ArenaNet continues revealing Elite Specializations coming with Heart of Thorns. This week is the Necromancer's Reaper!

ArenaNet continues its weekly reveals of the Elite Specializations coming with Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns by unvealing the Reaper specialization for Necromancer. While the Necromancer is a hands-off damage dealer, the Reaper will help bring the class into the midst of the battle to deal devastating damage with its Greatsword and set of Shout skills.

The Reaper is inspired by classic movie monsters and survival horror games where the enemy is a slow but unstoppable force. The greatsword mimics this with its great size, but the skills take this further by having a slow but powerful effect. The greatsword skills will all feel slow according to ArenaNet with each attack having a fairly sizeable cast time to give it the iconic horror monster's sense of weight and dread. This slow build-up will have a big payoff as the damage modifiers and effects for each blow will be more pronounced.

The blog post uses the greatsword's #2 skill—the Gravedigger—as an example. When the skill is used, the Reaper first draws in dark energy before delivering a slow but devastating execution style blow to all foes around the Reaper. Not only does this skill have a very high damage modifier, it has the added effect of dramatically reducing its own cooldown if any of the foes struck by the skill were below 50% health.

It is not only with the greatsword that the Reaper will be getting in close for the battle, as the iconic Necromancer Death Shroud will have updated, melee-focused skills while the Reaper specialization is equipped. While the skills are being updated for the new Reaper's Shroud, they will share some similarities with their respective Death Shroud skills and in many cases still take effect of traits that affect Death Shroud. Possibly the biggest change is the giant shadowy scythe that the Reaper's Shroud will hold to dish out damage to its enemies.

The last major point of the Reaper is the addition of Shouts. While shouts for Warrior and Guardian are more support focused, the shouts that Reaper gets will all act as attacks that can hit up to five enemies, becoming more effective the more enemies the shout affects. The example from the blog post is "Rise!" which will deal some damage to enemies and summon a jagged horror for each of those enemies hit. Hitting one enemy might not sound that impressive, but getting a full fleet of horrors spawned could become very powerful. In addition to the shouts themselves, ArenaNet teased that a trait would reduce the cooldown of the shout based on the number of enemies it hits.

For more information about the Reaper, including how it is becoming the master of Chill, check out the full blog post on GuildWars2.com. Then check out the official Guild Wars 2 Twitch page tomorrow at Noon Pacific where they will show off some gameplay of the Reaper.

Matt Adams aka the Mattsta

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