Guild Wars 2

Tank/Healer build for Raids/Fractals, it’s probably going to be horrible.

I take Radiance only to share Wrath of Justice to my allies, which is nice if your group is oriented towards condition damage. Also Feel My Wrath! might not be necessary as I already have plenty of quickness access with aegis and Stand Your Ground!, Renewed Focus might be better or Mantra of Liberation if you’re against heavy CCs, Signet of Courage might be nice, if it wasn’t healing passively every 10 seconds, but every 3 seconds instead (with a decreased healing), it’d be even better.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNApeWnsADtDhVCBuCBEEhlBCDLDUCiTWBgpVBYfhGRvoA-jxxGQBTUJI5eCA0T9HCq8DAHCghs/QuOBAAA-e

Stice.5204:

First off, I think the assumption that 35k DPS is the minimum requirement for use as a DPS slot in a raid is pretty silly. Raids in GW2 aren’t so tightly balanced that the absolute highest possible DPS becomes a minimum requirement. Players often seem to take the view that “optimal” and “viable” mean the same thing but they really don’t.

Indeed. If your group is using safe tactics then having one or two dps dealing around 25k/30k is fine, it’s not going to be the fastest clear, but if the players are good they won’t have that much problem clearing the raids, though you’ll likely don’t receive much love if you want to pug.

Stice.5204:

Second, the soulbeast’s damage output with the greatsword will improve over the core ranger’s not just because of the extra ferocity and other passive stats and traits, but because they’ll be able to fill time waiting for the weapon swap cooldown with soulbeast abilities instead of having to use the awful greatsword autoattack (which is the main reason the ranger greatsword has such terrible DPS.) So they’re likely not going to be using the same rotation.

That’d be true if the skills given by the Beastmode were good, because as it stands right now only Worldly Impact deals good damage, and it has a 25 seconds cooldown and you cannot pet swap to another power pet to get a new one (cooldown seems to be shared by both pets), otherwise the other abilities deal so little damage is laughable, most of those skills deal between five to ten less damage compared to what the pet outside of Beastmode deals, when it should only be slightly inferior damage for the sake of balance.

I want Power Soulbeast to be a thing, but for that to happen they need to highly buff the pet skills in Beastmode, otherwise it’d be fun in open world but will never see the light of day in hardcore content.

I’ll begin by saying Renegade inherits the Revenant flaws, and to make the former fun to play they also need to fix the latter, recently a thread on reddit touched on some of the core Revenant issues and proposes interesting solutions.

I think every “f” abilities should consume Kalla’s Fervor for greater effects, it’d make Kalla’s Fervor much more interesting to use, as right now it’s a passive effect really easy to maintain.

Heroic Command - It should grant 2 might for every stack of Kalla’s Fervor consumed, the might lasting for 12 seconds. Alongside the energy cost should either be reduced from 20 to 15, or Heroic Command should restore 1 energy per stack of Kalla’s Fervor consumed.

Heroic Command becomes a more powerful group support ability and might compete with Phalanx Strength, Heroic Command being an active might generation with the drawbacks of losing all of your Kalla’s Fervor sacks and costing energy when Phalanx Strength is a passive might generation without much drawbacks. If you’ve Lasting Legacy trait-ed you’ll get 20 might lasting for 12 seconds every 10 seconds.

Citadel Bombardment - It should grant two missiles for every stack of Kalla’s Fervor consumed. Alongside the energy cost should go from 40 to 35.

Vindication - It needs changes because of the rework on Citadel Bombardment. It should grant 2 seconds of Retaliation for every missile damaging a foe, it’d have a synergy with Vicious Reprisal form the Retribution trait line.

Orders from Above - It should grant 1 second of alacrity for every stack of Kalla’s Fervor consumed.

Righteous Rebel - It needs changes because of the rework on Orders from Above. It should still increase the radius of Orders from Above by 120, and it should also affect 10 targets instead of 5. It’d allow for some great alacrity sharing in Raids and WvW.

Shortbow -

Sevenshot - It’s angle is too wide leading to most projectile missing in close to mid range, the angle should be reduced to have more compacted arrows.

Spiritcrush - Slow should be replaced by chill in order to allow the shortbow to synergize well with the Abyssal Chill trait.

Scorchrazor - Burning should go from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

Utilities

Overall I think the utilities are great, even though Breakrazor’s Bastion could use a buff on its healing capabilities, but my biggest reproach is the fact that those utilities are basically wells, but they also behave like phantasms, in the sense that they can be interrupted and killed, which means those utilities are going to be terrible in sPvP and WvW, as they have both the drawbacks of wells and phantasms, the former being easy to not stand inside and the latter being easy to cleave. Legendary Renegade Stance should only behave like wells and not have health pool.

Traits

Let me first tell you about how easy it’s to max Kalla’s Fervor, and how useless the traits (Wrought-Iron Will, Ashen Demeanor, Blood Fury, Ambush Commander) helping to max Kalla’s Fervor are because of that. Arguably if the “f” abilities would consume Kalla’s Fervor instead of refreshing the duration, those traits would become more useful, but the minor adept (Ambush Commander) would cover most of the Kalla’s Fervor application anyway.

Ambush Commander - Only grants Kalla’s Fervor when you critically strike, attacks from behind or the flanks increase the chance of critical strike by 5%. It’s only 5% because the trait is a minor adept, otherwise it’d be more powerful than the Ranger grandmaster minor Hunter’s Tactics.

Wrought-Iron Will - Increase the duration on Regeneration from 2 seconds to 4 seconds.

The grandmaster traits already have been looked into above, overall I like the other traits.

It depends on what you want to do if you want to go Condition then go Viper, if you want to go Power then go Berserker, as said above there is going to be a hybrid Condition/Power with Greaver, but I’d argue that a Power Soulbeast doesn’t need condition damage, because it’s going to almost never use condition, and a Condition Soulbeast doesn’t really need the Ferocity, but Greaver might be nice for WvW/sPvP and open world.

If they highly buff the Tome of Resolution for the Firebrand, then Druid might be replaced in some instances, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful about a tome buff, and even if it is buffed Druid will still bring more dps support with Glyph of Empowerment and Grace of the Land, I don’t take into account the Spirits and Spotter because a power Soulbeast would be able to carry those.

It’s very likely that the Druid (damage support + healing + burn sharing + protection) will outperform a Firebrand (quickness + healing + burn sharing + stability) and a Ventari/Herald (alacrity + healing + boon bot) or a Ventari/Renegade (alacrity + healing + bleed sharing + life steal).

I’ll toss some ideas:

Below 50% (level 1) skill unchanged – above 50% (level 2) small change – above 100% (level 3) change

Riffle

• Hip Shot – Level 2 – 5% damage increase / Level 3 – 10% damage increase
• Net Shot – Level 2 – Immobilize 3sec. / Level 3 – Immobilize 4sec.
• Blunderbuss – Level 2 – +1 Bleeding (for whatever range) / Level 3 – +2 Bleeding (for whatever range)
• Overcharged Shot – Level 2 – +50% Critical Hit / Level 3 – +100% Critical Hit
• Jump Shot – Level 2 – Range 900 / Level 3 – Range 1000

Pistol

• Fragmentation Shot – Level 2 – Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (35% chance) / Level 3 – Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (50% chance)
• Poison Dart Volley – Level 2 – Additional Darts: 1 / Level 3 – Additional Darts: 2
• Static Shot – Level 2 – + Weakness 2sec. / Level 3 – + Weakness 4sec.
• Blowtorch – Level 2 – + Fire Aura 2sec. / Level 3 – + Fire Aura 4sec.
• Glue Shot – Level 2 – + Boon Removed: 1 / Level 3 – + Boon Removed: 2

Shield

• Magnetic Shield – Level 2 – + Retaliation 4sec. / Level 3 – + Retaliation 6sec.
• Static Shield – Level 2 – Duration + ½sec. / Level 3 – Duration +1sec.

I’m not going to do the Harpoon Gun, but it also needs to beneficiate from heat, and the Sword should be slightly buffed, especially the core damage and Refraction Cutter:

• Refraction Cutter – Level 2 – Additional Blades: 4 (in a cone in front of the holosmith) / Level 3 – Additional Blades: 8 (in an AoE around the holosmith)

I don’t think the longbow should pierce without having Lead the Wind trait-ed, but I think Lead the Wind should be slightly buffed as right now it’s always better to take Remorseless or Predator’s Onslaught.

Lead the Wind attack speed increase should go from 10% to 25% (or even 30%). With a 30% increase in attack speed Long Range Shot would have a cast time of almost ½sec. instead of ¾sec., and Rapid Fire cast time would go from 2½sec. to 1¾sec. It’d make the longbow an even more fast attacking weapon as it should be.

After trying a bit more Soulbeast during the stress test I think there should be an incentive to going in and out of beastmode, otherwise we’ll just become Warriors and stay in beastmode 95% of the time.

I think the statistics increase from beastmode should carry over for 5 seconds after leaving beastmode, in order to make using the pet not so punishing, there is also the need for the pet condition scaling issue to be fixed, because since 2012 when a pet inflicts conditions, those conditions scale on the pet statistics, but if you swap (or go beastmode), those conditions will scale on nothing, which means a condition Soulbeast doesn’t want to go out of beastmode to use the F2 to quickly go back to beastmode, because the pet’s condition will scale on the lowest level possible.

After trying a bit more Soulbeast during the stress test I think there should be an incentive to going in and out of beastmode, otherwise we’ll just become Warriors.

I think the statistics increase from beastmode should carry over for 5 seconds after leaving beastmode, in order to make using the pet not so punishing, there is also the need for the pet condition scaling issue to be fixed, because since 2012 when a pet inflicts conditions, those conditions scale on the pet statistics, but if you swap (or go beastmode), those conditions will scale on nothing, which means a Soulbeast doesn’t want to go out of beastmode to use the F2 to quickly go back to beastmode, because the condition will scale on nothing.

Power – Smokescale + Rock Gazelle (eventually in sPvP you may want Red Moa for the extra heal or Drakehound for the knockdown in Beastmode).

Ok, but I’m not talking about the legendary backpack, I’m talking about the ascended backpack hence the examples of ascended trinkets. The thing is sPvP is a rather good way to get ascended gear for cheap without having to tediously farm winterberries, but the ascended backpack not having access to all of the stats, unlike the ascended trinkets, is quite puzzling.

While Mist Band, Mist Pendant, and Mist Talisman have access to all statistics (including HoT and Season 3 ones), the Wings of Ascension only has access to core Guild Wars 2 stats, is there any reason for that. I’d also like to know if the PoF stats are going to be introduced for PvP armors/trinkets (…) and of course the Wings of Ascension.

Speed of Sand - It seems they added Super Speed to cover the fact that dodge can’t be used for mobility as a Mirage, but it also makes the minor grandmaster lackluster. It should have another effect such as +15%/20% Boon Duration while under Super Speed in order to keep the Vigor from Nomad’s Endurance up longer. The rework on Speed of Sand also improves Renewing Oasis among other traits.

Self-Deception - It should summon a Clone no matter what, but in return should have an internal cooldown around 3sec., because right now it lacks a lot compared to Chronophantasma, which has the same idea of illusion sustainably behind, but with Phantasm. With Jaunt you’ll have an easy access to Clones, and it’d also make Infinite Horizon better because the dilemma between keeping your Clones alive and Shattering them would be less hard.

Shards of Glass - I’m not a fan of being forced to move in a position which may be compromised in order to get something important, it’s the same issue with the healing fragments on Ventari and the Aegis on Fragments of Faith. Shattering should give Ambush, or create a Mirror in front of the Mirage, and this trait should have an internal cooldown around 5sec instead of using chance.

The other traits are either fine or the reworks above enhance some of them, for instance the new Self-Deception would fix Infinite Horizon.

BadSanta.6527:

as we know anet sick em going to be nerf ( sadly the only use of soul beast here was the merg with gizzrala and f3 and the sick em )

Do you have any official statement about that, because Sic’Em in Beatsmode is one of the funniest thing to have and gave me hope to be able to play Zerk Soulbeast in PvE, if it has to be nerf it should only be in sPvP.

I think the best option would be to start with 100% energy instead of 50% energy, as I stated on another thread, mainly because it would give more option when engaging and legend swapping, it’d also need some slight increase in energy cost for some skills in order to balance the change.

It’d greatly enhance the gameplay of some of the legends, for instance the current rotation for Shiro is to use Impossible Odds and then let your character auto-attack for few seconds until you can legend swap, it’s far from being compelling, but if you’d start with 100% energy you might want to use Phase Traversal to boost your next attack damage, and Grasping Shadow to have a small damage burst, because you’d have more energy so more freedom to create combos; one could argue that with 100% energy Shiro would still use Impossible Odds then auto-attack, but if you do so your legend swap would recharge before your energy reaches 0%, so you’d want to use all of your energy before legend swap and you’d want to legend swap as often as possible, therefore using Phase Traversal + Grasping Shadow wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Nevertheless having 100% from the beginning would also unbalance some legends, for instance Mallyx is already quite a strong legend for condition damage, so Mace skills would need to have an increased energy cost, it obviously needs testing, but Searing Fissure and Echoing Eruption should go from 5 energy to 8 energy, and Banish Enchantment from 20 energy to 30 energy, there are also plenty of skills which would need to have a slight increase energy cost, I’m not going to do them all because without testing it’s hard to give good numbers.

Always starting a fight with 100% energy cost would also make some traits such as Charged Mists more relevant, as you’d more often go above 50% energy which means the trait would trigger more time, and traits such as Equilibrium might actually trigger the above threshold effect which means you’ll need to be aware of your energy in order to trigger the damage or the heal, right now as you’re more often below 50% you always get the heal. Moreover I think Charged Mist should also have a second passive, because selfish might is not something the Revenant direly needs, particularly if you play with Glint, so when you weapon swap you’d gain 15% energy back + might when dropping below the 50% energy threshold, it’d make the grandmaster traits harder to choose for dps/condition builds as Roiling Mists gives you increase critical chance when under fury and Charged Mists gives you might sustain and more flexibility.

I’d rather see an overall buff where Revenant starts combat with 100% energy rather than with 50%, I mean energy is sort of like mana, in which game do you start a fight with half your mana and no potion, do thieves start with half initiative, besides energy grows so slowly a player will never exceed 50% once in combat which also makes traits like Charged Mist rather useless, this trait should also grant a faster recharge rate for energy with eventually the drawback of having longer cooldown for utilities.

The Firebrand needs at least four things to be viable compared to a Druid:

• No activation time for tomes in order to have the same level of reactivity as Druids, or even Ventari.
• Resolve and Courage cooldowns should be reduced to respectively 20/25sec. and 40/45sec. in order to have a healing burst capability as often as Druids.
• Resolve should have a blast finisher (should probably be Azure Sun), just like Celestial Avatar as one.
• Radiant Recovery (Resolve’s second skill) should have a reduce cast time around ½ or ¾.

Reworking the pages and the top line traits would also help.

Then core Guardian should have some buffs, there is already a discussion about Signet of Courage, it should at least tick more often with a larger radius and a decreased heal, and some traits like the new Perfect Inscription should also be buffed, currently you can share your signet passive for 8sec, it should be around 10 or 12sec.

It’s easy you either make it like Soothing Mist, x heal ticking every 3 secs, or Virtue of Resolve passive, y heal ticking each second, in both case with a radius of 600, the current one being 300, added to that a lowered cast time from 2½ to 1¾, and we’d have a healing utility worthwhile.

I made a post on the official Feedback thread, so I’ll post it here to keep the discussion going.

Alright, I’ll try to give a more a balanced view compared to my posts on other threads, which ask for heavy rework.

Firebrand

• There are a lot of discussions out there about mantras, so I’ll try to summarize the thoughts on them. Cones are fine for offensive mantras, as you need to immobilize or impair the movement of your opponents to use them correctly, in return those offensive mantras are quite powerful, and I like that. The issue comes when you’ve supportive mantras, and four out of six mantras are support oriented, because you cannot control the movement of your allies, and in modes such as PvP/WvW your allies will spread out and constantly move, which makes cones impractical, while in PvE you’ll also have situations where you allies are spread out, such as some raid bosses, therefore mantras are really underwhelming support capabilities. In consequence I think having AoE instead of cones would make more sense for such supportive mantras.

• Tomes shouldn’t have activation time, just like Celestial Avatar/Photon Forge/Shroud (…), because the Firebrand cannot react quickly enough to threats, harming its support potential, and it also makes the Firebrand too vulnerable to CCs.

• Tome of Resolve and Tome of Courage cooldowns should be reduce to make Firebrand exist as a support compared to the low cooldown of Celestial Avatar. Tome of Justice should keep its 30 seconds cooldown as it’s very powerful, and because Renewed Justice reset the cooldown on kills, Tome of Resolve should have a 20 seconds cooldown as it would be more in line with the other skill swapping support ability of the game, Celestial Avatar with its 10 seconds cooldown, Tome of Courage should have a 35 seconds (eventually a 40 seconds) cooldown as it’s otherwise too long to be relevant.

• Tome of Resolve feels a bit weak, even if it gets a cooldown reduction, you should consider reducing the second chapter (Radiant Recovery) casting time, one second cast time for a condition remover is too high particularly when considering most condition remover have a ½ or a ¾ cast time, Nefarious Favor doesn’t even have one and could be considered as powerful as Radiant Recovery. Another issue with the Tome of Resolve is the lack of blast finisher to synergies with Shining River, unlike the Celestial Avatar which has Lunar Impact to blast Rejuvenating Tides, as it stand right now you need your allies to blast for you, which isn’t great. Edit: Azure Sun should be a blast finisher

• Legendary Lore is responsible for some really powerful synergy, but I think they’re too powerful. As it’s right now the Tome of Justice throw too many burning stacks at its opponents, and one reason is because of the extra burning brought by Legendary Lore, I think the extra burning should be replace by slow or cripple, in order to keep the enemies in melee. Also aegis on every skills used by the Tome of Courage is bonkers, particularly with Pure of Heart, I’d rather see protection instead, and give aegis on tome skills such as Stalwart Stand, and the Unbroken Lines lasting longer (8 seconds) to compensate the lack of protection without the trait.

• Pages accompanied with the long cooldowns of tomes are leading to some awkward behaviors, because stowing your tomes means going into huge cooldown you want to keep them activated until all of your pages are gone, even though you won’t need your tome immediately, but if you stow to go back to your weapon rotation then you won’t have your tome when you might need it, therefore you want to keep your tome activated waiting for the opportunity to use your last pages, which means you’ll do nothing while waiting as you don’t have access to your weapons skills and your utilities might not have a use while waiting, this is clunky. One solution would be to reduce cooldowns as suggested above, but even though pages would remain a clunky mechanic.

• [Heavy Rework] Another solution would be to have the tomes cooldowns taking into account the number of pages left, if you have a lot of pages left your cooldown is going to be very low (as low as the cooldown on an Elementalist attunement) but if you used all of your pages then the cooldown is going to be high, in return the skills need to have different page costs, otherwise player will spam the most powerful skill carelessly, and as the skill cost goes up the number of pages also need to increase, otherwise you won’t be able to make hard choices, such as using low page cost skills to have your tome back faster or using high page cost skills to be more impactful, it’s basically how Initiative works for the Thief weapon skills, and it’s how pages should work if you want them to be meaningful.

The more I play Firebrand the more I think Tomes should basically be Kits, no activation time, no pages, with eventually ammunitions for some skills, higher cooldown for tome skills, and no cooldown for tomes themselves.

The first Chapters (Searing Spell, Desert Bloom, and Unflinching Charge) would have ammunitions for a purely balance purpose, while the other skills would get higher cooldown.

Virtues passives are heavily affected by those changes, each one of them would go down when using a tome and would remain down few seconds after leaving the tome, Justice would go down for 20 seconds, Resolve for 35 seconds, and Courage for 75 seconds, using a tome during this time would freeze the cooldown but not reset it, visually when your passives are down you’d see a similar cooldown as the ammunition cooldown. The Loremaster traits would allow in return to retain the passives outside of the use of tomes.

[I can also see how Tomes might be too strong if they’re basically Kits, therefore I can also see them having low cooldown similar to Attunement, which would look like something like this: Justice 8 seconds, Resolve 12 seconds, Courage 15 seconds. This change also allows for Power of the Virtuous (Virtues trait line) to be useful as it’d reduce the cooldown on tomes.]

Mantras oriented towards support should be AoE, otherwise they’ll be useless in sPvP and awkward to use in PvE/WvW, with rather good range. However mantras oriented towards the offense such as Mantra of Flame should remain cones, but their angle and range should be slightly buffed.

The Firebrand is nice on paper, but awful to play. It’s simple, you want to play as a support in PvP go Tempest healer or Druid healer, because both can reliably heal with smaller cooldown overall on major healing and have larger AoEs. The Firebrand suffers the same fate as Ventari in PvP, your allies keep moving everywhere while fighting, as they should, which means you can’t effectively use your support abilities as they have cone effects.

The tomes are a nightmare to use because the cast time means you can be interrupted before doing anything useful, it also means you can’t reliably panic heal/cleanse, and the fact that after using your tomes they go into a huge cooldown also means you won’t have most of your support abilities (the major ones at least) before 40 to 60 secs. There is also the issue of having the same cooldown on tomes activation no matter the number of pages you used, if I use 2 pages why should I have the same cooldown as using 5 pages, in a similar way why the first skills cost the same amount of pages as the last skills, clearly more powerful, it doesn’t make any sense, and totally cripples support capabilities, as you’re better off waiting for the most powerful to be available again, which means you’re waiting doing nothing because you can’t swap to your weapons while waiting without the tomes going into cooldown, unlike engineer’s kit, it’s awful.

The Firebrand would reach a somehow useful state if we had healing + concentration stats in PvP. Also worth considering the staff is not a good weapon, even worse with the auto-attack nerf, but it’s one you’ll need nonetheless to play support.

In PvE the support Firebrand doesn’t have a better fate, Druid is clearly better as it has access to heals every 10 secs compared to the 40/45 secs of the Tome of Resolve, as for quickness sharing the Chronomancer is still better and also brings alacrity to the party, even a condition build seems doom as Firebrand can’t reliably keep a high number of burning stacks, and it’s pretty much the only condition Guardian have access to, so cPS, cRanger, and cEngineer are better choices.

What the Firebrand needs is no activation cast time for tomes, pages working similarly to initiative and tome skills similarly to thief weapon skills, in return having no cooldown for tomes, or a small cooldown similar to attunement, and eventually nerfing some skills to balance the changes, just to make the gameplay smother and less of a pain. Supportive mantras, 4 out of 6 mantras are oriented towards support btw, should have AoEs, with at least a 240 range, and I’m fine with offensive mantras having cone effects as you can always CCs your foes. Traits-wise don’t force me to take Virtues to make tomes viable, I’d rather run Honor/Radiance or Honor/Valor.

To add more to my post, the players are going to use the tomes for one or two abilities then go back to their weapon rotation, to return to the tomes shortly after, no matter what build you play. Obviously tomes cannot be engineer kits, it’d way too strong, and should be limited by pages and cooldown on abilities, but certainly not by tome cooldown and tome casting activation.
I think the best option would be for pages to work similarly to the thief initiative, so let’s say firebrand have 12 pages, and each tome skill and tome activation as the following cost (numbers are here to give you a feel of scale):
Tome Skills: 1 = 1 / 2 = 3 / 3 = 4 / 4 = 6 / 5 = 8
Tome Activation: Justice = 2 / Resolve = 3 / Courage = 4
Then your pages replenish naturally one pages per second, and the Loremaster trait increase the number of pages to 15 and gives access to virtue passives when you’re using the tomes. With the abilities still having their cooldown it wouldn’t be too powerful, though those cooldown might need to be increased.

Arnath.2319:

Tomes should never be like Kits. Tomes are meant to be cooldowns we use in intense situations, not swapped in and out as a weapon replacement.

Then you’ll never use Tome of Resolve and Tome of Courage in PvP, except to have stability before a finisher or to panic heal, and you’ll never use them in hardcore PvE because Druid, and even Ventari, are doing a better job than you.

Arnath.2319:

Why should the Firebrand be good at both condi and support? That is how balance problems are created.
I would much rather have a strong condi guard with no support then a weak condi guard with weak support. The ‘jack of all trades master of none’ thing is horrible class design.

Well because the Firebrand is obviously designed to have both support capacities (heal/boon sharing/burn sharing) and to enhance condition build, as someone said above the Firebrand lacks focus it fulfills two roles and his both focused around melee while having range skill on his tomes.

Clunky is the word.

I understand why they went for cone attacks, but without ground indication it’s really hard to see where you’re going to hit, it’s even worse for support abilities because you can easily end up missing your spell, which is really bad for a support, and in PvP cone attacks are horrendous to use against allies because they’re constantly moving, unlike foes you cannot immobilize them. The 300 range is also ridiculous, just like the auto-attack nerf for the “lootstick”, again doesn’t make for a great support ability.

The Tomes should behave more like Engineer kits, and less like the former elite Tomes. The cast time is quite bad for support, particularly if you need to cleanse or heal quickly an ally, compared to the Druid or Ventari which can quickly achieve those tasks. The cooldown for each Tome should also take into account the number of page used, if I use 2 pages to quickly cleanse and heal an ally it shouldn’t have the same cooldown as using 5 pages or 8 pages, once again it totally cripples support abilities because I can use my healing Tome early on in the fight but it’s going to lock it for 35 secs or more, or I need to remain in the Tome stance even though I don’t need it right now but I’ll need it later, which is even worse, compared to Druid/Ventari it’s just bad. The pages mechanic while being cool might also being the one to blame here, I’d like to see higher cooldown for tome abilities but no pages, just like a kit, or more pages in general, but some abilities such as the fourth and fifth using more pages, in return increasing the cooldown for the use of tomes as discussed above.

As a condition build Firebrand is quite good, but as a support it’s clearly too clunky to be efficient at its job.

My thoughts on HoloSmith for Condition builds in PvE -

You take HoloSmith instead of Tools, as this line give little damage overall but you’ll have to leave behind that sweet stamina regeneration, then you take Prime Light Beam instead of the Mortar, because PLB has a fire field which is better than the Mortar’s poison field but you’ll have to leave behind the extra healing from the Mortar, and you (probably) take Laser Disk instead of Grenades, because LD seems to apply more bleeding than the Shrapnel Grenade but you’ll have to leave behind the Poison Grenade.
Taking the HoloSmith specialization will also apparently remove your elite’s tool bet, as we take PLB it doesn’t matter, but you’ll get access to five new skills from the Photon Forge, one of them (Photon Blitz) giving apparently eight stacks of burning.
As for traits you want to take Solar Focusing Lens because it give more burning, then Crystal Configuration: Storm, which synergize well with some traits from Explosives, and the grandmaster is probably going to be Photonic Blasting Module because it’ll reduce the risk of overheating for you, give you extra burning, and won’t deactivate Heat Therapy and Laser’s Edge when overheated.
Otherwise you take the same stats/weapons than the current Condition Engineer, and rotation wise you might want to charge your overheat above 50% in order to trigger Laser’s Edge (+15% damage increase) and allow LD and PLB to be used at the maximum of their capacity.

In PvP I can see HoloSmith be quite good with Alchemy as it gives more defensive traits such as Prismatic Converter and Crystal Configuration: Eclipse, and Thermal Release Valve may have an interesting synergy with Tools’ trait increasing stamina regeneration.

HoloSmith isn’t as sexy as Weaver on the paper but I think it’s going to do the job just right. And regarding the original post, yes gadgets have been (partially) useless since release, and turrets were useful for a short period of time (an era of boringness I must say) before being nerfed into oblivion, though you still use Overcharged Shot in the Static Discharge build (admittedly a rare sight those days). Which makes half of the engineer skills sort of useless, but that’s an issue for core engineer and specializations have nothing to do with it.

I’m currently stuck in the collection because I can’t make the event progress toward the Branded Devourer Queen, which I need to kill to get one ingredient.
I don’t know if the event is bugged when “The Sentinels at Brandwatch Encampment are preparing to assault the Brand”, or if it simply take ages for the event to start, either way it’s awful I have been afking the place for 40 minutes now and nothing.
Is it possible to allow players to start the event by talking to a npc in order to overpass that issue.

More generally I have been really disappointed by this final tier, most of the tasks ask you to wait for an event (I waited 35 min for the Queen Wasp to spawn), to wait for an event to fail, to wait for an event to have the proper amount of people to be completed (say hi to the chak regent) …

At the moment we are not able to see which level is tied to which island, and which instability we’ll get at which levels, resulting in something even more confusing than the randomness to which we were accustomed before.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/wTSupvW.jpg[/img]
The current interface

I think that we should be able to see those elements directly before entering into the instance, because nobody wants to check the wiki every time to know if the level 41 is Swamp or Mai Trin, it’s a quality of life feature that could be very interesting for fractals. Moreover it could also make fractals less confusing and terrifying for new players, because right now it’s kind of a dark and scary place.

The idea is to have a new interface for the level/island selection that allows players to instantaneously see where they’re going. This new interface should be place both outside of the instance, like the current one, and inside of the instance, where all the merchants are standing, allowing players to change the level/island between attempts and after completing one island, without going outside.

Interface:

• If you’re alone you should be able to intuitively create a group, so there is a button that send you back to the “looking for group” menu.
• You can see in a blink of an eye what your personal fractal level is, and which scale you’re planning to go.
• Then according to which scale you are you see the artwork of the island tied to the level, it’s a visual cue, the name of the island, and maybe a quick description of the island, objectives or lore reminders.
• If you’re in high-level fractals you should be able to see which instability you’re going to be against, so according to which scale you chose you can see the instability tied with it.
• Just thought about it, but knowing the number of agony resistance needed when you’re selecting scales could really help beginners.

Here’s a poor visual example :

[img]http://i.imgur.com/ZETsdvj.jpg[/img]
Cry of despair before my Photoshop skills

Digression

While I’m doing a post about fractals, I’m going to talk about something that could increase the fight readability, which is the AoE detection system.

The old system of AoE detection is still in place in most of the fractals, if you don’t know of what I’m talking about it’s the red rings that are used as visual support to know where the AoE will land, and we must face the reality that those red rings are really clunky and misleading if you want to spot AoE correctly, particularly when you compare them with the new system of AoE detection, which are the orange full circles.

[img]http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/gw2-canachs-lair-rampant-energy.jpg[/img]
Red rings

[img]https://whyigame.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/aoe.jpg?w=588[/img]
Orange circle

Ex: Bloomhunger uses the orange circle and Mai Trin uses the red rings.

The issue with the red rings is that when you have plenty of AoEs you can’t see them properly, which is problematic for some fights, like the canon phase against Mai Trin. It’s not a big deal but having the orange circle implemented to all fractals fight could help for readability in general.

Conclusion :

We need a better interface while selecting our scale in order to know where we’re going, and how to prepare ourselves. Also changing the way we detect AoEs in fractals could help for some fights.

Absolute Resolution triggers when you land with the Wings of Resolve, I think that it should trigger when you activate it, because the synergy here is bad. Now I understand that the new virtues are not immediate, but the effect, such as cleanse, should be immediate, otherwise your trait can be interrupted or are simply delayed, which is not the case on the base virtues, making them more is appealing.

Can we have Continnum Split lined up with the others Shatter ? I really don’t like seeing it above Distortion.
When you’ve Preparedness on Thief, your Initiative icons are reduced, is it possible to have the Active Illusions icons reduced when you’re a Chronomancer in order to line up Continuum Split with the others Shatter.

The first thing that strikes me about ranger shouts is how bad their design are. Across all other professions, and now elite specialisations, shouts are AoE that either give some boons to allies, or impair enemies, strangely enough ranger shouts are none of that.
Their shouts are supposed to have an interaction with the pets, which is an original approach to shouts, and is in accordance with the theme of the ranger, meaning a symbiotic relation between the pet and the ranger. However in reality few shouts have a synergy between pets and ranger, making them terrible from the point of view of the class, and because it’s not enough, they have a poor use inside a party, only Search and Rescue brings some good support, but it feels just bad, and of course there is the Resounding Timbre trait that also brings a good group support, and frankly this is the only thing that legitimate the use of shouts on ranger. Another issue is that some shouts have a weird use, like Sic’Em that forces you to have a target, or Guard that is a ground targeted skill, making the ranger shouts totally different compared to the other classes shouts.

Conclusion:
Ranger shouts have no, or very few, interactions with other players, allies or enemies, but beyond that, they are not even good for what their purpose is, offering a good synergy between the pet and the ranger.

Proposition:

We Heal as One:
I like the new changes because it answers to one problem that I raise above, which is the synergy issue. Through those changes We Heal as One offers now a good interaction, through boon share, between the ranger and the pet. However the community found some abuses, and it got quickly nerfed, which was necessary, but the nerf was too heavy-handed.
The amount of boon share should have a limit, but the limit should be softer.
Few examples:
Might should have a limit around 5 stacks, making ranger more independent toward might self-sustain, Quickness should have a limit around 3 seconds, in order to make some burst build more rewarding to play … I’ll not examine each boon, but you get the idea.

Guard:
One thing that strikes me with this one, is that it should not be a shout, but an order on the pet command panel, because I literally see no use for this shout in every situation possible, except maybe if you spam it with Resounding Timbre. Moreover this shout does not affect the ranger, in other words there is no synergy/symbiosis, this shout is only here to increase the pet survivability through protection and stealth, and I’m sorry but nobody want to waste an utility slot to increase the survivability of a pet.
I recommend to rework the skill, instead of Guard I propose Ambush.
Ambush gives to you and your pet 3 seconds of Stealth, and to both of you an Opening Strike, plus it cripples nearby foes. The cooldown should be around 30/35 seconds.
The goal here is to make this shout more offensive, surprise the enemies, and bursting one of them with an Opening Strike, alongside it gives some stealth to the ranger, which is actually really hard to have compared to the other medium profession.

Protect Me:
Actually this is the worst skill to avoid a burst/survive, across all profession, because it basically kills your pet to have a little sustain, and it’s selfish, and from a ranger point of view does not compete well against Signet of Stone.
I recommend to change Protect Me, by Protect Us, and the skill will now have a similar use to Phantasmal Defender or the Bulwark Gyro.
Protect Us gives the effect Warden Protection to nearby allies, transferring 50% of the incoming damage to your pet, in addition your pet gain a health increase, something around 3000/4000.
Through that change the shout has now a utility in group, and offers something new to rangers.

Search and Rescue:
The skill is good, but need some tweak. I recommend to make it an AoE resurrection, and having two sources, meaning that when you use the shout it will revive nearby downed allies around you and your pet.
Search and Rescue – When you use Search and Rescue you and your pet will pulse for 8 seconds the effect Kindly Warden to nearby downed allies, which revives them. The radius is 180 around both sources, you and your pet, but if a source dies the effect stop to pulse, if you swap pet, your next pet will not pulse the effect.
Now you have a skill similar to Toss elixir R, but slightly more powerful if well used.

Sic ’Em:
An overall good skill, I mainly use it to buff the dps on my pet, but it lacks of synergy with the ranger, and the revealed application is clunky since you need to target someone to apply it, meaning that you need to reveal someone before he goes into stealth mode.
I recommend to change the 40% damage/movement speed increase for the application of diverse boon on the pet, in order to create some synergy between Sic ‘Em and We Heal as One, and I recommend to have an AoE reveal in order to make it more rewarding to use
Sic ‘Em applies 10 stacks of might for 10 seconds, 4 seconds of superspeed, 4 seconds of fury, and 4 seconds of quickness on your pet, and applies revealed for 3 seconds on foes nearby both the ranger and the pet.
Again we have a double source AoE, the pet and the ranger, which creates some interesting opportunities where you can increase the surface covered by your shout if you place your pet wisely, and the radius should be around 180 for both sources. Moreover you can use We Heal as One to gain some of the boons applied by Sic ‘Em.

Strength of the Pack:
Nothing to say, except that the casting time is maybe too long, I would reduce it to 0.5 second, or at least to 0.75.

TL ; DR - Shouts on Ranger have a unique application, they don’t have a lot interaction with other players, allies or enemies, and are all about interaction with your Pet. However the current state of shouts makes this synergy/symbiosis between a Ranger and his/her Pet close to impossible.
I recommended few changes, reworks, in order to make the shouts more interesting for group support, for fight engagement, and to have a better synergy.