Nerf Soul Reaping

Soul Reaping is undeniably severely OP and easily the best primary attribute of all 10.
But there are still many other imba things so it's not the only thing that needs a nerf if we ever want to speak of any real balance as a reality, not only a dream.

And all this talk about "FUN" when talking about balance is complete bs. It's not an argument at all. Imba is almost always fun. One could say the BAMPH! (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/BAMPH!) skill is great FUN, and even if it really is it doesn't mean it's good to have it available for the health of the game.

/signed for more balance, not just sr nerf.

It is.
Of course PvE is inherently broken with all the stuff thrown in from EotN.


Why should I be able to mindlessly spam two 10 energy skills on recharge (well, OoP doesn't have a recharge)? You could say the sacrifice keeps it balanced and if it weren't for ER I wouldn't be able to run it.
Well I could - low max health and Blood Renewal solves the issue. I just stay away from the action and maybe use stuff like Aegis with a bit of careful positioning.

With 9 in Soul Reaping I can fuel OotV spam (5e every 6 seconds), use Well of Blood, spam Blood Bond and use some hex and condition removal whilst maintaining Strength of Honor on four people. The returns from an incomplete SR spec (including SoLS (but I'm not entirely certain that's necessary)) can easily fuel a bar that spams skills and has no energy regeneration at all!


The only real balancing factor for Soul Reaping in PvE is a lack of non-elite energy management skills Necromancers have. The Necromancer has only 3 (+1 PvE only) real energy management skills that are non-elite - Signet of Lost Souls, Consume Corpse and Angorodon's Gaze (Signet of Corruption is the PvE one). Foul Feast and Jaundiced Gaze are sort of there.


Now I've argued that SR is overpowered. However I don't think you can nerf it, especially not so crudely like this.
For instance, the Domain of Anguish is horrendously broken and the majority of people require overpowered stuff to even have a hope of completing it. When the DoA was first introduced before EotN very, very few people could get through it and kill Mallyx.

Please help me to understand something.

For what i'm reading here the most serious cases of "overpower" comes when SR is combined with some exp. skills (sorry here, i don't play the expansions, i stick to the original prophecies). If that is the case, and now comes the tough part, why don't nerf the newer skills intead of nerfing the base skills as it's been happening so far (everytime an expansion added new skills they nerfed the base ones, rendering base builds almust useless in the best of the cases).

I wonder if the people who are complaining about SR overpowered have played a core campaign character lately with only core skills... Basically all classes are becoming nearly unplayable now thanks to this new fashion of nerfing the core skills to give importance to the new ones

History lesson by one old old necromancer only player.
Once upon a time when fractions didnt exist yet,necromancers had infinite soul reaping and no minion limit.
Sure thats what you would call a lot of power,but during prophecies the elite skills were few ,and of course there were areas with no corpses.
Arenas?Pvp?Yes those existed back then,but i didnt see anyone complaining that an mm was breaking them (actually it was dumb to go in an arena as mm with the minions we had back then,the wammos would eat you alive).
Then with factions we started seeing the problems with minion limit,after the soul reaping and anet started cutting head when it was only the foot hurting (Oh and i do friggin recall which part of the gw community was the crybaby over the nerfs,har har har rangers).
Back to pure math and stats etc etc etc
In a functional rate,soul reaping is currently the slowest of them all,necros get what?12-13 energy 3 times in a period of 15 seconds IF SOMETHING WITHIN RANGE DIES 3 TIMES.
Hmmm now thats a big catch isnt it?
Lets compare how constant expertise is,or strength or leadership or motivation?Fast casting?Spawning power?
If you think deeply,and compare you would find that the answer isnt a nerf.
Necros make up for jack of all trades (spellcaster classes) but they are masters of none other than theyr own (and that is still debatable,when we cant use our own touch skills since we dont have synergy to spam them like rangers,or when rits make minions that can outlive the ones we do).

Did you even read the suggestion?

Most players have more fun when they are able to be useful to a party. Necromancers, by virtue of their overpowered primary attribute that allows insane energy management without even doing anything, make it more difficult for those other players to contribute, by reducing the number of good builds at their disposal. In other words, necromancers have more "fun" than other classes at the expense of the "fun" of those other classes. This is bad.

However, if you just nerf SR, then MM builds become harder or impossible, because of the high cost of minion skills. So, by reducing those costs at the same time, you can safely nerf SR without hurting MMs.

That's because mesmers have no choice. Their own profession is absolute crap. It actually proves the point. Necromancers are insanely powerful whether they rely on their own skills or secondaries. They are easily the most versatile class in the game. This is a bad thing, because there are only so many roles one can fill in a party, and 10 professions. When you have one class that can do, say, 30% of those roles effectively, then some class is going to have the short end of the stick. And yes, expertise needs a nerf for non-ranger skills as well, but that's outside the scope of this particular suggestion, and I believe has been suggested before (by me, even).

I'm annoyed that necros are so good that they crowd out other classes. Sure, you might find it fun that you have fifty different ways you can contribute to the party, but what about the classes you "took" those options from? Don't they deserve to have just as much fun as you?

And no, not all classes have their upsides and downsides. The dervish, for example, currently has no upsides with respect to the warrior. The only upsides a mesmer has over any other class is that they can go Me/A for sin summon spam or use Fevered Dreams better than other classes.

eh... you'd have to make a pve split for soul reaping, and I'm not sure they can do that? Soul reaping remains in the bottom 3 worst primaries in PvP, nerfing it more would just mean all necromancer would go Mesmer primary for the fast casting. If I have to choose between balancing PvP and PvE which allows junk like Save Yourselves... well I can't even see a PvE player really saying it'd be a good idea after thinking about it. If it becomes a problem and people ask for necros only, then it might be worth thinking about. Otherwise, heck no. Besides don't people just bring a bip PvE anyways, rendering this discussion mostly moot?

Are we even playing the same game?

In the past few months, I've joined quite a few pugs and I haven't seen a single person request that a necro do anything other than be a necro.

They are usually presented with two options: SS or MM. On rare occasions, I've seen blood builds requested.

Nobody insists that they heal, spirit spam, nuke, or anything else. If you want to run a restoration or healing necro, go for it, but I'm pretty confident that most groups will favor a monk or ritualist for those roles.

Sure, soul reaping allows necros to be pretty versatile (assuming stuff is dying), but I don't understand how you can say that it's causing issues for other professions.

Things must die. You can waste your 40 energy on the first kill, but you won't get 40e back. You will not be able to spam skills if you choose stupid high-e skills and spam them all the time without any extra energy management.

I don't think you've played a necromancer, Reaper, or are just annoyed that your dervish can't do things we can... You must experiment more with your dervish, if you want to have "fun".

This is why the 15 second timer is a brilliant balance, and it IS balanced now. I would have agreed had it still been the same "When something dies, gain 52352 energy." That was amazing; and allowed for a full army of Bone Fiends to be maintained with great ease.

Now things require careful planning, and require extra energy management usually. SolS is almost always a staple in necromancer builds, unless Assassin's Promise is present.

I remember when everyone would go /Me to take advantage of Inspiration's energy management properties in early PvE. It wasn't a good idea, but I'm just saying that mesmers themselves had it easy for energy management, and skill spamming with Fast Casting. All professions have a hand full of decent builds, of course. You don't know the difference between a mix of synergising skills/attributes to a "Great" build. Dervs are warriors. They have self-damage-reduction skills, a ~3 AoE scythe with high damage, quick attacks...etc. They even have a healing/prot build of their own.

Mesmers have builds such as Fevered Dreams condition spread, AP sin spam, they can run support builds with signets better than any other profession and their energy management is great.

Also, would you rather there not be a secondary profession or...? Would that be the best way to balance this game to you? Make EVERY Primary Attribute's skill say "If Primary Attribute is 5>". This would limit anything any profession can do, including your whiny dervish.

It seems that this is just another "i think they are better than me so nerf them so i am not so bad anymore" situation.

I have no other option but to agree with Targren since i see no valid reasons on why it would be justified to nerf one of the traditionally "bad" primary skills. I see that people have forgotten the common "SR sucks" we used to hear just about everywhere (check posts in this same forums older than 4 years and you will see by yourself).

To be even more realistic, if is it in fact that Dervish is affected by SR, then again, balance the dervish up to the core class/skill, not nerf the baics.

Along this line of thought...

I play a fair bit of high-end PvE and see the groups call for at most two necros but more typically just one if it's needed at all. The bars they do play are either casterspike or utility and neither of which is crowding out some other class. Both of those options rely primarily on in-class skills to run the bar not massive secondary skill 'theft'. Sure, you could go find some gimmick build where necros do non-standard roles but we are talking in practice not in theory here. If the hope is to nerf necros to make less useful options look better then it's pretty flimsy.

As someone who primarily plays a necromancer, I can tell you that we are certainly NOT crowding out other classes. It's very, very rare that I am asked to run anything that isn't primarily a necromancer build. I've even offered to N/Rt heal when there was an excess of necros, but too few monks, but everyone PREFERS actual monks. We can't really compete with elementalists' 80+ energy and their management. I'm still not seeing how Soul Reaping is overpowered. Yes, necromancers are versatile, but I can't remember a time when someone said, "No, I want the necro to run the monk/ele/rit/mesmer build instead of taking that monk/ele/rit/mesmer." If the whole premise of your argument is that necromancers are stealing party slots from other professions, then it's utterly failed.

i love that kind of argument. i guess that you've mastered all classes, including dervish, in pve and you just know that - compared to all other primairy atts in most occassions - SR is balanced and totally fine.

i'd rather buff other primairy atts to SR level than nerf SR but that's just me, nerf-hating mesmer, outclassed and outnumbered by any other class.

Oh... not this crap again.

SR is fine for PvE purposes. (And worthless for PvP purposes...) If anything, the timer should be reverted, or at least made less clunky and less of a punishment for playing well.

/notsigned

And, by the way, an important lesson that applies to cries of "nerf!" for SR and many other things as well: Having more energy does NOT have a linear utility function. It's a very jagged stairstep function. You either have enough energy to do X, or you don't. It turns out that there's very little in GW that is both (a) worth doing, and (b) really expensive. On the top tier is maintaining ProtBond -- something only ER can do, and something that necros are practically equivalent to warriors at doing (because neither can do it effectively at all). On the second tier is spamming PS -- this is something that (while worse than ER) SR does a decent job at, and few other options can. (Which leaves me wondering why almost no one does it.) After that, we get into some necromancer skills like Bone Fiend and OoP that are overpriced specifically because SR exists. There's really very little that SR lets you do that's worth doing and that lesser e-management options can't also do.

I approve of the above message.

/not signed

I'd have to agree.

To the OP, are you seeing otherwise? Are you seeing parties asking for Necro players to fill roles that should in theory be left to other primary professions? N/Mo's being requested over primary Mo's, for example? Or N/E, N/W, N/Rt, etc? Where? For what specific roles?

I get that SR on paper looks OP enough to threaten other professions' dominance at their natural roles, but in game, with real players*, I'm just not seeing it happen. If you could provide examples where this is actually a problem for other classes, then I'd be interested to hear them.

*Heroes can be a different story, but as was mentioned, this is primarily because of the AI's poor energy management.

Soul Reaping is not overpowered in the game, you're just underpowered in the mind.

If soul reaping gets nerfed again, I'll take up my ele or Rt to make minions because there'd be no more reason to use the primary profession at all at that point because SR would be officially Smiter's Boon'd if nerfed any further.

/not signed - for any change that have SR remain passive and conditional in nature.

If SR only existed to fuel minions than it would have read "Any time a minion you control die you get so much energy per rank".

This is clearly not the case. Actually soul reaping had 0 skills in prophecies and only 2 elites in factions, in NF got 3 (and the 2 first non-elite SR skills) and 2 more in EotN.

Imagine they do your purposed change. If I want to play curses and get no energy from SR why won't I play a Me/N instead? I'll cast my skills a lot faster. What about a blood necro?

Why would I play a primary Necro?

The easiest nerf you could do on SR is preventing other necros to gain energy from other ppl minions.

when compared with other primairy attributes, it IS superior. noticeably superior.

e:
what irritates me, personally, the most is that necros can actually not only run the best primairy att in the game, but also get the effect of primairy att of another profession.
since SR is usually enough as e-management for necros, counting out spell-spammers and other weirdoes, they can get mindbender in place where me/n would have to get some e-management skill. and we've already argued about two-three months ago in another topic that, although mesmers have loads of skills for e-management, they are fairly less powerful than SR itself unless you'd like to dedicate three slots for e-management.
and both mindbender and SR are to blame. i wouldn't nerf them though, rather redesign other primairy attributes - SR is fine for pve, it's not fine when looked at in comparison to other attributes. and that's the wrong part - i'd prefer to change those atts rather than SR. but broken things are still broken.

the dervish is one class that is not affected by SR (with the exception of Orders; but necromancers are supposed to be better at that). This has nothing to do with the dervish. Believe it or not, there are other things in this game I care about besides the dervish.

Your post made sense until this part. Having more energy != energy management. And the actual energy management offered by energy storage does not compete with SR, even before considering the fact that the elementalist has to burn skill slots for it.

Secondary professions are a great idea, so long as they are used for making your primary class better at what it does. The problem is, Anet didn't account for people using their primary attributes to play as another profession. Many of the balance problems in GW today can be traced back to secondary professions being used in ways for which they were not intended (the old SF was an example).

Oh, Inspiration used to be insanely good. And it was nerfed for that reason. I don't see what that has to do with this, though. The past is the past.

And yes, I do play a necromancer. The dervish is not supposed to be able to do what the necromancer can (honestly, dervishes should not be spamming orders all over the place; someday that needs to get nerfed for them). They are not comparable.

The same arguments about energy apply to any other class. If you use 40 energy on a monster, you won't get that back. The difference is, that while other classes have to waste time and skill slots for energy management just to save 10-15 or so energy a pop, the necromancer gets that with no skill slots or action on his part, and can get it up to 3 times every 15 seconds. That's overpowered. Critical strikes can't compete with that. Neither can leadership. Or inspiration. Or energy storage. The only attribute that can is expertise, and that's overpowered too for the same reasons (ie, when not used with ranger skills).

I can think of one thing I would want a Necromancer primary to do over another primary for anything other than Necromancer builds (any build that uses more Necro skills than anything else). Even then, people will argue with me and the Mesmer variant has options the Necro variant does not have (I'm talking about Fevered Dreams). This is with regard to human players, heroes are only slightly different.
Heroes are absolutely terrible with energy and hence some people use N/Rts for healers (some use N/Mos). Is that your problem?


The actual energy management Elementalists have is pretty damn good. The downside is that they generally require high investments and he'll need to waste 2 skill slots. It also only usually works with Elementalist skills.
And then there's Ether Renewal, but that's in a completely different league of overpowered stupidity.



Soul Reaping is overpowered. It surpasses pretty every other energy management line or options in a PvE setting (with the sole exception of Ether Renewal) and allows Necromancers to have next to no skill in energy management.
However this hasn't actually caused any problems. I don't see people asking for Necromancers over Monks to keep their party alive (I see a few asking for Eles over Monks though), I've never seen someone tell a Nec to run a Spirit Spam build when Rits were around and I definitly don't see Necromancers being asked to pick up a melee weapon to replace a Warrior, Assassin or Dervish who just left.

Nerfing Soul Reaping will not help other professions. Perhaps if you hit SR hard enough you will help other professions, but only because they pick up the roles the Necromancer can no longer perform.
Necromancers have very few alternative energy management options beyond elites. Monks and Rits have a tougher time yes, but a well-played Rit doesn't need that much energy and hence Siphon Spirit or Boon of Creation easily cover it all. Monks have always been efficiency concious whereas the Necromancer has always been much about brute force.

Uhm... i still use a 55 necro when i need to make some gold, but that's the only case i use ore non-necro skills than my primary ones, and yes, SR in that case is just about to be useless since when you engage a mb grup usually they all die at the same time, so the energy gained from the group usually don't replenish the bar and i must rely on the monk's energy management to keep the build working, so up to that case SR is already over-nerfed. Someone may argue that the game is not suposed to solo, in that case eliminate all the solo builds out there and do not bother anymore.

That's just one example of the negative effect of the already nerfed SR. My necro is mainly N/Mo, just for the very same reason i got R/Mo or W/Mo ----> To have a spammable resurrect to save the rest of the party's sorry a**es when i am the last one standing, it apply both to PUGs and henchmen parties (not heroes since i repeat again, i play only prophecies) other than that the 3 or four different bars i use are 7/8 necromancer skills, and to have a really effective prophecies necro bar you can't spend much points into SR, so again, the new limits imposed to it had a negative effect rendering it basically useless.

I don't think ANet forgot about a player playing the secondary at expenses of the primary attribute only, i believe they had it in mind just as most of what people does, what i will keep arguing is that they made the mistake of nerfing the basic skills instead of "fixing" the new ones when they came out with the expansions, that's where they failed and that's what they should aim for new fixes. It's just like see how many good skills and excelent builds were destroyed only because of PvP until someone finally had the idea of making the skill work different for pvp and pve, until then we, the PVE only players, had to see our skill bars shattered to pieces over and over again.

We already seen rangers nerfed to dust, warriors basically destroyed, smite monks are no more than a laugh, mesmers.... oh well sorry for mesmers, i still got one; the very old and real minion masters are no more, it is now imn possible to be MM without expansions skills (i'm always talking about CORE skills/builds, i don't care what happen with expansions, i know i purchased a product that now gives me less than 50% of what it was) If they want us to purchase expansions they should provide better and more things within them, not try to force people to buy them because they are cutting down the basic game.

Other than that, if it is about builds, it sounds like "oh, thats's a good build, let's destroy it", or "hey! why do they can do that and i don't, not fair not fair, kill them all" and nothing else.

Sorry... Critical Strikes doesn't compare? I assume that's when you're running 0 in Critical Strikes and 0 in Dagger Mastery? Energy gain from Critical Strikes with Critical Eye is amazing, and your bar should almost always be full.

Same for Paragon; Spamming adrenaline-based shouts in return for 6~energy is just as bad, as GFTE and/or Save Yourselves! are very spammable. Infact, those two are as good as Soul Reaping, as it allows them to do what they do best, without waiting to activate any skills.

Energy Storage... Well, Ether Renewal> every other skill for energy management. Then you have the other skills the Elementalist has. And really, you're not going to miss a skill slot by adding an Attune.


Inspiration, well... Mesmers can sort themselves out with so many ways for energy, it's silly. Energy Tap, Drain Delusions, several interrupt skills, signets...etc.

And lol at you thinking Expertise is the only attribute comparable to Soul Reaping. I haven't used it much without a bow, but I really don't think it is as amazing as Critical Strikes or Leadership. Expertease...

A NECROMANCER STILL REQUIRES ADDITIONAL ENERGY MANAGEMENT. As does everyone else. Actually wait, the Paragon doesn't require energy management....

Nerf leadership please?!

Only if I want to spam relatively high energy cost skills on short recharges and I only require one skill to do so.

Ok:
You use a Fevered Dreams build with Signet of Lost Souls.
You use a MoP nuker build with Assassin's Promise.
You use an OoU MM build with Consume Corpse.
You use an Orders build with Cultist's Fervor.

Are you starting to see my point? Necromancers have as much energy management as most professions.

With all of those, I cast much more than I do with other professions with generally only one energy management skill.
If AP returned no energy then only a little economy would be necessary in casting and Order of Undeath is insane. That is again, a 10 energy skill on a 5 second recharge, BotM is spammed and I maintain 7-10 25e minions with the rest filled up by 15e minions, all achieved with only one energy management skill.
If I cast at similar rates on my Nec as I do with my Mes with my FD builds, my Nec wouldn't need SoLS.

In short, in all of the builds you posted; I'm casting with high regularity, 10+ energy skills.
Only the Elementalist can keep up with with the casting rates and only with Elementalist skills, 2 of which need to be energy management, possibly 3 (short of Ether Renewal and stacked enchantments).

In order: sort of; false, and true.

Soul Reaping is hax because it allows Necromancers to manage their energy with absolutely no effort. You cannot say that it surpasses all other forms of energy management because all other forms of energy management function based on the play style of the class.

For instance:

• Mesmer passive energy management sucks. However, this is because Mesmers aren't supposed to be casting all the damn time. They're spot-casters/precision-casters. They do what needs doing when it needs to be done and not before or after, sort of like Combat Quality Control. Their playstyle is a bit more riddled with downtime, and that makes it more suited to planned energy management
• Monk passive energy management sucks. This is because the better a monk you are, the less you're actually healing. So what if your tank is at 70% HP? It's still going to take more than three-quarter seconds for him to get spiked, and you can pop WoH in that time and keep his ass breathing, and DF means you can afford to use a 1s cast if you need to. Save the energy for when it counts. They don't need the constant passive energy gain because if they're needing to spam-heal then their party must be sucking something fierce.
• Paragons are rewarded for buffing the party. That's their design. Sure, they have one of the better unmodified damage output rates, but then again their options for ranged damage skills is pretty limited to match. In fact, just the act of maintaining Aggressive Refrain on myself manages my energy right there, and I don't need to think about it beyond that.
• As huge an energy return as SR is, it's still only three times every fifteen seconds. And as someone who enjoys playing the Curses line, I have several times found myself begging for something else to die so I could get a recharge because I'd already hit the thrice-cap and used my signet. In fact, in Imperial Sanctum I pray for party members to get banished just so I can kill their bound stuff and get that boost again.

Which leads me to....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenomortis However this hasn't actually caused any problems.

...this.

And pretty much after that point Xeno and I are on the same page. So.



I do have to admit I'm a little baffled by the "SR means necros are taking fun away from other classes" concept. The hell it does! I have yet to enter a party, see necros in there with some of my skills (usually ele), and think "Ah dammit, guess I'm not needed any more." Actually first thing that goes through my head is "sweet, I got backup". So if you can't stand seeing necros playing on your turf, you might want to check your priorities.

Considering it's a game, you know.

But now we are back at the start.

You take one energy maintaining skill and spam.

A paragon who doesn't have high Leadership + an adren skill like Go For The Eyes! or Save Yourselves! is silly. They can spam skills with only one/no energy management skill, depending on if you will argue the adren skill is to maintain energy.

An assassin will take Critical Eye, and spam their attack chain and other skills.

You mentioned Elementalists already.

Dervish have either Mysticism, which sucks, but they have Zealous Vow which allows the Dervish to spam attacks as much as they want. Whether or not they take it is up to them, but the choice is there.

Warriors can spam with Warrior's Endurance, or with adren skills, when partied with adren fuelling orders/MoF.

The list goes on, I think I'm repeating myself.

But the point is this:
tl;dr:
You say SR is overpowered, and you can spam spells with only one energy maintainment skill; but this doesn't seem to be bound to just the necromancer class. Practically everyone can do this with ease.

expertise, leadership and SR are the best e-management ways in game. criticals are slightly behind them. oh, i won't even mention AP.
why? because they're passive. they require no skill slot for e-management itself. it's all automated while you play on with your build.
then there are eles and spirit rits. they have decent, well synergised e-management built-in their main attribute - fire attunement + fire nukes, siphon + spirits, so on. dervishes are slightly behind them.
then there are warriors, mesmers, monks. warriors are not really supposed to run high energy, while mesmers are crippled twice - they have loads of e-management skills, but most of them are useless or nearly useless.

too bad all the effort needed to play a mesmer in pve doesn't pay out when/if you finally time out everything. i agree that, on the paper, they seem to be destructive but fragile and they need precision in playing; in practice, they need precision to get half the effectiveness of most other classes. when playing as a mesmer in pve, that is.

sure, imperial sanctum is one of those harder missions where general gimmicks usually fail and where generally overpowered stuff ain't that much powerful. there are several places like this.
still, SR is the single best e-management in game. it's passive. it's automated. it gives 10+ energy, statistically, every five seconds. you don't need to waste a skill slot for e-management, you're not dependant on it's cooldown (please take a look at ether signet, for example), it cannot be stripped, it cannot be interrupted, it cannot be disabled, it cannot be timed wrong (as mesmer interrupts). no real weak side + being passive. how can anyone say it's not overpowered? not for pve - for other e-management options and other primairy attributes.

You think the other energy engines aren't ridiculous either?
You've done something not too impressive by comparing the physicals to the casters. Warrior's Endurance is stupid on a Warrior because it bypasses the balancing factor all energy based warrior attack skills have - they cost energy (hence it got nerfed out of PvP).

A better (and far more sensible) comparison would be to the other casters.
The Elementalist has Ether Renewal but the everything else requires fairly active use (apart from the Attunements, but you can't get by with just that).
The Monk gets basically nothing and has always had to be economical (otherwise where's the challenge in keeping a team alive?).
The Mesmer has Inspiration (perhaps the epitome of active energy management) and gets next to no passive energy benefit skills (Channeling and the Mantras require skill slots too anyway).
The Ritualist's strongest general options are Siphon Spirit and Boon of Creation - the rest are elite (and generally have good secondary effects) or just skills that have an efficient effect. It's fairly easy to play an economical rit build though. The Rit has around the same number of energy management skills as the Nec (probably a bit more) but the Nec has Soul Reaping on top.

Soul Reaping blows the energy management options of the other casters out of the water. By using no energy management skills they get strong enough returns to fuel reasonable builds even in the hands of a hero (my Hero MB keeps up a good number of Minions, helps keeps my party clean, spams Death Nova and is very handy with Aegis and especially Prot Spirit with 9 in Soul Reaping).


As for the physicals:
Assassins - Basically forced to use a Zealous mod and Critical Eye to keep their energy up and spam their skills (so that would be a weapon mod and a skill). Even then, as you probably know, there are times you cannot depend on that alone against very high level enemies on whom you're not going to have very good crit rates, so sometimes we burn our elite on WotA.
Even so, Critical Strikes has the strongest passive effect of any of the physical primary attributes and it and Soul Reaping are probably comparable (except comparing Physicals to Casters is somewhat difficult).

Dervs have to spec into a line that doesn't have much that they really want (one semi-useful if expensive IAS and IMS) and isn't their primary attribute line for Zealous Vow. Otherwise yes, at the cost of 5e and 1 energy per second they get a very strong energy management enchantment elite.

Not quite...

Ranger skills have had their skills' energy costs balanced with Expertise in mind which is really annoying. If you want to use any ranger skills you have to invest quite heavily into a line that you may not want much from just to be able to use your skills. It only really shines when you use skills from other professions (hence R/As and R/Rts)

When I have skills that cost energy that I want to use, I have some options.
A. I could ride the regeneration and what energy management I bring and use these skills economically.
B. I could use all of them very quickly and rapidly deplete my energy. I would then have to wait for my energy to regenerate or use some very cheap skills to get it back up again and repeat. Not a good option for a caster or someone with low base attack damage (i.e. Assassin).

Critical Strikes actually negates the drawbacks to B and allows an Assassin to continuously frontload his attack skills and anything else he brings so long as he keeps doing his job.
Curses Necromancers do something very similar. Soul Reaping also mostly negates B and makes A somewhat unnecessary.

True. But then as a Mesmer I have no delusions that I'm supposed to be nearly as destructive at all—or at least taking "as destructive" to mean "able to spam constant and high damage". That's not my role. (Well. Unless I can get to testing the RoJ build I'm considering. But even then it's not going to be supreme damage.)

No, my job is to know what to cast where and when, and not to screw it up. Which at times can be balls-hard.

Two things about SR, though.

First:

Quote:

Originally Posted by drkn it gives 10+ energy, statistically, every five seconds. // ...it cannot be disabled, it cannot be timed wrong....

Statistically. Problem is, though, that if all three of your +10e returns are triggered within the span of a second (minions getting nuked, for instance, which is Death and not Curses), you've got a 15s cooldown right there, and if you didn't plan ahead (like the people with no skill will do) you'll be SOL.

Careful with statistics. Like you were saying with Mesmers, what looks good on paper doesn't always pan out in practice.

And there again, enchant-stripped Eles means poor playing, thus lack of skill. Paras standing for ages in Well of Silence or not calling Vocal Minority or Ulcerous Lungs when it's sitting on them means poor playing, thus lack of skill; same with Sins derping under Blind or Empathy or SS. (Although those last two aren't so much emanage as they are just stupidity in general.) Wars with no/all adrenal skills, Monks with too many 10e spam skills, on and on, means poor playing, thus lack of skill. Basically, if you run out of energy playing any class at all you're a moron. It's just easier to forget you need to on a necro, is all.

I'll admit right away that SR is hax. I love it. But it ain't broken. All it does is make it easier for stupid people to hide for longer.

Of course, when said stupid people start pretending MMs can tank, it gets obvious real fast.

The only difference being that a Necromancer doesn't need skills to upkeep energy, in effect, a Necromancer has 9 skills slots with SR acting as an energy management skill.

Now, also keep in mind that a Necromancer doesn't have to bother casting or wasting time upeekping their energy, because they get 'free energy' from SR.

This basically leaves us with a proffesion that has unlimited energy. Which is why the Necromancer class can outperform most other primaries with a secondary build (ie N/Mo Healer, N/Rt Healer, N/Me Interupter or whatever.)

I don't want SR to be nerfed, but its clearly OP.

Be sure to let the class know when Necros take over as the sole pre-eminent caster profession in GW. Surely with an unlimited energy supply this has already happened and maybe they are out there cleverly disguised to look like other professions as we speak

soul reaping is pretty strong, but as far as i'm concerned, it's only value is for healing in pve since monk heroes have a tendency to overheal. and in pvp, things don't just drop frequently enough to fuel necros. SR may be undeniably powerful, but it's not worth crying about.

and pve-ineffective ;p

you still CAN get an e-management skill, like the SR signet. which is powerful as well. you just, usually, don't have to worry about it.
when i even think about a fitting e-management skill + SR for energy, and then look at other classes, i get irritated ;p

+1
as said already, i'd seriously rework/buff other primairies rather than nerf SR. but it does stand out and it does provide much more advantage than any other primairy att in pve.

Yeah. Kinda funny those att names. For example Expertise turns the Ranger into an "Expert" of some kind when talking about attk skills and so on , so its usage cost is reduced ( when they actually use those skills ).
The funny part is Soul Reaping being a totally passive att despite its "active" name. The N has to do nothing , not even a move to "reap" those souls and gain energy , only has to watch them die in range. Kinda odd isnt it ?

My change would be 1/2 energy per rank , no limits per seconds but you obtain that energy from the foe ( spirit, minion or regular "alive" mob ; and yes , Allies DONT give energy ) when :
- You or your minions KILL that foe ( hits or life steal )
- Target dies under your hex or by its effects.

I know is not balanced , dont be so fast with comments against it but i would like that passive att to be a little more active.

How about we stop QQing about things needing nerfed, and talk more about stuff that needs buffed, otherwise theyre gunna KEEEP ON NERFIN and nerfing and nerfing and nerfing....untill the game is bullshit and unfarmable.

We need underpowered parts to be Buffed rather than nerfing the overpowered parts

Well, you do have to do something; kill things. If you stand around like a lemon, you feel no benefit.

Do i need to remind yu that they were publicly against any kind of farming in the game and that was the cause of most major PVE nerfings? Including the removal of chests in many places, the inclusion of keys, etc etc etc and a long list of further ETC's.

I am completely agree with you, lets buff the underpowered parts, but i guess Anet is following the same path as all other game companies, it is eaier to nerf nerf nerf and let players in a game that lost it playability and original foncionality instead of actually making it better for everyone.

For those QQing about with SR necros don't need to do anything: wrong, you are supposed to kill "smething" to get energy, if you get someone else to kill it for you, it is about the player and not the skill fault. So, from now on; please nerf the players who get others to do their job!!