Remove the Timer from Soul Reaping

/signed /signed /signed

I love MMing and soul reaping is great. There have been so many nerfs to make mming less fun and effective, but it is still one of my favorite thing to do in GW.

Please let us have a little more fun ANET :-)

It really is amazing how much better than players heroes are with Splinter Weapon isn't it?


To clarify for everyone else - minion costs would necessarily be modified if Soul Reaping no longer triggered on minion deaths.

Even if they don't change costs it would work, I think. It would just push the energy generation to the frontside, instead of allowing you to 'store' energy in minions via carefull usage of the timer.

For example:

You kill a mob of 10 monsters within 15 seconds. You get 3 SR hits plus another 3 hits when you raise the next 3 minions (assuming you are at the minion cap)

vs

Getting all 10 SR hits as the monsters die, and none thereafter.


The second example generates more energy and is more reliable. So, I'm not sure skill costs need to be adjusted, but maybe I've overlooked something.

/signed

I've played necros since July '05, my very first character.

Saying SR has "always been broken" is just not true - it's a very good emgmt attribute, but that alone never got any necros groups in PvE or PvP back in the day. No one wanted N/E nukers because E/Me echo nukers were and are better at at it, and between ES and Inspiration, they had plenty of energy for double and triple echo'd meteor showers, exhaustion notwithstanding. No one wanted N/Mo healers because DF was and is a better primary for healers than SR. Warriors have always had adrenaline, better armor, and better melee skills, and Strength let them do lots more damage, so (sorry all you meleemancers) SR never really had any effect on a N/W's desirability as a tank or melee combative. As others have pointed out, Expertise is as good or better e-mgmt than SR anyway. Mesmers? Again, plenty of good e-mgmt and other useful skills (stances, anyone?) in Inspiration, and FC was generally better for an interrupter anyway (or a FC Me/Mo healer or rezmer, both popular at one time). This is not to say SR was ever bad - it was always good and a useful primary, as it should be. But no, SR was never a "broken" attribute until later on when Anet introduced skills and failed to account for their synergy with SR. If SR was truly overpowered as many claim, then why isn't everyone playing a N/x and using SR for e-mgmt?


That said, I think the nerf was silly and should be reversed because it was silly. Not because it's necessary - I do run out of energy a little more often when I'm being lazy about emgmt, but not to the point that it causes me problems. (Most PvE can be handled with longbow H/H C-spacebar anyway, regardless of what class one plays.) I just think Anet made a misguided move and should be willing to admit it & correct it.

Incidentally, if there's a class that's truly overpowered in the e-mgmt area right now, it's elementalist. Fire + ES plus a decent skill combo = constantly spamming spells as fast as they recycle, doing damage & self healing all at once, and never dropping below 40-50 energy.

My main is a necro, so it pains me to say it, but I suspect that the "remove SR triggering from minions" angle is probably a good one. As mentioned, the cost of minions should be scaled back suitably, but the sheer abusability of SR is kind of crazy. Nothing makes that case better than Sab's 3 necro build (especially when I'm a fourth necro running a sympathetic build), which only gets even crazier when you have two humans (one of whom is playing a necro) bringing two copies of that build (for a 7 necro team).

I'm not sure I believe that. I believe it would be necessary, oh yes. But I have a bad fear that's not what would happen. The poorly-thought-through, incomplete, and, frankly, half-assed skill price reductions we saw when the timer was implemented indicate, for me, that the devs are fatally lazy when it comes to offsetting the collateral damage from their nerfs. I fear we'd get the nerf -- no SR from minions -- without the offsetting buff -- seriously reduced minion prices. I also fear that the stupid timer would still be left in place.

I think, if the timer was totally removed, and if minion prices were reduced to 5's and 10's and maybe 15 for bone fiend (or maybe 10), then removing SR from minions altogether wouldn't be a bad thing. I just have zero confidence in the devs to actually do the buffs to offset the nerf. I strongly fear we'd end up with the worst of both worlds, so it's not a road I even want to start down.

I find the alternative of "minions trigger SR for their master ONLY" appealing as something that can't possibly be screwed up through dev laziness.

With this, at least, I agree. I think trying to leave them "weakened, yet viable" was a huge mistake on the part of the devs, and I really resent how the rest of us necromancer players have had to pay the price for it.

I'm with Carinae here. The AI is only good at running minion bombers. (Which it does do better than any human.) It's skill usage is far too poor to run a real minion master build passably, much less well. I guarantee you that Carinae, among many others, really could run rings around anything you could get a hero to do using her(his?) OoU build.

I think I may be unwisely going against Ensign's advice here, but I'm going to respond to your post. First of all, thank you for the insult; I'll treasure it.

Really? Over a year and a half ago everyone thought that SR was overpowered? Can you give me a link to a single post complaining about it from back then? How about two? I went looking for them when people made this same claim back when the timer was introduced, and I could only find ONE post expressing that position. I really don't think you can support your claim here, and I challenge to to try.

Or, like Verek said,
Feature, not bug.

Bullshit. The reason you can't state an exploit removing the timer would make viable is because there isn't one. As I explained in the OP, and as Jayce more than patiently explained to you again, ALL of the mechanics that allow you to "manufacture" infinite deaths have been accounted for and nerfed. You can't get infinite energy through SR without infinite deaths, and this last update has removed the LAST way to manufacture infinite deaths.

As they say, you need to "put up or shut up." Post a specific infinite energy exploit that un-timered SR would enable, or quit insisting that one exists out there somewhere and we're all idiots for not seeing it. Or, again, as Verek puts it:
Ahem... There are 7 e-management skills for the necro -- 3 elites, 1 that requires a corpse, 1 that requires a half-dead foe, 1 that only works for life sacrifices, and 1 PvE-only skill. There are 12 e-management skills for the monk, including 5 elites and 1 PvE-only skill. How exactly is 7 "more" than 12?

I'm really not a fan of making those massive posts where you quote each comment directed at you individually and make your reply; they tend to be too long and egotistical. If I fail to respond to someone who was trying to converse with me, I apologize.

Firstly, there are a few things which some of you have tried to turn into an argument which are simply not debatable. If you would like to feel that I am wrong, it won't bother me, but please do not waste my time disagreeing with the following:

-You are supposed to use your secondary class for e-management, among countless other things.
-Necros have better e-management available in their primary than Monks.
-Soul Reaping has been an issue for a long, long time.

This is not a paradox, this is bad attribute allocation. SoLS is an incredibly effective energy management tool, and it works well with the same investment in Soul Reaping as average (9 or greater).

Your post just happened to specifically mention something that's been floating around in this thread that I can safely assert is false. As Necromancer's, many of you express jealousy of Energy Storage. I find this funny, because Soul Reaping is impossibly better than Energy Storage, which may actually be the worst Primary Attribute in the game. While most primaries either help you spend less energy over time (Expertise, Soul Reaping) or allow you to get more bang for your buck (Leadership, Divine Favor), Energy Storage just gives you a massive energy pool and doesn't directly help you with the large cost of the class' spells.

Also, on that note, almost every class has those huge, Timmy-esque spells/skills that cause energy problems for the user, so don't try to use that as a reason why Necros suddenly need infinite energy forever.

Oh yeah man, since the search on these forums is really reliable. I'm not going to cite sources for common knowledge.

Lol, thanks Gaile. Actually, that was a bug that got fixed way, way after they had already taken a dump on Soul Reaping and had destroyed Jagged Bones as a viable skill.


Finally, those of you claiming that there is no possible Soul Reaping infinite energy exploit that could be used now that the spirit issue is fixed are clearly unaware of how the PvP Necro meta evolved to get to where it was. I would cite IWAY as a potential problem, but the game has evolved geometrically since that was standard, and with the recent player-pets-don't-give Soul Reaping, that just can't happen the same way again. Many of you have focused the discussion on minions, but frankly, that's not a problem either. With the sort of imba shit that they just allow to happen in PvE, I really don't think they care how much energy you're getting back in 15 seconds, and furthermore I'm pretty sure it doesn't matter.

That said, if you would like a mental picture of what might happen if Soul Reaping were let off it's chain once more, I invite you to take a trip down memory lane with me to just before Halls was changed (the first time, lulz) from 8v8 to 6v6. Just before the change, the one build that completely dominated everything in Halls to the point of q.q'ing and demanding some type of fix was BLOOD SPIKE. That's right, Blood Spike. Anyone else remember that or am I talking to myself?

Iirc, the build consisted of 7 Necros and 1 Ranger. Yes, the Ranger was an Oath Shot spirit guy, and yes he provided some bonus energy that was nice, but his primary job was defense; bringing a primary Ranger was the only way to ensure that Fertile and Symbiosis would remain up in holding situations.

The real core basis of the Blood Spike builds that really dominated everyone was the energy return on every kill. Shadow Strike-->Vamp Gaze became only ~7 total spent energy for a kill, allowing for an incredible amount of secondary healing support (most of the elites in this build were from the Necro's Monk secondary) and also permitting the caller to call a new spike every four seconds if desired. Toss in at least a Blood Ritual (but more likely a Blood Is Power, as no elites are required for this spike) and you can literally use skills forever and never run out of energy.

And that was just then, when the skill list was only one or two campaigns long. Now, I can easily fashion a very broken build relying heavily on Soul Reaping (with a BIP probably thrown in to make it completely impossible to lose) that has tremendous spike potential and a huge amount of secondary healing. Necro spike builds still have a great deal of power (ever heard of those Icy Veins+Augury of Death spikes?), and to release Soul Reaping to it's original form would give them back the infinite energy engine they need to be unstoppable.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_Lost_Souls

9 SR gets you 6e hardly enough to make a notable impact.

in fact anything below 8 is kinda weak. so thats a minimum of 11 SR.

if you are putting 11 points into an atrib and only have one skill kinda working THATS bad.

then again what would i know. only been playing necro 2 years.

/signed.

SR timer should be removed, now that spiritway is completely and totally nuked (Thank you SOOO much Izz, best update EVER! )

You would have 11 in Soul Reaping anyway; I would hope that since you've been playing Necro for 2 years, you would be good enough to know that 3-Att split Necros are horribly ineffective. Most good Necro builds focus around one Attribute besides Soul Reaping, and just split the points between the two (Curses/SR, Death/SR, Blood/SR). If anything you might split 4 points to Blood for the Blood Rit, but regardless, you aren't going to be spreading your points enough to hinder SoLS' effectiveness.

so @9 spec 39 energy every 16 seconds isn't good enough for you that is counting sig of souls and normal soul reaping bonuses...

they will not remove it for the simplest reason of all.

they have had months to study it and the results.

they like the results and the spirit is a bit of tidying up and a possible small additional nerf as well.

given that there is no chance they will turn the energy spout back to where it was.

convince me they will change their minds after all this time showing that the VAST MAJORITY of necros are still playing and having fun and only a few complaints on the boards which are meaningless compared to the player base

they have the logs showing continuing necro play not a necro die off so they will not change to the bad old days

This thread = /fail like all the other 1s
/notsigned

Until you PvP necros can finally quit abusing energy not gonna happen. Oh booohoo you have to take out 1 skill for Signet of Lost Souls. Cry me a river.....

And if my Olias can manage his energy at 9 soul reaping with minions then pm me and tell me not to PuG with you....

Also why use spirit you can gain energy from minions still. So no need to remove the timer.

but that exactly the issue =/

in pve:

If you have to use SOLS, its because you are out of energy.

If you are out of energy then its because nothing is dying.

If nothing is dying then...you dont get the SR energy gain.

i nearly NEVER have to use SR except in the last ditch situation when a particular enemy is half dead and my toon is out of energy...and if i can pull it off (ie: the target is half dead) then i am winning anyways.


when im using SOLS in the middle of a full on party vs mobs combat its mainly for the HP gain. Stuff HAS to be dying else its all gone wrong.

I'm not going to let you dodge the question that easily. The search feature has been fixed. Moreover, I'd consider posts from ANY forum that timestamps posts as evidence of your point. (GWonline's search function has always worked properly, btw.) I'd even consider your own posts from back then -- you should be able to find those, shouldn't you? Or even someone stepping forward now and saying that they made such a post back then -- that's something I can verify for myself using search by name. Which returns me to my call of BULLSHIT on your claim that "all good players always thought SR was overpowered all along." PROVE IT. Cite me complaints, or even just commentary, from back then wherein the poster says SR was overpowered.

You can't. Because they don't exist. Because your claim is just bogus. Virtually no one thought SR was overpowered until JB-way and [spirit spam and its descendants, including spiritway,] arrived on the scene. [That is, the pre-nerf discussion about SR was limited to gimmicks for manufacturing infinite deaths. The idea that SR is somehow inherently overpowered, even without such gimmicks, (and therefore needs a timer to reign it in) was almost entirely absent from the pre-nerf discussion. It was certainly not something that "nearly every even slightly-above-average player was upset at." (The conclusion I draw from the above is that infinite-death-manufacturing gimmicks (and their elimination) is a legitimate, long-standing basis balance changes, while the inherently-overpowered-even-without-such-gimmicks position is a post-hoc rationale spouted by fanboys in support of the unsupportable. Others may draw other conclusions.)]

[The section marked in []'s has been revised for clarity and diction. Thanks, Sab.]

1. It was a feature, not a bug.
2. It's still a feature:
For one of the self-declared "best players in the game," you're woefully ignorant of how commonly-used skills work. Get your facts straight.

How the meta got to be the way it is is WHOLLY IRRELEVANT. Potential exploits depend solely upon what is possible to do with the game mechanics RIGHT NOW.

As several people have now tried to explain to you:

• 1. Infinite energy via SR requires infinite triggers.
• 2. Infinite triggers requires infinite deaths that your team can "manufacture" at will.
• 3. There is a VERY LIMITED number of ways to "manufacture" deaths, and ALL of them have been addressed at this point:
  • Flesh Golem -- Recharge has always been too slow for worthwhile energy gain.
  • Jagged Bones -- Nerfed so that recharge is too slow for worthwhile energy gain.
  • Spirit Spamming -- Nerfed so that there is no energy gain.
  • Life Sac + Rezmer -- Risk has always been far too great for the SR benefit alone.
    (Risk was arguably worth it when it also gave you 20+ minions to start the match with in addition to the SR benefits, but that's another issue -- and already dealt with through another nerf.)

That's it. There are NO OTHER WAYS to create infinite deaths at will. So there are no other ways to create an infinite energy exploit using SR. Period.

You disagree? Then cite a specific way one could get infinite energy using un-timered SR. Put up or shut up.

IWAY was all about a single overpowered warrior skill. The necros were secondary to the team and could have done their jobs nearly as well without any SR.
Moreover, as for a future exploit, only a team full of total idiots would look at your party full of necros and pets and be dumb enough to kill the pets over and over for you. And only a team full of total weaklings would fail to kill you during the skill blackout if they did kill your pets once. 12 energy for a 10 sec skill blackout is a pretty bad trade.

Again, get your facts straight. Pets still give SR. They just don't leave exploitable corpses.

(Not that it's on topic, but that change is totally 100% daft, btw.)

This is silly. Perhaps even sillier fearing unlimited SR if your team brings a lot of pets, and the opposing team is dumb enough to kill them over and over for you, and weak enough not to capitalize on your skill blackout.

Yes, the spirit guy spamming spirits that no longer trigger SR at all. He'd be much more powerful if the timer was removed.

And how would removing the timer suddenly make this any more viable than it is right now? Instead of spiking once every 5 sec to stay within the timer, they could spike once every 4 sec? OMG IMBA!! IMBA!! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!!

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t=soul+reaping

Click. Read.

all that thread does is confirm that:


1. it was a PVP issue.

2. A lot of people DID indeed state that the solution to pvp spirit spamming necros would be to remove energy gain from spirits.

3. That counters to that particular type of build were available but non exploited because "too hard".

*shrugs

um fenix...jagged works without a target.
the skill description is borked.

"f no minion is targeted, spell will automatically be cast on the nearest allied minion. Thus it is worthwhile to keep casting Jagged Bones during a battle even if you cannot target a minion."

source:
http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Jagged_Bones

Which is clearly a bug, not a feature. The description says targeted, which is what it's meant to do, but it's bugged, and works wrong. Bug, not feature.

well...actually there are shitload of skills that do not correctly follow their descriptions.

bug? feature? jagged has been modified several times by Anet now and they could have either corrected the description or the way the skill works by now.

They clearly know about the way jagged works because the last time they messed bout with it it was to reduce its overall power due to that...aspect.


bug, feature, semantics.

Yes, that's post-Spirit-exploit builds.

That was pre-Nightfall, roughly a year and a half ago, so it was before Jagged Bones and Spiritway.

1. Thanks and good job. This is (sorta) what I was talking about. And and excellent example of looking for the facts instead of blowing smoke out one's arse. It's also, I must confess, I thread I did not know about prior to you posting the link.

2. That thread is all about spirit spam, as Moloch pointed out. I think you've definitely shown that my choice of words was wrong -- SR was a PvP concern before the build known as "spiritway"; the concern dates back to older variants on "spirit spam," as shown by that thread. However, this thread only reinforces the general point I was trying to make: The pre-nerf discussion on SR was limited to infinite energy gimmicks -- first "spirit spam" (and its descendants like "spiritway") and later "JB-way." This notion that SR is somehow inherently overpowered even without a gimmick to "manufacture" infinite deaths is something that only gained traction when fanboys started spouting it post-nerf. To me, that indicates the notion is nothing more than a post-hoc rationalization, and infinite-death-manufacturing gimmicks (or the lack thereof) is the only legitimate concern on the table. Even if one does not agree with that conclusion, one can't deny the underlying fact that the notion that SR is inherently overpowered, without such a gimmick, is largely absent from the pre-nerf discussion, and therefore at least somewhat suspect.

However, I remain, as always, open to proof I am wrong. If you (anyone) think I'm wrong here, show me pre-nerf posts discussing SR as inherently overpowered even without some infinite-death-manufacturing gimmick.

3. I think I shall revise my previous post so that sentence is technically correct.

Sry but I've started to (beer). If you are already out of energy and nothing is dying problem do lie else where within your group. Changing soul reaping to trigger not on a timer isn't going to help that situation anyways. Don't see your point.

Lol Chthon.

IWAY was not all about a single, overpowered Warrior skill. The players who thought that were the ones pugging for a win or two versus teams with no anti-melee. The players who understood the actual power of the build and the Necros supporting it were capable of many more wins in a row.

I definitely brain farted regarding the Soul Reaping from pets, it was that they no longer create corpses... which was silly enough to have me thinking about it as I typed out that post. Regardless, sorry to break it to you, but pets are VERY frequently killed by AoE and bad players in HA. Why do you think they had to nerf the free corpses?

Anyway, most of the stuff you typed regarding what I said wasn't so much a response or debate as it was an attempt to be witty and avoid realizing that I'm right. I'm not really sure why you're having so much trouble understanding how a Blood Spike would be able to create (and USE) more energy from Soul Reaping than is currently possible with the timer... nor am I sure why you're so eager to continue arguing when this is only ONE potential example of how it would be abused.

The timer on Soul Reaping should be left alone to prevent imbalanced builds from taking over in HA, which is why the timer was installed in the first place.

...nothing dying can mean many things :s
often its because the last mob standing is a boss or there are several monks,the timer just went off and everything died at the same time, whatever.


thats not the issue anyways, i dont have a problem with SR timer, i find there is a small issue with consistent energy gain, even so that can be worked around.
The main problem imo is that there is no NEED for energy management skills in the SR line in general because...it IS energy management.

look at Reapers mark for example. pve wise its totally useless in the SR line since if one is using hex heavy single target methods of killing...then stuff will be dying one by one, triggering SR. But if you dont max out SR and you use Reapers Mark...you end up effectively gimping yourself in both atrib point repartition and use of elite.

more skills like Hexer's Vigor or Masochism and a reduction in amount of energy that SR gives whilst maintaining/implementing consistent energy gain would be an approach to re-balancing the attribute line imo.


OR on the other hand Anet could move skills like SOLS and Reapers Mark to other attribute lines whilst tweaking some of the other skills energy wise.

just do it like the dervish and give it 1 energy every three levels. no timer - plain and simple.

Actually, I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how they could do that, too. At least, doing in in such a way as to create a build that would actually have a snowball's chance in hell to win against a good team. Spirit energy has been removed. Exploitable pet corpses have been removed. Only way I can see it minions from player corpses either by suicide or kills. Getting more than 1 death every 5 seconds from that won't be very easy. It would also cripple the team in other ways.

Anyway, as for the real problem with Soul Reaping.

Soul Reaping is a very strong primary in PvE. Nobody disputes that, with or without the timer. Removing the timer will have little effect in PvE while creating a more beautiful and logically consistent game.

At the same time, Soul Reaping in serious PvP, non-reliant on gimmick death-factory builds, plain sucks. It's a more or less absolutely non-desirable primary attribute.

Soul Reaping in PvE enables the necromancer the position as the most resilient spell caster in the game. In PvP, nothing is easier than shutting down a necromancer caster. Energy denial is an extremely potent weapon against necromancers with their high spell costs, and interrupts work wonders against their long cast times.

This is why it was suggested that Soul Reaping would be changed to operate on a pip-based energy regain system. For example, for every death in the vicinity, the necromancer gains x energy regeneration for y seconds. This would actually make the necromancer stronger in PvP and able to outlast some popular pressure spells, while the so-called "infinite energy machine" would be stopped.

This is the best option I have seen.

Note to Arenanet. You have not fixed Soul Reaping. Given the state of the game, Soul Reaping is a broken attribute in many ways. It's either horribly bad or ridiculously good. There seems to be no middle ground.

This matter needs serious attention.

/Signed for removing the timer.

Not because it's necessary, but because having the timer is completely unnecessary now.

don't get why so much love of the timer from SR-NERF supporters. They just don't want timer gone even though many timer-haters here have already proposed solutions to change SR if the timer is removed. WHY?

Most agree SR was overpowered and will be somewhat overpowered if the timer is removed. But timer is the laziest way to fix the imblanced problem. Remove energy gained from spirits (already done) and minions; scale down energy gained per SR rank. These are much better solutions. Tell us why these options can't be applied?

All we want is a consistent SR which allows us to gain energy when we know and when we want. Or put a timer on ranger so he can only reduce energy cost of skills 3,4 times in 15sec, monk can only gain DF benefits 3,4 times in 15sec,.... how does that sound?

I'm going to throw idea out there that was brought up in the big SR thread after the first round of nerfs.

The biggest problem with an untimered SR is the unbounded nature of the energy gains. Take your typical pve fight: 15ish seconds with 6ish bad guys dead, giving you 12 hits of SR after minions. With 10 SR, your average PvE necromancer would have 24 pips of energy - enough to cast Heal party and an echoed SS on recharge while never swapping out their dual 15/-1 sets.

A player reducing his SR attribute cannot help this - even at 3 spec, you'll be getting more energy than a timered necromancer at 10. In the same way reducing the effectiveness of sr to 1 energy per 2 or 3 points of SR doesn't help the problem either.

What does help is changing the SR mechaninsm to regeneration instead of straight energy gains. Eg for every 2 points of SR you gain 1 energy regeneration for 5 seconds when a creature within earshot dies. This gives a predictable of constant energy regen that a player can control by thier SR attribute.

Any insult to an individual or the community as a whole will be deleted. Please keep your posts on topic and contributing.

Well, in response to a deleted post, at least the part of it that was meaningful.

1. Spike kills once every five seconds in high-level PvP for any sustained length of time is pretty unrealistic and not even the dedicated Bloodspike teams that ran rampant in HA due to Angorodon+OG (pre-nerf) could manage this unless the opposition was very weak, in which case they'd lost anyway.

2. When I play PvE, sometimes I come across monsters that carry corpse exploits. Maybe you should try it. If the monsters can do it, so can you!

At first I was against the energy nerf but got around it and don`t care anymore. And I don`t care about pets or spirits not giving either.

Now I`m thinking why don`t I get exhausted like ele`s that would be one cool nerf (flame shield up). Then all the bad necros would all change chars or go and play something else. Time to even things up.

Bring it on!

Yes. In fact, let's make the passive Soul Reaping benefit cause exhaustion.

Yeah! -10 max energy each time someone dies! And exhaustion can go negative! Pshhh with my heal area spam, my minions never die anyways...

Oki since my previous post was deleted - and an admin warning popped up in the thread regarding the deletion of posts - I'll try to make this less flame-ish.
(Also this is PvE only - not only do I play only that, it's because a lot of people seem to believe that SR in PvE is fine.)

My original comment was something in the lines of:
"It's post like this that make it clear why SR should not be buffed!"

The less-flamy explanation.
Reason 1:
Touchies don't spam life stealing skills. They spam exactly 2 life stealing skills. Because only those 2 have a very nice synergy with expertise. It's not like they can do EVERYTHING better.
Reason 2:
Lets keep in mind that Expertise is pretty much maxed out in that build! So that limits the build even more! It's not like can put a few points into Expertise and be the dream necro!
And reason 3:
And this is the most important one - because it clearly shows how bad the example given is to this cause. The elite of the touchy build is .... Offering Of Blood.
The build is using insanely high Expertise AND an elite to manage it's energy.

And that is why the comparison is bad. The build would stop functioning IF the elite wasn't OoB. They would run out of energy.
It would happen the same thing that happens with all casters that don't bring e-management.

And here is the second post that showcases the basic misunderstanding of the game.
SR is so insane - in terms of giving back massive amounts of energy that people have a very misshaped view on how e-management skills work.
An investment of 9 in SR - gives back 6E. (More important 6 energy can be gained at the breakpoint of 8 points in SR - which an advanced player will know! Or at least check!)
You also gain HP! (Which is important because the added effect means that the energy gain needs to be lower! Which will be important later on.)
IF the foe is under 50%.
And the skill recharges every 8 secs.
And it's free. Which means one does not need to have the extra few energy ALWAYS ready JUST to use the e-management skill!


Now let's look at alternatives:
Waste Not, Want Not.
5 energy / 15 recharge
At 8 in inspiration - You gain 11 energy. Minus the cost of the skill and voila ... the energy gain is 6E.
Every 15 secs.
IF the foe is not attacking NOR casting a spell.

Leech Signet.
Recharge 30 secs.
At 8 Inspiration - you gain 9E.
IF you interrupt a foe using a SPELL!
Not only does one need to be able to interrupt skills, one needs to KNOW what skill is a spell!
(The added effect if of course the interrupt, plus it's one of the rare mesmer interrupts that will interrupt anything!)

Power Drain
5 energy / 20 recharge
At 8 - 17 energy.
So the net gain is an AMAZING 12 energy. (And I am not joking here! The gain IS amazing! It's pretty much the best e-management skill the mesmer has for general use (outside the insanely specialized Symbols Of Inspiration build(s)!)
IF one interrupts a spell.
And that's every 20 secs.

Mantra of Recall.
10/20
At 8 - one gains 18 energy.
Net gain of 8 energy every 20 secs!
And it's an elite!

Drain Enchantment.
10/2!/20
At 8 Inspiration - 11 energy - 83 hp.
Net gain of 1(!!!) energy.
But you do get more hp then with SoLS.
AND you remove an enchantment.
Every 20 secs!

Now consider that all these skills are in Inspiration which is pretty much one of the most useless skill-lines for PvE.
So now we have an investment of 8 into a line.
With SR it's a primary attribute meaning one can pretty much invest into SR and a second line for damage and that's IT! Compared to Inspiration - which isn't a primary attribute. Which means one has to invest into FC (otherwise one might as well play a different class), a damage skill line AND inspiration! You NEED to invest into 3 lines which makes every skill used weaker then if one could just invest into 2! Now since a necro can run only 2 lines - compared to the mesmer which must run at least 3 - the necro can push up SR investment with much more ease!
Second of all - the energy gain of SoLS is BETTER then the gain of skills of a line that is DESIGNED to manage energy. (If we take into account how many times one can use it in a certain amount of time and under what condition and how easy that condition is achieved!) And you have the added effect of having a self-heal in it!
Third - you also get the passive e-gain from SR! The only passive effect that Inspiration bring is the LOSS of skill-slots!

And the jewel of this crown - Inspiration is balanced.

And for those that still feel that SR is beyond bad - load up your necro builds onto a monk. Or a mesmer. Or an ele.
Now make them work.

I suppose I only post because there is a small bit of hope glimmering. I still don;t like the previous nerf.
The current one is fine and makes more sense but just simply adding it on top of the previous one is crap. Of course I am not as enraged anymore as I was last time but if Anet think people have forgotten the last nerf then this thread at least dispells that illusion.
I loved necro's and have 3 of them...can't get myself to delete them and can't get myself to play them. Well done Anet. Now it's my paragon that got FoW armour and have given the 2nd year mini pet that my 2nd necro got to my para. At least my necro's still get mini pets.
Well done indeed.

i dont get it. if you think a boost of 58 hp and 6e (regardless if you are putting 35 or 40 attrib points into there) will really impact the end result in HM pve well...

itsnothing its not even ONE hit from a mob and youll be facing multiple mobs. its barely sufficient to pull of ONE Necrosis (pve only skill) Not maxing out SR and using SR energy management is just misunderstanding the whole necro class.


OC most necro builds do not work on most classes (though i have some necro heavy builds for mesmer and such) you imply it yourself! They REQUIRE SR to function properly.

My other characters manage just fine with that 6 energy boost! Because that low energy gain is NORMAL! What is not normal are the obscene amounts of energy that SR provides! That's the issue that so many people fail to see. That people either cast less or bring a more then one (or even elites!) skill to manage their energy! And the necro doesn't need to worry about that!
Using e-management on a necro isn't a misunderstanding of the necro class.
NOT using e-management on a necro SHOULD BE a misunderstanding of the CASTER role in GW. But it currently isn't because SR is so insanely powerful!

There is a reason why the self-heal is mediocre at best. It's because the game relies on dedicated "healers". One of course won't be able to live though HM on self-heals alone. But it helps!

The best way to see how insane SR is is to make a mesmer. Or an ele. Or a ritu. Monk.
Put half your points into the primary attribute and the second part in the secondary attribute of choice. Bring only skills from the secondary attribute of choice - preferably damage dealing skills.
For example - if you choose a mesmer - you go with 12 in FC and 12 in Domination.
Bring Empathy, Backfire, E-Surge/Burn, CoF, Diversion, Shatter Hex, Power Spike (Or replace Diversion with WW for some spammage!)
If one does not watch their energy and one reaches 0 - one is useless until the energy bar refills. And that is how the caster class is played.
Now use that build on a necro. Even with the current SR. Put 12 into SR and 12 into Dom.
Strangely - the build that is so bad that it relies on an outside source for e-management (in the form of a BiPer) or just waiting till the energy refills itself at the rate of 4 pips - that build WORKS on a necro.
The necro just bypasses all rules of the caster role because SR is that strong!

SR would need to be adjusted (as in nerfed!) because of it's insane strength. But until we see further abuse of it in PvP - it just won't happen.
So till then - enjoy the superbly strong SR.
Enjoy it, abuse it!
I know I will!