Nerf Soul Reaping

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).

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.

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!!