Guild Wars 2

I’m a fan of River Drake for PvE

Choppy.4183:

EriskRedLemur.7153:

Funny I was just in their forums and no one thinks this. But every class thinks their elite is crap right now.

You’re not the first to notice it, and it’s pretty funny. Might even be an indication that the new elites are already balanced.

Pfft. I think that soulbeast is awesome.

It made ranger Greatsword /awesome/

Feanor.2358:

Blaeys.3102:

Designing game content that is first and foremost fun for as many players as possible – that sounds like something we should be saying to devs a lot more often.

The thing is, the game needs harder content to cater for the tastes of different people. Targeting just one auditory won’t cut it. Hence the progressively harder content, from open world through various instanced content, to raids. If you’re looking to ‘much about’ harder content, you’re obviously having wrong expectations. Yes, it is still there so that players have fun playing it. However, it’s a different kind of fun. It’s the fun of being challenged and overcoming it. Which does happen, when your party all has the same mindset. Just think of the mindset needed for any content of the game. And if it doesn’t fit yours, don’t play it. Simple as that. The game is huge, there’ll always be plenty of content for you to have fun with it. That’s the beauty of it being diverse.

Raids aren’t actually significantly more challenging content though. The only major difference for an individual as opposed to soloing most dungeon bosses is that they have less to think about, you randomly get punished for other people’s mistakes, and if it fails, instead of waypointing and going back for another try, you deal with drama as various people quit/demand people be kicked.

Raids aren’t challenging content, as for the majority of the bosses, there’s only so much you can do yourself. It’s only difficult in the sense that it’s difficult to find a group to figure out the encounter in the first place, and then keep it around long enough that people figure out what to do. (As opposed to what I’ve typically seen in a rotating door of people leaving/getting kicked that ensures a steady stream of people that need to learn it.)

Zenith.7301:

Gonna say it again, a measly 200+150 stat buff does not come even close to making up for the loss of dps from the pet.

200 power and 150 ferocity does not equal 2-3k DPS. This is pathetic.

Please try to get someone who knows math when designing elite specs.

What about 280 power, 80 precision, 300 ferocity, 10% Damage when above 90% health, +40% damage on a 32 second cooldown, Extra damage skills, and +50% damage on Maul?

Brutal Momentum is doing weird things to crit chance.

When I gain fury, for an instant they both apply, then Brutal Momentum’s crit bonus drops even when I have full endurance, then it reapplies itself a few seconds later, then sometimes it drops again if the fury lasts long enough, and sometimes when the fury expires, so does Brutal Momentum.

sevenDEADLY.5281:

Maul is currently consuming its own AOO on hit in beastmode. Not sure if this is how its intended to behave or not.

That’s pretty awesome. If that’s the case, in PvE it might actually be better to go for a remorseless build with Live Fast, then use beast skills right before Maul to guarantee the opening strike on your biggest damage dealing skill, as well as on whatever other things you happen to get it on from the party giving out fury.

Edit: Nevermind. It turns out that the F1 and F2 beast mode skills aren’t beast skills, also I forgot that even if they were, they’d proc the same opening strike that they just refreshed.

The bird beastmode skill Swoop moves a much shorter distance than the 1,200 range that is listed on the tool-tip.

Upon testing, I can confirm that Maul procs Attack of Opportunity for you while in beast mode. Maul → Beast Skill → Autoattack → Maul → Beast Skill → Autoattack Maul → Weapon Swap seems like it might have the potential to be quite good in terms of damage over longbow.

Also, Sic’Em effects you as well, which should be a pretty significant damage increase, and while some of the traits were nerfed, you do get some of the bonus power/precision/toughness/vitality/ferocity that your pet would normally be given from the Beastmastery minor traits while in beast mode.

At least this one is almost current.

I can’t see druid being replaced as a healer as long as grace of the land is unique to them without massive power creep. Chances are that firebrands will be damage dealers that give quickness, and chronomancers will go for a damage/alacrity build instead of quickness/alacrity, or a renegade will take over alacrity.

Oddly enough, I felt really fragile with power warrior, but my mostly viper one feels ridiculously tanky despite having no defensive traits. I guess that that 40 toughness from my dire backpack is going a long, long way.

TexZero.7910:

doubt it.

Memser (Chrono) is just too effective at the role that the only way another thing comes in is if it can also poop out invlunes, boonshare, alacrity.

Except that now chronomancers have some pretty good power builds with less than amazing quickness, but great alacrity and pretty good damage, and Firebrands have easy 100% quickness uptime.

It could very well be that Druids will take over.

ButterPeanut.9746:

Why is it bad to have it a bit early so other folks see the thread instead of making their own threads that aren’t consolidated?

Because it always means that the front page gets filled with irrelevant chatter that’s in no way related to the purpose.

Sublimatio.6981:

kinda unfair that warrior gets 2 weapons while scourge not only has shroud taken away but also we only get a torch…\

Isn’t it basically just the same as necromancers getting a 2 handed weapon (5 skills) and warriors getting an off-hand (2 skills)?

Sure they lose shroud, but they also get sand shades.

glenndevis.8327:

Refia Montes.3205:

I don’t know why do they even bother making ambushes for Sword and GS if they’re not gonna interact well with Mirage trait line. Seems really kitten to me.

Tbh I’m more or less fine with the sword & gs ambushes for now: They seem to be useful situationally.

The GS one maybe for power builds though, but then again, which power build uses gs? Maybe in WvW?

The Sword ambush can be used in multiple ways. Clone generating, leap, daze (or stun when traited.) Could be very interesting.

I’m a little dissapointed there are some shatter based traits in the Mirage line when the spec as a whole doesn’t revolve around shattering at all.

The fact that it focuses on clones rather than phantasms kind of suggests that you should be shattering in general.

The main thing that I want to try is a scepter build (the only one with a worthwhile ambish) that summons 3 clones, spams mirage cloak + ambush over and over, then shatter, and works on rebuilding the clones while the mirage cloak granting abilities refresh, before doing it again.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Unimaginative is fine, as long as there’s synergy and functionality. Both traits you draw attention to lack both, so almost anything is better.

I’d like to have Twice as Vicious similar to Always Angry. “Gain Twice as Vicious (10s: +5% damage and condition damage) when exiting or entering Beastmode.”

I find the trait layout bad. While other specs have minor traits revolving around their new functions or thematics, our minor traits have nothing to do with entering, exiting, or remaining in Beastmode.

Instead, Soulbeast has a bonus with Fury which is found more on core Ranger, and another minor that procs on disabling foes, which is found on power/defensive/Druid setups. No one else finds that the least bit odd?

Fury seems fine. Soulbeasts that pick “Live Fast” have plenty of fury uptime, and I’d much rather have Twice and Vicious than have it apply when entering and exiting beast mode which would be useless if you want to stay in it. Meanwhile, a good number of weapon sets have at least some way to disabling. (Greatsword 5, Greatsword 4, Axe 4, Shortbow 5, Longbow 4), and a fair number of beast skills as well.

I just realised that Maul gives your pet a +50% damage boost to its next skill. If Beast Mode allows /you/ to get that bonus instead of your pet which you can use on Worldly Impact/Chomp/Tail Swipe instead of your awful 1 skill, and Beastmastery becomes good enough to replace Skirmishing (so that your maul and beast mode skills are on a lower cooldown so that you need to resort to autoattacks less often, it might actually be somewhat decent.

I guess that it’s something for me to test tomorrow.

Lazze.9870:

Megas.4980:

. And Soulbeast trait line is so-so for power.

It got a permanent 7 % damage modifier from one of the minors, a 10 % modifier as a GM trait (that is near permanent if it procs on percentage, which we can only assume it does). Stacking relevant damage modifiers is pretty much all there is to pve power damage, trait wise. Soulbeast is only beaten by marksmanship in that regard.

The problems with ranger and power builds in pve are the autoattacks of greatsword and sword, and I honestly think that neither the evades, the defensive capabilities nor the pet adds up for it (that’s not me saying they are bad, that’s me saying there is no reason it should stay how it currently is). Not in pvp either. No one would be bothered if Anet buffed ranger sword damage, yet we’re still taxed by it for aforementioned reasons, and have been ever since the beta nerfs.

A greatsword with a leap, burst skill, block and a stun should still have some decent damage on the auto chain, even if that last skill on the chain is an evade. It’s not ruining the thematics of it, nor is it ruining balance.

Either that, or front load the damage so that you can skip the evade and go more damage focused by canceling the greatsword 1 chain after the second one.

My normal run gets about 40-50 normally. I did two runs yesterday and got 40-50 each.

I preferred S2 to S3 as well to the point where I ended up actually completing the achievements in S2. It definitely felt more coherent, but more importantly, the characters just felt a lot more like reasonable adults (other than Caithe, but, we can blame Mordremoth for that).

A lot of the internal conflicts don’t really feel like genuine conflicts so much as they feel like unnecessary misunderstandings caused because the people on this side just refuse to actually talk things through with each other. It would make me want to bang my head against a wall if I didn’t know that that was a terrible idea.

That said. There is one aspect from it that I’m pretty excited to see develop. Logan.

Daishi.6027:

glenndevis.8327:

I had Infinite Light for ages. Love it.
Considering getting Shining Blade though but that’s not gnna be anytime soon.
Never been much of a fan of Bolt.

I’m in this camp. Bolt is a wallhanger with a rat tail tang! Shining blade and Infinite light are real swords.

The Shining Blade is about as ridiculous as Bolt. Infinite Light is nice though.

Presumably condi berserker builds got buffed because they want berserker to be the condi elite spec and spellbreaker to be the power one.

A similar thing happened last patch with power mesmers getting massive buffs and condition builds didn’t get anywhere near the same benefits, presumably due to an intent for condition builds to use Mirage.

Cleric Rifle + Turrets engineer was one of the easiest builds that I ever tried playing in PvP. I’m not sure how it would be in PvE though.

Megas.4980:

And Soulbeast trait line is so-so for power.

Well, we don’t really know how soulbeast is for power until we find out all the details on how Elevated Bond affects other traits.

“Traits that affect your pet may affect you differently while in beastmode.”

Now I’m wondering whether Grieving or Viper stats will be better for them.

Kain Francois.4328:

Firebrand has a Minor trait you cannot remove: Imbued Haste, which restricts build diversity and complicates tanking in raids.

Gain increased attributes while affected by quickness.

Condition Damage: 250
Healing Power: 250
Toughness: 250

The problem is that it increases Toughness instead of Vitality.

Guardians will not be able to freely use many of the Healing stat combos besides Magi, since it increases increases toughness by a whopping 250. The consequence of this is being unable to use Cleric’s Gear (ascended trinkets without LS3), or Minstrel’s gear (for boon duration builds), since it puts us miles above the Chrono in similar gear.

My suggestion is simple: Change Toughness toughness to Vitality.

Hopefully this is fixed before launch.

Don’t forget Zealot’s

CptAurellian.9537:

Heavy armor is hardly the reason why investments in toughness are sub-optimal. Personally, I don’t really care which of the two stats the traits scale with, since I’ll have 1000 of either. Maybe ANet wanted to keep scaling in check, but it hardly matters. It scales with toughness now and the probability is close to 0 that they’ll change it in the next years.

Except that if it scales off Vitality, it’s substantially better.

Since combined with the +50% crit chance with retaliation, +10% vs burning enemies, 4% base crit, +20% from fury, and +15.8% from spotter and banner of discipline, you get close to 100% crit chance with 0 personal investment into precision.

As a result, Valkyrie becomes significantly better than berserker gear with good play since it has the same crit damage, more power, and the same crit chance.

If there was a power primary version of Cavalier, then you’d probably be seeing that as a serious contender right now.

I was thinking something similar, except instead of honor, either Dragonhunter in a group (For the damage boosts, and the chronomancer will be helping you with the retaliation uptime since you’ll be giving them retaliation to AoE copy with Signet of Inspiration) or Virtues (For the retaliation when activating a virtue, and the damage boosts).

I also was thinking of cutting down to 0 crit. Banner of Discipline, Fury and Spotter will give 36% crit chance. With the 4% base crit and the 50% while you have retaliation + 10% vs burning foes, that gets to the point where more crit is useless.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vVAQNArfRn8cCdditCBGCB0Ehl4BrKA0AqXWlg8VkSe/1/WgA-TxRBABJqP4hTBAAPBgr2fANlgeq+TXK/IFQEz0A-e

There’s not enough information to say. It might be that the axe is essential, or it might be that the axe is on par with other weapons and trait line has damage modifiers.

If it’s the former case, then yes.
If it’s the latter case, then you’ll be fine to just keep using a greatsword or scepter.

You very rarely want a full set of commander gear, so I’d suggest going with berserker armour and a set of commander trinkets/rings/amulets which aren’t all that difficult to get these days and can be easily transferred to other characters if the stat combination ends up being good on a medium/heavy armour class next expansion too.

After chapter 4’s ending left me wondering what this ritual to revive Lazarus was, I heard that it was related to the story of the previous raid, of which I had only finished Spirit Vale, Slothsazor (and explored up to the second boss), the first encounter of wing 3, and the Keep Guardian (without progressing on from there).

Is this chapter like chapter 4 in that regard? Will I end up confused if I play through it before finishing the raids? I don’t want to ruin the story for myself, but finding groups to do them first is difficult.

Doam.8305:

So considering the whole fashion wars thing this request makes sense because if you get a mainhand sword what are you going to put in your offhand?

…a dagger? Two swords is weirder than sword and dagger.

Alternatively, there are a bunch of focus skins. The two options that stand out as going with a sword are the various book skins, and the whip.

Power builds aren’t the way to go because of their damage, nothing mesmers can do competes with just sitting on 3 duelists.

But the reliance on duelists are also the reason why the power build is favoured. Shield Phantasms have the potential to do even more damage than duelists do by maintaining group alacrity much better than just relying on wells would, and without duelists, the power build is much more competitive.

Kodama.6453:

Eponet.4829:

[…]

Also, obligatory Axe doesn’t fit at all. A cloth wearing class should not be using an Axe without a shield or at least a dagger off hand, both of which base mesmer doesn’t have, and will thus be incompatible with it.

[…]

How did you come up with that stuff? Why should a cloth wearing class not be able to use an axe without a shield or dagger offhand?

Suspension of disbelief.

Obviously this doesn’t apply in the case of necromancers, since their axe is actually just a ranged weapon that they use to cast spells through, similar to mesmer greatsword/staff.

But when used physically, one handed axes are terrible weapons to use on their own. The weight is incredibly top heavy, meaning that they’re comparatively slow to recover with, even if you do use the momentum, and the lack of any sort of hand protection on a short shaft leaves the user incredibly exposed.

In order to compensate for this, unless you’re happy with the suicidal look, you either want heavy armour to do the protecting for you, a shield to block with, or a short off hand to parry with without getting in the way of the attacking weapon, which with our current assortment of weapons, means daggers.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

What rose said. Basically, mentally scrub out the word “fractal” and write in “dungeon without personal story attached”, and bam, you have the design path that anet followed here.

and “Raid” with “Dungeons made for 10 people.”

Vayne.8563:

Metas don’t always have to succeed. The fact that people think they do is a problem. Every event ideally should have at least a small chance to fail. In core Tyria that doesn’t happen so people get to end game stuff and think it should always succeed. Even on full maps you can lose something like Tarir by one side killing the octovine instead of waiting. A full map of TD can fail by Nuhoch Lane not stomping mushrooms fast enough. A DS full map can fail if one side can’t keep the blighting pods down.

There are enough people to do every meta. More people have to learn to organize those people. I’ve done it a few times, so I know it can be done. I’ve done it on maps where people have said there aren’t enough people to do the meta.

It often starts with a post to LFG.

And Verdant Brink Night fails whenever you don’t bring a small army of people to it, because the map never reaches the same numbers as the other HOT maps.

Feanor.2358:

Did you forget the hp and armor stats? We’re the squishiest of the squishy classes. And we already play in melee range if we want to produce any meaningful damage output. Sword is such a cliche… Still better than GS though.

Sword might be a cliche, but it’s also a cliché that makes sense. Elementalists don’t have access to shields, and they hold their daggers in an ice pick grip.

Additionally, they wear cloth, so they can’t rely on their armour for protection.

Thus, they’ll need to rely on their melee weapon for defence. Of the options, the only thing that’s anywhere near as stand alone defensive as sword is great sword, and does anyone really think that elementalists will ever actually get another 2 handed weapon? 20 skills is a /lot/ for them to devote to elementalists.

Shenakitten5792:

or we get a 2h weapon that’s strong damage and support. 2h prevents use of offhand, so it should be strong weapon on its own. say somewhere between GS and staff, but differently.

but the real issue, how do you replace the chronomancer in a group? a pure damage weapon would have to deal insane damage to compensate.

yeah probably via boons to allies with high up-time. also crowd control, in particular daze / stun with music distraction and maybe knockdown in the form of shock waves and sonic booms.

Simple. You don’t.

You run it in addition to one, or you get other new elite specs to replace them and you replace what the thing that’s replacing chronomancer was doing.

Also, obligatory Axe doesn’t fit at all. A cloth wearing class should not be using an Axe without a shield or at least a dagger off hand, both of which base mesmer doesn’t have, and will thus be incompatible with it.

Plus it means that we’d still be expected to use the phantasm generating off hands, which have been one of the major issues with mesmer damage due to ramp up time/damage modifier/sigil incompatibity since release.

The sword isn’t incredibly flashy, but it’s a solid moves etc overall. I’d rather see a spec with high damage multipliers and something like an off hand dagger with low cooldown high damage skills that have built in shatter effects that compete effectively with just summoning phantasms and then going afk.

Knuckle Joe.7408:

A traditionally melee weapon doesn’t necessarily mean it will be close range. Examples:

Staff – Long range with ele, close range with thief, medium with guard.
GS – Close ranged with war, long range with mez
Hammer – Long range with Rev, close with war
Axe – Close on war, long on necro

etc.

I’m rooting for a GS, because that way we would get 20 new skills, as opposed to 12 with sword.

This is actually the exact same reason why I doubt that it will be a two handed weapon, and probably another off hand.

Vitali.5039:

Mass whirl blind could be a bit OP..

Chilling Darkness has a 3 second internal cooldown

Ithilwen.1529:

This is what Robert Gee said on the official ANET blog:

“Think Fast
Specializing in chronomancy grants mesmers access, through traits and skills, to a new effect called alacrity. Alacrity functions as the inverse of chill by speeding up skill recharges rather than slowing them down. Chronomancy is the only specialization allowed access to this powerful effect, and chronomancers can share alacrity with allies in limited situations, making them an incredibly powerful ally to have in any party."

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-chronomancer-mesmers-elite-specialization/

The bold text is mine. This statement is not true.

Breaking that statement shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

They already broke the “chronomancers can share alacrity with allies in limited situations” on launch by making group alacrity so common that a chronomancer could maintain 100% alacrity uptime on multiple allies without requiring any kind of unusual situation, then nerfed alacrity because it was too easily available for how strong it was without adjusting chronomancer/mesmer cool downs to compensate for it.

Takashiro.8701:

They stated that they wanted to give iberzerker and iwarden this “special thing on summon” too, but weren’t satisfied with how it turned out and decided to postpone it to another balance patch. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too long.

Well, seeing as they only balance patch once a season, I think we will.

Quote omitted due to character limit. For reference, look at the post above.

Don’t forget to combine that with the fact that 2 avengers is with a well build, so it’s not just 2 duelists that they lose (which is a huge amount), but also signet of domination, and either the flex spot of feedback (meaning no reflects on either), or signet of midnight, 20% condition duration, which is similarly huge.

Then that number comparable to dps revenant isn’t actually condition chronomancer, but condition mesmer running dueling/illusion/chaos. Dueling is practically mandatory as it’s where their illusion bleeds come from, which is their most powerful condition, and chaos represents another 18% condition duration, along with some additional condition damage, just for chronomancer, thus they also don’t have shared distortion, since in order to get that, they’d need to be running inspiration, which would reduce their damage even further.

Condi mesmer literally doesn’t have the space on its bar/trait line to fit in inspiring distortion, wells for alacrity, and reflects.

Ventari camping revenant can’t do it all at the same time, but they can do them all, and you rarely will end up needing to spend more than a matter of seconds reflecting.

Condition mesmer only has access to feedback, and only if they trait for it, meaning they either didn’t trait for wells, or gave up a full 20% condition duration from signet of midnight. If we’re assuming an alacrity maintaining build in both cases, Revenant has the advantage here.

Ventari camping revenant has amazing breakbar damage, they have to drop alacrity for it for a couple of seconds, but it’s also not a frequent occurrence. That said, magic bullet and polymorph moa are similarly good and don’t require dropping alacrity. This one’s in the chronomancer’s favour.

Group Distortion, neither have. Revenant doesn’t have access to it, and if you’re picking up the trait lines for both alacrity and shared distortion, along with spending 2 of your phantasm slots on illusionary avengers, you might as well not even play condition chronomancer.

Other support: Boon copying has the same issue as reflects. You only have so many utility skills, you can’t support reflects, boon proliferating (it no longer copies since the nerf), and condition damage all at the same time. On the other hand, Revenant also supports by providing assassin’s presence to 5 people just by taking the devestation line, which they should be taking anyway. Revenant is quite clearly the winner in this case.

I get the feeling that you
1) Haven’t played Chronomancer enough to realise just how much they give up in order to achieve even mediocre damage. People don’t call chronomancer damage trash tier for no reason.

2) Just want to make the revenant changes seem worthless, when they actually do have the potential to give them a spot provided that quickness generation is buffed to the point where you don’t need 2 chronomancers. If there’s ever a time when there’s enough quickness generation that we don’t need a second chronomancer, Revenant is quite easily the go to option unless your group has a bunch of classes that don’t benefit from alacrity.

In either case, there’s not point trying to reason with you whether it’s out of ignorance or because you’re pushing an agenda rather than looking at it objectively.

Zenith.7301:

Eponet.4829:

Zenith.7301:

Narth.6094:

Alacrity actually opens up a lot of options in combination with the rework to Druid’s grace of the land. These buffs are trying to redistribute alacrity and GoL so that you don’t have to run two mesmers and two druids.

Pretty much, now that GoL affects 10 people you only need to take a single healing druid. Also, now that Time Warp affects 10 people, a single mesmer should be pretty close to being able to supply constant quickness to the party.

They also buffed the scaling of healing power by 180% on the Ventari’s main AoE heal.

I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but a healing Ventari revenant can replace a druid and give the team alacrity, boon duration, and permanent protection without losing any GoL stacks now. Theoretically, if a mesmer can keep permanent quickness on the whole raid, then this means that this also makes room for another DPS too.

No, you cannot replace a druid/ranger because spirits were not made 10 man and neither was glyph of empowerment.

What you can replace though if the numbers work out such that time warp and Well of Action buffs are enough to allow 1 mesmer to supply 10 people with quickness is the second mesmer. Groups will still want alacrity, but won’t need any more quickness, and even a revenant sitting in ventari will be more useful than a second mesmer when you don’t need them for quickness.

No, it won’t because taking salvation means sacrificing invocation or devastation.

Realistic revenant dps benchmark is 25.4k. Losing Devastation is a 27% damage loss from trait modifiers. Losing Invocation is a 15% damage loss from traits. That’s not including the damage loss of not using jalis or elemental blast.

Rev would drop to around 18-19k DPS in ventari, it’d be no better than a condi druid or condi chrono.

ALACRITY DOES NOT COME FREE. YOU HAVE TO SPEC SALVATION TRAITLINE FOR IT.

Something that would do around the same damage as a condi chronomancer, while providing assassin’s presence and having better alacrity uptime. That sounds like a good trade to me if one mesmer is enough to handle the entire party’s quickness.

I take it that you haven’t played chronomancer much. The ability to do even half decent damage as a condi chronomancer isn’t free either. It means maintaining full pistol phantasms, while chronomancers need shield phantasms in order to maintain permanent alacrity on 5 people, and they also need to sacrifice utility skills, cutting down their support even further in order to take damage signers.

Ventari camping revenant is a much better support than condi chronomancer, which is barely a support at all. Having comparable damage as well just strengthens the case that it has the potential to find a place.

Even if we assume that your estimates are right, 18-19k dps might seem low to you, but being able to do that much damage while also supporting effectively is like a dream to chronomancers.

Aktium.9506:

Eponet.4829:

Aktium.9506:

On the bright side of things, both condi and power specs have similar dps benchmarks now.

With or without epidemic bouncing?

Without.

Bouncing Epi would require you to run 2 Necros. A single Necro is enough of a detriment so one should never even bother to factor in Epi. Not to mention only one gets to ping it back to the boss.

That’s actually quite promising then. When Hot came out I ended up experimenting with cavalier gear and ended up finding that due to decimate defenses and sharpening stones Reapers could get extremely close to their berserker build damage while using significant amounts of cavalier gear, and actually gained damage by mixing Valkerie with berserker.

As a result, if there’s ever a fight that does enough damage that you actually do need some defense, power reaper will probably be good there.

Power reaper also has its hidden bonus. It’s damage goes through the roof when the enemy is under 50% HP, making it very back loaded. For fights where the mechanics get harder over time, it’s ideal since it trades off being lower damage in the early phases where things are easy in exchange for bringing the hard parts to a close faster.

Aktium.9506:

On the bright side of things, both condi and power specs have similar dps benchmarks now.

With or without epidemic bouncing?

Zenith.7301:

Narth.6094:

Alacrity actually opens up a lot of options in combination with the rework to Druid’s grace of the land. These buffs are trying to redistribute alacrity and GoL so that you don’t have to run two mesmers and two druids.

Pretty much, now that GoL affects 10 people you only need to take a single healing druid. Also, now that Time Warp affects 10 people, a single mesmer should be pretty close to being able to supply constant quickness to the party.

They also buffed the scaling of healing power by 180% on the Ventari’s main AoE heal.

I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but a healing Ventari revenant can replace a druid and give the team alacrity, boon duration, and permanent protection without losing any GoL stacks now. Theoretically, if a mesmer can keep permanent quickness on the whole raid, then this means that this also makes room for another DPS too.

No, you cannot replace a druid/ranger because spirits were not made 10 man and neither was glyph of empowerment.

What you can replace though if the numbers work out such that time warp and Well of Action buffs are enough to allow 1 mesmer to supply 10 people with quickness is the second mesmer. Groups will still want alacrity, but won’t need any more quickness, and even a revenant sitting in ventari will be more useful than a second mesmer when you don’t need them for quickness.

reikken.4961:

I’m betting that a sword will come with evades (or blocks)

Something like Blurred Frenzy? CAT YEAH.

Also bolt should totally be usable by elementalists.

The one to Rule.2593:

When Mesmer can pump out 100% alacrity and quickness, did you guys think this would change anything?

The answer to that lies in how much mesmer was buffed. If the time warp and Well of Action buffs are enough to allow 1 mesmer to provide enough quickness for 10 people, but not enough alacrity, then it would make sense to bring a ventari revenant instead of a second mesmer.

OriOri.8724:

tobascodagama.2961:

I guess the real question is: Does this change anybody’s builds, or does it just make the existing ones (that don’t rely on permastealth) a little nicer to play?

It made TW more appealing to raid groups. Now that it applies quickness every 2 seconds it has less of a chance of overlapping with other quickness stacks, which means you are wasting fewer sources of quickness. And making the slow unblockable was a nice change for PvP/WvW as well. But I don’t think any raid build will change substantially due to this.

Well, now that it essentially quadrupled in power (since it won’t overstack with itself anymore, and also doubled it’s number of targets) and Well of Action was also buffed, there’s a possibility that one chronomancer might be able to provide enough quickness for 10 people, but not enough alacrity for them, in which case we might see the ventari revenant come out.