Guild Wars 2

LucianDK.8615:

Hrm, some good points there. I am currently fully ascended vipers myself, and opted for 4x nightmare and 2x trappers. I have malice+geomancy on my mace/axe set now. But would geomancy still be useful on the shortbow if you mainly intend to use it when you have to be at ranged, or do you think you will still end up with enough mobs around you to make it still count?

Well, Smoldering is seemingly somewhat as pointless as Agony. It makes things like Searing Flames reach a maximum stack of 8, up from 7 while using Malice at the same time. The difference in damage is basically 591.762894 per second with optimal stats (Spotter, Banner of Discipline, Embrace the Darkness, etc.) At the same time, using a Geomancy sigil instead of the Smoldering one, provides 1502.698724 damage per second once it has been triggered twice and from then on out until failing to maintain it in rotation or when the encounter in question is over. That is after 9 seconds of course, which means it has a bit of a ramp-up time, but it is vastly superior when it can be maintained. Even after triggering for the first time it does 751.3493622 damage per second. This is not counting the minor single damage spike the “Ring of Earth” effect produces on triggering it.

The question then is, will Geomancy be useful on the Short Bow? As far as I can tell right now, with how I envision myself using the weapon and Renegade in general, most likely. When running around with Short Bow, I am likely to use Kalla’s legendary stance while engaging, as that is more or less the only stance with synergy for ranged battle, I will also likely close the gap frequently, since some of our traits are benefiting close range combat. Diabolic Inferno is in example more or less melee range. Mallyx’s legendary stance is in general melee focused as well, e.g., Embrace the Darkness being a rather big deal with it’s 10% to all stats and pulsating Torment, not to forget it’s synergy with Diabolic Inferno. Enemies are likely to close the gap on me as well. So, when I am close to enemies, I will likely either legend swap to Mallyx for Unyielding Anguish to Chill (and Torment) in order to give myself some kiting capability, triggering the Geomancy sigil on the Short Bow, and/or I will weapon swap to Mace/Axe which also has a Geomancy sigil, triggering that one instead. When I need to get away from melee combat, I will swap to Short Bow and thus trigger it as I move out, etc. — sometimes it will be on an ICD, but it at least makes it more likely that I am able to trigger and maintain the 6 stacks of Bleed the sigil can produce at a given time.

PS: I may have made mistakes in my calculations, doing this while a bit sleepy again, though I’m fairly certain everything is in order.

LucianDK.8615:

So, Sigil of Agony and Sigil of Smoldering for the bow I think? Improving both bleeding and burning with 20% duration.

Superior Sigil of Agony might be pretty much pointless actually. With the Blood Fury trait already increasing our Bleed duration with 25% — in full Ascended Viper’s, 4x Nightmare + 2x Trapper Runes with a Rare Veggie Pizza — we should be looking at a 98% duration increase while under the effect of Fury. At that point, if you want the 2%, you may as well go for a Superior Sigil of Malice which should cap the Burns as well (if used in conjunction with Smoldering), pushing them from a 93% duration to 100%.

My problem with getting rid of Geomancy from condition builds is that with the new traits, we should after 9 seconds be looking at 983 damage per second from the maximum of 6 stacks of Bleeds that it can maintain permanently if triggered properly, with the duration increase. That’s not exactly too bad from a single Sigil. It does require us to be up close and personal though.

(PS: I am extremely sleepy right now, there may be mistakes in the calculations I did.)

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

mounts will be fully useable in wvw as well as in all of the game even in core maps too you will be able to use mounts fully . just like gliding you can use that all over too but you need hot to unlock the gliding .

It has been said that mounts are unlikely to be active in World vs. World on release.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

you need to buy living story packs from the gem store to unlock them mastery points but I do not think you can use them for hot mastery if you do not own hot . but never the less you still need to buy living story packs from the gem store . to get the other mastery points for the core game and doing living story when the next one comes out while active . once you play that it will not cost you at all .

You do not need to buy the Living Story packs from the Gem Store to play Path of Fire. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to get them, but then again, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to buy Heart of Thorns either.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

you will not be able to play the Revenant profession if you do not own hot . hear again you not be able to use the mastery points from hot or that class

This is plain wrong misinformation (not that I mean you intended for that); “Path of Fire includes access to the revenant profession, but not the Herald elite specialization. If you only own Path of Fire, you will be able to create a revenant character and unlock the Renegade elite specialization.”

Who in their right mind would pay 100 USD/Euro to unbind a single Account Bound item though? You could practically convert those 8000 Gems to Gold and straight up buy a new Legendary first-gen. weapon instead. Using Gold to acquire 8000 Gems, same story, that’d be more than enough to replace your bound item on your other account. If you accidentally bind something, Customer Support is likely going to help you actually, GW2’s Support is bloody amazing. If you accidentally bound something 2+ years ago, they are unlikely to help you with your “mistake” though, that’d be silly.

If you are willing to spend 8000 to 16000 Gems on unbinding a first-gen. weapon on your old account, then just convert those Gems on your new account and straight up buy it. Problem solved. You’ll have the Legendary on your old account and on your new account.

You will lack the Heart of Thorns Elite Specializations and masteries tied to Heart of Thorns. While I would expect shortcuts to exist in the new maps using HoT masteries, I don’t think they will be a requirement. Most things will likely be based around the mounts and their mastery lines. If you consider that to be held back, consider purchasing Heart of Thorns at some point. Personally I think it’s worth it.

Mastery Points are different for Central Tyria, Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire. In the sense of Path of Fire-related masteries, you will be on the same level starting ground as everyone else.

You can only equip one Elite Specialization. If Reaper is “optimally” better than Scourge in certain situations, you may be outclassed in that particular scenario. That doesn’t mean you can’t run Necromancer vanilla traits, weapons and utilities or Scourge traits, weapon and utilities. As a Revenant player, I have over time stopped using the Elite Specialization Glint, as I don’t find it necessary to enjoy and perform with the Revenant class. I will however use Renegade 100%, since that I have already been able to test outperforms any of my other builds revolving Conditions.

Mounts are unlikely to be out for WvW at release, but it may be included down the line, the same way Gliders were implemented just recently after almost 2 years. There is a lot of map design and things that needs to be taken into consideration before mounts are put into WvW. I guess they could just implement them as a “get from point A to point B” kind of feature, and simply not have the “bunny” being capable of jumping high into the air (basically over walls of the WvW structures), but time will tell what they do with the feature in relation to WvW. You can use mounts in Central Tyria. There are certain areas where they are disabled, such as in some Jumping Puzzles and the likes to not completely trivialize the content.

Ohoni.6057:

I’d like to be able to be Kalla/Glint spec, because the Revenant requires Glint to be playable.

I personally disagree with this. In no way does Revenant require Glint to be playable. I like the upkeeps, but I can create perma-Swiftness that spans minutes by running Jalis and using Inspiring Reinforcement followed by Echoing Eruption. I can create 25 stacks of Might (over a couple repeated cycles) from Searing Fissure followed by, again, Echoing Eruption. What Glint is, is a fun Elite Specialization that creates lazy Revenants that just want to run around with a switch to turn on and off for boon sharing and permanent Swiftness requiring no input. You won’t even need that much Swiftness come PoF, since mounts will move you about faster when outside of dungeons and such where I will assume they are disabled.

I really wish they just wouldn’t do mount skins at all. But.. that’s not happening. Oh well. I hope they don’t become different creatures entirely with the skins though and I pray to Kormir there will never be a SAB mount. I’m fine with a SAB mount inside SAB. Not outside it.

Just slowly finishing up Chuka and Champawat for my Renegade. I could technically finish it up today by simply buying some Amalgamated Gemstones I guess, but I may as well just spend the next 12 days doing the meta events and getting my free 4 Gemstones per day to do it for “free”, while earning Gold. Then again, I could just buy the stones today, then sell the ones I gain over the next 12 days doing the meta events.. choices, choices. I have no need for it today though.

The skins are typically what I enjoy. Obviously also the effects. I started making them back when we had Soulbound Legendary weapons without stats swapping. If I like how it looks, if it has a cool effect that can fit a theme I’m going for, I’ll make it. I have no regrets, I like my collection. I also really loved the Legendary crafting collections/quest, so I’m sad to see those go because of them being time consuming to make. Making Eureka just wasn’t the same as making Nevermore and Chuka and Champawat.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Absconditus.6804:

Bear.3689:

Absconditus.6804:

I vote we also complain about physical bursts of damage as well.

Go make your own thread about this.

Why would I? It’s as ridiculous as making topics about Condition Damage bursts. They both exist, the fact that they are bursts means they can be avoided.

Wrong. A well timed dodge, block, invuln etc can mitigate a physical burst that is telegraphed UNLESS some other factor flags that hit as unblockable, but even then most can be evaded in those cases provided you still have enough dodges left in you.

Condi burst on the other hand is a non-telegraphed massive stack of damage types that both cover each other and tick off LARGE damage at such a fast rate that you can insta die to it before you could ever try to hit your cleanse after the fact. Furthermore if you somehow managed to eat enough of the damage and live to hit the cleanse and got maybe half of them cleared, you’re probably down you’re condi cleanse and will certainly get hit with more condi damage right after to finish you off. And this is all provided you even had a clue that you were about to be condi-burst.

Fact is condi damage should never be “burst” damage.

What in the flying.. In what world aren’t condition bursts about as telegraphed as any physical bursts. When did you ever experience a condition-build compete with the ludicrous damage dealt by let’s say a Thief doing the good old Mug > Cloak and Dagger > Backstab > Heartseeker combo over the span of about a second, maybe three? Sure, you can mitigate it through quick reaction and anticipation, but that freaking goes for condition applications too. You can dodge the application of a condition, it needs to bloody hit you. You can evade the application. You can block the application of a condition. You can invulnerability block the application. (Unless there’s Unblockable effects in play of course.) A whole lot of burst application comes from fields too, specific locations that you can avoid or at least get out of before they start to properly hurt.

When I am facing a Power-based build, my mitigation are dodges, evade skills, blocks, invulnerability, mobility skills to re-position myself with and get health back, healing skills, cleanses, Protection and then some. There is practically no difference when it comes to facing Condition-based builds. You use dodges, evade skills, blocks, invulnerability, mobility skills to re-position yourself with and get health back, healing skills, cleanses, Resistance (which trumps Protection with it negating the damage completely) and then some. When I am out of the majority of my mitigation against a Power-based build, I’m certainly getting hit with more physical damage right after to finish me off.

…

Bear.3689:

Absconditus.6804:

I vote we also complain about physical bursts of damage as well.

Go make your own thread about this.

Why would I? It’s as ridiculous as making topics about Condition Damage bursts. They both exist, the fact that they are bursts means they can be avoided.

As has been stated, Power builds rely on Power mainly, supplemented by Precision and Ferocity for critical hits and damage modifiers. They can hit like trucks and are the kings of 1-2 second bursts into downed state — condition bursts are not able to compete with that. Condition builds rely on Condition Damage mainly, supplemented by specific condition duration, condition duration in general, expertise, damage modifiers and precision. Both sides of the spectrum relies on multiple stats. Most condition “bursts” are only effective thanks to duration. Conditions also relies on cover conditions to make it harder for foes to simply cleanse it away instantly.

Identified all drops I received during the stress test. The majority were blue (item value 99 copper), some were green (value from 1 silver to aprox. 1 silver 60 copper) — every single item identified was in itself a negative impact on the wallet. Salvaging items that yielded Mithril Ore, loss of money. Salvaging items that had some profit tied to the material, very low profits. The system is horrible with the cost attached to it. Loot is not rewarding at all in Path of Fire with this being how things are, you lose money from getting loot. I hate it.

I vote we also complain about physical bursts of damage as well. Since we’re going to complain about condition bursts. I played physical builds for 4 years. I’ve recently started playing conditions. I don’t feel any more or less powerful than I did before, it’s just a different way of playing.

I’m going to be rude and say I’m glad you are not in charge of balance in this game. Have you ever fought against a Daredevil or two? It can be absolutely infuriating to watch a single Daredevil dodge around 4-5 players without anyone being able to do anything about the nuisance they can bring. Are you basically proposing that every class should be able to become equally frustrating? It’d become Dodge Wars 2. PvP would be infuriatingly annoying. It would also undermine smart use of block, shadowstep/blink, evade and crowd control skills to supplement dodging.

Vitality is your defense against condition damage (with a bonus being it also helps against physical damage). Toughness/Armor against physical damage. The system works as intended that way. I see absolutely no reason to change it. If any such change were to be implemented, it would have to be ridiculously low gains of endurance regeneration, which would render the stat pointless. At least now it serves a purpose.

mazut.4296:

Whats the problem? That’s just another item in your inventory, that stacks!

The problem is — that currently, when you salvage let’s say a green or a blue, you are looking at potentially getting, e.g., a single Thick Leather Section out of it. That can be sold for 2 silver and 27 copper right this moment on the Trading Post. Listing it would net you 1 silver 93 copper after the listing- and sales fee has been deducted. You also have to subtract the 3 copper it costs to salvage with a Copper-Fed Salvage-o-Matic for a total of 1 silver and 90 copper gained. If we are now to be forced into paying an additional 1 silver and 68 copper to identify our loot beforehand, we are then looking at a measly 22 copper profit from that item! Sure, sometimes you may get 2 Thick Leather Sections. Sometimes you get a Rune or a Sigil that adds a few more copper when vendored, but I hate the idea of needing to pay to identify the gear. I do like the idea of having stackable items that needs identifying. I do not like the idea of it costing money. I am perfectly fine with visiting an NPC every so often after having garnered a stack of unidentified items, I am not fine with it costing money. That is the problem. It costs money.

I’m fine with Unidentified drops that stack, I’m fine with needing to identify said gear, as long as this is free. It needs to function like Repairs, no costs involved. I can waltz over to a NPC to have things identified, that won’t bother me too much, but if you add a freaking cost to the process, loot becomes unrewarding (again), since you are spending more for identification and salvage than you are likely to earn from a whole lot of the things that shows up in your bags through the process.

I would not be okay with them suddenly switching from Short Bow to Greatsword, even if I have an Eternity in the bank collecting dust. I just crafted Chuka and Champawat due to Revenant getting Short Bow, I’d be well ticked off if that suddenly was a complete waste of my time, resources and Gold.

Luckily there’s not a chance in a heated desert of that happening, given they’d have to create assets for a new weapon all of a sudden with less than 3 weeks to go.

Blue.1207:

Wheres the cohesion of the items with the in game aesthetic? I know we get a few items that adhere to this midset, but then we get a giant raven, or a literal meteor glider, or (insert your item of choice) that throws that aesthetic out the window.

While I can find the raven glider to be a bit.. frustrating when doing jumping puzzles, due to the immense size of the model on large player characters, I don’t think it can’t fit within the game. On the contrary; say you’ve made Nevermore — now the spirit of the raven is allowing you to soar through the air towards the ground. The meteor; an Elementalist summons a meteor to fall slowly towards the ground. The Sheet Music, some contraption created by a “bard”, perfect for the musicians of the game (as in those who likes to play instruments). Besides some of them being a bit frustrating to deal with in certain aspects of the game, such as jumping puzzles, I don’t think the majority of them can’t have their place within a functional theme.

Also, if players wish to load up on all the possible auras, why not let them? There’s generally very few people who can ever afford to become the “monstrosities”. How many can you honest to Kormir say you see on a regular basis in the content you partake in? It seems a good quantity of us thinks effect bombs just look ugly, so we shake our heads. And you know what? We can then move on with our lives shortly thereafter, looking the other way, not caring. Chances are we won’t necessarily see that person again. We won’t remember their character name just because they were a walking bile of particle effects, we’d likely remember them more if they had a clever combination to be fair. It’s insignificant to us. You’re letting yourself get worked up for brief moments in time.

PS: There’s a difference in how player models look (they can be hidden with name plates showing during big encounters should the game deem it necessary), and how skills look. There’s also unlikely to be 5-10 people that are regurgitated effect bombs. It’s not unlikely to be 5-10 fields on the ground.

I don’t see why you can’t just use Geomancy on the Short Bow as well truth be told. You’d likely be swapping and triggering it when in melee range at any rate, unless you were to swap legends at range I guess. There’s factors like that to consider I suppose. Bursting? Smoldering since there are Burns on the Short Bow as well?

How about.. let’s not ask for that? I can’t achieve my ice and frost theme with just one aura effect, I need 3 to achieve my current look (posted the screenshot below a few times, but I guess it can show what I mean here as well). Sure, some people look like someone threw up effects on them, but if they think that’s cool, who am I to say they can’t walk around like that. It’s overall very few players in the playerbase who looks that way. I think it looks ugly too, don’t get me wrong, but I can perfectly co-exist with these players being around, without the need to request limitations being put in place just because I think it’s a bit too much to just load up on every single aura one can get. I prefer creating certain looks with a combination of a few, they prefer to just show all of them for whatever reason. Maybe you find my appearance appalling as well, but chances are we are unlikely to meet in game anyways.

Paulie.6215:

According to the Wiki, the appearance is the same for WvW and PvP armor?

Sooo, for wvw and pvp, the only difference between ascended and legendary is the purple name in the tooltip?

Is this true?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor

Yes, the appearance of the Structured PvP and WvW Legendary armor is not special from their “regular” counterparts, but I am quite happy with that, as I would never feel comfortable transmuting the raid Legendary armor, seeing as that has unique effects and appearances. Sure, you can transmute it back again, but I like keeping my legendaries “mint”. I also don’t want the raid set anymore, since there’s so many people running around with it by now, all looking the same aside from some color variations. The sPvP and WvW armors however, I can skin to my hearts content without feeling like I sully a special item. Of course, the sPvP and WvW armors also allows you to select your stats on the fly and to swap runes.

Just do it spread over a few days. You don’t need to spend 8 consecutive hours to finish the Gift of Battle reward track. You don’t even need to follow a squad that may or may not be in one of your matchup’s maps (though I would recommend it as it can be quite fun to partake in the large scale battles of this game too — a death doesn’t cost you a dime; repairs are free and so are the Waypoints). You can go around flipping camps, killing Dolyaks, capturing ruins, taking out sentry posts and the likes. There’s plenty of Gold to be earned in WvW as well, so there’s that too.

There’s plenty of aura effects in the game, but that’s a good thing as you can combine some of them for interesting looks and effects. I’m hoping to see more for interesting new ways of combining them. Sure, some players may perhaps go a bit overboard and just load up every single effect they can, looking as if someone barfed effects on to them, but if it makes them happy, who am I to complain. Personally I like the effects I use to achieve a frost and fire theme. Maybe it’s flashy and looks terrible to you, but I quite like it myself. I’d even say this is muted compared to some effect bombs walking around.

There are so many people during the bigger meta events that will flood the LFG with “Meta 3 Com Full” and the likes, which creates annoying clutter to go through when you are trying to find a map that is organizing for the event. For that matter, it’s just annoying to keep trying to go through LFG and to attempt to join on a person in a map, only to be told it is full. Why can’t this be filtered out (optionally) from the LFG UI? I’m sure there are situations where it may be useful to see full maps, so I’m not saying to filter them out as a whole, but for the love of Kormir, let us at least tick at little checkbox that will hide all listings with full instances of the map.

ScottBroChill.3254:

It also clashes with mallyx, which I don’t get why they designed it that way.

In what way is it clashing with Mallyx? By Kalla’s Fervor adding +20% Condition Damage which benefits all our conditions? What is the Renegade traits doing that makes it straight up clash with Mallyx?

Personally I think Renegade is meant to be a PvE-focused toolkit. The next specialization may be more PvP-focused. You can see this across all the new specializations, they seem to be focusing on certain game modes more so than all of them. They are specializing. Maybe you don’t think it’s ok for them to design them that way, but I am personally alright with it. And it’s not like you can’t bring Renegade traits into Structured. You are in no way obligated to use the legendary stance, the short bow, etc. — or maybe you do want to bring the short bow, but not the stance, or the stance, but not the short bow. Maybe you want to run Mallyx/Shiro with Mace/Sword and Short Bow? There’s options to be had which doesn’t cripple your defenses entirely. Maybe you even got an idea for using Scorchrazor and Spiritcrush to zone out and knock down enemies before nuking them with Mallyx’s Unyielding Anguish?

Maybe you want to use Phase Traversal, Grasping Shadows, DP into Shackling Wave, weapon swap to Short Bow, Spiritcrush, Scorchrazor as they get up, legend swap to Mallyx (might have been necessary sooner, didn’t exactly sit here and calculate energy costs and time between skills used for regenerated amounts — I’m pulling a combo out of my bum), Unyielding Anguish. Stuff like that? Not only that of course, you aren’t a robot that only does one thing, as that won’t always work, sometimes you need to use Duelist’s Preparation for defenses and not just to be annoying, etc., but there’s some option to be had with the new kit.

Zenith.7301:

Condi renegade is lame because the Kalla traitline only affects bleeds.

Uhm, isn’t that a bit.. wrong? Kalla’s Fervor adds 30 Ferocity and 2% to Condition Damage per stack. With Lasting Legacy, you will be running around with +300 Ferocity and +20% Condition Damage. While the other traits are more focused around Bleed duration and damage, that is in no way a bad thing when we have a pretty easy access to applying Bleed stacks with Renegade (more so in a group scenario). It adds a new condition for us to bless our enemies with. Renegade buffs our Bleeds, while Corruption buffs our Torment. Kalla’s Fervor buffs both.

Don’t forget that Endless Enmity adds 7s Fury when you critically strike a foe below 50% health (8s ICD), and that Brutal Momentum increase your chance to critically strike while at full endurance. It felt a bit awkward though; maybe the 8s ICD on BM is what is making it feel a bit weird (I’d like to see that 33% Critical Chance increase be a permanent reward whenever you are at max endurance, as a trade-off for not dodging — currently it seems to turn off with a 8s ICD whenever you gain Fury, since that grants Vigor; bug?), but they are relatively decent minor traits.

Renegade utilities are very energy hungry, but I am pretty sure going Mallyx/Kalla is miles better than Mallyx/Jalis which a good chunk of us condition Revenants are currently running. Hopefully before release, they have tuned some of the energy costs (and fixed issues with pathing and skills not working properly (Sevenshot..).

Posted this in another topic about Sylvari colors, but why not here as well, it is a Revenant after all; I settled (for now) on a frost and fire theme for my condition-focused Revenant. (The effect is mainly achieved thanks to some infusion auras.) Thematically, Frostfang is the source of the ice, while Eureka is the source of fire. I don’t think another race would “pull off” this look, since the effect goes on to Sylvari hairstyles, which it wouldn’t for other races. Sylvari also have special faces and said hairstyles which helps. I kinda feel like I’m playing a new race at times.

I had the opposite experience to you, aside from the Elite Specialization being very energy hungry (and Sevenshot still being a buggy mess), I enjoyed it immensely in PvE. I also found use for both Ice- and Darkrazor to stack up extra bleeds, and pumping out cripple/dazes to keep enemies at a distance while using the short bow, etc.

I am even more hyped for Renegade on the 22nd of September. If for nothing else, I’ll have great fun with it in open-world PvE while exploring new maps. The trait line is still highly interesting from a condition-focused Revenant’s point of view as well, and I saw the highest ticks from Mace/Axe I have to date, even in Exotic gear instead of my fully decked out Ascended gear with stats-infusions and an actual backpack, proper Sigils and Runes. It’ll be interesting to see what the Superior Runes of the Renegade will be as well. I’ll just assume they are coming.

Only 22 more days to go! I do hope they tune the energy cost a bit though. It’s playable, but it does feel a bit frustrating to not be able to properly combo things together due to energy costs being so incredibly high.

I’d rate the support for Guild Wars 2 among the best, if not the best in the industry. I accidentally skinned my Sunrise way back when, after having purchased a weapon skin from the Gem Store and being in the middle of dying my armor. I didn’t notice I had double clicked the GS skin item which then skinned my Sunrise when I accepted my dye colors. I quickly got help with restoring it to its “pristine” condition by Support replacing the “ruined” one with a new one and destroying the old one. Absolutely love them for this to this day. (I don’t like seeing “Transmuted” on my Legendary items. I’m weird, sure, but they helped me fix what was otherwise quite frustrating to me.) Every time I’ve been in need of help, I have gotten support within 24 hours.

I vote for the color of ice. It’s achieved with a combination of infusions granted. I basically wanted a fire and ice theme, since Revenant applies Burn and Chill quite frequently. I quite enjoy how he turned out, but it’s a bummer it won’t show up in Structured and anywhere else in PvE where your infusion effects are turned off for whatever reason. I like the “Groot” face for this theme, as it almost makes it feel as if I am playing a new race.

Renegade is indeed pretty much a slice of the Ritualist from Guild Wars. I don’t hate that.

Why not at some point go over World vs. World and rather make it a Faction vs. Faction system where players sign up with factions such as the Kurzick, Luxons and a third faction, and the server portion of WvW is phased out? Will there be potential landslides, yes; but that’s already happening.

(You can read bolded words for short and concise feedback.)

Renegade has a few very problematic bugs, one of which makes the entire legend’s utilities unreliable for use in all game modes because you can’t rely on them not being the victim of a “No valid path to target.” message at any given time. I have recorded a short clip to demonstrate this here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llctr_10b50

The Brutal Momentum trait seems to have some sort of issue with Rolling Mists in the Invocation trait line. I saw my Critical Chance shoot up to 100% as it should while under the effect of Fury, for a split second before it would drop to 70%, then when combat ended, it would drop to 30%, and a few moments after pop up to 60%. It felt all over the place.

The Blood Fury trait which should provide a Bleed duration increase while under the effect of Fury didn’t seem to be working either.

Another issue comes with Seven Shot on the Short Bow, which will frequently not fire off several of the arrows, even if the terrain is seemingly perfectly flat. This can be seen in the following clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C4kOM3W2Xg (arrows 1-3 do not fire) and also in this example combo clip; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8847KBvhwrA (arrows 1, 2 and 4 do not fire).

On the notion of Seven Shot, it would be nice if you could aim the sweet spot in the same way you can when having set Ground Targeting to Instant (which may or may not be a bug. But it made the skill feel far nicer to use considering this is not a 1200 range weapon and enemies can close the distance needed for it to be optimal (when it doesn’t bug out) in mere moments, making the skill somewhat useless very quickly). Renegade does not have a short Immobilize, which could alleviate the problem too.

Citadel Bombardment felt pretty inconsistent in its ability to apply damage to targets. I never find the opportunity to use it in any sort of rotation, which is somewhat sad considering how cool it is. It is just way too energy hungry to use.

In fact all of the Renegade’s skills and utilities does feel as if they have a slight bit too high energy cost tied to them. It’s a constant energy starvation when playing Renegade, which just doesn’t feel as nice as when playing with any of the other weapons and legends.

PS: The heal feels rather.. in lack of better words, garbage. If it scales well, that doesn’t help condition and power builds. It just makes it awkward. Also not sure I like that the stun breaker is on it, though I can understand the difficulty of putting it elsewhere.

I don’t even know if having allies in front of the arrows matter, but it clearly has issues even on flat terrain as can be seen in this short clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C4kOM3W2Xg — there should be no reason for half the arrows to be gobbled up by the mists, but they still are. Same thing occurs in this example combo clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8847KBvhwrA — one could be inclined to believe that this behavior might be due to what you are saying, friendly models blocking the shots; e.g, in that short clip, my Mini Molten Destroyer and Razorclaw taking away arrows 1, 2 and 4 respectively. But when looking at the first clip showcasing half the arrows just not appearing, the Mini Molten Destroyer is standing on the side where the arrows are manifested. It seems to be more related to weird terrain behavior. Or, well, the skill is simply bugged. As are the “No valid path to target.” behavior of all the Utility skills as can be seen here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Llctr_10b50 — that latter issue makes the Elite Specialization highly unreliable until it is fixed.

I think Renegade is better than many players are giving it credit for, even if it’s buggy right now. It’s not perfect, it’s energy hungry, but still; it’s easy to test out some combos in the Mists. And sure, these are under perfect conditions against easy AI, but it shows you can in rapid succession perform more or less by the book what I wrote out, without it being just a “theorycrafters dream”. Look at the ticks, look at the cluster of conditions that would need to be cleansed and consider how easy they are to re-apply (you could obviously Legend swap and weapon swap to re-apply conditions with Mallyx), and look at the speed of which they are applied. Can they be avoided, obviously, otherwise it’d be completely broken. But can you condi-burst someone with Renegade? Likely. The more of your allies are nearby the stronger you are. Renegade is in my eyes obviously meant to be a spec that thrives with team mates. It’s not a duelist. Let your team mates knock someone down and then seal their fate with a burst of conditions.

Here’s an example; https://youtu.be/8847KBvhwrA

To repeat myself yet again, I was mainly talking about the specialization in regards to PvE (and yet again; skills can be balanced differently in PvP and PvE — as in, the Bleeds may last twice as long in PvE for all we know), though it can function for PvP too (WvW perhaps more so than Structured). Oh, and if you want, you can set your targeting to Instant and re-position the sweet spot for Seven Shot to actually hit targets up close (with the bonus being that some arrows tends to double dip the target).

PS: I realize I should perhaps have used a different AI than the Ranger in the example, but you can go do the same exact combo yourself on any of the AI in the Mists, the results won’t be vastly different. The repeated Cripple makes it somewhat easy to keep your personal distance and for Icerazor to finish attacking. When enemies close on you, swap to the melee weapon set. In PvE, the Cripple is not of importance, it’s the amount of Bleeds Icerazor can apply being as he is an extension of us, the player. I can also understand why they went with Cripple over Chill, as to not need to mess with Abyssal Chill, giving it an ICD that would make it harder to burst out Torment with other skills on other weapon sets and a certain legend.

CutesySylveon.8290:

While I haven’t tested this myself, if Renegade is more useful on a power build, when it was specifically built to be a condi/support spec, then that just proves that the spec is an absolute failure from the devs intended. I can see the reason for trying to pull some light from all the doom and gloom Renegade was, but this isn’t helping. If anything it’s making it worse.

What.. in the world.. are.. you.. even.. on about? Just because it’s got a good duality with being functional in both a Power and Condition build, it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily more useful in one over the other. That means it’s well designed. Condition Renegade is quite strong from a PvE perspective, and not absolutely terrible for PvP either. The combination of dropping Razorclaw at your feet while tossing Icerazor (who will pummel the enemy 20x with Vulnerability and Cripple and gain the effect of adding Bleeds due to him being an extension of the Renegade) over by your target followed by a quick Seven Shot (every arrow that connects adds a stack of Bleeds, for up to 7 stacks together with 7 stacks of Torment) followed by Bloodbane Path/Scorchrazor to a Spiritcrush or switching to Mallyx and Mace/Axe is quite devastating. It’s not a weak Elite Specialization for Conditions. Toss in Orders from Above to restore your cooldowns a bit faster for additional skill usage. Obviously, against a player, you may want to connect Scorchrazor before you do Seven Shot, etc.; there’s a good chunk of alternative ways you can throw these things out. Razorclaw at your (and/or your team members) feet is going to be huge though. Also, for PvE purposes, do not forget the skill split between PvP and PvE. There will likely be more damage in PvE.

What Renegade needs is huge bug fixes though. The “No valid path to target.” is inexcusable and completely broken when it means you can’t use your Utility skills whatsoever on top of (certain) WvW walls and bridges, on top of certain terrain and so on forth. It’s horrible, and I can’t even fathom how they have let that one slide. Seven Shot needs serious fixing too. Several of the arrows never basically spawn, because it for some reason on perfectly flat terrain still seems to think it’s blocked (https://youtu.be/0C4kOM3W2Xg). It’s also extremely cumbersome to use in narrow areas, so that skill as-is can use some dev work to make it functional in more scenarios than just big open areas. I also find that I never ever have energy enough for Citadel Bombardment, which on top of that isn’t surefire to connect, it’s RNG, so that could use some energy cost reduction or at least become more reliable in its damage. It’s currently not feeling worth it to use it, as it costs way too much for little payoff when you can use way more skills and pump out way more damage in a shorter time than the skill takes to play out its animation.

Oh, and the heal is of course junk. Most of us seem to agree on that. Maybe it scales well with Healing Power, but that feels like a weird design choice if so. It’s fairly terrible with Condi/Power builds. Not a fan of the Stun break being on it either. Not entirely sure where else they could move it though; Darkrazor?

Burtnik.5218:

As fun as it sounds i still basically play rev “without” wep swap where i have hammer but basically never use it on duels and yet i kitten using s/s only which proves that wep swap wasnt needed at all.

That proves you don’t weapon swap and perhaps that you aren’t optimizing by swapping between things such as Sw/Sw to Sw/A, Sw/Sh or otherwise. I can play any class without weapon swapping. That doesn’t mean I am being as effective as I can be.

Artim.5139:

Actually, the bleed summon does apply bleeding buff to both Icerazor and the dazer. you have to stand in the buff but yeah I have stacked a little over 15000 damage ticks with all three up.

But I do believe your character has to be standing in the bleed buff for all of them to get the buff.

Ah, so I weren’t crazy. I thought my summons did apply the Bleed, but then I were using the bow and it weren’t doing it. I didn’t think about it being me standing in the area of effect from Razorclaw previously. So yeah, that is a big boon to them I guess. Definitely helps when swapping from Mallyx to Kalla. That’s potentially the go-to for the duration of being stuck in Kalla’s stance before swapping back to Mallyx again; Razorclaw, Icerazor, continue the rotation, swap to Mallyx, EtD, rotation, swap, rinse repeat.

Edit; Ok, so with a bit more testing I realize that you can summon Razorclaw at your own feet at range, and then Icerazor/Darkrazor by an enemy, and they will apply the Bleed stacks together with yourself at range although they are not within Razorclaw’s area of effect. The summons are basically extensions of you. This makes them far more interesting to me, as this opens up for a bit of play in both ranged and melee range. It’s also worth noting that for Seven Shot, every arrow hit applies the Bleed effect, so that’s 7 stacks right away when paired with Razorclaw.

I wouldn’t say nothing works well. The summons will be pretty good for PvE content such as Fractals and Raids I reckon. The bleed on attacks that other players apply to targets seems to take your condition damage and duration into consideration, as it is you who gets to see the stacks tick for damage, so people can do what they do, while you get even more stacks of bleeding out of them attacking. The new Elite is also quite good for bursts.

I do wish the bleed summon would actually apply that effect to the other summons that attacks though. That’d make for some interesting synergy between the two that attacks and the bleed applying one. (They do apply it as long as the Renegade is standing in Razorclaw’s area of effect.)

I also find some of the bow skills to be interesting, and there’s definitely synergy to be had there. Our F4 additionally applies Alacrity on demand so that we can repeat a few higher damage skills more frequently, which can also be helpful with Mace/Axe as well as other skills. I’m excited to try this out in PvE.

Note that there is synergy between the cripple summon and the fact that the bow is a ranged weapon as well. You can kite easier thanks to that and that is definitely helpful for Seven Shot (even if that skill is very bugged and several shots just disappear even on flat surfaces). Oh, and it’s very nice that you can use several bow skills while not even facing the target, since they are shot through portals that appear at your target. Love that.

There’s clearly a bug with our critical chance traits in Invocation and Renegade, as I see it briefly hit 100% before it drops to 70%, then out of combat it will for a while dip down to 30% before it goes back up to 60% — it’s all over the place.

Energy cost for a lot of the skills feels a bit steep, but overall I find them to be fairly alright. I do wish Razorclaw would actually affect the other summons without he player needing to stand in the field though, as from what I’ve tested now, the bleed does not get applied by the other guys if you’re not within the range of Razorclaw. It’d also be nice if Darkrazor would eat projectiles so it could be used for other purposes than dazing. It’s a semi-great stomp tool though, as it will interrupt most attacks a downed player can do when dropped on top of them.

Utility skills also needs a serious bug fix; it will say there’s no valid path to target, even if it’s on perfectly flat ground. That is game breaking bad, as you can’t use it on tower walls in WvW, on bridges anywhere, and so on forth. It doesn’t really help that they are killable. It’s Mesmer all over again for WvW. The summons will get destroyed before they can do anything due to the zerg.

The heal is quite honestly just terrible, the initial heal is weak, and the regenerative effect is basically stationary Regen that can be killed. And why on earth would they put a stun break on the freaking heal! Waste the heal at high health to break CC (or swap legends if you use the Invocation line)?

Liking the F2-F4 skills, though I think Bombardment could do with a energy cost reduction. Maybe bring it down to 35, or even 30. It’s hard to use it in any reasonable fashion, and it’s an amazing skill that takes on the effect of ANY legendary weapon wielded in the main hand. Throwing a barrage of Bolts is kinda funny. Shooting rainbows of death with Bifrost is just so stupid it’s brilliant. Juggernaut is almost lewd. I’d like to use this skill more, but it costs too much.

Sevenshot bugs out often, seems to be terrain related, as per usual, and will sometimes only fire 2-3 arrows even on flat surfaces with the remaining ones disappearing in the mists. Other than that I enjoy the Bow skills somewhat more now that I’ve played a bit with the spec.

Overall, I’m quite certain this will push the Condi Revenant up on the DPS ladder, with my Bleeds now reaching 10k in Structured without buffs and ideal equipment. It’ll be interesting to see how far this will push us once we get to toy around with it in PvE.

My bad, right, didn’t think about Karl just dropping his health. Saw now that it doesn’t do that. The elite isn’t bad. Renegade does feel clunky though, and it costs a whole lot to use skills. The trait line helps a lot for the condition specs at least.

I’m a bit worried when I see that the Elite actually puts you at ONE health. That practically means you can never use it in PvP, and it’s going to be incredibly dangerous to use in PvE. Not a fan. That just seems like a recipe for the downed state every time you use it. In PvP it’s like a “I surrender” button I guess. People can laugh at Revenant even more as they just give up. The enemy can see when it is summoned. The enemy can learn how long it takes before the 1 health state triggers. Not to forget that conditions exist. That sure feels like an Elite.. what are they thinking? I’m almost worried it does that to your allies too. Renegade will quickly be the most hated class in the game if that’s the case. Unless this is some sort of thing that can affect enemies as well (which would be equally as broken) by standing in the AoE circle and only trigger from that, then.. regardless, that Elite just seems stupid.

Edit: My bad, didn’t consider that Karl used dev hacks to lower his health to 1.

Never mind that; I decided I wanted a more Sylvari look for once, being as I am a Sylvari Revenant after all. I still use the Poly for the darkened effect and Ghostly for the blue flames and smoke, but I figured I’d take a screenshot of how I look in my Power version of the same gear combination. Just finished Eureka as well, though it’s not really shown here.

Tried to go for a dark “Mistwarden” theme.

I’m just happy there’s a set of armor I can earn to stats and Rune swap with, as mainly a Revenant player, with Revenant not being considered meta and the raiding community largely being a bunch of elitist meta slaves. Perhaps that’s a rude statement, but it’s based in truth, and you know it. If you aren’t playing x class, you aren’t welcome. No fun allowed, you are forced to play classes you aren’t that interested in playing if you want to partake. It’s all about min-maxing the class comp to the extreme and everyone’s a speedrunner.

It’s the exact kind of thing that makes people quit MMO games. They are blocked off from having fun and earning QoL rewards if they happen to enjoy one class over others. It’s one of the reasons why I stopped playing for closer to a year personally. The constant elitism in early raiding and established Fractals got tiring. I never got complaints directed at me mind you, that’s not what burnt me out, I had a static group; it just felt tiring to constantly need to be a part of the elitist click. The GW2 PvE community still wore me frustrated and made me start playing other games. Now the elitism is clearly even worse, I see there’s even DPS meters now.

Luckily with these recent changes, I have options to ignore this part of the game. And I’m a bit saddened that it needs to come to that, as I did enjoy raiding about a year ago and this is well, a part of the game that I feel I need to miss out on currently — but it is how it is; ArenaNet has not balanced the classes to be able to perform on an equal level. Some are better performers due to easy access to powerful conditions in the game, with raid bosses in situations being stationary and just standing in fields, and thus they are selected over everything else that can’t keep up. It was the same with all Warriors in dungeons.

This feels borderline impossible to achieve with a physical Revenant build. Staff is great for breaking the bar of course, but it is somewhat terrible for dealing any follow-up damage, plus it builds 5 stacks of damage resistance right away which is not ideal. Swapping over to Sword for damage dealing purposes after the stun can also only be done once in a blue moon when the frustrating condition that keeps increasing the cooldowns kicks in; so you can’t just swap back and forth to deal proper damage between stuns, plus a big part of physical Revenant DPS comes from the auto-attack which is also put on a cooldown. Mace is also kinda out of the question on a physical build. And while Hammer is good, it’s not ideal for this fight. The cooldowns become insane at 25 stacks, and the Alacrity buff it then applies doesn’t remotely help reducing the cooldowns enough to have skills available again, so you run around at a snails pace, trying to evade some attacks without being able to do anything at all. Breaking the bar only leaves a very small window to deal any sort of physical damage for that matter, making me feel as if this was designed purely for condition builds that can keep ticking after they’ve been applied. Why, ArenaNet?

It certainly doesn’t help that the Self-Doubt is using Sword and you will need to wait for it to have performed its Unrelenting Assault (which lets it evade) before you can break the bar. If you don’t wait for that, you risk wasting a valuable CC. I did that a couple of times before I learned my lesson. Ugh!

Kiting is also somewhat out of the question, mainly due to the higher stacks you get as time goes on, which also slows your movement, but also because the Self-Doubt has the aforementioned Sword weapon, which makes it use Precision Strike, afflicting you with Chilled status frequently, slowing you down, plus increasing your cooldowns..

Sword/Sword is kinda mediocre at breaking the bar, and going with an Axe off hand doesn’t really help much either. Using the Elite of the Dragon or Assassin stances is not really all too effective either, as it “only” does half the bar roughly.

This is honestly a horribly designed challenge that doesn’t seem to have been given proper thought (or testing) making sure that everyone can actually do it. I run a physical DPS build with my Revenant; all Ascended Berserker, Strength Runes, Force and Air Sigils, every slot has an +9 Infusion with +5 Precision — there’s ridiculous amounts of Gold invested in this set, but it feels impossible to use it for this challenge (just like it basically were impossible to use for the previous achievements in this mission, Precision Blade and Hold the Line.. I had to rely on cheesy tactics by exploiting that a certain friendly NPC can’t die and not engaging myself. That is not fun. That feels cheap, because it is; just as cheap as the insane damage increase the later waves had). I am certainly not having fun trying to get this achievement done. I am getting frustrated. Annoyed. I want to punch something, someone. The achievement is making me boil with anger.

Stuff like this makes me regret that I bought the new expansion. I can only imagine similarly terrible challenges that aren’t doable without specific classes and gear throughout the expansion areas. How fun that’ll be.. It makes me question why I returned to the game. I was frustrated on several occasions in the past before I took my rather long hiatus from the game. Why would it ever change. It’s gotten worse.

PS: I got the Self-Doubt to about 20%, a couple times. But the cooldowns at that point were all going to last for over FOUR minutes due to the condition and frequent Chill application, so the Alacrity at 25+ stacks practically doesn’t help at all. The Self-Doubt also deals higher damage and there is absolutely no way to kite it effectively. Being downed followed shortly thereafter. If the auto-attack weren’t put on a cooldown, then this would likely be doable, then I could at least get some proper burst done when stunning the Self-Doubt. But alas, it gets affected.

I imagined that most decent servers were capable of color coding their Commander tags. On our server, the following system seems to work fairly well;

Blue – Come join us at your own leisure, we welcome anyone, regardless of your PvP prowess. Come have fun. We want to help you become a better PvP player.
Purple – Guild group, avoid us unless we swallow our nonsensical pride and ask for backup should we require it to avoid our foes steaming over us.
Red – Small Objective Assault group of roamers that runs around taking camps, towers and so on forth. Depending on size, you may be welcomed to roam along.
Yellow – Objective scout looking for enemy forces, though these are excessively rare over the past year(s) I guess. There’s no need to gather at these guys, for obvious reasons.

I sure don’t miss the days of invisible call-target-“Commanders” (though some still do it that way), where you’d end up having a couple groups deciding to detour to the same objective, around the same time, and for one of these then to have wasted their time as they need to split off to find somewhere else to go. That’s the honorable thing to do in such a situation of course. That’s the unwritten World vs. Bro code. You don’t double dip. It’s been this way since ancient times. But.. hey, it’s annoying to find yourself in that situation. It’s unquestionably unorganized. Who likes wasting time? Kittenfurball me, it’s annoying as a solo roamer going for, e.g., a camp as well, because even then, you can be told to go away by some tense, worked up, hormonal (little) (wo)man that can’t even give you the chance to move elsewhere before they start firing their machine gun of virtual saliva, letting you know how unwelcome you are.

Now, I do of course understand that there are elitist Guilds out there that don’t wish for any other players to ever invade within their 9001 range vicinity. They wish to play solely together, for pride(!) and honor(!).. and renown(!)… uhm.. and reasons(!), thinking everyone who don’t bear their prestigious Punny Guild Name and [Tag] is a rally bot, and that their (frequent) losses are inevitably only caused because there was that one allied outsider (who perhaps didn’t even die) that happened to dare come near them as they were fighting their arch-nemesisesesesyllable-eh—ses and wiped. I get it, in that situation, it could perhaps have been nice to have invisible tags, because people will never stumble within your vicinity if you have invisi- oh, right. Well, at least there’d be no reason to verbally make people feel excluded.. wait, no, that would still happen.. there’d be.. I mean.. there are- there must be reasons… to have invisible tags, just give me a moment. I’ll think of some good ones.

Well, actually no.. I see no real reason for them. We have the ability to organize our maps now. And yes, there will of course be new players from time to time that has no knowledge of the color coded system, who start running alongside your precious Guild groups. But you know, sometimes someone just wish to jog alongside you because they are going to the same location as you, so.. you can perhaps wait a bit before you calmly explain the situation of the color coded system to them? If they in fact are following you, most players you explain things to calmly, are likely going to respect your wishes, listen and leave WvW if there are nobody else to follow. Because really now, why would we ever want more WvW players. It’s not as if a rise in popularity would actually make ArenaNet more interested in providing content for the game mode, right? Less players interested in partaking in an oft perceived elitist player environment, is probably the better path to pursue. We need invisible tags. We need less organization. We need more elitism!

Ok, I am being a bit hostile in my way of presenting the average WvW Guild. I do get it, we just want to run with our Guilds, and I see that as something perfectly respectable in all honesty. But still, if perhaps a few more Guilds would be interested in showing how good they really are at PvP, by changing their tag color to Blue if there are no “free-for-all” Commanders around, to allow these seemingly detrimental weights that are other players to tag along, the game mode could flourish a bit more. Asking for invisible tags is not in line with making the game mode attractive to develop for (beyond whatever they are doing to it in the coming months). Player interest will push for that, and people stop going into WvW if there are nobody to run around with. sPvP is more attractive than trying to solo roam since the WXP patch that made WvW into a zerg zone.

I get this all the time, sometimes during the week as well, but yes, it’s far worse on weekends. People not rotating. People that just die instantly. People who don’t assist. People who runs into a group one by one to feed them kills. People who fight off point. People who can’t communicate even the simplest things, not even before the match starts to say if they are going home/close, mid, etc. People who will when you say you are going home/close, follow you and stand on it, then move when you rotate to mid instead. People who never call targets. Argh!—Basically people who have no place being anywhere near Ruby and above.. and I feel as if I get penalized for it, because I practically always end up on the team with headless chickens, while the other team always has at least a duo queue, if not a trio or more. It’s seriously annoying. But then again, maybe it’s just me being terrible. The League system is obviously a display of my skill, right?

You are/had two Diamond, trying to play the system by grouping with a Emerald, the game saw you as highly favored to win, you barely won, you got no pips, the losing side should have lost no pips either if I recall the table data correctly. Working as intended.

Take a moment and visit the Signet of Humility wiki page. Familiarize yourself with the skills you will be having access too there, instead of panicking in-game pushing buttons and not knowing what to do.

You may notice that you can use Flee to evade some attacks, and it even sends you running a short distance if you wish to try create somewhat of an gap between you and your target(s). Perhaps to LoS around a corner, down a ledge, or otherwise.

You can use Screech to apply Weakness and lower the potential incoming damage coming your way. It’s not huge on range, but should serve its purpose.

See a field you can Combo Finisher: Leap from to gain something beneficial? Use Kick, besides using it to Cripple your target(s). You could use this before trying to Flee as well.

Or go on the offensive. Kick them, throw in a Screech, then Peck the kitten out of their hides before you Flee and Dodge for avoidance. And before you know it, you have dealt them some damage when they least expected it, and find yourself back out of the Moa form ready to curb stomp them and teach them that Moa is not such a easy thing to win with after all. If you got a buddy, practice in a empty Lobby with them.