The "Big Soul Reaping" thread

[Dextus Ironheart]

Originally Posted by EaT Macros

If you're telling me that your team is not having any problems with necro spikes in HoH, and you win from them (1 on 1) on a regular base, then you're just a liar, unless you're running rspike and their infuse sucks.

I wont force people to be creative, if they want they can run dual smite all the time after a SR nerf, as long as their skill of playing goes up and the fun gets back to the game.

Firstly r-spike should never beat bloodspike unless they're doing something seriously wrong. But more to the point you're saying that they should nerf bloodspike so that they can go and run dual smite? and then in a month you'll have a few 1000 people complaining that dual smite is to common and getting that nerfed? or maybe im missing something ><

Anways good idea /sign or w/e just so people stop complaining and guildies stop wanting to run bsp ^^.

~Wipe [LAMA]~

[Conan The Castrater]

The spike is not the issue. Its the healing issue aggravated by the soul reaping. For an example the last b-spike team I was in, we had a run of 3 matches under the worst caller in the game. He would call targets every 30 seconds and just talk gibberish in between, no pressure on the infuser = no kills. The thing was all 3 matches lasted the full 10 minutes or over, (had a total of maybe 2 deaths on our side and maybe 4 kills on the opposing side over the course of those matches) and in the end the opposing teams just resigned because we were unkillable.

Quite funny and maybe quite a rare occurence but just as an example it highlights what the main problem is. Equal level of skill vs equal level of skill it is almost impossible to dethrone a holding necro-spike team.

[Zui]

Note to Mods: This may not be about soul reaping directly, but the only reason there is debate about soul reaping is because of spirits triggering it when they're recast. I figured there wouldn't really be much of a point starting another thread with the same general topic as this one - necromancer gimmick spikes being overpowered and needing to be fixed - especialy as there have already been other ideas put forth for discussion in this thread.



Ok so I've been thinking about this more...

It is clear ANET doesn't want to nerf soul reaping, making it not trigger on spirits. They obviously want necrospike to remain viable for some reason, probably because they don't want to loose players like they did with the IWAY nerf. This is the clear and obvious fix, however there are other ways to fix it, that involves changing the way spirits work - not the way soul reaping works, while still making it viable.

Currently, when someone casts a spirit again, if it has already set by a member of that party, that spirit dies. If they simply made it so that it renewed the spirit, much like recasting a level 17 divine boon that's on you does, by removing that spirit from the map, and replacing it with another copy in the location where the newest spirit was summoned. The spirit wouldn't actualy die(more like time renewed and location moved), meaning that the necromancers wouldn't get energy simply from somoene on their team repeatedly laying spirits that are already up, causing those spirits to die. The spirits would need to be killed, either by the other team or by the team using them, and the spirits being killed would of course still give energy to necromancers upon death.

This wouldn't entirely nerf gimmick necrospikes, infact they could still function using Ritualist skills like Feast of Souls, Spirit to Flesh, Rupture Soul, and Signet of Creation.

Looking at how theese indidual skills would have an effect on making it less powerful:

Signet of Creation is inturuptable(2s activation), and causes all the spirits to die at once every 30 seconds, and a Necromancers energy pool is obviously only so big, and every 30 seconds would limit the energy intake.

Rupture Soul is also inturuptable with a 3/4s cast. It is a spell, costs 10 energy, and it has a 5 second recharge. It also requires touch range, but that doesn't really do much in making it non-viable to kill spirits that are placed right next to the guy running it.

Spirit to Flesh, again, inturuptable with a 3/4s cast. 15 second recharge, and costs 10 energy. Also requires touch range.

Feast of Souls, 1/4s cast, and a spell. By all means inturuptable, but not that easily, you'd need to time an inturupt(ok not THAT hard when the use is predictable), or maks use of migrane, dazed, or arcane conundrum. 10 energy, 10 second recharge. It destroys all nearby allied spirits.

From looking at this, we can see that there's really two viable skills to kill spirits and still maintain energy gain; Feast of Souls, and Rupture soul. Feast of Souls seems to have the real promise, but it requires energy to spam it, and requires that the spirits not be totaly clumped up(depending on the number of spirits that is) to make best use of it. Plus in the common version of HA bloodspike, there is no ritualist or person with ritualist secondary, causing the build to loose some offensive power to gain some power. If used every 10 seconds, this skill would give a non-necromancer an effective 3 energy regained every 10 seconds. Essentialy gimping any non-necromancer primary running this(minus one n/mo plus one N/Rt). Either way, with this skill the ranger spammer would need to first use Oath Shot before the guy with Feast kills the spirits, for increased recharge on Oath Shot, and of course, that requires more co-ordination, and flags to the other team "hey that guy is about to kill the spirits" allowing them to possibly use a blackout, diversion, ranger inturupts, whatever.

Rupture Soul as has been said is not hard to inturupt, infact a ranger at close range could hit it with a distracting shot, with pure reflexes without much problem. It's also much more energy intensive, and requires more use to kill an equal amount of spirits. But, it also gives a nice pace to the killing, about the same one you'd get with a ranger spamming them how it is now. Meaning you've just made one necromancer devoted to spamming rupture soul, he can occationaly spike inbetween sure, but not every time. Plus he's got that whole no monk healing spells thing now. And he's going to have to rely on natural regeneration for whatever else he does(unless he's running more than 10 in soul reaping, but even then the benefit will be minimal).

This may not fix the issue with the necromancers having an insane amount of energy - it would still be well above normal in the form of pips. But, it would certainly make them change up their build, and tactics, leaving more room for the opponent to capitolize on their weaknesses, and essentialy forcing the times when the necromancers get energy. every 10.25-11 seconds(feast of souls route), or every 5.75-6.50 seconds(with having a dedicated rupture soul spammer) assuming Quickening Zephyer isin't up. With QZ spirit to Flesh does also become somewhat viable, but then again, how hard is it to kill just one spirit every time it's set down, or just inturupt it?

If someone would be kind enough to do the math on exactly how much energy this would afford and compare it with what blood spike would be getting under the same circumstances now, it would be much appreciated.

Please, if this is a horrible idea let me know. I just threw it out here for discussion, since a soul reaping fix won't be happening this season(or ever).

[EaT Macros]

Dual Smite isnt as overpowered as bspike, dont want everybody to run it tough, but rather have them running dual smite which requires more skills then bspike.

[Xasew]

Soul Reaping: Every time a creature dies, you gain the same amount of energy that you have in this attribute. You only gain 1/3 of the normal amount when a spirit dies.

Seems like an improvement without totally destroying the usefulness of SR.

[lishi]

im doing the deep , there is more high ranked player here there then in HA atm.

reason?

blood spike

[Sabe]

Maybe to stop this would be to somehow stop the rangers, ritualists spamming spirits with disrupts.

[JR]

Originally Posted by Sabe

Maybe to stop this would be to somehow stop the rangers, ritualists spamming spirits with disrupts.

Have fun stopping a Ranger with Whirling Defenses and Dolyak Signet from spamming spirits way in the backline of his team.

I am going to move this to Gladiators Arena main as I believe this problem is a general PvP issue, not exclusive to Heroes Ascent.

[Sabe]

Try blackout?

if spell breaker get a non targetted enchantment stripper - but doubt they'd do that anyway.

[JR]

Originally Posted by Sabe

Try blackout?

if spell breaker get a non targetted enchantment stripper - but doubt they'd do that anyway.

Blackout is a skill not a spell, so it would go through Spell Breaker anyway.

And are you honestly suggesting someone stands way in the backline of the other team baby-sitting the Spirit Spammer with Blackout? Slightly impractical no?

[Guinea Fig]

Xasew,

So you dedicate 2 people from your 5 person offense to interrupt those 2? Leaving three damage dealers to try and outdamage 5 n/mo and 1 healing monk. That and spirits WILL slip through if they are smart with SB/SoD... or the spammer can overextend the interrupter. Necro spike will have plenty of time to spike and heal.

I mean I'm sure we all appreciate suggestions but if you don't play HA much you don't see how much of a problem this is. I'm starting to think that some of the people who are opposing a change.. either don't play HA much or play way too much blood spike themselves.

So its reliably powerful on 1on1 maps... rolls iway everytime... doesn't require great timing... damage goes through just about all forms of prot... is great at ganking (high DPS and spirit pressure)... and probably THE best build at holding. Blood spikers complain about relic runs but that's not particularly hard either. Similar problems most spike teams face in relic runs... And necro spike has the luxury of actually having high DPS/pressure to overcome balanced teams going into defensive mode. Just don't fall behind 3-0 and keep spiking.

All of this is fueled by that ridiculous supply of energy. As mentioned before its not as if those 2 are being simply batteries. Ranger spirits like EoE and QZ put immense pressure on your team and must be taken down. Ritualist spirits give great damage reduction and will gimp an opposing spike team (other than blood spike).

Since blood spike is so ubiquitous of course there will be good groups and bad groups. The good groups give even the best monks in the game an immense challenge. I've played with some very good set of monks and everyone has trouble against decent blood spikes. Dephria, monks from iA, our own monks... and many, many others. It takes a long time to kill a GOOD blood spike since you have to take down spirits for your defense and offense to work. By good I mean simply remembering to heal and some decent spirit placement... takes some skill but nothing spectacular. Your offensive capability is gimped by this and you must wait for them to make mistakes. Meanwhile, they spike every 5-8~ seconds or so. Over a long period of time this puts immense pressure on your monks. You have to infuse the spike and deal with the relatively high DPS with simple heal spells. Your seeds and prot are just about useless. Throw in a few fake spikes and durations where QZ is up... its a monk's nightmare.

You can't even specialize against Necro spike too much because there are still many iway/balanced/other spikes around in halls. There is also a standard set of skills/classes that balanced need to relic runs and holding.

It's not quite at the level of old spirit spamming but it is certainly at or beyond the level where many other builds were nerfed. Air spike, dual smite, old ranger spike. All builds that could be beat but anet and a lot of the community thought were a little too unreasonably powerful.

[art_]

I hate the way people try to pretend that just because there is an infinitely complex counter to a given build it means there are no issues with the build.

People moaning 'you must suck, necro spike is so infusable' etc etc.. are totally missing the point. Its not that the spike is an issue. Your infuser you should be able to catch it 19times out of 20, but the problem is the spirits give practically infinite energy to the necros unless you devote 2 people from your team to shutdown the 2 spirit spammers. If you make a build to do this you will likely get destroyed by another balanced build. Its also 2 bars worth of skills less for your own offence. For those of you bragging about how you pwn necro spike regularly, stop being asses, everyone beats necro spike all the time, but thats because its fotm, so there are a lot of bad players playing it. When you face a team that understands how to play the build they have an almost limitless defense. And as energy is not an issue to them they can just wear you down however long it takes. And yes, the build is insane on altar maps. If you dont have the right build to counter necro spike when its holding you might as well just ragequit before the timer starts.

[Ensign]

Originally Posted by JR-

Have fun stopping a Ranger with Whirling Defenses and Dolyak Signet from spamming spirits way in the backline of his team.

Who even cares about that stuff. If they're a physical team you're dropping Displacement every six seconds.

To reiterate why this is a problem now and was not two months ago:

Previously to power Soul Reaping you had to dedicate a ranger to dropping spirits. Many of those spirits did not help your team all that much, they were used solely for the energy. The Zephyr was important, and Fertile Season is good for holding, but otherwise the guy didn't do much. You could not realistically run more than one ranger because the second one contributed nothing beyond Soul Reaping triggers.

Now you have ritualists. Unlike the ranger the ritualist drops spirits that significantly upgrade your defense, on top of powering Soul Reaping. Many of these spirits have very strong effects but kill the spirit quickly, a mechanic that encourages spamming of the spirit and creating more synergy with the necromancers. On top of the defense they add, the ritualist is hardly a dead slot as each one spikes harder (and more reliably) than a blood necro due to Gaze from Beyond.

Hence, unlike pre-expansion versions of the build where you'd realistically get 8-10 activations of Soul Reaping per minute from spirits, now 30+ activations per minute is the standard. That extra energy comes on top of a very hard, passive spirit defense.

Previously you could beat a necro spike build by pressuring them significantly that they had to go into defensive mode and stop spiking. Now, due to the harder passive defense and ridiculous energy given to the necro/monks, the build is impossible to pressure. The net result being that you have to out spike the necros, and apparently the best build to do that with is a metagamed version of necro spike.

Every other build that tries to fight necrospike straight up will lose.

Peace,
-CxE

[Thom]

Best thing to do is abuse spirit spamming until Anet changes it. Everyone go play necro spikes and other ridiculous energy heavy builds. Earthquake chains ftw.

[makosi]

Originally Posted by lishi

im doing the deep , there is more high ranked player here there then in HA atm.

reason?

blood spike

Amen. Some of the spikes are so clean that even the top infsuers can't squeeze Infuse Health in so it probably feels futile even going to HA right now. Its clearly an exploit waiting to be fixed. Remember back in the day when air-spiking was the FotM? Exploit -->too powerful -->nerfed -->gg anet. What's the delay with the necro spiking nerf?

A previous poster suggested that Anet are afraid of losing more custom like when IWAY was nerfed. If its not fixed then I won't buy Ch3 just as I said I wouldn't buy Ch2 if IWAY wasn't fixed.

[TwinRaven]

My opinion is simply this: Soul Reaping was mega-nerfed in beta...they took all the Soul Reaping skills away so its ONLY purpose is energy generation. Don't beleive me...look at the still un-fixed trader items (Drok's)that enhance Soul Reaping skills (which no longer exist). There may be occurances where death of spirits causes energy to freely flow to necromancers...but look at our spell-casting times...If you can't get a ranger and/or a mesmer or two to take out a slow casting necro, you need to re-think your playing style, not nerf the necro....just my 2 cents. Reminds me of a similar complaint with Touch Ranger/Necs...people saying they are too powerful and need nerfing...but if you play it right, you can drop one right quick...strategy, not the nerf bat is needed here.

[Mental Leteci]

One more smart guy. If it's so easy to beat it,why do you play it? You a re still missing the point. You can interrupt,you can infuse,but the spirits are pain in the ass. You can interrupt spirits and spike at the same time,unless you have a full interrupt team. Problem is soul reaping and triggering on spirits. They get benefit from the spirits when they're up and when they die.

I would agree with Thom. Let's all go and play exploited builds,trust me,ANet won't have any other choice than nerfing the build. If there won't be more than 3 builds in this game they will change something 100% ))

[Master Fuhon]

Keep allowing souls to be reaped from spirits, pets, minions, and others. Necromancers are a greedy bunch, not wanting to share the life force from souls.

Energy gained from death = (Soul Reaping attribute) / (friendly necros within soul reaping radius)

If there are any legitimate builds running multiple necromancers from before the Ritualist was introduced, they are still better off and continue to gain energy.

Hurts the minion masters running in tandem with SS necro, orders, battery for PvE. I believe this would do something to Barrage/Pet farming runs. Like at least running less effective orders.

[plasmasword]

How to properly nerf soulreaping:

Soulreaping gives energy to a necro depending on how many necros are in the party. The same "soul" cant be reaped 100% 6 different times. So in other words, if there are 6 necros on 1 party and they each have 12 stats in soul reaping, then when something dies, they would only get 2 energy each. However, a lone necro on a team would get the full 100%.

[shardfenix]

He is not talking about necro spike. He is talking about any build that uses a necromancer with heal/prot spells, because they are literally 100 times better than monks. Necromancers in a build with a rit/ranger spammer are functional healers with unlimited energy, which is obviously broken. They can spam heal other/heal party infinitely with no drawback.

/signed to nerfing soul reaping by making it not trigger from dead spirits. (minions are ok)