Soul Reaping, Spirit Spam and Abuse in general

As you can see I'm newly registered, but I read this forum from a long time.The main idea to start this thread is to address a balance problem that is in the game from the beginning, but recently is getting more and more abused.

The Soul Reaping attribute by itself has major problems and I'm not the only one complaining.Not so long ago before [skill]Jagged Bones[/skill] got nerfed, there was a build of 8 necros based on the idea of minions enchanted with jagged bones which you can kill and they are replaced with new once giving your team energy from the soul reaping.This was imbalanced energy management in any way.The energy management in this game is something very very important.It's not a surprise that most good energy management skills are elite ones.With something so trivial like soul reaping you could get better energy management than any skill in the game if properly abused.

Now there are many builds based on spirits and soul reaping.Despite the fact that this type of energy management was nerfed once already it still in my opinion is a major imbalance.Honestly I'm tired of playing against abusive builds,but they are there since the start of the game.I've been playing for two years now mainly GvG and we always have been a top 100 guild,which I will not mention,but I'm telling this in order to take my opinion more seriously.

I think that most of this abuses could be fixes easyly, but for a reason I don't know it always takes a very long time.The spirit spam in his first form (old Tombs now HA) was nerfed months later and there are many more examples.For this one to be fixed I have a suggestion.

I've always had the opinion that the whole conception with spirits is wrong.There shouldn't be spirits in this game,but since they are there my suggestion is to put a limit on their usage,not only in the count of the spirits from same type (already done), but on their count overall.For example a team can not have more than two spirits up at a time and if third one i summoned the first one dies without giving soul reaping energy bonus.In this way I think are solved two problems.The first is the soul reaping abuse and the second is spirit spam, witch still has no valuable counter even with all the anti spirit skills and you could still have a team build based on spirits for example [skill]Tranquility[/skill] and [skill]Nature's Renewal[/skill].

As for the other type of abuse: the skill abuse,there are things that could be done too.Here I'm talking about skills that alone are not imbalanced,but in many copies have devastating effect.Skills like Searing Flames etc.On the NF preview I spotted a skill that I hoped will solve this once and for all.The skill is : [skill]Xinrae's Weapon[/skill], but in order to do so this skill needs a huge buff.which I hoped will be done on release of NF,but futile.This skill's idea is exactly to punish such type of multicopies abuse,but it's parameters are laughable: 25eng, elite, 30s rech. and all that for a short weapon spell and 5 to 13 seconds of additional recharge.First you have to cast it on a party member witch you should be somehow sure,that it will get target on an skill abuse and if you do that the reward is negligible.We already have skills like diversion and distracting shot I don't think that boosting this weapon spell will make it imbalanced.On the counterpart this is the only skill in the game that could handle this type of abuse,so this skill needs some major buff.I can't tell exact parameters but surely the energy cost,the recharge and the disable should be tweaked.

These are my suggestions feel free to comment or criticize.

P.S: Sorry if my style of writing is not readable, but normally I don't write in forums.This is only to show you how desperate I am about this changes

As far as I'm concerned, spirits are far from a problem. You seem to simply lack the proper counters, as many who post about PvP balance changes do.

It takes 3-5 seconds to cast them, during which time they are very open to being interrupted, so take a Mesmer or Ranger.

Spirits are rather low level (max is around level 13 at 16 attribute points), and so can be killed very easily. I'd suggest skills like [wiki]Unnatural Signet[/wiki], or [wiki]Spiritual Pain[/wiki] (both Mesmer skills) to take them out fastest.

Also, if your problem is that your opponent has too much energy at their disposal, then I have two words for you: Energy Denial. Mesmers are the masters of preventing their opponent from having energy.

So it seems to me that what you need, is a mesmer, not a change to the game mechanics.

P.S. Mesmers wipe the floor with spammers.

No whats broken is soul reaping, not spirit spamming. Spirits are viable and balanced for 8vs.8 what Is broekn is soul reaping, it has been abused twice now and will continue to be abused while not nerfed.

T_T posts like this make me cry so i am not going say one thing
what would happen to many many rit builds with a two spirit restriction?

Agreed... but I don't see a change coming.

Say E-denial to necro spamming spirits must be best joke ever.

Well two is rather drastic suggestion,but my point with spirits is that you cannot simply nerf soul reaping,it's a primary attribute so if you can't fix it you could fix the way it is abused.As for the rit builds there are many many builds that could be valuable even with two spirits only and this is my opinion but spirit spam in general ruins the gameplay and it's not fun especially in arenas,where the number of players is limited to 4 vs 4.Try to handle 6-10 spirits from 2 rits if you are not build for that.The best thing to do is to stay away and this kills all the fun,but this is not the topic of this thread.

if soul reaping if bad, (which i think it is not) then the tweak must be there, modifing anything else is wrong, you are imbalancing spirits for something that does not have anything to do with spirits.

an example to a posible fix, soul reaping dont benefit at all from spirits.
(which i /not sign because actually the benefit from spirits on soul reaping is intended for necros being useful on pvp.)

You shouldn't have to be forced to take something like unnatural signet to counter a spiritway. It's way too specific of a skill, and would be fairly useless in the absence of spirits. Energy denial against soul reaping necros with spirits? That's gotta be the best counter to it! Why hasn't anyone else thought about e-denying a necro who gets 25 energy every 5 seconds? Genius!

Nope, not in pvp at all. Everyone in pvp knows that Soul Reaping is broken in pvp with infinite energy by spirit spamming.
The reason ANet doesn't have any nerf is mostly because it will affect the PvE a lot. You will see 23980989 threads complaing about it like warriors cried about armor and skill nerf before. And because ANet doesn't want to separate PvE and PvP update, they will satisfy the majority of community ( which is killing pvp by the way).

I dont think necros should get any energy from spirits. Minions yes, spirits no.

I think necros should only get energy from dying players.
The attribute is soul reaping and minions and spirits dont have a soul ...

There are several threads already about this.
One of the propositions i liked the most was to link the Soul Reaping gain upon the level of the dying creature (max= Soul reaping score; gain=creature/player level or gain= pet/minion/spirit level/2). This way necro/rit spamming lvl 6 or lesser spirit/minion wouldn't gain that much of energy. It would still be imbalanced IMO.
As many stated before, being able to counter something doesn't mean something is balanced.

Soul Reaping is possibly the strongest primary attribute in the game. It would still be very good if it did not trigger on spirits. Some arguments in favor of this solution:

1) Easy to implement, as spirits are a separate class (see how hexes dont affect them).

2) Few complaints from PvE crowd, as I think very few people would choose to go through the campaigns by tediously setting up spirit forests at every encounter.

3) Ends the thoroughly un-fun combination of teams camping in spirit fields while spamming skills with the SR gains. Leads to very stale games, I cannot stress this enough.

If this is thought too radical, then maybe no SR gain when a spirit is replaced by its own copy? And no SR gain when it expires perhaps?

/signed

~the rat~

This made me laugh. There is a perfectly viable skill that would counter Spirtway yet people "shouldn't be forced to carry it".

I'd love to hear why..

For the abuse I'm talking about it doesn't even matter if you bring antispirit skills or not.There are only 4 antispirit skills one of which is elite, so OK [wiki]Unnatural Signet[/wiki] is a viable skill for killing spirits (and that is after the boost),but even with it you can not cope with the spirit forest 2 or 3 spirit spammer may unleash and even when killing the spirit they get their energy from soul reaping.Not to mention the spirit range and if clever a spirit spammer may put spirits in such a way that you either overextend or don't get them at all.Still I'm not talking about that there are no counters to spirits,but in my opinion if abused they are imbalanced and adding soul reaping to that makes it very ugly.That's the reason I added them to one discussion,because I feel that with one change here are solved 2 problems one of witch major.

I like the idea of energy scaling based on level. For example, assuming 10 soul reaping:

lvl 20 necro and a level 8 spirit dies (8 is the max for most spirits, IIRC)
8 / 20 * 10 = 4. Normal would be 5 due to the half-from-spirits rule.

lvl 20 necro and a level 18 minion dies (std 16 death)
18 / 20 * 10 = 8. Normal would be 10.

However, in PvE you'd get more from higher level mobs.
lvl 20 necro and a lvl 24 mob dies
24 / 20 * 10 = 12 instead of the normal 10. This could actually be a buff for PvE MMs, especially end game.

I don't know if this would be enough of a nerf for PvP, though. Lvl 6 spirits, which are probably a little more common, would drop from 5 energy to 3 energy gained on death.

Another option might be to reduce the SR range to earshot.

What about, you know, interrupting the person casting the spirit? It does take 3-5 seconds to make a spirit, not exactly fast.

Really, having to take a counter to a highly used (apparently) build, is so absurd. I mean, people didn't start bringing blinding skills to protect against heavy melee builds, of course not!

Don't really care about spirit spamming because HA is going back 8v8 (thank god was about to rage and go play WoW or something). Spirit spamming has been nerfed twice (i think) necro's only get half of what they have in soul reaping and you can't have more than one of the same spirit up at a time for your team.

Having trouble killing these N00b\/\///-\\Y teams? Run a mesmer with spiritual pain.