Guild Wars 2

Hail Sorrows Furnace
King of the Glicko ghetto
Crushed empty servers

http://www.cutecatgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/omg-cat.gif

You guys are exaggerating. These issues are nothing compared to the one I encountered.

It looks like you should be able to jump between these bushes, but you can’t. Depending on your situation this is a potential death trap. Please fix ASAP!

I’m in favor of this change. I thought they would go this route before HoT. It would be nice if the core professions remained competitive and an exclusive trait line would help.

I don’t think more options increases build diversity. There needs to be an equal opportunity cost when selecting traits. Some trait lines are better than others and some of the individual traits are far superior to the other options in their tier.

Let’s only submit scythe staff and great sword skins. Also, please don’t include butt capes or trench coats on your weapons.

Lionwait.4815:

Most of the time I don’t read the forums and or post. Because it is a sea of sorrows full of ignorance. Most of all the GM’s I call the speech police. Give the most ignorant of answers like the one you guys are complaining about. But today you are in luck. I have the answers. The NERF happened because of the new trait “Righteous Instincts”. Having such a trait inducing a build capable of 100% crit chance has its ramifications. Live with it and move on to another weapon.

As others have already suggested, I think it’s more likely due to the amount of burning that can be applied with Permeating Wrath and the Firebrand’s Quickfire. Either way the traits should be nerfed not the weapon.

I expected ranged skills as well and was pretty disappointed by the elite spec. It seems like Firebrand was mainly designed to allow Guardians to use condition damage in PvE raids.

Without a good non-reflectable ranged option the Guardian just feels subpar compared to the Revenant and Necromancer. There’s a natural ebb and flow to fights where you have to switch back and forth between your ranged weapon at chokepoints and melee weapon when pushing. If you are melee only you are sitting there with your thumb up your kitten half of the time.

A guardian will always be needed for support, but without a good range option the class doesn’t bring as much damage pressure and is less fun to play. I still have a hammer Warrior, but I haven’t touched it since HoT. Revenant and Necromancer are far more effective.

If Permeating Wrath may have caused the staff nerf, why not adjust that trait instead to address the problem more directly. Make that trait single target so condition guardians can’t use the staff to apply burning. This change shouldn’t hurt condition guardians in the long run since the Firebrand is on its way.

To add to that. Without the staff for mid range damage I would rather play other professions since they are more fun. I’m not going to be a melee range stability-bot when I’m not a part of an organized group.

StanleyJohny.8047:

This is beautiful. So because you are a pug you are allowed to not care about squad composition? Ill say that to commander next time ill bring glass-cannon berserker thief to front line.

So in short terms, playing in WvW for you is not about teamwork and coordination and mainly having fun, but tagging everything to get your free loot?

I would never zerg with a useless profession. I mainly play Revenant and Necromancer and both of those classes have nice ranged AOEs and are tough enough push with the front of the zerg. I prefer those classes since they are adaptable and work well in most situations. Just because squad composition isn’t my main concern doesn’t mean I’ve never switched classes for a commander. I have 80s of all professions and duplicates of the professions I like most.

When I made the comment about tagging with a weak 300 range weapon, I was referring to how pointless the staff has become. It’s better to not bring it at all.

I feel like most of the people applauding this change must play Ranger, Engineer, Mesmer, or Thief. They are just happy to see one of the core zerging professions get nerfed regardless of whether or not the change is good.

I main Thief and quit bringing it to zerg fights a long time ago. Get out there and try out some other professions instead of posting guardian hate. I’ve played all of them and each has there strengths and weaknesses.

If you favorite profession isn’t great in WvW it isn’t the fault of other players/professions, the developers should be creating more competitive elite specs.

I don’t see how nerfing the Guardian staff is a good thing. It’s just one less ranged option to pick from and the lack of a good ranged option makes me not even want to play Guardian. It’s too frustrating being full melee when you are outnumbered or following a commander who won’t push. The scepter and longbow aren’t good ranged alternatives since they can be reflected.

The skill related comments are also pointless. I spend the vast majority of my time in WvW playing Necromancer and Revenant and those can tag enemies just as easily and they can do it from 1200 range.

Overall, this is a bad change for the game and it needs to be reverted.

The staff nerf is awful. I just spent 250 gold to create a Guardian for WvW and now I don’t see myself playing it anymore.

I mainly pug so I don’t care about squad composition. Why would I waste time trying to tag enemies with a weak 300 range weapon when I can just play a Necromancer or Revenant instead?

Tricks and signets are also receiving several changes to help them compete with the very powerful utility skills offered by deceptions and physicals

It’s funny that they mention a buff to Signets in the summary, and then nerf the Signets of Power trait. The trait was much more useful with might instead of the PVE oriented on-kill effects.

Luckily, I play S/D which was buffed pretty heavily in this patch.

I definitely prefer to run vitality only as a defensive stat like Justine’s first build. I feel like death shroud gives you all of the extra toughness you need and vitality is much better defensive stat since it also works against conditions.

The funny thing is that I chose to switch from wells and Pack runes to shouts and Trooper runes. When I started playing necro I played in an organized group so I had plenty of stability and condition clears from my squad. When I started pugging I got annoyed when some pug commanders would create all necro groups. This is why I switched to Trooper runes. Trooper runes also makes the necro more survivable in outnumbered fights.

I ended up picking Curses since it gives me boon corruption without wells. It heavily boosts shroud skill 2. Chilling Darkness adds chill, Path of Corruption adds boon corruption, and Weakening Shroud adds weakness. I also like Furious Demise to provide my own Fury (pugging).

I stacked as much vitality as possible in my build. I even ran Sigil of Accuracy so I could swap more gear away from Berserker’s to Valkyrie. This gives me 27k health and 22k shroud health.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJAWRnMbClbiVbCubC0biliBLKA8tKAx7wh4Sk6JMFqVA-TFCBABXq+zGXCg90FwoSwq2fALlBZp0DgnAQAAEgbezs5NDcezbezbezz115O35O3ZA-w

Edit: Yeah you’re right. I should avoid typing out quick replies from my phone.

Answer:

1. People will be afk-ing to abuse the system regardless of whether or not there is an outnumbered bonus. Heck, they could even do this with WvW reward tracks. There are other solutions to this problem. Like having participation drop faster or reducing the timeout that’s already in place for kicking inactive players.

2. The outnumbered bonus is intended to reward people for playing during periods of low server activity and it solves that problem. I don’t care if people are switching maps to chase pips. If feel like this is a temporary problem that will go away once hype over the new rewards dies down.

I feel like the outnumbered bonus balances everything out. Players on a server with good coverage and dedicated players already gain more rank-up chests. This bonus will help keep people playing even though they don’t stand a chance due to coverage issues. If pips are mainly handed out for winning to reward “better” players, that just promotes server stacking and bandwagoning.

I also don’t like the suggestions to change how the outnumbered bonus is triggered. Right now the current implementation is simple. If you are outnumbered during the tick you get the reward, if not you don’t get it.

If we start tracking player state to determine how long a player was outnumbered or track how long they have been active on a map, that is more work for the server. I would rather have server resources available for large fights instead of having it track additional information for rewards.

I prefer the existing distribution of pips. Providing a larger pip bonus to all squad members just promotes zerging. The existing commander bonus rewards commanders and could be higher.

I also like the current outnumbered bonus. I believe people are complaining about it because they are pip hungry and trying to abuse the system. The outnumbered bonus is great and will help keep people playing even if they are being blobbed to death due to coverage issues. The bonus also helps provide better rewards to roamers during periods of low server activity.

This seems like a pretty harsh nerf to a Revenant’s access to resistance. Here’s a before and after comparison of the resistance duration for 0% and 100% boon duration.

• Empowering Misery: 2-4s of resistance becomes 0.5-1s
• Pain Absorption: 4-8s of resistance becomes 3.75-7.5s
• Banish Enchantment: 2-4s of resistance becomes 1-2s
• Unyielding Anguish: 2-4s of resistance becomes 1.5-3s

I personally prefer the ICD over these changes for my front-line WvW Revenant.

As far as tracking and non-tracking goes, I think there are downsides to either approach. I personally find it easier to deal with positioning with a non-tracking skill instead of having to potentially de-select and re-select a target with a tracking skill.

I guess I should mention that the best food is Plate of Mussels Gnashblade. It provides 15% boon duration and 10% damage reduction. I quit running it due to the cost and since it is account bound you have to keep crafting it.

I just wanted to make sure you had a stacking sigil (Sigil of Bounty) on you underwater weapon so you didn’t loose stacks when going underwater.

I believe your build should work great as a mid-line damage dealer.

Damage Sigils
My favorite sigils to use on damage builds are usually Sigils of Air, Fire, and Accuracy. But since you have so many damage modifiers Sigil of Force may be the best option:

1.07 (Ferocious Aggression) x 1.07 (Target Destruction) x 1.20 (Swift Termination) x 1.06 (Elder’s Force with 3 boons = 1.456
1.456 × 0.05 (Sigil of Force) = 0.0728 or a 7.28% damage increase

Since you also want to have a decent amount of boon duration Sigil of Strength may be another good option. I’m currently using this on my Celestial boon duration Revenant.

Utility Sigils
Your base boon duration is 49.6% and Facet of Nature gives you 33%.

I usually run Chocolate Omnomberry Cream as a cheap option to add 20% boon duration on my Revenant and this will put you at 102.6% boon duration. This wastes 2.6% boon duration since boon duration doesn’t go over 100%.

You could also use Sigil of Bounty to add 15% boon duration and this would put you at 97.6% boon duration. Make sure you put this sigil on an underwater weapon too if you go this route.

I knew the name was familiar. I was thinking about searching this forum for the source.

I think I never got into PvP due to the game mode. I just want to log in and have some fun fights and I don’t care about earning rank or maintaining a win/loss ratio. I think some more casual game modes will draw more people into PvP like TDM or DM. For example, a 20 minute 10 vs 10 TDM where the only goal is to make the top of the score board with least amount of deaths.

I think requiring someone to tap a gate to contest a waypoint is a good compromise. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to have player limits or require siege damage. There has been so many changes since HoT to discourage solo roaming and I don’t think we need to add more. If we keep going down this path WvW will eventually become EOTM 2.0.

I think a simple change to help both power D/D and S/D would be to buff Dancing Dagger. Right now this skill doesn’t serve any purpose. It doesn’t provide any damage and cripple isn’t worth the initiative cost. I use it mostly for laughs when some one only has a sliver of health.

I also feel like condition D/D is fine. As you said it is not a problem in high level PvP and I’ve never had any issues fighting it in WvW. You just have to time your attacks and you can walk away to buy yourself some time if you take too much condition pressure.

I also think Dagger Storm is fine as is. It’s a good PvE skill when you don’t have access to Black Powder. It allows you to agro all enemies in an upgraded camp so you can clear it before white swords pop. It hasn’t been good in zerg vs zerg for quite a while. I miss the good old days when you could Infiltrator’s Strike at a zerg, push through the zerg with Dagger Storm, and teleport back an infinite distance back to safety. I think they nerfed the number of projectiles so you can’t self sustain with it any more using Signet of Malice. I mainly equip the skill out of nostalgia, but it is still useful against power rangers and condition mesmers.

I agree with your assessment of Pulmonary Impact. It turns Headshot from a low damage utility skill to one of the highest damage range skills we have. I don’t like the idea of changing Pulmonary Impact to have two parts. It seems like this change could prevent other weapon sets from triggering it. Maybe they just need to add a cool-down to Impacting Disruption so it can’t be spammed. This will level the playing field since other weapon sets don’t have as much access to stuns, and the cool-down may allow them to buff its damage without making Pulmonary Impact over powered.

Here’s what I currently run:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhKnYhTw3JQ/EL+E28AMBGB3CAvmAkXToK8CA-T1BFABXpEUf1fK4UKgkyP113AwTKok9HCAgAcz2sNvZ28m38mPv5Nv5Nv55m38m38m3sQAlHDA-wo

It’s more focused on moving about the map quickly and soloing upgraded camps and lords. I choose Quick Pockets to avoid steal damage for more mobility and Roll for Initiative to have nearly unlimited dodges. Both signets provide 5 might and I’m running Runes of Strength so I usually have 3000+ power.

Although it isn’t optimal for dueling, it can usually wear down other players. I tried to strike a balance between PVP and PVE since I don’t like swapping skills. You could always switch to Slight of Hand and Impact Strike if you prefer to duel.

Haha, I know. Both sword and dagger fall into the joke category and the HMS divinity scares me.

Appearance: A midieval dagger with a steel blade and a golden hilt encrusted with precious gemstones. Smaller gemstones will cover the guard and the grip, but a large ruby will be set on end of the pommel. When equipped this weapon will glow brilliantly due to the ornate hilt.

Weapon Effect: When attacking an enemy gold coins will fall from your target as if your cutting open their coin purse.

Footfall Effect: Shadowy footprints will be left behind as if they were left by a thief.

Precursor Weapon: The Cutpurse. This would be a much less ornate weapon. The handle could even be wrapped in rags instead of gold and gems.

Maybe switch Dancing Dagger to a shadow step since jump casting was removed from Infiltrator’s Strike. A gap closer would also be useful to D/D and P/D. If that is too drastic, it would be nice if Dancing Dagger applied Blind to give it some utility.

I’m worried this is just another form of power creep so anyone could instantly switch to the best build for a given situation. I also play several different professions and the amount of gear grind would be insane to keep up with players who only play one profession/character.

Remove the levers and make everything automatic like auto upgrades!

I’m not having any issues with double activating thief skills and have mained S/D since the original beta release. I just wanted to call out the likely cause of the problem. It was a bad decision to add this feature and it creates these odd timing issues.

In the July 26th 2016 update they added the ability to hold down keys to activate skills multiple times. There was a lot of complaints for Revenant facets double activating so they fixed it after a month. As far as I know other skills which can double activate haven’t been adjusted like Shadowstep or Spectral Walk.

I wish there was a way to disable this option so you can have finer control of your character. I don’t know why they decided to allow people to be lazy and hold down keys.

I feel like it’s up to personal preference. I personally feel that maxing out might is very important with hybrid builds and that boon duration works well with Mallyx/Glint. I think you will have to try some things out and determine what’s best for your play style and game modes. If you like Viper’s you should be able to add a little more defense without completely replacing your equipment.

For example, if you are downed frequently to burst damage, you may want to mix in some vitality or toughness. I think vitality is the better option since it offer protection against both direct damage and conditions. Adding a small amount of defensive stats can go along way. I liked that you picked Carrion in your build. It gives you vitality, more condition damage, and doesn’t sacrifice too much power. You could try mixing in a few Carrion trinkets to see if it helps. If you go this route also check out Rune of Scavenging, it’s the vitality version of Rune of the Undead and it also provides you with life steal.

If being able to sustain your health in a fight is an issue you also have several options. For example, you could swap your offhand axe with a shield. The axe doesn’t offer much dps in PvE anyway and the shield gives you healing, protection, and blocks. You could take this a step further and switch to Rune of the Defender. The wiki indicates that this rune’s 6th bonus heals 3,920 every 30 seconds when you block. It only has healing power stats so you will have to make sure the 6th bonus is worth it.

Also checkout the food available on the wiki: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Food. A nourishment may be able to help you without requiring any build changes. My personal favorites to add more sustain are Mango Pies and Omnomberry Pies.

I think staff should work fine. I used it on my power build when HoT first came out and it makes sense that it could be better for PVE due to boss break bars.

I was able to get some healing numbers for you:

Regeneration -233 (the WvW bonus messed with my numbers this is usually 220)
Empowering Misery – 5713 + 718 per condition
Infused Light – 1319 per hit

I don’t think I would use Hardening Persistence because Radiant Revival gives you a second Glint heal. Both heal skills from Mallyx and Glint are way more effective in WvW where you have an abundance of conditions and frequent low damage hits.

In open world PvE I don’t think you will have an issue healing. For example, standing on a Mordrem Snipers fire trail from their Charged Shot only does 1120 damage to you and you have 24k health. I think you could have more difficulty against bosses which hit for high damage, but the hammer allows you to back off to safety to regen and reapply boons.

I also wanted to point out that due to the Facet of Nature nerf from 50% boon duration to 33% boon duration you may need to use the Chocolate Omnomberry Cream nourishment. I also added the Sigil of Concentration on the hammer to reach 100% boon duration without using food.

Base (45%) + Food(20%) + Facet of Nature(33%) = 98% boon duration
Base(45%) + Facet of Nature (33%) + Sigil of Concentration(33%) = 100 boon duration

I tried recording a video, but OBS isn’t working. I may try again when I get some more time.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNApXin3geNSuQvJRboHlsP0kS4I6SJ4EtrklTlJNgEaQNjOKxO93vH-TFSGABA8gAoTPReKBN4UC8/RAA99HeU9noU+REAzaA-w

I’ve actually been using the cellestial Glint/Mallyx build you mentioned, but I use it as a WvW front-line build. It’s an odd build since it’s pretty durable and take a beating in WvW, but it also has decent DPS against stationary targets. This allows you to both zerg and quickly flip camps and solo towers.

A while ago I used the raid training golem (no buffs) to benchmark some of my professsions and was suprised where this build ranked:

PvE Berserker GS & S/F Guardian – 5,275 (32k full buffs)
WvW Berserker Staff Elementalist – 5,254
WvW Glint/Mallyx Celestial Revanent – 3,848
WvW Berserker/Captains S/D Thief – 3,571
WvW Valkerie/Berserker Staff & GS Necromancer – 3,082

With the Sigil of Strength and the ability to blast your mace’s fire field it is easy to stack 25 might without using any of Glint’s skills. Glint’s Shared Empowerment trait also provides quite a few stacks of might if you spam your One With Nature skill.

I compared the DPS provided by Corruption’s grand master traits. I chose Maniacal Persistence over Diabolic Inferno since both traits provide about 200 DPS against single targets with mace equipped. Diabolic inferno has a much higher DPS potential since it is capable of hitting 5 targets, but I didn’t want to complicate my skill rotation for WvW. Maniacal Persistence also provides about 60 DPS when ranging targets with the hammer auto-attack.

I usually apply regeneration, swiftness, and protection when on Glint and traveling or attacking from range. Make sure you use Versed in Stone, this trait provides quite a bit of defense when you get bursted. It usually saves my behind when I’m out of position in WvW and should help against Mordrem Snipers.

This build also has quite a few weaknesses. The damage output is significanlty less then PvE meta builds so I wouldn’t use this build for fractals or raids. It’s not very mobile. Your best option is to use Unyielding Anguish to move faster and get out of trouble. It is also difficult to stack might and apply conditions against mobile targests. When faced with this situation you will lose a significant amount of your DPS. Luckily this doesn’t occur often in PvE, but it definitely hurts this build when trying to solo roam in WvW. PvE enemies with low HP also don’t give you enough time to stack might.

I agree that the lack of skill balance and diversity is a big factor in the death of solo-roaming. The game gets stale when underused weapon sets, skills, and traits go unchanged year after year. I also feel that the power creep introduced with the trait changes and elite specs also make it much more difficult to win outnumbered fights due to the over abundance of AOE damage, CC, and damage immunity.

There were also several gameplay changes which made small groups and roamers unnecessary. Auto upgrades and spotting by sentries allow players to group up and stay with the zerg. It’s also more difficult to ninja objectives with small groups when you have to deal with Watchtower upgrades and buffed lord HP. The spotted affect on keep capture also prevents roamers from sneaking in behind enemy zergs to steal or re-take the keep.

I think the nerf to Unwavering Avoidance went too far with both the ICD and evade requirement. I play Mallyx/Glint with only one stun-breaker and it was nice to be able to dodge and follow the frontline when pushing another zerg in WvW. It seems like staying at range with the hammer is the better option now…

I would have to agree the CD does make it feel like you’ve just been dazed. I’ve been avoiding stealth attacks with S/D to prevent my auto attack from being disabled. At this point I would rather be revealed when a stealth attack misses.

This is still an issue for me. I usually tap the facets for regeneration, swiftness, protection, and boon duration and repeat once I recover energy too keep the boons stacked. It seems like activating multiple facets quickly causes them to double activate.

This issue has also been reported in the Revenant forums:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Bug-Facets-double-activating/first#post6277385
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Facets-going-off-immediately-ever-since-patch/first#post6270781

The facets have been messed up since the LS3 update. I’m getting too frustrated with it, so I’m going to stop playing Revenant in PvP game modes until it gets fixed. If you can please support the bug thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Skills-double-activation-on-single-input/first#post6274482

If this buff makes it into the game why would you bother with another weapon set. Just run D/P with D/P .

D/P can easily reset fights with stealth. If you make Black Powder a ground targeted shadow step, D/P would have too much mobility. They could use Black Powder to create distance before leaping through the field.

I also like the fact that we have tradeoffs when selecting your offhand weapon. Mobility should come at a cost.

It seems like it happens with any skill that instant cast and has two actions. I also play necro often in WvW and had this happened with Spectral Walk. There’s also been some bug forum topics referencing thief and guardian skills. I’ve been keeping my eye on complaints since I really want a fix for this problem.

What about one up one down with a random chance that the servers will switch? This way rank swapping could be limited to trigger 25% or 33% of the time. If you want to get creative, the chance could increase dynamically the longer a matchup hasn’t changed.

It’s very annoying to have to wait 40 seconds for protection when your Facet of Chaos double activates. I don’t see why they added the ability to hold down keys. It doesn’t seem very useful to hold down a key with the high cool-downs on most utility skills.