Guild Wars 2

Admittedly I did forget about the Torment on Fear, but a single 3s (6s) Burn (assuming the burn is not on CD from your Shades) on a 32s CD hardly competes with three 5s (10s) bleeds on a 16s CD. Burns are indeed much stronger than bleeds, but not by a magnitude of 10.

Furthermore on top of it being less overall damage, CD limiting application and the application being overlapped by your main Shade skills, but it will also be tougher to apply in WvW as Fear is stopped by Stability preventing the Torment application whereas Chill is not.

It all comes back to the fact Reaper has strong weapon synergies with getting bonus bleed stacks from chills, blinds, and crits on zero CD where Scourge gets an overall weaker burn stack on a 3s CD on Torment and Fear – both of which are more limited in access. Scourge is a pretty hard hit on Weapon DPS, but Shade DPS (at least currently) has a lot of synergy with Shroud traits including said burn on Torment with Demonic Lore.

This is not to say Staff is trash and will never be used. The DPS loss is undeniable, but I (at least currently) see Sand Shades being strong enough that you build around them and select weapons that best support them for best rotation rather than just selecting the max DPS weapon with Shroud skills as filler like is current meta. Staff will always have a place in WvW due to safety, and its LF gain potential in zerg situations is great. But then again even with Reaper, Staff was never top DPS, so nothing’s really changing.

Lily.1935:

So I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but Staff on Scourge through traits can inflict burning through torment. Thought I’d mention that.

Yes, you can inflict Burning through Torment, but two issues with that comment: First is where does Staff have Torment access? Second is currently that ability has a 3s CD – you can pressure that CD with Shade skills alone as F1-5 will pulse a Torment.

Unless you were referring to Scepter. That does mean that Scepter 3 will also apply a single Burn stack assuming the ability is off CD. There’s no question that Scepter is better DPS on its own compared to Axe or even Dagger… the question is if that DPS gain would outweigh any DPS loss in not being able to maintain Shade DPS due to poor LF gain. If the CD were removed on Demonic Lore and Scepter 3 had the potential to apply 7 Burn stacks along with its Torment, it would become a clear winner… but I don’t see that happening. Until then, you’d also want to be wary of your Scepter burning up the use of that burning. Where your Shade skills would apply that Burn in an AOE, Scepter 3 would only give it to a single target.

I’m thinking of Pistol. Offhand Pistol works well in Melee range, and Solar Focusing Lens + Photonic Blasting Module combines well to throw out 8 burning stacks.

While shield has defensive benefits and hard CC, it is crippled by long cooldowns. Pistol 4 alone would out-DPS shield even on a pure zerker build. I really only see Shield in situations where the CC trumps out the DPS and soft CC of pistol.

Holosmith is looking like it will have some fun build options. A build that uses Explosives/Tools/Holo with Thermal Release valve for high damage dodges and max Forge usage. A Capacity build for high sustained Might and over-boosted skills. And a build where you can perma-boost heat skills and release a Overheat burst when needed (though likely the lowest Forge usage due to keeping charge and overheat downtime). Grandmasters that all will likely be used and be major aspects of builds instead of non-options too many face.

@Maullus – I’m assuming you’re talking about PvE due to the “content missed” comment. An Engineer is pretty reliant on their kits and tool belt skills, so if you’re relying mainly on your weapons, you’re hurting yourself. A Power engi using Bomb and Grenade kits is a pretty easy build to run with.

I never enjoyed Scepter either. Staff was also boring for me, but was a brilliant loot stick… unfortunately they nerfed that.

Hammer: My favorite Guardian weapon. It has an symbol on its auto-attack, giving it nice support along with making it solid DPS if traited right. It also has a ton of CC – throwing down a Ring of Warding and then banishing their face into the ring wall is a blast and works against large mobs too. Add in a 5 sec CD blast finisher, and you can either easily keep condis in check or work on other people’s fields for might/stealth/heals for more support.

Greatsword: Between having a leap, a high DPS spin to win, and an AOE pull that you can use to jerk targets into your trap bomb, this is a staple DPS weapon for Guardian.

Sword: Built in mobility and projectile protection on a weapon with solid DPS while leaving room for either the defenses of shield/focus or the DPS of Torch.

Longbow (DH only): While scepter has come a ways from its early days, they nerfed scepter range and made Longbow Guardian’s long range option. I find the skills of this weapon to be fun, especially when traited, but unfortunately its mediocre DPS relegates it to PVP only (for its point denial strengths). Scepter is simply better ranged DPS and can load more utility.

Mace: Purely a supporty weapon. Great for that role, but not really anything else.

Axe: The weapon of the Firebrand. This will give Guardian a true condi mainhand, which it has lacked. This weapon feels a little clunky, so hoping it will get some work, but has potential. Plus the symbol it has is purty.

I was going quite into depth on the pros and cons of each weapon, but honestly Lily got the gist of it.

The #1 factor for which Legendary you pick is the one you want the most, not the one you think you’ll use the most. I think Astralaria is gorgeous, and that will be my next Legendary.

For Scourge, my current planned weapon setup is:
Dagger/Warhorn – This the Life Force pinnacle combo. This in demo testing allowed me to spam Shade skills, and likely will be the main set for most things.

x/Torch – Situation would dictate if Axe or Scepter is better. Axe has a great LF skill with 2 and an AOE boon corruption. With LF being more important on Scourge, I can see the desire for Axe increasing even on Condi Scourge builds. If POF adds in heavier boon usage on mobs, this could make it a mainstay. Scepter is the most powerful condi weapon a Necro has, but with Scourge relying more on Shades for DPS and needing LF to maintain that, Scepter’s poor LF access will hurt it. However on targets with 5+ conditions it is equivalent to Axe, and if being used as a 10s swap only then back to dagger, the shorter CD advantage of Axe is also lost. So if you’re on a Condi build and have no boons to corrupt, Scepter is likely better than Axe… but unless I can’t escape heavy auto-attack usage, I’ll be going Axe so I can use Astralaria. We’ll see how my attack rotations land.

Staff – Not backed up by the Reaper bleeds, Staff will be even weaker DPS on Scourge and its utility overlapped a bit too. However its LF gain in zergs along with the safety of range means that it will likely never leave a Necro WvW zerg setup. I can also see it as being a part of point denial with marks + shades.

GS is one of your main condi weapons on reaper. You get 3 Bleeds on chill, and can trait chills on Blinds… and 4 is a pulsing blind, making it an amazing burst of condi damage. 2 is a whirl finisher, so if you have a party throwing fields down, you can get a solid hit (if using viper) as well as a quick stack of condis, and it can be spammed on low HP targets. 5 is also a good stack of chills. Add in 3 and 5 being good Life Force sources when your scepter is junk at that, and I consider GS to be your best condi weapon. It’s the Staff or Scepter that becomes the situational choice. Though note you should not be camping a single weapon on a Necro – Necro’s auto-attacks are pretty weak. Though admittedly GS auto is weaker than it should be, so unless you have proper fields and a low HP boss to spam 2 on, it becomes the weapon you use Shroud on.

I look forward to Scourge. though I will miss my GS. Though admittedly without the Reaper trait line to back up the chill access, it would become much weaker.

Using Rifle 2 for poison stacking when you can use Pistol 2 for the same reason also throwing on 5 vuln stacks (which would increase your DPS) and not needing to be immobile to get it… plus also getting P1 for bleed stacking and either access to interrupts and a smoke field for blinds with offhand pistol, or a jump back + torment + stealth access (which sets up P1 bleeds) with off hand dagger?

Deadeye also faces the issue that Malice and none of its abilities help condi damage.

Deadeye’s saving grace for a condi build is traited steals. With Mark resetting on target death, you can run Deadly Arts and Trickery for every Mark to bomb Poison, Confusion, Boon strip, flat damage all along with giving you initiative and Fury + Might + Swiftness + Vigor. Mercy allows you to double-bomb Mark on a single target. If targets are dying fast enough, the boons can easily become perma (though not much of a Might stacker).

The biggest problem with this build is how clunky Marking currently is. The cast time is slow and obvious making it an easy target for interrupts in PvP/WvW and feel a bit tedious in PvE. Considering the possibility of Mark spam, it does need a cast, but hoping that animation gets halved.

Same – I had to solo the entire chain and champ, which shows me the event chain has a high failure rate. And considering the fact it permanently glitches until the chain is hard reset, this collection item is impossible unless you manage to catch the reset before it fails. This definitely needs to be looked at.

I’ve been stuck on this for days as well:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_Giant_Branded_Devourer
The event has shown as up with no actual champ – and I’ve carefully combed the entire area the event shows as well as a ways around it multiple times.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_Branded_Devourer_Queen
The event chain is perpetually stuck on this stage: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defend_the_siege_devourer_while_it_assists_the_troops

I’ve checked at reset as well as constantly throughout the day on multiple days, and still glitched.

Staff and P/P is strong for PvE content. Staff gives you great AOE and dodge fram AOE for masses of trash, and P/P is easily maintained DPS pressure for single targets/bosses and is good on an unsupported thief. Plus I love the extreme flippy acrobatic feel of staff and the Pirate feel of P/P. I was one that wanted a thief Sniper, but I’ll have a hard time giving up staff and the dodges of DrD.

Unfortunately this combo has almost no mobility, and any stealth attempts outside of utility is clunky and expensive. Staff is great, but lends itself better where lots of small AOE pressure is needed. That is in PvE and small scale WvW, but not so much in PvP as most fights you’ll only catch one or two in a cleave. While it looks like Staff is mainly a means to prep P/P unloads, P/P is one of the most easily countered combos in the game making it weak in PvP. You’re on a channel in which you can’t dodge or use anything else or you’ll interrupt – this means they can dodge, interrupt, block, reflect to your face, or do their own big moves/combos knowing that you can’t p2 or 4 without interrupting your own channel first. You stopping your channel means you cost yourself more Initiative making it tougher to do more unloads. In short, unless you’re +1 and/or going against complete noobs that can’t or don’t know how to counter obvious channeled tells, your P/P will get your ass handed to you.

D/P on the other hand offers tons of mobility with 3 allowing you to stick to your target for your melee attacks, interrupts (pulmonary ftw), unlimited access to stealth with P5 + D2, and massive burst. And as D/P already gives you everything you want for most of combat, you can use SB for the powerful utility. SB5 for the ability to get to points quickly, SB4 for anti-res pressure, and SB2 for blasting fields/party stealth. Really, no matter the build, you’re crippling yourself giving up SB on a thief in PvP.

Part 3: (the weapon!)

<< Rifle >>
This is a weapon dipped in controversy, and the struggle the devs had with this weapon shows. I don’t feel it is in a good place currently, but feel it can get there and even like the trade-off kneel mechanic, assuming it is made to be worth it.

The kneel mechanic is currently very clunky and suicidal. Only +300 range is not a real range advantage, and is easily closed allowing for CC/gap closers/etc to easily step on you. Add in skill 5 being the only way to break out of the stance, and that extra button click is a breaking deal for PvP, Raids, or anything else with heavy mechanics that you need to react quickly too. Dodging and leaving kneel will cause you to pause or even completely stop (while still pressing a move key) at the end of the dodge roll, which needs to be fixed. Also WASD should break out of Kneel, but dodge alone should not. That allows for more active gameplay. If those changes cannot be made, then kneel will always be in a broken balance as it would take OP skills to justify a mechanic that won’t allow you to react to stimuli quick enough.

The ability to pierce naturally (or through trait) is a major factor that would help make the Rifle worth using without just flat buffs to everything.

My suggestions are with the consideration that dodge + WASD as well as WASD will be fixed to properly break out of Kneel dynamically.

< Skill 1 >
- Brutal Aim: I do feel that the damage of this ability falls a little short. I also feel that the projectile speed is too slow, especially for how obvious it is. The base damage should be boosted by ~10%, and the base projectile speed boosted a little.
- Deadly Aim: I don’t feel that this quite justifies the stance. But if the 25%(?) damage boost is applied onto a base increase of Brutal Aim along with the 50% projectile speed on a faster bullet, this will feel much better.
- Cursed Bullet: A slow and very obvious projectile being your stealth attack feels very counter-intuitive to me. Add in the mediocre damage of the move, I don’t see a two even unblockable boon corruptions justifying the slow and obvious tell. This should either be an invisible bullet to fit more thematically, or have a benefit that justifies the tell. Possibly taking away endurance or much more damage or something.

< Skill 2 >
- Skirmisher’s Shot: Adding no more damage than auto-attack, it means that this is more for the utility. I do feel that all of the Rifle’s attacks should pierce on its own, which would take off one of the main reasons to use this. Possibly having this bounce shot instead of pierce so to want to use this when you can’t line up shots would be a very good fit. Also as others have suggested, it would be nice to have the swiftness not be qualified by hitting a target.
- Spotter’s Shot: I do feel that Vigor instead of Swiftness is more fitting in the kneel stance. Bounce instead of Pierce if pierce is given to the rest of Rifle.

< Skill 3 >
- Double Tap: Feels a bit like P/P Unload, but I like the route they took with that, and that’s nice here. Though I don’t feel Double Tap is worth the 4 Ini cost – this should be 3.
- Three Round Burst: While the damage of this I feel justifies the 4 Ini cost, it comes with the penalty of requiring Kneel, so should also be 3 Ini.

< Skill 4 >
- Death’s Retreat: I like the flavor of this ability, but it faces the issue of Shadow Step’s poor pathing. You can easily find yourself only moving a tiny bit or not at all, which can be the death of you, especially considering it is target based rather than direction based. Simply make this direction based to leave the player enough control to keep the step effective.
- Death’s Judgment: This is the big move that on would want as a sniper… and then was given a massive over-the-top beacon along with a sizable windup that allows anyone with at least one eye-ball to easily see and dodge/block/reflect back to your face. This move is also strongly tied to Malice stacks which currently stacks too slow for true active combat, mean most uses of this will be weak versions. Any Malice changes making it easier to stack would obviously help the latter, but please take a step back from the hand-holding counterplay and make the tell more normal. I think the glowing star at the end of the rifle is enough of a tell that the move is happening, but at the very least make the line half the current width or less.

< Skill 5 >
- Kneel: I don’t think a skill slot should be given up for a mechanic. “Sniper’s Cover” should be base giving this the utility of a stealth ability. Also I question if the 10 second charge of Kneel is necessary. I realize this is meant to prevent an easy perma-stealth, but there are already multiple ways to get that – I don’t see why the class it would be most obvious to have it should be excluded from it. This could be balanced by making it cost 4 Ini instead of 3 so as to have perma-stealthing in most cases to outstrip ini gains so someone using that mechanic won’t have the ini to open up with.
- Free Action: While I do think it needs to be made to allow Kneel stance to be broken out of more freely, having this with the additional utility when you leave stance in a more controlled manner is nice.

Part 2:

<< Traits >>
< Adept Traits >
- Revealed Malice: Currently I find this weak. I do see the advantage of looking to start with more Malice, but only one is meh. I’d like to see this be 1 malice per 1.5s while you are revealed. I’d take losing the small amount of Might for that.
- Iron Sight: Straightforward, and likely the default trait in most cases until the others are changed.
- One in the Chamber: This refers back to the poor use of stolen skills being required to have a marked target. 100% useless on one of the skills this is meant to trait, and others generally too short to have a use. Break the Marked requirement, and this should be better. This should also trait Cantrip cooldowns.

< Master Traits >
- Renewing Gaze: This sole trait is where I can see Marks competing against Steals. You lose mobility, but gain constant uses against squishy targets, gaining nice utility with Steal traits.
- Silent Scope: I don’t believe Rifle 5 should lose almost all utility just to engage a mechanic – it basically makes a 4 skill two-hander. Stealth grant and the higher initiative cost should be base Rifle 5. Possibly have it grant 2 initiative on kill along with the 20% kneeling rifle crit? Or make all Rifle skills pierce? Though I think that should be default as well.
- Unforgiving: Does allow for a followup stun on a traited Mark or a CC type mark without having to go Trickery, but hard to escape trickery if you’re looking to use more than auto-attack regularly. Though I’d like to see this to tie in better with the Malice mechanic and have Unforgiving trigger on max Malice as well.
- Peripheral Vision: While this suffers from the Mark stolen skill lock that I think needs to be changed, I also consider the range to be a bit tight. 360 I think would be a better area.

< Grandmaster Traits >
- Perfectionist: This is currently capped by the slow malice build-up rate, but it’s own timer can easily be a balancing factor against faster Malice max possibilities, which this already has set at 8.
- Maleficent Seven: Is the max damage trait with the malice mechanic, but unless Malice buildup is changed, is likely a no-go outside of boss fights.
- Be Quick or Be Killed: Pretty strong against trash fights where you keep casting mark or when you have other sources of Quickness.
- Fire for Effect: I can see this being pretty strong in zergs that need a source of Might, or as a melee source. The stolen skill life being tied to Mark concerns remain, and also would want to see a 360 range, especially with it being meant to hit more targets.

<< Skills >>
- Malicious Restoration: This is a skill tied to Malice, and considering its longer cooldown, really will be tied to if they improve Malice gain or not if it really will see use. Outside of that, not bad.
- Binding Shadow: A nice little vuln burst, but should be range 1500 to match Rifle so a Rifle user will not be without their matching Elite Specialization abilities. That, or tie +300 range to the One in the Chamber trait.
- Mercy: I know that this exists so as to allow more dynamic Mark use and as a stun break, but a 30 sec cooldown for this is just silly. That’s as long or longer than the cool down of Marking in the first place, and can be considered a detriment if used as a stun break. This should have a cool down of 10 or 15 seconds. That would allow for more dynamic target switching if the need calls for, as well as the counter-play of making a thief want to take this for the stun break and conversely allow players to press a thief into dropping their Mark and subsequently built up Malice against them to break a stun.
- Shadow Flare: Strongly resembles Shadow Step, but with a much smaller window, only one port, and does damage instead of cures condis. While most cases utility-wise Shadow Step will be taken over this, the ranged AOE pressure always has its uses. This should have 1500 range though.
- Shadow Gust: I like this skill, though I do think it should count as a whirl or blast finisher.
- Shadow Meld: The ability to re-stealth no matter what is pretty strong, and didn’t do any testing to see how it works against things like Warrior’s Mage Teather. Would like to hear from those that have. This will be a tough choice against Basilisk Venom.

My opinions of Deadey. As these posts are long, I need to break it up into parts due to message length limits.

Part 1:

<< Core Mechanics >>
Malice: Malice currently takes 10+ seconds to build it on a target you’re attacking, and 20+ on one you’re not. The latter means you’ve already basically burned your entire duration before you even get the full benefits, and the former you only get half. It taking that long means you won’t be able to build up high malice in 90% of content, as you or the target is not going to last that long. Bosses are the obvious exception, but then you face the issue of the fact that Malice completely resets when you Mark the same target as well, putting you back on the long build up process all over again. Unfortunately this all boils down to mechanics heavily reliant on high malice for proper utility or damage are screwed. Build up time can pretty safely be halved, but lowering of some kind is needed, such as the traited version being base, and 1s/2.5s traited.

Deadeye’s Mark: I’ve already went over the Malice aspect, but this ability has another big issue: the stolen skills being tied to the mark rather than being separate. This causes several issues. First is that in the face of quick combat that means a mark will be dropped in seconds if not less, so stolen skills lose all strategy. More frustratingly, the the Cantrip trait that gives stolen skills on Cantrip use becomes 100% useless on the Mercy Cantrip as it self-defeats itself by removing the Mark that the skills currently require. Simply allow the stolen skills to remain, and overwrite like it already does with normal stolen skills. This should allow you to fix the Cantrip trait for Mercy and as well as open actual strategic use of stolen skills (alternate openers, saving a specific skill theft for the proper time, etc).

Just adding the note that I’m willing to change servers if needed!

About Me: I am a mix of casual and competitive in my game play. I really like to dissect a game and see how it works as I enjoy learning (and even math), and that typically translates how to play well and meta game. However meta-gaming isn’t my actual playstyle – I look how to make the way I want to play the best possible it can be rather than playing whatever is the best meta, which means you can find me on some unique very non-meta builds. These efforts mean I do lean towards to being more competitive and like being in a guild that supports that. However that is a lower priority – I love socializing with people in games, and is the main reason I play MMOs. I also love learning with and teaching other players, and that doesn’t always happen in competitive guilds. I’ll take a casual guild of people I can call my friends over one that will boot me because I can’t play every day. I took a two year break from this game because I found myself booted from guild because I was gone for two weeks. Life should come first.

What I’m Looking For A guild that does all game modes: PvE, PvP, WvW. While I mentioned I tend to be more competitive when I play and like a guild that has people I can play like that with, I know that is not really compatible with my game time. I work from home and can play on my downtime, which means I can easily log 50+ hours of play in a week. But then I might get an urge to do something else (be it go out and have a life, watch a movie, or do a different game), which means I’m not 100% consistent. I’m really hoping I can find a guild like I have in some other MMOs – a group of friends that will still be there even when I do take breaks from the game, and hopefully have friendships that extend beyond this game. Taking breaks is how I keep interest in a game; a gear grind is not enough for me, and breaks allow me to forget stuff so I can enjoy relearning it and allow new stuff to build up for me to figure out. This means I like to take occasional breaks that can last weeks or even months, but I always plan on coming back. It’s how I have been playing DDO for 10 years, and will continue to do so. Hope it can be the same here.

More literal needs:
VOIP – I can use Vent, Mumble, Discord, or whatever. 18+ preferred. I am not one that cusses much and know how to behave around kids, but I like not needing to worry about that.

Website – This really helps my “I like to take breaks” playstyle. Allows me to keep up with the guild when I’m taking a break as I’ll still check the guild website and chat with people as I want to keep the friendships up while not in game.

Quality – By this I’m not going back to the “competitive guild”, but rather not wanting a zerg guild. I like being able to trust everyone in a guild that I’m in and is someone that I can catch in VOIP rather than some nameless face that is no different than someone I’d catch randomly in a PUG. I have no problem following an application process.

I know all of that was a bit rambly, so please feel free to ask me any questions!

Ssilvak.9781:

Astralaria III : I can’t loot the “Tail of the star god fragment” found on the grawls in Blazzeridge steppes.

Took about 100 kills, but I eventually got it. The low chance RNG items are frustrating. I’ve killed hundreds of saurians in Auric Basin for Astralaria IV, and have yet to get the item I need there. Yay not knowing what is a grind and what is glitched!

Note, I bumped a thread I should not have – Karka Queen not giving collection item for Astralaria IV

And another to the list of killing Karka with no collection. Saw a video of someone with it – did they get dev help?

mexay.3902:

Yeah I sent a mail and basically got told “lol no we can’t give you the item even though we did it for Nevermore”

Kind of frustrated by this. Watched one of my guildies get his Nevermore last night and we should have pretty much gotten our Legendaries at the same time, but we can’t cause it’s bugged.

Keep reporting the bug guys. According to support, the more reports, the higher the priority

Sadly I find that unlikely considering they thought it was a good idea to make Part 3 cost 11 Meteorit Ingots – that’s 275 Meteorite Ore that is gated behind a rare drop on Orichalcum ore, which will take months (unless you hit every single node every single day and are lucky) as you can’t buy it, is new so don’t have a stock of it, and orichalcum ore nodes are limited and time gated. And of course is the fact the meteorite ingots require 44 deldrimor (though you can buy that out or have it stockpiled).

The Aurillium Sheets being bugged out is frustrating, and the lack of support that we’re getting regarding it is a slap in the face – especially considering they supported Nevermore. But even if they gave the 1100 sheets needed (I can only imagine the Auric Basin grind that will require to buy), don’t believe anyone would be past tier 3 at this point.

Revenant is in a weird place that they’re locked down by their stances. They lack stability access having to either use Dwarven Stance (Jalis) for Inspiring Reinforcement or traiting to only get a short one through a dodge… which is under the Retribution tree that lacks almost entirely on damage options (your limited Retaliation access coupled with only getting might when people are punching you makes it double meh as not getting hit at all is the best). This means that you are almost certainly going to be lacking Stability without party support, and lacking stability means that you’re likely going to get tagged with CC. Which comes the second joy of Revenant – your lack of Stun Breakers. You only have 3 options: Rite of the Dwarf in Jalis (super expensive likely preventing you from using other skills) and Riposting Shadows in Shiro (also expensive and displaces you, which can be good or bad… but def a great option). Unfortunately the second you leave either one of those, you’re toast against CC, which leads to your third (and main) option: Empty Vessel in Invocation.

Really, Invocation is a requirement for Revenant in PvP. Revenant seriously is lacking in stun breaks and condition removal, and Invocation is the only tree that helps that. Add in that it is a pretty good tree with Fury access, 7% damage while under fury, and 20% more crit with fury (which helps both power or your torment on crit), and it’s cemented in place. The other two trees can be theory crafted, but I would not suggest ever stepping away from Invocation until and unless stability and/or stunbreak access is addressed.

Other than the issues dealing with CC and conditions, I actually quite like Revenant. While I definitely think their weapons have some room for more balancing, they all have a place. Staff and Hammer have great utility, sword and mace are great damage, and OH axe/sword/shield are solid too. Personally the Sword mainhand fits my playstyle the best – auto-attack is great damage and vuln stacking, s2 is a chill which is huge, and s3 is a strong evasion (which is much needed on a class that can’t take the CC hits). I prefer Axe offhand as it gives a gap-closer and a CC to help stop stomps, though does admittedly hurt the mitigation department (losing the block/escape of sword or the turtling of shield). Hammer and Staff are pretty much just off-swap weapons and nothing else. They pale in comparison to Sword when it comes to Power DPS and completely lack Condition damage, regulating them down to utility. Both offer similar utility with Staff being stronger in that area and Hammer being ranged. Either case you shouldn’t be using the weapon outside of specific situations.

Personally I find this to “clutter” change to be a step backwards. The only time that visual effects affected me was small world bosses (such as Dwayna or Modniir). PvP even with a 5v5 fight I never have had an issue. Simply making small world bosses a bit bigger so their tells stand out above the affects of 100 players would solve that issue for me.

What I think they need to do is to add this as an option. People that want smaller/less visual affects, but don’t want to turn them off can select the option. Just under “Effect LOD” add “Smaller Effects” where the tooltip can note that it lessens the ‘clutter’. And let those of us that enjoy the flashiness of GW2 have it back!

Lynnie.7213:

I tested the same rotation using Reaper’s Onslaught and Deathly Chill and DC build won everytime. But as you said, chill can be overwritten by another player, so that is factor to take into consideration.
Since its a build for group content and assuming everyone can pull its own weight, i’d go with curses. You can stack 8 might stacks on yourself, if the others 4 players can’t contribute with something would be really sad, tbh.
But for solo playing style, i take curses anytime.
idk, i kinda prefer the condition duration over some lil power dmg boost. Lose 25% condition duration would be big and duration win anytime vs direct damage on longer fights, which is my point there.

Isn’t your testing only been on single-target no-competing-chills? Unfortunately DPS tests like this don’t take into consideration moving targets, avoiding attacks, and CC. You’re not getting quick recharges on 3 (stability – being knocked on your kitten hurts your DPS), 4, or 5 (a good CC and good damage against low-HP) without trash, and just one other reaper can easily cut your DPS in half or less from DC. Though Dungeons and Fractals are a controlled enough area that you can make sure DC is effective.

As for the duration – 6% damage to burns, chills, bleeds, and poison I see as easily outdoing losing less than 1s of Poison duration. Power, condition damage, 5% modifiers would take actual calculation and/or testing to see if it’s worth losing overall duration. Then the factor of the need for higher quick damage on trash vs long boss fights.

Yes, there are music guilds that frown upon the use of macros for playing music. That is more a stem of greed, however. It is relatively common for players to give a little gold to players that have done something that they enjoyed – be it port them to the top of a hard to get to jump puzzle, guide them through an event, or in this case, play music. They don’t want to see people get paid for giving others enjoyment without them pressing the buttons themselves (of course they would use words different than that). When such people come up and feel that they should disparage others for not wanting to play the game the way they think it should play, just ask them kindly to leave them be. If they continue, report them for their abusive behavior. Maybe a temporary ban will wake them to the fact that it is a game meant to be played for fun. Those with enough talent to play the musical tools in the game should indeed be applauded, but I’d gladly take a nice player with a macro over a button pressing troll.

One thing to not forget about Reaper’s Onslaught is it increases your physical damage along with the extra stack of Burning as you’re attacking faster. Another important factor is the on-kill cooldown trigger, allowing you to break out your 3, 4, and 5 when trash/adds are present. Another major concern is that Chill has no “most damage” intelligence built into it – any other chill even if it has no damage trait will overwrite yours erasing that damage.

In short, if number crunching shows deathly chill to out-DPS faster attacks + extra burn stack(s), it still would only be better in a single-target single-player-chilling situation.

Then comes the question of Spite vs Curses. Spite gives massive self-Might stacking, damage modifiers, and spinal shiver triggers for extra damage and chills. This obviously require different utilities – I like running Well of Suffering for solid damage, Suffer, and You Are All Weaklings for AoE weakness, might, and stun break.

I doubt a few more stacks of bleeding, 2 stacks of torment, and Target the Weak outweigh 25 stacks of might and 25% damage modifier, though once you’re in a group that gives you that might, it would go in favor of Curses.

Another suggestion is possibly forgoing Sigil of Venom for Sigil of Bursting? Poison is the weaker of the damage conditions, and boosting condition damage by 6% easily cover the poison stack losses. Also consider your off-swap having a Sigil of Corruption to have an additional 250 condition power for areas that you can build that up.

Also have you compared the 25% duration from runes vs the additional condition and power damage you get from Berserker runes? Runes of the Berserker would unquestionably win out on trash, but the extra stats and 5% condition damage (and 5% power damage if they ever fix that) is nothing to shake a stick at for bosses either.

Jana.6831:

Amadan.9451:

when you say you don’t have to buy the mats but farm it you are forgetting that all those mats you are using and not selling plus the time gate are worth much more than just selling the mats and buying the precursor.

And the price currently is that high because “everybody” has got the same goal like you. If that weren’t the case the materials would be cheaper = you would get less potential gold for your node farming.

There are many other ways to get gold than node farming, and ascended crafting was meant to greatly increase the value of those material already. Every material did shoot up – while didn’t really balance the demand evenly so some materials are worth more than others (I’m looking at you cloth – placed a high demand on a low supply item), that can always be adjusted with requirements in material crafting itself. Placing the Precursor strain on these materials was not needed – they were already expensive. Crafting ascended armor already takes hundreds of gold in materials to craft, did it really need to cost more? The addition of more content that requires ascended items beyond Fractals would increase demand and cost on it’s own. They’re already encouraging that with Raids.

The RNG drop requirements are also frustrating (we’re back to the equation that means people can get zero hope of ever getting it), but to me that is still dwarfed by the sheer pay/grindwall they have in place. It should never have been implemented in the Precursor Journey in my opinion.

This has been debated across multiple threads. It’s an adventure before and after with a paywall in between – it’s apparently what they meant by “barter for knowledge, seek out great minds and convince them to teach you their tricks, and prove your ability at the crafting workbench”. There’s obviously mixed opinion as to whether this is ok:

- Precursors should be expensive. The game is about the accumulation of wealth, be it through grinding over 7500 nodes (that is counting getting at least 3 mats per interaction), gold farming, or pouring in your real money. Those that don’t grind or $$$ don’t deserve precursors.

- This form of accumulation is far better, even if much more expensive than current precursors because it is static. By the time you farm 700 gold, the cost of Dawn may have gone up, and you have to farm even more. By the time you’ve farmed 70 Deldrimor Steel Ingots, you at least know that the 20 left will not change, and you’ll be done with that specific aspect once you’re done.

- People actually enjoy grinding nodes in the open world/wvw – so needing to do it over 7500 times is no barrier.

- People already had a bunch of materials saved up over the years of gameplay that they never spent, so they don’t care.

- People have already spent their tens of thousands in mats or hundreds in gold, and any change to the paywall would upset them, so it must be argued against as it’s not “fair”.

Now I realize that the tone of those points is a bit slanted and it can go on and on. I’m not saying that the reasoning that precursors should be expensive is explicitly wrong, but I am saying it places the same barrier from getting precursors that has always existed:

- Pre-HOT, getting a Pre-cursor was either getting super lucky or pay for it by grinding huge amounts of resources, or spending real cash to just buy those resources. Post-HOT adds some fun steps, with a 2nd stage is the same “pay for it” by grinding a huge amount of resources or spending real cash to bypass it. Why could we not have a third less grindy/$$$ option? Buying specific materials from event vendors across the world (barter), actually talking to NPCs in remote locations (seek out great minds and learn their tricks), and then make the proving your crafting by using these special materials bartered (and/or found in part 1 and 3 of the adventure)?

- Crafting a precursor into a Legendary already has a paywall. 500k karma (1 million if crafting clovers), 200 spirit shards, over 100 gold (runestones and recipes), thousands of materials, and World Completion. While unfortunately you can pay past this gap too, those that go for their precursor are not, so they have this to prove the “accumulation of wealth”.

I had my hopes up with the Legendary Journey – I play all aspects of the game and enjoy a challenge, but doing the same thing over and over thousands of times is just tedious – not what I had hoped for when they said it won’t be easy. I also don’t want to take “then just don’t do it” as an answer. I want to try for change – to find an alternate method to a tedious grind. Those that like the grind can grind, sell their mats, and buy the precursor. And those that wanted the “Journey” could go on the journey that wouldn’t require that (or at least be far less of a grind).

Raedwulf.3712:

As Draknar rightly said, before HoT you had two options – grind for gold or… well, one option really, because gambling on the Mystic Toilet for many players meant buying cheap exotics on the TP. But let’s call it two options, for the sake of argument – grind for gold or gamble on chucking stuff down the Toilet.

Now you have a third option. It may well ultimately be less efficient / more expensive to accumulate materials & craft than it is to accumulate, sell, and buy. But that’s not the point, is it? For very many players having a leggie is not terribly important (over 6,000 hours, no precursor, leggie is a very small improvement over an 80 exotic, couldn’t care less; I’d play with a player who knows what they’re doing than some clueless idiot with maxed gear & a dozen leggies).

How is that “not the point”? How is just dumping all your accumulated materials on the craft system different from dumping all your accumulate materials on the TP? Except the TP doesn’t require you to revisit to click the same buttons every single day with artificial time gates as you can sell as much as you want at a time. Why would you want to take 10 times as long and spend more?

You can accumulate gold just like you accumulate materials – just don’t spend the gold just like you’re not spending the materials on actual ascended items. You can “accumulate” hundreds in gold/materials for precursors like you could before. Ask yourself, though, 6,000 hours and you don’t have a Legendary – why? Mine is I have a thousand other things I’d rather spend my gold/mats on rather than a single item. Legendaries were not worth the paywall before HoT, and they’re not worth the even larger “third” paywall now.

Draknar.5748:

Ascended mats don’t cost gold….

You can gather the mats you need yourself from nodes and from salvage. For free.

Mats only cost gold when you absolutely must have your item right now because heaven forbid you take the time and effort to do it yourself.

Pre-HoT everyone had 2 options: 1) Play Mystic Toilet RNG game to hope for your precursor, often spending hundreds if not thousands of gold with no precursor. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Post-HoT everyone has 2 options: 1) Painstakingly gather up materials over the course of months to craft it, with very little out of pocket. 2) Save up hundreds and buy precursor.

Make your own choice. Just don’t sit there complaining about the cost of the materials when you have the option of not spending that money if you really don’t want to.

Why, yes, yes they do – if you sell those mats, it is the exact same thing as saving up hundreds and buying the precursor as those mats are worth hundreds…. except you’re painstaking limiting yourself to gathering thousands of nodes for that barter item (be it trading in those items directly for the precursor, or trading in for gold to buy the precursor).

Cost comes in more than just gold. The irony is that the cost of precursors in Ascended mats is so huge that it is greater than the cost of most precursors in gold. Whether you pay in “gold” or pay in “Deldrimor Steel Ingots”, the cost still exists, and Anet still put just a huge paywall on precursors that will bar most players. It’s the same as precursors have always been: grind or $$$ past the paywall. I, for one, was hoping that this “Legendary Journey” would have been a way for us players to escape that.

Just as a tip: Grinding gold will be cheaper than the mats in most cases; and for the few precursors where that material cost is cheaper than just selling those materials and buying it, grinding the gold and mats simultaneously is much quicker and better for your sanity than clicking “Interact” on thousands of nodes for a single weapon. Hundreds of gold in materials is indeed less of a paywall than 1000 if you’re going for Dusk.

slamfunction.7462:

Aside from the bugs, it is AWESOME! No, i am not being sarcastic. All the stuff it requires is easy to farm, and the ascended mats only take a few days to make. I LOVE that this is no longer gated behind a HUGE RNG barrer!

Thank you ANet! You rock!!!

Is this “not being sarcastic” sarcastic? You’re obviously exaggerating as the ascended mat requirement is at the shortest 10 days if you go for something like the pistol that has split requirements of metal and wood. Once you get into things that have single type requirements, it’s 30+ days. Then you consider the hundreds of gold that the ascended mats cost, and you are past the “RNG Barrier” that has always existed: Just buy the weapon from the TP with no additional effort required.

The first part was great. The second part is just a massive gold sink (as you could always farm and just sell those mats) – nothing more. So gamble with the toilet and hope to save/make hundreds of gold; grind hundreds of gold and just buy it; or grind hundreds of gold (or hundreds of gold worth of mats – but still the same as just buying it) with a couple of extra steps along the way. Some people may be cool with that, but I’m not.

Sorry for the necro, but I figured this is better than a new thread of the same subject.

This upgrade extractor in the Gem Store has always been a rip-off. With the rare exception of already Generosity sigils (which even then destroying most items with a BL kit is still cheaper) or high level infusions. They have since added the Infusion Extractor, making this item now complete junk unless someone wants to extract a single sigil type from a super rare weapon. It’s about time they addressed the cost (be it lower the cost vastly and/or add them to vendors), or simply delete them from the gem store. When you start talking thousands of gems for a consumable item, it better be permanent rather than the silly 5-25 uses it is now.

I too have to add my frustration with the HUGE mat cost of precursors. What were they thinking with, “lets make it cost a dozen worth of ascended weapons mats”. This destroys the ascended weapon and armor economy placing an even larger sink on the materials making them cost more and place them farther out of reach of the general populace. The sink also makes the pursuit of a legendary weapon and ascended armor/weapons counter productive. And most frustrating of all, the huge gold sink ruins what I thought the entire purpose of this “adventure”. Why would you kitten yourself to do these steps and then spend more than you would get in materials than you would get just selling them and flat buying the precursor? Sure, the economy might balance around the cost of crafting a precursor against, but if I found grinding hundreds and hundreds of gold (be it through mindless gaming the TP, grinding dungeons, or grinding mats to sell) even remotely fun, I would have had a Legendary years ago. They has always been the “huge gold sink” option to get one, and the idea that the new adventure to get a precursor should be a “huge gold sink” frustrates me immensely. I thought the entire point of them adding this was a way to get these weapons without grinding huge amounts of gold. sigh

What I want to see:
- Make crafted precursors BtA (if they’re not already – the stupid gold sink has prevented me from further pursuing the weapons). While a lowered demand will affect the RnG sold market, not as much as them being sell-able would be. Not that I would consider even that “bad” for the market. The market would balance around people going on the adventure or grinding the gold… which I find to be much better than the current ‘go on the adventure and grind the gold’ or ‘just grind the gold’.

- Remove the ascended material cost. The PVP and WVW material cost is an example of a good material cost. If the goal was to place a time-gate to precursors, placing it on high-demand hugely expensive ascended mats is not it. Having 30 mats that you can get daily per-path of a specific dungeon for a weapon would be an example of an adventure-driven time gate. Those with only a little available game time can do just a path or two when they can and eventually get their weapon. Those with more time can do 3 paths a day for a 10 day gate. And if the goal is to allow people to choose between PvE/PvP/WvW and able to buy out the other methods with gold if they so desire, just make these mats sell-able.

Now if they add the dungeon grind cost (or something similar such as map completion items, making adventure “collection” items used for crafting, or what not), then those that have already decided that the huge gold mat cost was worth it can be told that they did “x” method instead of “y” method. If they just remove the ascended material cost as the precursor adventure already has a heavy PvE component, then players that have already completed the crafting should be reimbursed the ascended mats used.

No matter the case, this takes away a huge amount of game value for me. I planned on doing many Precursor adventures which also comes with all the other additional Legendary efforts (map completion, dungeon grinds, material costs). As it stands, the current “just another massive gold sink” means I’m doing zero.

I ran into a bug while playing as a Sylvari with Canach and Caithe. In the second fight against the Pale Tree, I had the Pale Tree killed with a rift never showing up for the fight. Her damage rings and suicide mordremoth kept spawning, so I commit suicide. After committing suicide, I was simply put back in the Pale Tree fight with no Pale Tree. Had to restart the entire story mission, which the fight worked fine on the second try.

Probably not a bug, but I also found the Canach shield mechanic to be a useless waste of time. The volleyball match of bombs only to do a few K extremely sporadically vs just snapping his break bar and doing much more damage with your standard weapons. The end part of the fight took me 10 minutes trying to do it with Canach’s shield, and less than a minute just using my weapons. Either the last break bar needs to require the shield make the mechanic required, or the reflected bombs from the shield need to do 20k+ damage to make them worth it. I want to use his shield to make the defeat more thematic and rich, but as it stands, it sucks.

I have the exact same issue – It’s granting the wrong reward. Overlord’s Defeat is for defeating the Centaur Overlord in Kessex Hill… it should be granting Modniir’s Ruin. Have tried this multiple times with the same result. Stuck on this…

Miku.6297:

While I do agree, it would open up a ton of fun options… It is extremely unlikely this will happen in the near or distant future.

There is a thread requesting this type of thing enough to warrant it’s own sub forum ^^ but unfortunately the answer is still probably going to remain the same.

“When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece).. There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together.” – Curtis Johnson

Then lets take cost for players to get into consideration, if any class an wear any “skin” why does my mesmer have to make light armor when plate or leather is so much cheaper for ascended?

Dye channels being different so colors will be slightly different, armor clipping, etc exists in the currently limited types. Making everything work together is not the request here – it’s letting us choose what skins to use, and personally pick what works (or doesn’t).

This is NOT making armor types equippable by any class, just skins. You still have to craft/buy/find the appropriate armor for your class, but you would be able to pick any skin for it.

Dante.1763:

He is, and thats exactly what anet has said.

And it doesnt surprise me at all. Nobody wants to see heavy plate mail acting like a flowing wedding dress, as funny as that would be…

I for one like the fact that armor types are limited by weight. the amount of work it would take is also probably a limiting factor, but i dont think its needed.

Why would that happen? Medium armor sets have coats that behave just like the cloth of light and heavy. Light has rigid leather and metal parts that do not “flow”. Heavy has leather skirts like medium. I see no technical components that are unique to a specific armor type. And while I do not doubt similar threads as this have been started, they did not come up in my forum searches.

As for it not being needed, that is obviously opinion. You can always personally pick armor skins that you see as fitting your class the best – why limit other people from choosing what they want? Technical limitations of it being a massive undertaking should be the only reason this were to be turned down.

Donari.5237:

As others have said, in this thread and in most all the other “please let us wear any weight mixed with any weight” threads over the years, it is impossible for technical reasons. Used to be you could preview the mixed armor, just not equip it, and the texture and color bleeds, the weird bits sticking out in odd directions … you wouldn’t want to wear it, I promise. It would be a royal mess.

So they’d have to recreate each and every piece of armor on a new skeleton rig, at the cost of giving us anything new for a very long time.

Of course there are going to be combinations that don’t work – and there will be many more that do work. There are combinations that do not intersect, as well as combinations where the overlap is thick enough to cover any clipping. Besides if clipping bothers you, you’ve never played Char or wielded weapons. Even if half the combinations were too big of a mess to be usable, that’s still 700 trillion combinations… which is 699.5 trillion more than we have now. No need to recreate anything. And if it did take a bit of work, being able to cut out the design and rigging work is more than half the battle. The multiplication of the result would be worth the effort.

Atmos.8105:

What about the different races /w diff looks of same armour types

More options still

That, unfortunately, would be guaranteed to be impossible. Races have different rigs, and the armor would not be able to be mixed and matched. That would require brand new armor from scratch to carry the styles over.

Zackie.8923:

i agree, but their concern is that if they remove the limitations, they can’t restrict the looks anymore to “force” you to buy shinier outfits/skins from the TP with gems.

currently the way they do so is by for example limiting all the medium armor skin to trenchcoats before throwing 1 gem tp skin that is a nice tight shirt or a short skirt.

I disagree – I think it would increase sales of gems both for TP conversions and direct purchases. You’ll have completionists that want every skin for their main, and you just tripled what they would need. You have people that like a skin, but they can’t wear it on their character due to the current skin type lock – now they can. You’re basically tripling demand.

Batelle.1680:

They’ve already nixed the idea due to how they designed the armors in each armor class to function differently (most notably, how the long/skirty bits function on light/heavy armors vs. medium). I suppose they could do what they do with the preview function, where you’re locked into all of one weight, but that wouldn’t be the same as what most people want, which is to mix armor across weights.

Are you saying the physics of cloth is tied to the armor type and not the skin itself? While I question that due to outfits interacting the same no matter the armor type (it could be that they’re a separate function, but wouldn’t that mean they can break that out for general armor skins?), you’re right in the fact that I don’t know how much coding is involved in the separation of armor skins and their ties into armor types. It could be that this request is impossible…. but I still would like Anet to look into this as it would so massively increase our options. Of course this has to somehow be a popular enough thread on an extremely active subforum that mods/devs take a look at it before it’s shoved into oblivion…

Currently the game divides armor skins into “Light”, “Medium”, and “Heavy”. Due to years of skins being added, we now have a few hundred billion combinations (counting reskins). No small number or feat, I would like to see those restrictions removed. Without any new content added, you suddenly have a massive number of possible combinations added… we’re talking adding nearly one quadrillion** (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000) combinations on top of what is currently available. I, for one, have countless ideas on how I would design my character armor setups if this were to be opened up.

Other pros:
+ Cultural armor would be more reachable. Instead of requiring 3 characters in every race to take advantage of these skins, one character could be fully cultural.

+ New armor skins can be added to the store without triple the work. While I would still like to see light/medium/heavy logic applied and according skins added, I prefer armors over outfits as I can mix and match the other armors creating many more possibilities.

Concerns:
- Possible clipping or harsh cuts (where the armor was designed to be overlapped by something else). Though I consider this a non-issue; such issues already exist within the existing archetypes, and players can always avoid combinations that they see as clashing.

- Shared skins that have separate achievements across the armor types. I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but it is something that would need to be watched for as such duplicate skins would no longer be needed.

I do not want this to turn into an armor practicality debate. Outfits already break any armor type logic, and as this game centers so strongly around skins and the way your character looks, such a change would be only good.

• Disclaimer – This is 3am math with no sleep — I cannot guarantee it’s accuracy. Though for those that care about my quick calculations:

<< Light >>
127 head
77 shoulder
65 chest
73 gloves
65 leggings
67 boots
————
202 billion combinations

<< Medium >>
122 head
76 shoulder
64 chest
72 gloves
64 leggings
66 boots
————
180.5 billion combinations

<< Heavy >>
117 head
77 shoulder
64 chest
72 gloves
64 leggings
66 boots
————
175.3 billion combinations

202 + 180.5 + 175.3 = 557.8 billion total combinations

<< All Skins >>
366 head
230 shoulder
193 chest
217 gloves
193 leggings
199 boots
————
1.4 quadrillion combinations

While I’m one that doesn’t mind a grind (as long as I can earn it with effort rather than the stupid old RNG of Legendaries), there is the question if it should be applied to specializations. Historically character development was not part of the grind. You got your character capped with everything and at that point it was playing what content you wanted and grinding achievements/Fashion Wars. This is a bit of a two-edge sword as it allows people to play at the full potential they want the character which many can find more fun, but it also takes out the most obvious reason to grind: character progression. For those that played for that reason saw the game as having very short legs and would get bored fast – people can play through content much more quickly than it can be created. Personally, I think they should keep to their roots of the game. There are plenty of treadmill games out there already, so they don’t need to make this game one. With Masteries and tons of new collections and Legendary paths, there are grinds to be done, and I would like to do them on my full characters. This means I think the 400 cost is too much as it means that I have to grind out Masteries on my
‘incomplete’ character.

So then comes the question of the line between “just given to you” and “earn it” it should be. This will vary greatly on people’s opinions. Ranging from the same baseline (80 points – 40 traits, 40 skills) as the other lines, to the full 400. My personal opinion is in either one of two camps:

1) 200 points. This allows the specialization to be completed either through standard world completion or through the Heart of Maguuma and it’s current Mastery gates.

2) Split up the Specialization into trait and skill lines for the standard 80 points, and have it available without having all other trees completed. Are specializations a different track of a class, or class +? Being that you have to give up a trait line and skill slots for those of the specialization, I’d say it’s just a different track to bring your character. Doing this would allow new players to play as the specialization as they level.

Unfortunately it’s too late to have Specializations unlocked the way I wanted them to be – a story mission that would create a fun and logical transition to your new specialization. If it were somehow able to be implemented, I’d much prefer that to be the way to unlock vs the current bland grind gate of spending all your HP to complete the standard lines first.

Of course, any “nerf” to the grind for the specialization comes the question of what about the unspent Hero Points that are now useless? Having them as prep for future specializations would make the most sense, and would prevent the requirement of needing enough HP on new maps to support the new specializations… though we’d be sitting on a lot of them. The amount of HP available on the new maps can be shaved – 10 per point is a lot. Or we could just not care – people can simply go for the extra HP for map completion, or cut out once they have enough to unlock everything and do other things. Their choice on how to play.

So there are quite a few things that bother me about this HoT pre-purchase deal:

1) The base game being included after sales on the base game to push people to buy it for the expansion release now makes those sales look like nefarious cash grabs. I realize that the inclusion is to encourage new players to join by lowering the bar of entry for them, but I think there NEEDS to be a “loyal player” bonus so those that purchased the game before so they don’t feel like they just got gypped as they were getting it thinking they had to for the upcoming expansion. I realize that it may not have been purposeful and the game being included may have been a recent decision, but that doesn’t change the effect. A character slot or something that amounts to at least a $10 value (the cost of the base game at 75% off sales) should be included for expansions purchased on accounts that already have the base game.

2) A full list of what is included in the expansion is needed. Value is subjective and people will buy or balk no matter what you price it at, but it helps to know what we’re attributing that value to. As it stands, I don’t understand why it costs more than $40. Though at least the “deluxe” and “ultimate” are easy to calculate once you know the base game value. They’re not nearly as special or ‘ultimate’ as getting art books, figurines, beautifully made maps, and whatnot, which saddens me.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Also, @Drawing Guy, are you ignoring the fact that it actually sounds like they’re balancing them around hitting 3 targets, not 5? And for WvW, they could work very, very well in all kinds of different types of fights. Disorganized skirmishes happen all the time in WvW, it isn’t just roaming 1v1s (which is actually more often 2v1s), or GvGs with coordinated comps and calls. Additionally, I often stay near the rear of the retreating party because I have all kinds of slowing/distracting utility that saves more people from dying, instead of just trying to not die myself.

And little access to stability? You must not have seen Reaper Shroud’s #3.

Did you see the cooldowns on the shouts? Yes, they stated 3 targets equates to the average trait, but even 3 is rare. And that 3 was only mentioned in regards to cooldowns; the power balance was talked about when hitting 5 targets (durations, procs, etc). The shout heal they made a heal looking at limiting the potential against 5, meaning it is just a weak heal with a weak (or zero) life force gain in most situations on yet another long easily interruptable cast time. Yet another heal that wont get touched over Consume Conditions unless they add heal per target to make it a strong heal or add a base life force gain to give Necros a unique access to Life Force. You Are All Weaklings is ok as it is a stunbreak, which gives it automatic PvP/WvW usefulness, if not really PvE. Rise even the devs admitted is weak. Suffer is another one that is completely reliant on the number of targets for effectiveness. Nothing Can Save You at least isn’t target reliant (though hard to tell if it’s 2 boons period, or 2 on everyone). The unblockable portion is the only thing that stops it from being a much weaker version of Well of Corruption. Chilled to the Bone is another balanced against max potential, though the self buff is secondary to the stun and chill. Sadly the long cast and long cooldown put it off the tubs anyways.

As for stability, are you really quoting the stability from a form that removes all your shout access anyways? Are you really going to burn your SK cooldowns to get a maximum of one shout off? As it stands, stability access on Necros is reliant on forms that remove your utilities, so these long cast times for rather mediocre returns will be unprotected in most if not all situations. I am hoping they change the Elite from Resistance to Stability, and give durations that reflect the long cooldown or halve the CD.

Yeah, as they currently stand, I’m unlikely to touch shouts. Compared to wells, less damage, take 3 times as long to cast, have meh utility, are PBAoE rather than ranged… all on super long cooldowns. They don’t want them to be party support, they don’t want them to be damage… so they either should be amazing selfish utility or on very short cooldowns.

Then comes the problem of how they’re balancing it: they’re looking at 5 targets. The question is when do you run across that?

PvE: Likely when fighting trash, though for trash why take low damage on long cooldowns over wells or signets? Then bosses are only single target. As they mentioned, shouts are “ineffective against single targets”… which boss targets is what you care about the most.

PvP: You’ll almost never run across 5 targets, and any party that has an inkling of how to play is not going to clump nicely for you. You’re only going to have 1 or 2 targets in a small AoE range.

WvW: This you’re almost guaranteed to run against clumps of 5 or more. Aaaaand you’re going to take long cast time point blank aoe moves in the middle of a zerg when you have little stability access and no escapes? You might do the Elite skill, but the others are hardly worth it.

They seriously need to stop looking at the group of robots and think about active play.

Part 2 (I like to ramble):

+ Debuffing: This is where Necro is pretty good at it, but faces the issue that it is replicated across most classes. Without having any of the other options checked, this doesn’t help bring the Necro into play. Vuln access is strong for necro. Blind access is middle-ground. They used to be amazing Weakness access until several nerfs, though they’re still better than most if it’s pursued. Chill access is near top, though unless you’re going all out, not high enough to be sustainable. Immobilize access is below average with just one short on a long cooldown and one minion that has it. The only interrupts they have are fears, which in PvE is horrible. In PvP it is ok, but has more ways to counter than any other interrupt in the game. With Vuln access being too easily replicated, chill access not being strong enough, and other debuffs being bettered, there are classes that can bring the debuffs and then some over necro. The update, though, looks like it will be buffing necro chill access along with chill utility, which may make Necro a unique debuffing option.

-/+ DPS: The combination of weak AoE pressure and middle ground single target DPS has always put the Necro at a disadvantage. Power wise they have few/weak scales (which is the key to supported top tier DPS), little might access for unsupported DPS, and lack of cleaves. The cleave access is being fixed, but unless some strong scaling is brought in, they’re power based DPS is still going to be middling. Condi DPS is also middling and looking to not be fixed. Their bleed access is bettered by multiple classes. They completely lack burning other than Dhuumfire, which would at least put them above mesmer if they trait it. No confusion skills. Only one skill with Torment (which is ironic as I would have thought they would make Necro the top access to this). Weak Retaliation access. They do have unique access to Terror, though that faces the unwanted movement in PvE and easy multiple counters in PvP. Condi changes will help necro a bit – since as necros may not be as quick with bleed application which is strong in PvP, their long durations do allow them to stack it higher which is strong in PvE. The removal of bleed caps might see condi viability in PvE.

We’ll see what they plan on having happen in the stream tomorrow.

There is a lot that Necro needed help with to bring it out of mediocrity in PvE and PvP.

Here is the list of weaknesses that limit PvE/PvP viability (“-” looks to be still a problem, “+” is not or looks to be fixed):
+ AoE: The dagger getting 2 target cleave helped this, but they have no weapon with 3 or 5 target solid access. Sure, staff has 5 target marks, but that’s utility and not DPS with small damage and long cooldowns. Wells brings the necro into great burst AoE, which is great for WvW, but meh everywhere else – You’re not constant pressure. Gratefully Reaper looks to be resolving this.

-/+ Mobility: There are 4 types of mobility:

• + Movement Speed: Necro has ok access to swiftness and a 25 speed signet. But everyone has has a signet/trait except Mesmer, and mesmer is getting that fixed. This does not help you catch or escape.
• -/+ Sprints: Absolutely none at this time. The new DS looks like it’s converting the extremely unreliable Dark Path to a sprint type move. This will definitely be nice, but places it on reliance of having Life Force available and a double cooldown of the skill itself and DS further limiting access. My big fear is that they’ll make the spin forward movement slow. The video shows it already at the target spinning in place, so it’s anywhere from junk for mobility to as amazing as ele’s FG spin. We also don’t know the cooldown – if it’s on a 30s+, might as well just lol.
• - Leaps: Has none and getting none that we know of yet.
• - Teleports: Currently Necro technically has 3, though they are hardly mobility. Flesh Wurm has a very long cast time that pops a huge beacon that tells the enemy exactly where you are going followed by needing a second activation to get there. It then has a long cooldown. It is not a mobility gain in flat ground, and is only a mobility gain in getting up ledges that have a long run around. Second is Spectral Walk, which is a backtrack that has a glowing trail to the original point. This has zero forward movement gain (actually the opposite), isn’t really an escape in PvP unless the player is a nub, making it just either a life force tool or a “I’m going to spend two utility slots for a super long CD safe stomp”. Third is Dark Path, an extremely slow and obvious chaser that requires a target. Leaps and sprints outpace it, so if you’re trying to catch a runner, you best hope they are close enough it reaches them before it times out, and they don’t know how to dodge. Of course with the specialization, this third option is going away.

Mobility TL/DR: The Dark Path conversion to a spin might help Necro mobility, but how much is to be seen.

- Offensive Support: Necro passes out no might, no fury, no swiftness, no quickness. They have no blasts to support the fields of other players other than a mark that requires an enemy to trigger or sacrificing minions – both situations that are hardly useful in most cases. They also bring zero unique supports from auras or utilities.

- Defensive Support: Necros pass out protection only on spectral wall with a max of 25% uptime assuming players tag wall > wait for it to run out > retag wall before it disappears (which only can happen if traited). You’re not bringing a necro for protection. Regen access can happen with staff Mark of Blood and focus Reaper’s Touch. Necro can keep this up 100% if players clump. Necros have no reflections/projectile protections. They have no water fields, and can’t (reliably) blast water fields. They do have an aoe heal in the form of a well. They have no passive defensive auras or traits that help the party. So while they are slightly better at defensive support than they are at offensive support, when you have classes that are 100 times better at it (Guard, Ele, Engi), why would you ever consider Necro?

I should not have been on the ‘ragged edge’ as my voltages, wattages, and temperatures were well within safety and power ranges of the mobo, psu, and cpu. However that does not rule out undervoltages and everything is on a single rail, so if I have more stability issues, I will start to monitor that. Thanks Dodgy!

Whelp, either the latest driver update to the card or toning down my clock has fixed the stability issues. If it was the clock, I can’t quite figure out why GW2 would be crashing and everything else be fine, but as I’m not rendering or doing anything crazy on my PC, the 0.3GHz loss will matter little.

So I just have one item remaining:
Party icons flicker. Switching to simple mode gets rid of the icons, so there’s nothing left to flicker and gets rid of the annoyance… but I like seeing those pictures and hope this gets fixed.

My thoughts:
- All’s Well that Ends Well: As many have already said, this seems very underwhelming. Wells are on long cooldowns, and the final pulse is a very delayed reward. Suggestions:
1) Final pulse grants condi resistance for 1/2s
2) Each pulse clears a condi with the final pulse converting previously removed condis to boons
3) Have final pulse remove 2/3 condis

- SWAP Time Marches On and Seize the Moment. Time Marches On is powerful innate movement and anti-cc that changes how the Mesmer handles swiftness and condi removal usage. It will create a playstyle choice of: More control with one GM. Phantasm with shatters on the second GM. Or possibly anti-control and speed with the third GM. Seize the Moment would continue the existing reward of using your shatters of alacrity and then also granting quickness.

Everything is looking pretty amazing on Chronomancer. Mesmser lockdown builds can easily change the swing of fights, but as most lack killing power and are tough to play, they’re not often used. With this, I can see many curling up and crying when one comes up to the point in a purple flash.

I too am tired of just Legacy of Foefire. I almost never vote for it, but it is on my “most played” stat. I actually like the treb/skyhammer factor in the maps, but hate the knock off factor of skyhammer. Knockback access is not remotely balanced, so what you play becomes far too big a factor over how you play. It’s still a fun map, but shouldn’t be for random matchups until things are more balanced.

Spirit Watch is in the same boat. Classes like Ele and Warriors leave others in the dust in orb runs. Being able to cap and support orb runs puts higher value on mobility… and essentially you now have a game type where luckier class matchups and premades will decimate the other team. Being solo queue and this map coming up is almost never fun as you know it getting voted means you’re going against a group that is premade for it and you are about to be destroyed.

All the other maps I know I at least have a chance of turning out a win no matter the class list as class doesn’t dictate superior power over core map mechanics.

That said, more global stats like requested would be lovely.

I refrained as I don’t know how item stats are being adjusted to close the stat gap as only 72 is being added to base (going from 928 to 1000). Not sure where your “200 revamp” is coming from.

Cele gear, though, was already stated that it is getting shaved by 10%. Whether this means Cele gear is getting lowered 10% with NO stat boost, or 10% after considering redistribution. But let us consider the loss with no stat boost:

As this is PvP, we only care about Cele Exotic: 438 to all stats. 10% drop from that is about 44, so new stats would be 394. You now have 72 more to each base, making 466 the new baseline + gear. 466 – 438 = 28. 28 * 7 stats = 198 stat point gain. However once you take into account that you could potentially put 1400 points into stats (max of 300 in a given stat, 1400 assuming you’re not being diluted by condi/boon duration or class mechanic (which most eles are)) there is quite a significant potential point drop.

As I see it now, the cele d/d is going to get a gain in damage and a loss in survivability (just looking at stats, specializations will of course change this). They gained max vitality, healing power, and boon duration – all critical points in ele survival. Even if boon duration is folded in to baseline, I doubt the full 30% will be, hurting might, regen, and protection uptime.

As they have an eye on Cele, and it’s the easiest to translate (and possibly nerf) in the redistribution, I’m not really worried about it becoming too much stronger with HoT. My bigger concern is 3-stat gear and how that would be balanced without it being a major stat loss.

Courtyard can be fun for a quick brawl and think it should at the very least exist for servers to set up GvGs. A few more deathmatch maps would actually be welcome IMO. Whether deathmatch type should exist in the general map pick is a different question – this I feel falls along with whether the new moba-type should as well or not. I like variety and would be fine with all three game types being in the queue within Unranked. Not sure if the PVP community is large enough to support splitting into game-type queues.

Skyhammer, while a fun concept, should not exist in the match making system for the same reason maps with water should not exist. Class access to knockbacks/pulls/fears is not remotely balanced. This is not to say it should be deleted, though. Both Skyhammer and Raid on the Capricorn should exist for private servers to load up if underwater/death fall combat catches someone’s fancy.

Spirit Watch is one I wouldn’t mind seeing fall off the face of the planet. Orb running isn’t really a unique mechanic that brings in new play types, and is strongly imbalanced in favor of classes with innate speed, leaps, and blocks. Add in that inexperienced players get confused by the orb (feeding orb escort groups, going after orb exclusively while 3-capped, letting them get easy orb runs, etc), and matchmaking becomes far worse on this map. There is no question this is the least favorite map out of all of them bar none.

I personally loath RNG when it is the only system in place. I understand that the excitement of finally getting what you wanted to drop is fun, but that means the outlier players that never get that drop lose out on that fun… or the exact opposite when there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. You run fractals 4 times a day for over two years and never get you weapon skin. You sit there 1000+ gold in on the mystic forge wishing you bought out someone else’s RNG luck on the AH. You paid $10 on special dye packs and get 1s worth of commons for your money.

I’m fine with kitten items: things that took you 1000 hours to get, for being the best at something, from being the first player to do something, etc… those are things that I could get if I put that effort in. But when I click “forge” for the six-hundredth time, get nothing and know that the 601st click is the same infinitismly small chance as the first 600, how is that fun or hopeful? Am I to gain hope by the fact that my guildmate just combines rare swords 17 times and got 3 Zaps? There needs to be hope for the low-end outlier examples – to know that by playing the game they actually can eventually get what they want. I quit the game for almost two years because I’m one of those examples.

Of the possible solutions, it probably would be a mix of 1 and 2.5. Fractal skins, tonics, queen bees, etc all already exist in a system that has tokens. By the time someone reaches the outlier example, they can purchase it. Mystic forge, black lion kits, dye kits, and other things that fall outside of a specific environment should have some system that closes out. RNG should exist in MMOs, but “never” should never part of the equation for a player.

The conversation can quite easily be offensive as the user is calling the OP a tranny and that he should get that checked out. That is definitely crossing the line from inquiring to insulting even if it is buried in a legitimate question.

However the real item of concern here is the user’s bad grammar, spelling, and lack of spacing. They definitely should be reported for that.

I’ve had some really bad streaks with leavers/afkers – two weeks ago I had 9 games out of 11 where someone left or went afk before the match even started. While I have won 4v5s before, 99% of the time it is hopeless. Also makes wanting to have competitive win ratios impossible even if leavers don’t hurt your ranking.

Those that go AFK due to thinking the game is lost can suck an egg – they’re a far bigger disease than those that are playing poorly. Really, you should see it as a time to push harder for the rally – often when a team pulls a lead like that, they get over confident and start fighting off point. Some care, some don’t, leaving you with easy fights and feeds… I haven’t been keeping track, but I’d say where people don’t act like kittens and give up we win at least a third of the time from being behind that far. I’ve even had games where it was 100 to 400+ and still won by holding a 3-cap. Turning games around can be some of the most exciting matches – never give up.

As for dealing with the cancer of people leaving or going AFK, it’s difficult. There was (or is – I never leave matches, but pretty sure it’s disabled) dishonor that prevented people from queueing for a period time if they quit. I actually do think that should be re-enabled with some extra penalties:

- If you get flagged as AFK or do not leave the starter area for 2 minutes, you get ZERO rank points for the match. You shouldn’t be able to get 500 points for doing nothing and possibly be costing your team 1000.

- If you disconnect and do not rejoin within 2 minutes, you get zero rank points for the match.

I would also like the ability to blacklist people, though considering the complexities that would add to the matchmaking, I just don’t see that happening. With proper punishments for those that AFK/abandon and just reporting the trash talkers, should be able to get away with not having a blacklist. As it stands, the amount of leavers/AFKers is FAR too high.