Guild Wars 2

Sepreh.5924:

Eatpies.6598:

I still don’t understand your concept of an “unfun” build to fight against. You have said that you don’t simply mean the powerful or hard to counter builds. Is it simply those that make the fight less straightforward?
Take mesmers for an example, you said that the PU condition build is one of the ones falling into the “unfun” category. Is this because of the many target drops and clones to hide behind? Because this is an inherently defensive setup, is it any worse than going up against a bunker guardian?
Shatter mesmers also someone was saying is one of these builds that they refuse to fight. Creating illusions is the core mechanic of the mesmer and does require more attention to deal with. However if all these builds are ones that you will not even engage, what does that leave them with? Phantasm builds are generally pretty boring to play ( at least for me). So that leaves us with lockdown mesmers and I think I know how you would feel about that.
Thus your idea of “unfun” builds has almost completely eliminated an entire class as an opponent due to a dislike of playing against their core mechanic.
I seriously question how you can label certain builds/mechanics as “unfun” and refuse to play against them. The only reason I can see, and I know that you have stated the opposite many times during this thread is that you can’t/find it overly difficult to face these builds

EDIT: I apologise if my post has come across as inflammatory, this was not my intention, I am however quite appalled and shocked by the ideas in this topic.

No need to apologize. I know that many people would be upset and I did not make this topic with the purpose of simply upsetting people.

What I see day in and day out in the forums and in guild chat and on TS is people talking about x build and y build being OP. The more I hear about it and the more I ask people about it, the more it becomes clear that what they are not bothered about is whether a build is “too powerful” (read:op) but instead whether fighting the fight is enjoyable, regardless of the outcome. At first, people may say it is because x or y build is “op”, but when you question them about it and get to the root of what they are saying, it is that the build they are playing against relies on a gimmicky mechanic/mechanics that make the fight “one sided”, in that one side is inherently in control of the fight and the other side can win, sometimes easily, but never with the satisfaction that you get from a skill based win.

Rather than see forum post after forum post about x or y build being “op” when in fact it is just a build that is not fun to fight, I am proposing an alternative here. Just don’t bother to fight them. If they want to run a build that overall lowers the pleasure of playing the game for opponents not playing that build, that is and has been their prerogative. If I or anyone else decides that we will not fight them, that is our prerogative.

I understand what you are trying to achieve by refusing to fight, however the mechanics that you may perceive as “gimmicky,” are to others legitimate ways of playing the game. Certain builds are designed to be as you say in control of the fight, this helps them stay on the offence and enables them to gain the upper hand if you do not pressure them to take control back. I do not, however see what it is that makes such builds that utilise the perhaps more annoying to counter mechanics not fun to fight.

I think it would actually be pretty cool if retaliation was much stronger but much less available. This way you couldn’t just have it up all the time, however it would be much better as a reactive ability, so when that warrior starts spinning around I top of you, it could be used as a counter.

I still don’t understand your concept of an “unfun” build to fight against. You have said that you don’t simply mean the powerful or hard to counter builds. Is it simply those that make the fight less straightforward?
Take mesmers for an example, you said that the PU condition build is one of the ones falling into the “unfun” category. Is this because of the many target drops and clones to hide behind? Because this is an inherently defensive setup, is it any worse than going up against a bunker guardian?
Shatter mesmers also someone was saying is one of these builds that they refuse to fight. Creating illusions is the core mechanic of the mesmer and does require more attention to deal with. However if all these builds are ones that you will not even engage, what does that leave them with? Phantasm builds are generally pretty boring to play ( at least for me). So that leaves us with lockdown mesmers and I think I know how you would feel about that.
Thus your idea of “unfun” builds has almost completely eliminated an entire class as an opponent due to a dislike of playing against their core mechanic.
I seriously question how you can label certain builds/mechanics as “unfun” and refuse to play against them. The only reason I can see, and I know that you have stated the opposite many times during this thread is that you can’t/find it overly difficult to face these builds

EDIT: I apologise if my post has come across as inflammatory, this was not my intention, I am however quite appalled and shocked by the ideas in this topic.

I would have rather seen the healing signet be based around illusion death/shatter as Ether Feast already fulfils the role of a heal scaling off number of active illusions. If the signet healed you every time an illusion is shattered or killed then It would synergise well with shatter and on clone death builds. It would also be more active, instead of just sitting here and passively granting regen, you would have more control over it and could perform bursts of healing with things like mirror images + mind wrack.

You can double tap temporal curtain (focus 4) to pull off a similar trick to the guardian greatsword, pulling all the enemies together so that you can deal with them all at once. From there you can use the sword 3 + mirror images to get off a quick 3 clone mind wrack along with blurred frenzy for some nice burst while evading their attacks. The illusionary warden can also help with some of those pesky ranged attackers. I find that builds focused on shattering can be more effective in these kinds of situation. Keep in mind, however, that the mesmer is much more reliant on traits than some other professions, so don’t expect to be as powerful as them pre-80.

I saw people were mentioning using a couple of pieces of Dire(cond-vit-tough) gear along with the rabid for some extra health. Would it be viable to use a full set of this gear? You lose out on sharper images and have to use different sigils, however it seems like the extra vitality would help a lot in slightly larger engagements. The precision stat doesn’t seem to grant much of a benefit outside the trait, due to a very low power, so would speccing to be even more durable be beneficial?

Boxwin.2098:

unlikeyou.8452:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Traps were already useless without that old trait. With the new nerf, basically the chill/burn trap will only apply 1 sec of burn and not 2 sec (rounded down). Basically UTTERLY useless. And traps are already worse then necro wells.

Anet this patch was a disappointment, but another massively uncalled, undeserved stealth nerf really is the worst you did so far. I sincerely hope you come in here, apologizing and saying it’s a bug rather then stealth nerf, but my hopes are pretty low.

I’m trying to tell you that there has been no nerf from my own testing. Just a mistake on the trait description. The skill descriptions of the traps are showing and the actual effects continue to have a 100% increase of condition duration. I have now tested all 4 traps numerous times and they all are acting just as they did before this update.

Use Vipers Nest, the increase is only 50%, the problem with using a 1s duration timer is that 50% takes you to 1.5 which will be rounded upwards to 2s a tick. With all the other traps, the trait says 50%, the tool-tip says 50% and the applied condition is only there 50% longer.

Test everything before making an uninformed post please…

Conditions DO NOT round up/down to the nearest second. If you apply 4.5 seconds of a condition only 4 ticks will happen, the tool-tips sometimes round to the nearest second however the condition applied will not.
Talk about uninformed posts…

Frost spirit, unlike the others, does not have an ICD on its passive effect even though the tooltip states that it does. With the spirit trait you are already taking, this spirit would be giving out an average 7% increase to all direct damage, much better group support that sic em, especially since guard alone is enough to provide permanent swiftness and regen due to the shout cd reduction and your boon duration. You expressed some concerns about the frost spirit not benefitting condition builds as much, however in a group situation, if all the group has is condition damage, it will be almost impossible to be effective due to the condition stacking caps. Replacing sic em with frost spirit would greatly benefit the support you provide to direct damage allies and would also give a slight boost to everyone else, more than sic em in any case. Other than this I like the idea behind your boon spamming and I think this build could be very effective with the spirit to make up for the lack of large amounts of might sharing.

While i like the idea of different pet species giving stat bonuses to people, i don’t think that tying in pet families to weapons is a great idea. This would encourage users of certain weapon sets to run a specific pet all the time. Build diversity is already fairly low, with only a few combinations of pets and skills that are feasible, however the choice of pets remains a more situational and utility based choice. Adding links between them and weapons could have the effect of moving the pets into just another part of a build, as opposed to something that can be adjusted to fit into different situations.

Solandri.9640:

Eatpies.6598:

Levetty.1279:

pysta.1278:

Then why they have put the Greatsword traits in both Condition duration and Boon Duration line instead of power line? 0.o

Same reason that our trap traits are in crit chance/crit damage line when traps can’t crit.

While i agree that the placement of the trap traits are annoying, traps can actually crit. The crits from them are rather pitiful damage wise but it can be useful for proccing on crit bleeds etc.

Except for ice trap, all the traps do both direct damage and condition damage. The direct damage part can crit. The condition damage part cannot. But the direct damage is pretty small relative to the condition damage, so it’s a moot point. You use the traps for the condition damage, not for the crits. Trying to “sell” the usefulness of traps based on critical damage is like trying to sell breast implants to men.

I agree that the damage dealt by the traps, even when critting, is not even worth considering. However, it is possible to trigger traits such as sharpened edges or companions might or even sigil of earth, using these tiny trap damage crits to apply additonal conditions using the traps (spike trap is less useful for this as it does not pulse and ice trap cannot do this at all).

Levetty.1279:

pysta.1278:

Ralk.7106:

No, just no. GS is a defensive power weapon. There is no reason to build full out condition damage just for a 3 second burn every 10 seconds from sun spirit.

Then why they have put the Greatsword traits in both Condition duration and Boon Duration line instead of power line? 0.o

Same reason that our trap traits are in crit chance/crit damage line when traps can’t crit.

While i agree that the placement of the trap traits are annoying, traps can actually crit. The crits from them are rather pitiful damage wise but it can be useful for proccing on crit bleeds etc.

One problem i can see with changes like this is that it would cause builds that do not utilize pets or power/crit to become even less viable. Purely condition based builds such as using traps would end up being harmed by the nerf to pets while not gaining anything from the power scaling increases.