Guild Wars 2

Ok. We can make these changes if OP and other thief players promise never to reset fights that they forced us into.

The only elites I really spent adequate time with were Weaver, Mirage, Renegade, and Spellbreaker. They were all fun to play once I properly learned their mechanics.

I think one of the reasons some players feel the PoF elites are underwhelming is because the skill floors are much higher than the HoT elites. It didn’t help that they also had to fight those HoT elites while learning, since there was no PvE test area.

With that in mind, I think making the PoF elites easier to play would be a good idea. Here are a few suggestions based on my experiences.

Weaver – Accessing offhand skills seemed to be a problem that a lot of players had. Unravel exists purely as a bandage solution to this issue, so like others have suggested I think Unravel should be converted to a fifth mechanic bar skill.

Mirage – Illusions need more durability to actually be able to use some of the new skills. The Mirage Mirrors should last longer, you can’t reach them in any natural way while you’re actively fighting.

Renegade – It’d be a lot easier to play if the utilities and mechanic bars skills didn’t use so much energy. Also I don’t like that the warband summons are vulnerable to cc, seems like unnecessary punishment when they cost so much to use.

Spellbreaker – Can’t think of anything, seems like it’s pretty good already. I’m disappointed though that the Dagger #2 skill doesn’t use ammo mechanics like Mirage’s Axe #2.

If the devs want to sell PoF badly they’ll probably buff it to the extreme. Then they’ll gradually nerf random things over the subsequent months just like with HoT.

I really like the shortbow skills. Can’t see much fault with them, though they only seem suitable for condi or hybrid builds.

The utility skills felt awkward for a little bit until I got used to them. I only really summon Icerazor and Darkrazor most of the time though, just for the cc effects and extra damage.

I agree with the notion that Icerazer should use chill instead of cripple, but it might be op combined with Abyssal Chill. Also it would be nice if Darkrazor blocked projectiles since it’s attack looks so much like Phantasmal Warden.

I’m actually starting to like Weaver now. It took some time getting used to not always having certain offhand skill when I wanted them.

If the barrier from dual skills is increased, it might make up for not having those defensive offhand skills readily available. Also if sword damage is improved (or fixed because it seems like the power scaling is broken) I think it could be a solid weapon.

It’s a little disappointing that this elite spec didn’t really provide a reliable option for survivability though. Still can’t figure out how those other Weavers I saw in wvw were so tanky.

It’s funny seeing history repeat itself. Everyone’s saying their main profession’s elite is terrible, just like the first HoT beta weekend. I guess if there’s another one of these weekends the devs will probably buff everything across the board. Then we’ll have a year or two of whining about the PoF power creep.

Fought some very tanky weavers in wvw earlier today. They seemed to be able to constantly heal and pulse barrier even while being focused by 4 or 5 people. I’m trying to replicate it, but can’t figure it out. Might just involve properly timing Lava Skin and Stone Resonance, who knows.

Turk.5460:

Downed state is fine and necessary. This thread is unnecessary. I don’t understand why some people are so against downed state. Its a core mechanic of the game, and has always been.

Judging by the OP’s signature, I’m guessing he almost 1 shots people with a glass gunflame build, but can’t finish them off if they have an ally nearby. Then he gets angry about a mechanic that he already knew existed before he even attacked, and comes to complain on the forum.

You answered your own question about why they’re against it. They don’t like their victims getting a chance to fight back or escape.

I’d prefer for them to work harder. If we lower our expectations for them, we’ll just get lower quality balance with less build diversity.

Amulets are just a bandaid fix for the balance team being bad at their jobs.

It’s a glass cannon, pure and simple. Justine makes it look easier to play than it actually is, because they’re that good at it.

TakeCare.3182:

The system doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t start to apply the chill and then reduce it -100%. It never actually applies in the first place. No bleeds.

Are you speaking from experience and have actually seen it prevent the bleeds?

Ulion.5476:

I doubt it will be a zero second chill but chill will be applied for a moment and torment with it. If you have some expertise the chill will be on the target for a half second. The torment should proc even if the chill is barely noticeable.

That doesn’t sound right, but who knows.

Jski.6180:

I think it reads a immune when you have -100% duration. Seems worth testing.

It would’ve been nice if the devs put immunity in the tooltip to leave less room for doubt.

Does anybody know how these traits interact?

I’m thinking that incoming chill is still considered “applied”, but it’s reduced to 0 seconds, which means you still get hit with bleed/torment. I’m hoping that’s not the case though.

I agree with the advise that everyone should learn to play thief. The only thing that counters thief is another thief after all.

LetoII.3782:

Sviel.7493:

what would being smart about it look like to you?

EB
It would be a rehash of Eternal Battlegrounds, the most popular map for a reason.

All the environmental effects and falling to your death are major flaws of DB: and EotM
The map doesn’t need to be a star, the combat is,

Yeah, seems like catering to mindless zerging would’ve been the best approach. Being aware of your surroundings interferes too much with the combat experience.

Justine.6351:

Ya these are the typical thieves I run into,
https://youtu.be/gLYW9c30fdE
Not really seeing anything OP from them.

If they take damage,
You can kill it.

Did Essence Sap get patched or something? I don’t think I saw any thieves in that video using it.

What’s there to discuss? The attacks were simply added so that phantasm skills will cause reveal. The other effects are just there to cover up their true purpose.

Why would you play thief if you don’t have a good reaction time?

I have nothing specific to point out. I just think it would be nice if revenant was given the same level of treatment as other profession(s) with similar mechanics. Also, just in general, it’d be nice if all professions were treated equally rather than some getting more attention because they’re the favorite(s) of certain dev(s).

EremiteAngel.9765:

By the way, does anyone know how the Druid was blocking during the fight? I was re-watching the fights and noticed he blocked my attacks at odd intervals.

Aegis from Rune of the Defender bonus #4.

You probably won’t proc the stamina sigil often unless you’re tagging a lot of players in a zerg fight, or you’re just killing npcs while clearing a camp. I don’t think it’s worthwhile compared to sigil of energy which only needs weapon swap.

Does it really matter that random strangers might accidentally share the glory of capping empty towers and ganking roamers?

Maybe instead we should have the angry clouds from SAB pop up whenever a pug gets too close to these self appointed VIPs. You know, put a fun spin on segregating the game’s population even more.

Anybody with common sense can see that energy + cooldowns are an unnecessary double standard. Thief gets to have pure energy only skills and warrior gets low cooldown skills without any extra cost. Are there any weapon skills that are anymore effective than most thief or warrior weapon skills? Maybe Coalescence of Ruin but that’s about it.

You’re right, I do enjoy big numbers. I was just wondering what part of the hammer playstyle you found boring. This mobile playstyle seems like it would be more tedious to me since you just constantly chase after enemies and only get decent hits in when they go to res someone.

I can see you get a lot of damage out when dropping aoes on downed enemies, but otherwise the conditions you applied only ticked for small amounts. How is that more fun than power rev with hammer?

Oh, the image quality seems much better now.

Ragnarox.9601:

ive seen arc divider crits for 9k but…I had this today, autoattack doing 7.5k with 2# doing 10k.

Wow, good thing revs have actual weaknesses like cc and condi and don’t heal for 1000 hp/sec.

The screen warping and panning all over the place is an odd creative choice, but overall it was a decent video just because you were actually solo roaming unlike most “roaming” videos these days.

Welcome to the Tyrian Space Program.

I can’t point to anything specific, but any profession would be op if a dev shows a personal attachment to it, while often contributing to balance updates.

Isn’t Diabolic Inferno just a weaker, more costly version of Ring of Fire? Even if you focused on burning, it seems to me like even elementalist and guardian have stronger condi builds.

I think Unrelenting Assault is probably the most poorly designed skill in the game. It requires a target to use, it’s broken if the target enters stealth, but when it triggers you lose control and your character attacks whatever it feels like. Oh, and you take confusion damage on each hit for whatever reason. It’s almost as if someone copy and pasted a rush job script for an npc skill.

Cool. Now we need a topic titled “PSA: How to handle resistance in wvw” for some delicious poetic justice.

I’m sure this is how a lot of revenant players feel right now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6_5IdNs4Vg

I’d say Mesmer is in a good position if their only problem is that another profession got thrown some of their table scraps.

I don’t understand why the profession with least amount of build variety is the hardest one for the balance team to get right.

I’m sure most revenant players didn’t really want this either, and would’ve preferred real improvements instead.

I look forward to them nerfing Rolling Mists to +50% effectiveness and compensating us by increasing the duration of Retaliatory Evasion to 3 seconds.

Ok, enough arguing. I know what needs to be done to make everyone happy, or at least equally miserable.

Slap a 5 sec cooldown on these things and we should be good:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infiltrator's_Arrow
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Headshot
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vault

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maim_the_Disillusioned
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Time_Catches_Up

I figure if it works for revenant, why not other professions?

The ICD of Ancient Seeds is what’s wrong, not the other way around.

If this were still in the game it would win automatically:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Disruptor's_Sustainment

Never forgive. Never forget.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Mesmer for the most part is less of a problem in WvW these days because of being oppressed by thief. Power shatter is pretty kitten overall. Condition shatter, I can handle them easy on dash pulm d/p. Don’t even need condition cleanse with the 5s of resistance with improv.

Mesmer vs that acro staff cancer though, don’t even bother.

It’s good that you’re a skilled enough player to handle condi chrono. That one build, and the occassional instagib from power shatter, are probably the only reasons mesmer got included in this topic.

Hmm, barely any talk about the mesmer side of the topic, but plenty of discussion about thieves. There’s a little bit about revenant too, but just as a backdrop to the discussion of thief. I wonder what it means when a profession is called out for being imbalanced along with another, but the other one is completely forgotten.

DeceiverX.8361:

ITT: People think the thief as a whole is overpowered because of D/P daredevil.

I don’t think people are only thinking of d/p daredevil. There’s been a few other complaint topics recently for things such as ghost thief, staff daredevil, and d/d condi daredevil.

What’s the compensation for all the players that already spent time putting together their gear?

KrHome.1920:

Clownmug.8357:

Sorry to go off topic, but how does entering shroud deal 10k damage? I looked up the build, and see Spiteful Shroud is used, but I don’t see how that can get up to 10k even with every possible damage modifier. Is this one of those weird instances where the tooltip is completely wrong?

1) you run the meta power build in WvW full zerk gear + 10%dmg. food + sharpening stone

2) keep in mind that you deal more damage the longer the fight lasts as you build up 25 might stacks and inflict a lot of vulnerability over time

3) you run hyromancy and air on you current weaponset

4) your burst brings the target to less than 50% health (time it accordingly!)

5) you have traited Death Perception (100% crit chance in Shroud)

Entering shroud (counting as a weapon swap and will proc sigills) enables the following things:

Spiteful Spirit: 2,5 -3,5K (one boon corrupt)
Hydromancy Sigill: 2,5 – 3,5K
Air Sigill: 1 – 1,5K
Chilling Nova: 2,5 – 4K
Chill of Death: 2 (no boon) – 5K (3 boons)

Numbers are for full zerk opponents of course and decrease with opponents toughness gear. Staff zerg eles and zerk thieves can be oneshotted if they ’ve 3 boons due to their low health pool.

It’s pretty funny. I run this setup in our 3 to 5 man roaming group and stay behind at the first few seconds of the fight. Then I run right into and press F1 -> Shroud4 – this ends in a massacre!

For solo roaming I would at least run 2,5K armor to feel more comfortable. This decreases your damage by about 25%.

I don’t think it’s too off topic since the OP is running necro too and seems not to have any clue how deadly the class can be. In WvW I ’ve met hundreds of scrappers running towards me and going for “dwarf mode” (25% health) in less than 2 seconds.

Ok, I see now what you meant. With all those things proccing with Spiteful Spirit, that can very easily add up to 10k. Thank you for the answer. I might try that build some time.

KrHome.1920:

Just play the Power Boonstrip Conquest Build @ Full Zerk Gear in WvW. Enabling Reaper Shroud deals 10K damage, strips boons and can be easily combined with any other burst. E.g.:
Grasping Darkness (3K) -> enter Shroud (10K)
Gravedigger (10K) -> enter Shroud (10K) or
Chilled to the Bone (3K + stun) -> enter Shroud (10K) -> Soul Spiral (10K) or
Dagger 3 Immob -> Well of Suffering (10K) -> enter Shroud (10K)

If a part of the burst is dodged: weapon swap to Axe -> Ghastly claws (10K) right after the dodge.

Every class can burst when going full zerk – the Reaper’s are even unblockable (Nothing Can Save You!)

OP: You should not have any problem killing Power Shatter Mesmers when you’re running 2,7K armor. You can shroudtank at least 2 of their bursts until you get some trouble with your health. Clearly a l2p issue here.

Classes you fear on Necro are the ones that can deal damage while negating your damage (Dragonhunter Blocks, Endure Pain, Unrelenting Assault, D/D thieves, Bunker Druids letting their pet do the job) as they have an easy time to outsustain you (in that scenario Nightfall is a very underestimated skill to survive)… but not squishy burst builds like Power Shatters. And did you ever notice you can HEAR the setup of the mesmer burst?

Sorry to go off topic, but how does entering shroud deal 10k damage? I looked up the build, and see Spiteful Shroud is used, but I don’t see how that can get up to 10k even with every possible damage modifier. Is this one of those weird instances where the tooltip is completely wrong?

I don’t think any in-depth analysis is necessary. To me this topic seems like it’s trying to say, twitchy players are too powerful with twitchy builds.

Well, you can’t doing anything about that except load up on as much passive defense as possible. Though I think Necro might be a little short handed in that department.

Cygnus.6903:

Clownmug.8357:

Cygnus.6903:

You can just smell the thief complain topics before opening them.

Try playing said build.

Swagger never mentioned any specific profession or build. Why would you automatically assume a topic about balance problems is talking about thief? Weird.

You didn’t read through the entire topic, did you?

Didn’t read your own post about predicting the contents of the topic before opening it, did you?