Change to Soul Reaping

Ok it is well acknowledged that necro as a primary is a bad choice if you plan on pvp. 1) it doesn't afford you the benefits of other classes really good energy managment primaries 2) people don't die in pvp often or well timed enough to make up for a larger mana pool or casting long casting spells quicker.

I suggest this for soul reaping, make it so at level 12 it stops the negative regen on necro pets. Thus allowing them to stay around longer. If you really wanted to do it you could boost soul reaping high enough to make pets regen their own health, but given the random nature of soul reaping it wouldn't make up for the sparatic energy that can be a blessing when low but if you have a full energy bar does nothing for you regardless of what level of soul reaping.

I don't think this would be game breaking as you would, at a minimum have to invest 9 levels worth of attribut points + your facial scar, +a +2 attr rune (which is -50 hp) or a +3 (-75 hp) rune. At that level you wouldn't be able to max out 2 other attributes and i think you can do 12 and 9 if you had to have another maxed out stat. This also would make necro primaries that would like to do pets more viable in pvp as they also require a death on the field which takes more time to wait before you can be effective and takes a long cast and a hefty mana cast for your necro primaries. This also would make Necro primaries more efficent in pet management since they wouldn't have to keep on healing pets just to keep them out.

Finally I would like to point out that necro pets become wild if their master dies, making the pets a scary thing to have out as if your team is around them when they go wild they will wreck havoc. I would say that once they are masterless their normal degeneration goes back into effect.

I think it's a good idea. Making Soul Reaping reduce the life degeneration of summons is a brilliant idea, far better than the current mana per each death feature IMHO. The degen is the main factor preventing people from using summons.

To prevent abuse, Death magic should be given another use: determining the maximum number of summons one can raise. Otherwise everyone would be running around with a baziljon non-health-degenerating minions that live forever. I'm not creating a primary necro any time soon so I don't really care anyway :P.

just to add to this suggestion:

Lets say i did want to do really high blood and soul reaping. i got level 9 soul reaping, 12 blood, and 9 death (which leaves you able to get a level 3 in 1 remaining attribute). Reason for high blood is you would need to not only heal yourself, but also contribute some damage to the fray. You also would like a higher amount of damage passed to your minions (or duration of enchantment i forget which).

So basically you would have this skill list (summon pet), dark bond, infuse conditions, veratra's sacrifice/blood of the master, taste of death, awaken blood, vampritic gaze, (insert skill of choice here). this would be a typical necro pet build. Now becomes the strategy issues. At your current level of death you will raise lvl 7 minions and almost lvl 10 or so horrors and fiends; the level of your soul reaping has them still negatively regenning; blood's level with awaken blood leaves a 3 second gap (including recast time) to perma dark bond.

So if we consider gear we can take the blood stained boots and lose nothing too much. Giving us (12+2buff)b 10d 9sr. Now we could do a +1 rune and get perma - the regen. Add a facial scar to death and a +1 rune to get death to 12, now leaving us with a +3 rune to get the nondegrading SR. This then would leave us with -25 hp if we could find a superior rune of vigor. Now given this curcumstance we could increase our rune values and then take demonic flesh but if you did that with awaken blood on you would sac 40% of your hp, and with only 2 hp heals on 5 second timers that eat up the same or more energy as your minion summon this hardly makes this reasonable to do.

Once again a build completely dependant on team and pets to do any reasonable damage. I would say a very strong build once it gets going and if the team doesn't have aoes, but really balanced by: a small mana pool, long casting times, limited individual damage, damage is hampered by waiting for deaths, and pets do not desummon if necro dies.

great idea...I would suggest making the minimum at any level of death 4 (so basically a piece-wise function 0-4 = 4 max 5> is equal to level). As my second post suggests, in order to be a necro pet owner in pvp you would really need to forget a secondary (so like take ele for glyph of -15 energy off of next cast or the mez for mantra of recall or concentration), and even then you could only get a lvl 14 pet without really lowering your health, which given your inability to get hp back effectively, makes you not a viable member in your team.

also i want to add that i am in no way saying get rid of the energy aspect of the attribute, i am just saying that not only does it make RP sense (better soul reaping, better pets) but make the primary a viable attribute even if you take the minion ones for a lil havoc on the battle feild. If you made this an attribute of 8 but didn't invest for pets it would make them last long enough to make them a worthwhile skill to take into the fray.

NO! Please don't nerf my Soul Reaping! It is my energy supply, and I don't want it messed with because some people don't like it. If you don't like necro primaries in PvP don't play them, but messing with it now will kill off characters built using it. Of the suggestions I have heard for how to deal with Soul reaping it isn't the worst I've heard, but I prefer the idea someone had of turning it into pips - so that each death gives a pip for 3*Soul Reaping (or more really, as 10 energy now is better than 10 energy over 30 seconds - make it a bit better, like 4*soul reaping) This would allow necromancers to have a more steady energy supply, instead of having it wasted when several things die by pushing them above their maximum, and would make it more effective for end of one fight/beginning of next in PvE as well - they can run to the next fight and engae while it is still running. To keep it from getting too many pips at once you could limit it to +4 pips of regeneration, at which point it simply starts adding length (1 second per Soul Reaping per death, which is equal in effect to the 1 pip for 4*Soul Reaping). If they kill off a trio of enemies they then have 40 seconds or so to engage the next group at an advantage. In PvP it would allow them to have a smoother use of energy and that might be better than the spikes that occur now - you can rely on casting more as the battle goes on essentially.

I think this is a good idea as well

i didn't say change it, i said add to it. I agree with you it is a good skill...for pve...sorta, but needs some revisions for pvp applications. I think this is a good marriage of the 2 and is a lil bump to make necros more viable as a primary but doesn't over power the class.

What i see wrong with the above suggestion is that with gear a necro would have easily 10 energy regen. Now add in well of power, any mez or ele secondary and what you have is someone that negates the need to manage energy. While it does increase the energy a little better i think over the idea (mostly the additional time) overpowers and trivializes energy issues. I would say if they did an increase of 2 + 1/6 * SR for pips and a static time of 6 + 1/4 * SR. At max this would give you 4 pips (for a total of 10 regen) for a duration of 9 seconds. This would yeild 30 total energy. Each successive death results in an the timer restarting + 2/9 of the remaining time from the original time. So lets say you had 2 successive deaths the total time would be 11 seconds. I would also add in for every full tick (every 3 seconds) that int(1/6*SR), which means it would have to be an integer 0, 1 ,2 etc., be added in. this would help with the need to have actual amounts of energy for use. This would be much more balanced than the quote you pulled as having 40s of high energy regen in pvp is ridiculously overpowering considering the secondaries you can get to mitigate the energy spent or give you energy back.

I think both of these would make for a better SR, however if they wanted to keep it a lil more random fun, then i think the minion change would be helpful

"Ok it is well acknowledged that necro as a primary is a bad choice if you plan on pvp. 1) it doesn't afford you the benefits of other classes really good energy managment primaries 2) people don't die in pvp often or well timed enough to make up for a larger mana pool or casting long casting spells quicker.

I suggest this for soul reaping, make it so at level 12 it stops the negative regen on necro pets."

Are pets a prominent necro strategy in PvP? Since people don't die as much, I don't see how a couple of bone minions could turn the tide of a PvP battle, but perhaps I am completely wrong (if so, feel free to tell me ).

Anyway, I do enjoy the idea, but that would make it seemingly too easy in the RPG to have a ridiculous number of Minions running around with you that don't die over time. Personally, I enjoy the fruits of a blood/curse Necro throughout the RPG (though I'll probably get snickers at my rookie noobishness for picking that kind of necro since I'm a mesmer secondary and don't use any mesmer skills... so sue me ). I pretty much cast spells constantly during any battle with only 41 energy, and the only prim I can think that would help that would be Ele, since a Mes fast caster would make energy management even harder.

Maybe it's gross PvP inexperience talking, but if you want to make the Necro primary a more viable option for PvP through Soul Reaping, it seems as though something else would be more effective. However, I DO like the outside-the-box thinking

actually they are far from a bad choice. they are just a lot harder to play. If your good with one like i am with mine you can do some nice damage. I mean i have managed to push my bloodmagic up to 17. add in armor means nothing to me and i just take your life means you die readily enough to give me 13 energy everytime my target dies. soon as they die Well of power. Yeah now the melee has +7 hp regen and +2 energy regen for my side Call next one, release barrage, they die i get more health put up another well. now my side has even more room that we get large health and energy regen.

just becuase you rely on the undead army to play a necro doesn't mean they can't be highly highly effective in PVP and GVG

Leave Soul Reaping ALONE!!

Or, if one doesn't want to modify soul reaping itself, why not add in some skills that use soul reaping as an attribute. As I recall, Epinephrine had some good ideas in this regard.

That is something they should do, because you can get a cesta from a collector in Drognar improving cast time and recharge for soul reaping skills.

if the degen of HP of summons can be nerfed by high Soulreaping, i think Hall of Heros will be the Hall of Bone Fiends.

Soulreaping is great for pve, while you kill many mobs. Great for farming, i'd say, hoho

They could depend this effect on death magic! Only when soul reaping has the same level as death magic, it has 100% of its effect. Is soul reaping lower the effect diminishes very fast!

Very true.
If they did add to the skill and make it effect the regen of pets it would be awesome. As soulreaping is good in PvE only.
I used to love my necro in Diablo 2, he had loads of minions and was awesome. ( he had 16 skellies / 8 revived )
As for players running around with armies of undead. Ok it could get a bit silly, a max would need to be inplace, maybe 4 fiends, 4 horrors, 8 minions.
Face it minions max at lvl 13 and when you fighting 3-4 lvl 24 creatures in a PvE mob they will not last long. fiends and horrors max at lvl 17 so they would be better, but not awesome.

I think it would work well as to have the top end lvl summons you would need a superior and to actually have regen on pets you would need either a major or superior rune. Even with a superior vigor rune you would still be at a disadvantage HP wise, blood magic would be dangerous to use, with less than 400 hp as a based, lossing from 40-80 or more to use a skill can be very very dangerous.

I agree that it could be changed, but disagree with the method. Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but I'm on my lunch break, and don't have that much time to read.

Anyway, the method you suggest is fine if you use minions. I don't; I take blood magic, soul reaping and illusion magic; I don't want summoning. If this skill really needs to be changed, then offer a slight increase in natural mana regen as a result, this way all builds can have a bonus. Probably a fixed +1, but the rate changes the higher the level you are or something similar.

Certainly changing the attribute as you have described is very build specific, and still unbalanced on the scale of things. In short, no attribute should be tied into any other; every player should have the freedom to experiment with attributes and find their own best match.

So far as my necro goes, she isn't great on her own, but working with someone else her skills can be deadly.

It wouldnt be unbalanced, Rangers have expertise and that is actually tied in with various skills, not just expertise related ones.
Soul reaping isn't tied into any skills.
Having soul reaping effect summons wouldn't actually alter your blood magic, soul reaping and illusion magic build at all, but it would make a minion build, or using a summon skill alot more useful, even if you only use it as a battery to store energy. (14 energy returned when it dies, you go into battle, curse etc your energy goes down, your weak minion as you have no points in death gets killed, but your mana goes up. you can cast more hex's and curse)

I guess what I'm saying is this. If it's unbalanced against minion builds, fine. If soul reaping is unbalanced full stop, then it is unbalanced for all builds. Therefore, this only solves the problem for minion builds; it remains unbalanced for everyone else (and so is still unbalanced).

So yeah, my whole point is that as a sole blood magic and soul reaper user, I wouldn't see any change. If it's broke, it's still broke.

As for tying in with skills, what I meant was that no other attribute should be related to any other attribute in my opinion. Expertise dosen't boost beast mastery does it? Or marksmanship. At least not other than skill use. (Was that what you were referring to?) Nor does any other attribute as I am aware. I am well aware soul reaping has no skills, but that suits me to the ground to be fair.

I really hate the idea of altering Soul Reaping. I play my necromancer mostly, and I think that Soul Reaping is quite possibly the strongest primary ability in the game in PvE, and can be used by a good team to incredible advantage in PvP - though it does take the right build, and it isn't easy to do.

It already has GREAT synergy with pets as it is, so I don't see why you'd be trying to boost that effectveness. It is greedy and shortsighted to try to improve the Death line through soul reaping - if anything it is the Blood and Curses that need a boost, as neither of these really benefits much from it.

Pets decay for a reason - if you feel it's too much then you need more maintenance skills or better Death magic. Soul Reaping is in my mind one of the best primaries out there - could it use a skill or two? Sure, but I don't see how boosting the attribute line that already benefits the most from Soul Reaping will help matters.

If Soul Reaping needs skills, it should be like the skills from Energy Storage - the Energy Storage skills all revolve around energy recovery, and Soul Reaping skills should be triggerred on deaths, generating or sapping energy and health. Examples would be skills like

Tormented Spirits - Hex: For the next 15 seconds, if hexed enemy dies its spirit is exploited, extracting 1-4 energy (and possibly some amount of adrenaline?) for all allies nearby. Cost 10, recycle 5 seconds.

This would give a way to generate energy for example, the principle of Soul Reaping, for your team.

Another example of a skill would be

Dark Communion (Elite): Enchantment. Sacrifice 33% Health, for the next 30-45 seconds you gain double the benefit of Soul Reaping, but suffer a loss of 5% of your health with each death that occurs. Cost 10, recharge 60 seconds.

This also exploits the same system, giving huge amount of energy, but this time at the cost of your own health. Knocking you down a chunk of health at the beginning makes it a bit riskier, but considering you could be gain as much as 32 energy per death (granted, at 16 Soul Reaping) you should be ok.

Another elite type suggestion would be a way to heal based on Soul Reaping - normally Soul Reaping generates energy, this would be a skill to heal from the souls of the departed. Another might be to have each spitrit of a dying creature infict damage on those around it, at a cost of health to the necromancer - but effectively giving mini-putrid explosions:

Soul Shards: Enchatnment. While this enchantment is maintained, when any creature dies its soul is torn asunder by the necromantic forces, releasing a wave of Dark energy causing 4-48 damage (4*Soul Reaping) to all creatures allied with it within the area. The necromancer pays a price for wielding this power, suffering the same damage himself, regardless of whether the creature was an ally or enemy. Cost 5, 1 pip energy to maintain, recycle 30.

Soul Leech (Elite) : Enchantment. While this enchantment is maintained the necromancer gains no energy from soul reaping, but instead gains 5-60 (5*Soul Reaping) health with each death.

And an interesting timing dependent version - Hex: For the next 12 seconds target creature suffers -1 health and -1 energy degeneration. The energy and health degeneration then stop, and for the next 2-24 seconds if the creature dies it heals those allies near it for 5-60 health. Cost 5, cycle 5?

This would require casting it carefully on enemies that were unlikely to die soon, but woul be dying within a window of time - making it tricky to use, but it has obvious benefits in terms of party support.

Other possible soul reaping skills could cure/cause conditions on deaths, remove hexes or enchantments and so on - but it should all be triggered by death - that is what necromancy is about.

The point is that none of these types of ideas really benefits one line more than another, and they stick with the theme of what Soul Reaping is about.

Would you use a skill that doubled your soul reaping but did 5% damage with every death? It's actually riskier as a minion necromancer (but with much bigger benefits) due to the amount of death occuring - you'd best be stealing life from your minions to keep yourself alive. Obviously the numbers would need tweaking (especially since I just made them up, so have no idea about whether they are balanced), but I could support the addition of a few Soul Reaping skills, provided they kept with the spirit of the skill, and that they don't reduce the effectiveness of Soul Reaping itself.

That is not physically possible. 12 from Attribute points, +3 from Superior Rune, +1 from Headgear. That's 16.

+2 from Awaken the Blood you can hit 18 regularly, +1 to that on a % basis lets you sometimes hit 19.