Guild Wars 2

While I can not say ‘no’ to more options in the player’s hands, I will say I find the available skins to be perfectly immersive with the theme of Guild Wars 2. How individuals dress themselves is another matter, and is entirely subjective.

Leo G.4501:

There’s also a slight stipulation in those two scenarios. The power ranger is locked into a channel skill to perform that while the druid has spent whatever cast to apply those bleeds up front, after which the druid can dodge, heal, apply more damage, etc. Of couse, those channels can be sped up by quickness.

Another consideration is that there are combo finishers that can ruin condi damage (light field) while the corresponding finishers are a bit more limited (dark fields).

True, and now comparing power builds and condition builds begins to become very subjective.

What build is appropriate to compare to another? At which point do you cease to apply external circumstances to the builds? Do you compare every facet of the builds, or only certain parts (As I did in my example)?

Aomine.5012:

Do you really pvp? You should give example better than Ranger’s garbage Longbow.

I don’t believe I ever said I played sPvP or WvW. As such, I’ll say it now: the Budweiser Clydesdales could not drag me into sPvP.

Knuckle Joe.7408:

Every time one of these posts come out, people (I assume avid condi players) always say stuff like “you don’t have condi cleanse?” as if the stupidly imbalanced condi classes can’t reapply the them isntantly.

The problem with condi is that you got stupid shutdown capabilities WHILE also doing stupid high damage, which is easy to apply/reapply. Most of the cleanse skills take away 2-3 condis at max, while the ones that remove all of them are under long-ass cooldowns. How are you suppossed to remove cripple, chill, burn, poison, bleed, torment etc, with your modest condi cleansing?

You don’t have to worry about that with power built enemies. You just dodge, dodge, dodge, (you can literally pull out vigor out your ass at this point of the game) a few blocks here and there and that’s it. Stuns are rare tbh and most of the time hard to apply.

5-7 stacks of bleed alone and you are already doing damage equivalent to some bread and butter power skills, each second.

Condi classes should not have so many crippling condis, they should have only damage ones.

I’d like to address several things. Disclaimer: This is merely a set of examples and observations. Interpret as you will.

1. The same skills and tactics used to avoid power-based damage also avoid the majority of condition-based applicators. Without those applicators, condition builds don’t do direct damage, nor apply damaging conditions.

2a. A Condition Druid; running full Sinister’s, Runes of the Krait, a Sigil of Malice, and food; has +33% bleeding damage on top of 1,817 condition damage.
- A single stack of bleeding does 174.25 damage-per-second.
- Five to seven stacks deal 871.25 to 1,219.25 damage-per-second.

2b. A Power Ranger; running full Berserker’s, Runes of the Ranger, a Sigil of Force, and food; has 2614 power, 58% critical chance, and 225.33% critical damage.
- Rapid Fire deals a minimum of 3,734.75 to 9,440.98 damage.
- Rapid Fire is a 2.5 second channel, so damage-per-second is 1,493.9 to 3,776.39
Note: This damage is against 2500 Armor. Soldier Professions using Berserker’s, Viper’s, Sinister’s, etc have a Armor rating of 2271.

3. There are no condition professions. Power-based builds have access to the same inhibiting conditions as condition-based builds.
- Afore-mentioned Power Ranger has access to Immobilize, Cripple, and Slow; the same conditions the Condition Druid has.

Now to be a cheeky fellow.

The afore-mentioned Power Ranger also has condition cleansing on a 20s CD (4 conditions), a 20s CD (2 conditions), a 32s CD (2 conditions), a 40s CD (2 conditions), and a 48s CD (2 conditions). These also apply Immobilize, Cripple, and Slow while being stun breaks and evades.

Your build can’t do that?

Leo G.4501:

use a hammer

and getting hit in the face.

I. Like. This. Build.

Leo G.4501:

Most players on each side of the argument only tell half truths. And then when people step in to argue the case, its taken into the context that you either think condi and power are equal or that condi is overpowered.

Agreed, and to be honest, I’m likely one of them. (Whomever ‘they’ are.) Hmm…

Correct me if I am wrong, but the opening post’s complaint was that condition builds only required investment into condition damage. For clarification: Was this referring to optimization or viability, and was it for a specific game mode?

Leo G.4501:

Sifu.9745:

As condi Guardian i also don’t need crit much: i get 15% crit on one handed weapons (trait), 10% on burning + 4 base crit = 29% crit + some more from Fury every now and then. So as Guardian i use same stats as i use them on my thief: condi, power, vitality.

I actually took the build in a slightly different direction. My Guardian focuses on Power, Toughness, Ferocity and some Vitality. He doesn’t use Right Hand Strength for the 10% crit chance on 1 handed weapons but instead the 50% crit chance while having Retaliation. I built him to get retaliation and light auras a lot and use a hammer for added protection and I can get 2-4k crits with autos and a bit of might here and there. Fury’s not always necessary but it’s a fun bruiser build. I had a similar set-up with my Warrior until they changed the +prec on signet use to +fer. I’d either need to change the build to Power, Precision, Toughness to see how it’d pan out or just go back to my berserker build.

…but that’s all rather beside the point. Guardian may have a build to bypass precision but it still doesn’t compare to a good spec’ed full power damage Dragonhunter-type build.

Interesting idea. My biggest problem with the new Guardian traits was getting reliable retaliation outside of greatsword.

On topic, just as your build won’t compare favorably with a meta-spec’ed Dragonhunter, neither will condition builds favoring defense compare to a full Viper’s build. (Or is it Sinister’s now? Meta makes my head hurt.)

Bear.3689:

its already been proven, is my point. like stop trying to argue that lmao

Please, provide this proof, then.

Bear.3689:

Sigfodr.9576:

…You are however completely wrong if you think a condi build only need 1 or 2 starts. It need 4 (with current stat options, power, condi power, precition and condi duration)…

yes, because condi builds totally need power in them!?

the only thing condition damage builds need is CONDITION DAMAGE. and MAYBE expertise, but then we have an armor set that is called trailblazers which gives tank stats + both of those stats.
the funny part is that you dont even need expertise. sigils + runes + food is easily enough condition duration for any condition you can apply. they give a LOT of +% duration

Condition builds don’t require power to maximize their damage, no. However, they do require condition damage, precision, and expertise to maximize their damage.

Sigils, traits, and runes are only effective at attaining +100% condition duration for a single condition. Many (All?) condition builds use multiple damaging conditions, for which expertise is required to increase duration across the board.

Precision is required in condition builds as many builds generate conditions from On-Critical traits and sigils. A Ranger’s Sharpened Edges, or an Elementalist’s Burning Precision, or a Sigil of Earth; for example.

On a related note, power builds don’t require precision. :P Revenants, Rangers, and Reapers can easily attain a high critical chance with no precision investment at all.

While I have reservations about certain trends, I believe Guild Wars 2 has a good diversity of fashionable skins people can use.

… Including all those sparkly glowy thingymabobs of blindness.

If a player doesn’t care for a skin, they are not forced to use it. If a player does use a skin a different player dislikes, it does not mean the first player has bad taste. Remember, five people will walk into a room and walk out with ten different opinions.

On a side note: any backpiece recommendations for an human Elementalist with Dominator weapons?

Dominator Sword and Dagger. Duh.

You said you used the Level 80 Boost you got from purchasing PoF. Have you done any of the personal story, or did you just start mapping?

The first step of the human story has you entering your home instance, and home instance modes will not show up as part of that.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

Shinzan.2908:

The value of dev time needed to make a new race work would probably vastly outweigh the actual value added to the game. They’d have to do models, voice acting, story integration (backwards too), make sure all the armor works… and in return all we’d get is a bit more cosmetic variety. Would be nice if they had infinite resources, but if it’s a question of Tengu or Mounts? – I’ll pick mounts.

Tengu are cool though, I wouldn’t mind seeing them play a bigger role in the story at some point.

People keep saying this, but it’s not true. New races and new classes/specializations are two of the key features that will sell MMO expansions. WoW is a good example of this. They have added 5 new races since launch and they’ll keep adding more! And they have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay many more armor skins to adjust to fit the new races to add too!

I mean sure, Anet is not Blizzard, I know Anet is a much smaller company, but then so is GW2 a much smaller game with less armors, so adding a new race to GW2 will be less amount of work than adding a new race to WoW.

I agree that the allure of a new playable race, whether it be Tengu, Kodan, or… Quaggan… Shudders. Anyways, it would most likely sell copies of the containing expansion.

My question is: How many of the copies are bought solely because of the new race? Of those, is it enough to profit from the cost of including the new race?

Thornwolf.9721:

Okhu.7948:

So what you want is an echo chamber, am I reading that right?

No I just want people to say why they want a new race, not why they dont. We hear the kitten as to why people dont want it all the time, I Want this to be a place where people talk about WHY they do want one.

We also hear reasons as to why people want playable Tengu all the time.

This is an open forum. People are free to post and respond as they wish, civilly. If you wish to censor opinions contrary to your own, I recommend you set up a private forum for that purpose.

PS: To be xenophobic, one must actually care about those foreign or strange things. I don’t.

Then my answer is yes, though in the end, it will depend on your play group.

Since I don’t really care all that much for Tengu (Or Asura, Charr, Norn, or Sylvari), I would prefer if time and resources spent developing them as a playable race were used on other things:

• Non-expansion elite specializations
• More Living Story content
• More armor and weapon sets
• More dungeons, fractals, and raids

First, and most important, question: What is your definition of viable?

In my opinion, power rangers are viable in high-level fractals and raids, but I don’t know enough about sPvP or WvW to say anything.

Is stability required/valued only in WvW and sPvP, vs. having it in PvE? I ask because I don’t think I ever used it in PvE.

With respect to Path of Scars, it already does as you suggest.

As for Sword being the go-to power DPS weapon, which sacrificial altar would you like me to use?

This balance patch was very helpful for me, I think. I ran a LB + S/A build using MM/WS/BM with survival skills.

Since the patch, I switched BM for Skirmishing and the new Vicious Quarry GM, and I do a lot more damage while maintaining the same amount of survivability.

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

He means easier…..doesn`t require thinking or trial and error thus better …

Wait, where did Goatjugsoup say it was easier?

Anyways, that’s only true for individuals. I find the combat system in Guild Wars 2 to actually be harder. It requires on-the-fly thinking and reaction to hard-to-see visuals, instead of just preparation and obvious skill tells.

Well, you can already see the additional critical chance, since it’s an additional 2% per stack of vulnerability. Therefore, just track the amount of vulnerability on the monster.

As for a buff counter or other personal indicator, it would be impossible. The bonus to critical chance from Decimate Defenses is unique to each monster and the stacks of vulnerability they have at the exact instant one of your attacks hits them.

You would need a rolling counter for every creature within visual range equal to the stacks of vulnerability they have, which could anywhere from a single one to over twenty different counters.

Example:
You have a base 30% critical chance.
Mob A has 25 stacks of vulnerability.
Mob B has 20 stacks of vulnerability.
Mob C has 10 stacks of vulnerability.
Mob D has no stacks of vulnerability.

You hit all four with the same Gravedigger, and as such you have four different critical hit chances.

Against Mob A, you have a 80% chance to critical.
Against Mob B, you have a 70% chance to critical.
Against Mob C, you have a 50% chance to critical.
Against Mob D, you have a 30% chance to critical.

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

Diak Atoli.2085:

As much as I loved the skill system of Guild Wars 1, I would rather not see it ported over to Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 1 was a set-piece style of tactical combat, with no vertical movement, movement while casting, or inherent dodge mechanics. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, is much more fluid.

Then again, I’m one of those who never left the outposts without a self heal, resurrection skill, and defensive skill on my bar. Avoided many a party wipe in UW and FoW, let me tell you. Guild Wars 2 just gave me 3+ skills to work with!

And you`d still have those 3 plus skills, just more of them to select from duh

Let me expound a little bit, then.

There are a total of 1235 PvE/PvP skills in Guild Wars 1. This means there are 131,204,518,666,321,227,270 unique combinations for an 8 slot skill bar. That’s not even counting the additional 84 PvE-only skills.

Oh, wait! We’re limited to two professions. That’s means there’s anywhere from 170 (Dervish/Paragon) to 286 (Elementalist/Necromancer) PvE/PvP skills to choose from. The minimum number of unique combinations is therefore 14,637,413,449,945. This is, again, not counting PvE-only skills.

Now, we get to consider the interactions of EVERY SINGLE COMBINATION with that of 7 to 11 other players (PVE) or 15 to 23 other players. I’m at work, or I would do the math on that, too.

Too many numbers; Didn’t read!
My point is: Guild Wars 2 skill balance is already difficult and time consuming, without the need to introducing a massive number of extraneous skills into a system that’s not even designed for that type of combat.

Though, if you wish to donate the millions of dollars to ArenaNet required to overhaul the system and hire a large number of professionals solely dedicated to skills and skill balance, by all means, do so.

As much as I loved the skill system of Guild Wars 1, I would rather not see it ported over to Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 1 was a set-piece style of tactical combat, with no vertical movement, movement while casting, or inherent dodge mechanics. Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, is much more fluid.

Then again, I’m one of those who never left the outposts without a self heal, resurrection skill, and defensive skill on my bar. Avoided many a party wipe in UW and FoW, let me tell you. Guild Wars 2 just gave me 3+ skills to work with!

I’m currently running a Shortbow Condition build and it works excellently… I think.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAV8fjEqQNLWyCGsAVLGMEKOAG9S/PgnNn7OI1bhREG-TxRAABAcRAo4JA0z+DSrb4SlgYr8za1fAA-e

I do have a question and a request, for those far more knowledgeable than me: Does Bountiful Hunter increase condition damage; and using this build as a base, how could I increase the amount of poison/poison damage I deal without sacrificing too much bleeding damage?

Farzo.8410:

Ubik.8315:

Norn just looks more popular because they’re easy to spot.

Zynt.5769:

Have you noticed that there are quite a lot of human female thieves that use not only tier 3 cultural armour, but also the scarf from the gem store? That’s a combination I see all the time in-game.

Guilty to using t3 medium top on my thief. Though it’s kinda between that or the gem store viper and strider skins…which I don’t have. Medium carapace and human t2 are nice as well, but the rest is just trenchcoats

Tier 3 underboob black leather armour, dual incinerator, flower-in-the-hair-hairstyle with weeaboo anime colour, massive obnoxious wings?

I have to say, I have never actually seen that combination in the game. Then again, I’m more concerned with having fun and dressing my own characters than paying attention to what others may or may not be wearing.

As long as I keep my shortbow-based Sinister’s build and my Chaos Shortbow, Fused Shortbow, Royal Ascalonian Shortbow, Aether, Corrupted Shortbow, Dwayna’s Shortbow, and Immortal Shortbow; I don’t care what you do with it.

Wait…

Heal Skill: Last Man Not Standing
Utility Skills: Fool’s Errand, Die Trying, and Rush In When Angels Hesitate
Elite Skill: Aggro Everything!… And The Dog!

Fixed those for you, Ill.

kitten … Can we have more, please!?

/starts second ‘Throw money at moniter’ fund.

I was posting that one as more of a baseline/formatting example than an actual suggestion, to be honest. I’ll leave the actual details to those more knowledgeable than myself!

… And I have little idea beyond the bland ‘Gain x seconds of might/fury/whatever-boon-of-the-month.’ Though that has it’s place and uses, especially if Thieves are going to be used in place of others.

One of the problems Thieves seem to have is the lack of ground support, via boons or otherwise.

My suggestion is a set of four new venom utility skills, or retooling two of the old ones, that are power-based in nature, applying boons, increasing damage, etc.

Example: Venom #1
Your attacks deal 125% more damage.
Number of Strikes: 6
Venom Duration: 30 seconds

Assuming the current 40 second cooldown stays, what effects do you, the community, think would be acceptable party support?

This is for PvE.

As for #2, I should rephrase: Which upkeep skills would I benefit most from while maintaining enough energy regeneration (Probably two pips worth) to frequently use weapon skills?

I’m looking for advice pertaining to two things with regards to using the Glint Legend: sustaining health and general healing, and managing energy costs.

1. Assuming I maintain 100% uptime in Glint, what are the best ways, through traits, weapons skills, and utility skills, to keep myself alive?

2. Assuming I maintain 100% uptime in Glint and hold a preference towards permafury, which upkeep skills should I use to repeatedly use weapon skills?

For background, my initial build is a full Berserker-based Devastation/Invocation/Herald setup, using sword/axe as primary and hammer as secondary.

(I’m at work, so I can’t upload a hyperlink. )

Thanks in advance!

Am I the only person eagerly bouncing in their computer chair waiting for the Champion and Legendary Pocket Raptors? No on else?…

/sulks in a corner

Well, for those brave or skilled enough, there an area in Auric Basin that spawns 3 veteran Shadowscales and a regular one at pretty good intervals.

It’s on the path to the Recovery Golem Hero Point, so it requires either an Experimental Rifle or Ley-line Gliding.

You can only select an Elite Specialization using the third, or bottom, Specialization slot on your build tab.

As for requiring new weapons, you need only select the Specialization on your build tab to use either the weapons or the new skills.

Forgive me, I’m on a tablet at work, or I would have listed examples.

Simply put, however, every profession is capable of running a condition build, especially in PvE. It might be not face-meltingly powerful or easy to use, but it’s there.

Ranger, Thief, Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer, Guardian, Warrior, and Revenant. Did I miss any?

Oh, yeah… Engineer!

Swagger.1459:

I think each hp spot should be worth ten points

Each Hero Challenge in Heart of Thorns, and the WvW option for Heart of Thorns, is worth 10 hero points…

Ironically, it costs more hero challenges to unlock a standard elite specialization in core Tyria than it does to unlock an elite specialization in Heart of Thorns,and the elite also gives you a set of 6 utility skills and cosmetic items.

Lightsbane.9012:

i wasn’t aware, i assumed it was kind of like ‘the force’ where some people were born with it, some weren’t. i took out the first part of your post because it was mainly a lore question, since warrior has been a 100% martial class until now.

It can be argued, based on certain Warrior skills, that Warrior used magic already. At the very least, subtle magics such as making a blade that much sharper, a shield that much sturdier, or the Warrior itself that much faster would not be outside the realm of lore-friendly possibilities.

Core specializations receive nothing, nor should they.

The five core specializations are the basis on which the professions are founded. Elite specializations then build upon that foundation, allowing heroes to, in effect, customize their chosen profession. Continually adding new skills, traits, and weapons to the the core specializations would defeat the purpose of the elite specializations.

This does not mean you must pick an elite specialization, nor that core specializations don’t need nor shouldn’t be fixed where appropriate. It’s simply my opinion that these are the skills, traits, and weapons you will always have access to, regardless of your elite specialization.

Aside from that fact that attempting to apply strict real world logic to a fantasy sword & sorcery game is a fool’s errand, your answer is magic.

Every human, for those of us from Guild Wars: Prophecies, and quite likely every race within Tyria is capable of utilizing magic. It was the basis of the secondary profession mechanic in the original Guild Wars, which gave you such combinations as Warrior/Elementalist.

As for the specific question: Channeling her immense rage, the reason she’s a Berserker in the first place, our psychotic hero pushes ffiery bolts of magic through her sword as she swings it very, very rapidly.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Invictus.1503:

Belenwyn.8674:

I assume one of the not yet introduced Legends is the elite specialisation. I bet for Glint.

I concur and have said as much in the dozen or so other threads just like this one. 1 legend each for the first 4 traitlines. 1 traitline that is more associated with the mechanics and not tied to a legend exactly. Then 1 legend plus some sort of core mechanic change for each elite specialization.

I also guess that Glint will be the specialization legend and since Rytlock seems to use her, he is likely using the elite specialization himself.

If revenants only get 4 base specs, that’s 4*3=12 utility skills. In contrast, other professions have 5 sets of 4 utility skills each, for a total of 20. That seems incredibly unfair.

But if revenant gets 5 base legends, and if anet decides to add a forth utility skill to each one of them, then revenants will be comparable to the remaining professions.

Even more so, if you consider that each new elite spec brings 4 utilities to a base profession, so it would be only fair if the that was the same case for revenant’s elite specs.

Finally, their “traitline that is more associated with the mechanics and not tied to a legend exactly” happens to have plenty of synergy with the ventari. But you may be right on this one.

Hopefully, we do get four utility skills per Legend… Hopefully. Personally, I think we’re going to get four base Legends, with the fifth one reserved for the elite spcialization.

As for the total number of skills, ArenaNet could add a general selection of Signets we can use in place of Legend skills. A set of four would bring the total number up to 20, and Signets are the most prevalent skill type in the game, with Engineer being the only profession not to have them.

The Dawnguard!

A hybrid PvE build based around traps and passive signets, just for the fun of it!

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgIBrAK4Bvw~

Weapons:

• Greatsword, Sigils of Fire and Force
• Scepter + Torch or Longbow, Sigils of Fire and Force

Skills:
Heal

• Signet of Resolve

Utilities

• Procession of Blades
• Light’s Judgement
• Signet of Judgement

Elite

• Signet of Courage (Current Proposal)

Gear:

• Full Celestial Armor (Ascended), Runes of Rage
• Full Celestial Trinkets (Ascended)

Judicious use of Spear of Justice to rack up burning, thereby maintaining Fury, and pressuring with greatsword. The primary burst would be either Procession of Blades or Light’s Judgement on top of Symbol of Wrath, then followed by Whirling Wrath.

Vizardlorde.8243:

Diak Atoli.2085:

I’ll probably run a PvE Zeal/Radiance/Dragonhunter build using greatsword and signets/traps. +70% damage modifier and 80% chance to critical with celestial gear? Yes, please!

Oh god Celestial Hambow guardians in the making

Actually, scepter/torch was going to be my offset, but now that you mention it!

I’ll probably run a PvE Zeal/Radiance/Dragonhunter build using greatsword and signets/traps. +70% damage modifier and 80% chance to critical with celestial gear? Yes, please!

As awesome as it looks and sounds, and it does look and sound awesome, not really. My greatsword-wielding Dragonhunter says n"Hi!"

This is a bit off-topic, but I’d like to point out that the traits they showed don’t specifically reference the Legend. Instead it references a legendary demon stance, of which there could possible be more than one, especially if demon stances are condition based like it would seem.

Just thought I’d throw that out there for those who assume we’re only getting four Legends, maximum, tied to specific trait lines.

In my personal opinion, I would prefer not to have something like this in a game I play for fun. That said, how I view the NPC communities’ reacting to the ‘possibility’ of corruption would depend on how the developers implement it and how well they do it.

As for whether or not every single sylvari works for Mordremoth, ArenaNet has already disproven that.

Aside from the fact that would completely wipe out a playable race, the developers have stated in their articles, and shown on Points of Interest, that one of the metaevents in the new maps involves the players helping Laranthir, a sylvari member of the Vigil, and his Pale Riders, an all-sylvari unit, gather supplies, rescue Pact survivors, and protect them from Mordrem.

As much as I would love to have a rifle, or 1200+ ranged option in general, I find myself hoping they add a specialization that adds offhand ‘hand’ skills.

Something along the lines of mainhand dagger/offhand dirty tricks, or mainhand pistol, etc.

Cough. Rotscale HM. Cough

Guild Wars didn’t have ‘Living Story’ patches every 2 weeks, either.