (a joke a joke, i love playin my mesmer). the timer is just clumsy. at least those other classes can predict whats gunna happen...

I'm sorry, is there a rule saying that you aren't allowed to bring Energy Management skills? I was sure you were allowed to. Necromancers have infinite energy WITHOUT emanagement, unless you spam like an idiot. Which is where you put in emanagement, and have infinite energy again. I'm sure this was touched on in the last "zomg QQ soul reaping is nerfed" thread. And I'm sure the general consensus was that bad necro's will lose out, but good ones won't care.

It's not really an issue, it's just now kinda pointless to even have the timer now that spirits give no energy.

At this point in your post, it's so blatantly clear that you don't actually understand the issue at hand that your argument loses all steam instantly to any seriously seasoned player. Though this thread will soon be gone from the page, and only a handful of people may find themselves actually reading this post, I'll go ahead and write this out again anyway.

Back in the day, literally over a year and a half ago, before many of you played (I would speculate), nearly every even slightly-above-average player was upset at how incredibly overpowered Soul Reaping was. In PvP, it was the engine that IWAY, and in particular [MATH] and other similar guilds, used to sit and grind endless fame in HA every night. In PvE, it was the only reason a Necro could ever find a team, usually as either a battery or as a one man, limitless Minion Master who could manage the upkeep for approximately 40 minions at a time.

Since these times where the game had just begun to flesh itself out, and the exploits were really coming to light, Soul Reaping has been the engine that many of the best teams in the game have run on. Though to my recollection Necros have been generally shunned at the highest levels of GvG, this is mostly because the teams at the top of the GvG ladder are (well, used to be, none of it matters now tbh) the best players in the game. Being the best players means recognizing an exploit build and understanding how to beat it. (To clarify, being a good enough player on Warrior to force kills on your opponent is not an exploit, but mindlessly spamming Reaper's Mark on the other team and scoring degen kills versus pre-nerf LoD is an exploit.)

From Blood Spike (in all it's forms) to Hex Spam in PvP, to SS Necros and Minions in PvE, it's Soul Reaping that makes it all viable. Without serious limits on the power capabilities of such an attribute, the delusion of balance that ANet loves so much is lost.

That said, it still saddens me that still virtually no one understands why Jagged Bones was such an exploited skill in HA, to the degree that I'm fairly certain no one at ANet has any idea. It was beating everyone, so they nerfed the skills that were core to the build and called it a balance update, without any true understanding of what was going on.

Honestly, Soul Reaping was not the direct cause of the problem. There was a bug with Jagged Bones that made it so that you could cast it without a target and it would automatically cast Jagged Bones on the nearest minion, despite specifically stating that the skill required a target. This allowed one guy on your team to just cast Jagged Bones-->Taste of Death-->Jagged Bones-->Taste of Death in an infinite loop and literally give everyone on your team ~16 energy per second. This problem was never fixed; Jagged Bones was given a 20 second recharge or something retarded that ruined it completely, but last time I bothered looking, it still requires no target.

It's really completely unnecessary to remove the Soul Reaping timer. Though I couldn't at this moment offer any suggestions for exploits, I can absolutely guarantee that if it were changed, the moment the restrictions on the attribute were lifted would see people searching very hard for a way to once again spawn infinite energy using this mechanic. Leave it as it is and we can all safely assume it's impossible, just like it's completely impossible to dupe items in Guild Wars.

Oh wait.

Remove SR for minions, as everyone and their dog has already suggested to Izzy. If you can only trigger SR on player/NPC deaths, then you have returned SR to its original purpose: rewarding success. I detest SR exploit builds as much as the next Joe McMonk, but even I will concede that the timer is a grotesque hack.

You haven't played as a necromancer much, have you?

I don't know where you people get this idea that "Necromancers have infinite energy WITHOUT emanagement" but it is quite false. As a player who has played a necromancer for close to 2,000 hours in both PvE and PvP, I have had my fair share of times when my "infinite energy" ran out, mainly because things weren't dying.

Also, Energy Management skills? You're joking right? There are in total, 5 necromancer skills that give energy. Three of them are Elite, and the other two require your target to be dead or near dead. Without a decent energy giving primary, necromancers would run out of energy rather quickly.

Just because a Monk or an Elementalist doesn't get energy as easily, doesn't mean that a necromancer doesn't need it.

Yes, we should never change anything, because someone might find an exploit. In fact, we shouldn't fix those exploits, because then those people might just go find another one. You know what, we should just shut down the servers to make sure that no-one will ever find an exploit. Yea, that makes sense...

Sha Noran, Thanks for a well written post. I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of how SR affects the PvP meta - I have never gotten into PvP. Your post gave me a little more insight.

I don't have energy issues with my PvE necro, and I haven't ever complained that energy is an issue - having played monk as my first ever char, I learned e-management very early in the game. I, however, have two issues with the responses that come up in threads like this.

My first issue with those who say "u suck, learn e-management" to those who do complain. Firstly e-management is all well and good when you have the CLASS SPECIFIC skills available to you - which the Necro does not. SoLS is the only direct non-elite energy regain skill - and it is NOT a core skill, it is a NF skill. (I am not even going to mention the other stupid skill that teleports you into the firing lines for a small energy gain). When Necros have e-management skills added to THEIR class's skills and don't have to make themselves Ele secondary just for e-management - then you can yell "learn2play" at them.

My other issue is with those that try to claim "balance issues" for the PvE meta. Now that is an oxymoron if ever the was one! Firstly, with the PvE skills now available, "balance" does not even come into the argument anymore - just get over it. Secondly, If someone does not like the "overpowered" feel of something - then simply don't use it. They must stop trying to impose their play style on others. That kind of "big-brother", paternalistic, elitist attitude is patronising at best and takes us back to witch-hunting at worst. And to claim that it affects pug entry - people will always find some form of elitism to use as a weapon in boosting their own ego - whatever the FotM is - it will be used. GW is not a communist state ... yet.

the real reasons to some of your examples given can be found here: Source
i took the liberty and quoted the explaination below

with spirits no longer triggering the Soul Reaping effect, there are only 3 skills and 1 game-mechanic (put in after SR i might add) capable of creating some of the examples in your post. the timer would have never solved this problem.

i will add that because of the timer, i have also found myself having to invest 2 and 3 times as much into SR than i used to when im not playing as MM which, quite often, i was not. i always could smell death and made it a habit to be near it. but as someone else has mentioned, its not consistant any longer when something dies. if anything, i would rather them scale the timer to consise with your current points in the SR attribute. that way, i can invest less in SR and have a faster rate of return. i.e. 3-times (contant) every 4-seconds (variable) with SR at 4 attribute points or 3-times every 12-seconds with SR at 12 attribute points.

for a while now, i have decided to return to investing 4 or 5 points in SR while experimenting with the only viable (non-elite) option that doesn't require a corpse, Angorodon's Gaze. AG, couple with natural energy regenaration, really describes the necromancer all to well when it comes to praticing paticent and disipline. but because of the timer, i am finding myself being too disiplined and paticent. going as long as 14-seconds or more without SR is the deal breaker here in this situation.

/signed - for removing the timer or at least scale the duration to match your points in SR



Jayce Of Underworld

I am leaning more towards this solution every day. It would change the dynamic somewhat, but I think it would make SR unexploitable while providing both: more stable energy supplies and more overall energy.

Absolutely NO.

This would kill several team builds that use energy gain from SR, like the recently popular Sab's 3 necro with a N/Rt healer.


@ Sha Noran: I'd like to point out something.

You and many other refer to SR team builds as EXPLOITS.

I call it SYNERGY.

Without synergy, Guild Wars would be a sort of unreal tournment, everyone takes his gun and frags the enemies, trying to do maximum damage with the gun he can use, we would play CTF or DM like matches.

Are 2 SF eles, one causing burning and the other spiking, an exploit? No, it's a very simple example of synergy.

Every time a team is set up, there are always choices in classes and skills aimed at synergizing in the best possible way the abilities of the players.

Synergy is the base of Guild Wars, without that it would be a mindless fragfest, like playing Serious Sam in coop mode.


So, absolutely NO to the suggestion of removing SR from other minions.

I agree that SR could be toned down a bit, receiving 12e for each death is really a lot and I think this is the real issue with SR, so I repeat what I suggested in an early post:

You're citing semantics. It's unarguable that removing the dam will cause the water to flow; taking away the thing preventing there from being a problem will ultimately cause a problem to arise. The only way to remove the timer and have there be no possibility for reasonable exploit would be to also remove Soul Reaping from minions, which they will never do, because the Soul Reaping energy return for dying minions is part of what makes the minion system work. It is what defines the energy cost of minion spells and also is what establishes playing MM as a unique roll.

Thanks, I'm glad to hear you learned something from it, I would hope that everyone's goal on a message board about a game would be to learn more about the game... of course in many cases, this is not true.

I would also just like to respond to your comments on e-management. As a Monk, I would think that you most certainly would know that there are more class specific e-management skills available to Necro than for Monk, and certainly so at a core level. Signet of Lost Souls, which you mentioned, is actually one of the best in the game when used properly. Also, using your secondary for e-management is not a new concept, nor is it one that should be frowned upon. A Lesser Glyph and a SoLS is more than enough energy to power any Necro build, when coupled with a reasonable amount of Soul Reaping (~9).

That's nice, but it's also a very naive and new school way of thinking about Soul Reaping. Yes, Soul Reaping with spirits was more imbalanced than the way it had been previously abused (previously read: before the later incarnations of Blood Spike), you're not understanding that it can still be abused and is still imbalanced even without the spirit clause. If you're really not able to understand why that's true, I can spell it out exactly, but that's a lot of typing I'd rather not do right now.

EDIT: You posted as I did, Abnaxus.

Causing Burning to trigger Searing Flames' damage is synergy because that's how the skills were designed. Causing yourself to have completely unlimited energy forever is an exploit because that's not how things were designed to be working, OBVIOUSLY, because there's a built in cap on it now.

As he mentioned, Sab simply took the core of the most ridiculous gimmick in the meta and made slight adjustments for PvE. It is boring to fight against in PvP, takes little skill because it is often powered by heroes (and better than humans), and relies on overpowered mechanics.

It is equally overpowered in PvE, however because you do not fight against it you do not realize it. Why do you think it is so overwhelmingly successful? It's a build heroes can run better than humans, with incredible power from Soul Reaping.

There is no reason N/Rts should remain - anything that is just as effective with Heroes as Humans goes against the point of player skill in a game.

Can someone PM me info on the 3 necros? *has never heard of it until this thread*

In skill usage, heroes will always be better than humans.

No human MM can compete with a hero, because there's no minion management interface for a human, whereas a hero is every time perfectly aware of the status of it's minion and can precisely target each of them.

Very few human mesmers or rangers can compete with the insane reflexes of hero rangers and mesmers when it comes to interrupting.

Try to put mistrust on Gwen and watch the effects on enemy casters.

Try to give Zhed blinding surge and shell shock + epidemic and see how he spreads conditions on groups of enemy warriors or rangers.

Watch any necro hero how timely he uses SoLS.

On the opposite, try to give Margrid splinter weapon+barrage and see how she casts splinter on all other party members but herself.


This doesn't mean that you can take your heroes, engage foes, go afk and watch them win.
They can perform "some" tasks faster than humans, but they can't be aware of the status of the battle, which foe prioritize, when it's the right moment to attack, how to position and if it's better to retreat rather then fight.

Having a good build for your heroes is only a tool in the hands of a human player, who only can decide how and when use it effectively.

Which makes them ridiculously capable as they gain the benefits of being AI with none of the drawbacks of being tactically incapable. Any build so unreliant on skill while still providing an unequal amount of power is broken.

Any decent human interrupter is going to be catching 3/4s spells and above anyway. The immense loss in target prioritization with interrupts is not worth the marginal advantage of being able to interrupt slightly faster (and how many critical skills are faster than 3/4s?).

The minion and SR builds are mindless and suffer from none of the drawbacks while having all of the advantages. This should not be so - AI should always function worse as it literally has none of the tactical skill that separates a good player from a poor one.

"as long as your secondary if elementalist" Are you seriously trying to tell me that you are having trouble changing your secondary?

You were having troubles about energy management. Sleeper Service was saying a lacking of skills in the SR line and having to put all of his points into SR for energy mangement. Different issue!
I didn't miss any point, if you are having problems with energy management, then I suggested what could help and even though that you were very defensive about this for some reason I do not know, then let me tell you this, I do know what SR does!
Although, let me give you a run down why they're not any prophecies and cores skills that are related to energy management. SR was DIFFERENT when only prophecies and core skills were out, get it? Now that more skills are available such as signet of lost souls, do you think they will give you SR as it use to be?

The way SR is now and the skills available like GoLE is decent. But I'm not sure if you can really take this in.

From WIKI
Anet has commented on community forums that it had deliberately avoided linking skills to Soul Reaping because they felt its effect was stronger than that of other caster primary attributes(before timer was in effect)

I used MM through Tyria, Cantha and Nightfall, where possible, without feeling restricted by modern Soul Reaping. I chose Radiant Armor and an Insightful staff for MM purposes because I know it's energy-intensive. I feel the limitations of the timer during play but it never holds me back to the point that I can't raise and maintain minions.

They're not that fragile. The're ranged, attack faster than melee minions. Worth the 25 energy in my opinion.

I'd like to see the timer removed for the sake of ease. It was great beforehand when I never even had to look at my energy but in terms of balance and equality between classes SR was too powerful.

I remember the good ol' SS/SV + 55hp monk farming whereby one mob of 4 or 5 Smite Crawlers would restore the Necro's energy to around maximum. My guildy said on numerous occasions it was overpowered and outshined Energy Storage by far.

As for PvP, it was and is somewhat weak. Especially in GvGs before the LoD nerf where nothing would die until VoD except for the odd NPC.

Timer or no timer, Necro will still be easy-mode in PvE.

There's a reason some classes have e-management skills and others don't. It's meant to put a balance on how powerful the class is. If monks had "healing attunement" they would be overpowered. Kind of like how PvE necros are. I find it amusing how so many necros have this huge sense of entitlement to constantly full energy, when everyone has to deal with these problems. Necros probably have it the easiest of all the casters with SoLS and Soul Reaping as it currently is.

ah but the paradox is for SoLS to be truly effective you have to put quite a few points into SR.

I personally max it out so i get 10e...but then im also getting 15e(?) off every death...it becomes almost pointless.

NOT that im saying its pointless, SOLS enables Necros to play builds that would be ...awkward to play under the current timer system and can give you that quick boost of hp and energy just when you need it most. so its good. But necro emanagment IS its primary attribute, what skills necros have in that attribute to manage energy is almost irrelevant considering the fact that necros (in most situations) will already have that energy.

its useful, its a nice skill, and i almost never have a problem with Emanagement (no matter what the class tbh) but it seems to me that the SR line is generally a bit weird.

Edit: I would personally prefer that SOLS and that hex...uh "Reapers Mark"? be placed into Death and Curses/Blood respectively so they actually become truly useful. but i dunno bout you people

Just a minute, if you are going to make a statement like the above please provide links or evidence rather than blowing hot air out of your arse.

I have been playing a Nec for over 2 years, all I can remember seeing was PVPers complaining how useless SR was. (this was before the introduction of Spirits and all the problems they caused)

If anyone would like to resurrect the old thread discussing this contrived timer, half e-gain from spirit nonsense they would find the most popular 'cure' was no e-gain from spirits and the problem (in PVP) would be solved.

In PvE there can be no argument about balance as the introduction of Ursan Blessing has knocked any scintilla of balance firmly on the head.

/not signed

Every class should watch their energy bar, and SR is fine with a timer.

Not every class has the huge energy cost associated with many necro spells. Saying "Watch your bar" or "Learn e-management" doesn't take into account that necros have no core e management skills and no pool buff like ele's do. Yeah with GoLE and e storage ele's can afford to cast multiple 15-25e spells at a time. This nerf was, from its inception, a PvP fix that unfavorably impacted PvE. Balance in PvE is a non issue since the addition of PvE only skills. The timer makes no sense with the lore or the original intent of the mechanic. I could see spirits not giving an energy gain since they are, logically, already dead, likewise I would not be averse to giving no gain from minions since they are already dead.

At the end of the day the thing to remember is that the timer was put into place to fix a very specific problem, PvP infinite energy engines. These functioned by spirit spamming and now that has been shut down. the problem is solved rather neatly so there is no need to maintain the inferior fix that was implemented earlier.

In other words you just want your PvE infinite energy engines back. The fact is that Necromancers aren't having energy problems at all in PvE, so there's no reason to change Soul Reaping back to an even more imbalanced version.

/signed

Please remove this inelegant and now pointless game mechanic. It's not that I have a necro who suffers paticularly from a lack of energy - it's just that I don't see how maintaining this is consistent with a transparent method of gameplay, and is overcomplicated. I argued this position when the timer was first introduced and I maintain it now.

That is exactly the part of SR that needs nuked. Sharing the SR return when a minion dies is an exploit. Even if minions keep returning SR, they need to return it to their 'master' ONLY.

Now besides that argument, removing SR from minions wouldn't break the build. Not hardly. You would get 100% SR return from monster kills and have no timer, but would not be able to trigger SR against the minion cap or when a minion dies.

I'll ask people to explain WHY they think it would break the MM build to remove SR from minions....maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like doing so would fix a lot of problems with very few drawbacks.

Your concept of MMing is very skewed. I run rings around hero MMs, I know a few others here at Guru do the same. Hero MMs only excel at JB/DN, so don't run those on a human MM. Fiends+OoU is the money ticket.

What is your problem? Why do you give a shit about PvE? There is not a chance of anything being 'imbalanced' in PvE.......ever.

If you think it's to easy with a Nec then don't play one.......If you have a problem in PvP now then state what it is and give us a solution.

Please explain to me why what I do in the game (other than PvP) effect you at all?

So...stop telling me how I should play the game...........you do realize that this a game, don't you?