Showing Posts For Gareth.2615:
The Vendor who is selling exotic armor is called “Armor Master [Armorsmith]”.
I can find him in all borders, citadel and EB.
I think the armor vendor who sold lvl 70 armor got removed but that isn’t a loss.
While that vendor does sell exotic armor, it does not sell Knight’s, Carrion, Cleric’s, Berserker’s, or Rabid pieces like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Master . Instead it seems to be http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Trader . I’d like to find the items in the first link.
I’m fine if they’re saying that the vendor’s prices were too low to compete and that they want to consolidate vendors to clean up the clutter, but five exotic gear types now appear unavailable in WvW, forcing us to go back to PvE to get them. This is a relapse from the direction the game had been heading, where WvW was viable on its own.
Hopefully the new build coming up in 5 minutes handles this.
“Due to fierce financial competition, one of the armor and weapons merchants in each staging area has declared bankruptcy and moved on. Their goods have been claimed by the remaining merchants.” ~June 3, Patch Notes
It appears that the former ‘Armor Trader’ who sold PVT exotics for solely badges of honor has now been re-named ‘Armor Master.’
The former ‘Armor Master,’ who sold 6 stat-combos of exotics for coin plus badges, no longer exists, and the goods she sold are no longer available in WvW.
Does anyone know if this claimed goods the former ‘Armor Master’ sold are still available from another merchant? If so, who/where?
If not, I’m sorely disappointed that I did not buy all of my zerker exotics yesterday, as I had been saving up and am just hitting 80 today with nearly 2000 badges. It’d be useful to know of such axing of vendors in advance.
Nothing got axed. Just read the quote you posted again.
I can’t find those goods on the other merchants. I’ve talked to all of the vendors I can find in the Borderlands, Eternal Battlegrounds, and EotM. Have these goods appeared to you on the remaining merchants?
“Due to fierce financial competition, one of the armor and weapons merchants in each staging area has declared bankruptcy and moved on. Their goods have been claimed by the remaining merchants.” ~June 3, Patch Notes
It appears that the former ‘Armor Trader’ who sold PVT exotics for solely badges of honor has now been re-named ‘Armor Master.’
The former ‘Armor Master,’ who sold 6 stat-combos of exotics for coin plus badges, no longer exists, and the goods she sold are no longer available in WvW.
Does anyone know if this claimed goods the former ‘Armor Master’ sold are still available from another merchant? If so, who/where?
If not, I’m sorely disappointed that I did not buy all of my zerker exotics yesterday, as I had been saving up and am just hitting 80 today with nearly 2000 badges. It’d be useful to know of such axing of vendors in advance.
(edited by Gareth.2615)
Focus is probably played less than Staff. Staff used to be king when EA provided more blast finishers for more healing.
In hotjoin, Staff doesn’t have enough escapes to evade all of the FotM thief burst but can be pretty powerful when hiding at the back of a zerg.
I can’t speak much to Staff in tPvP, but with fights typically being 1v1 and at most 3v3, it can be hard to get people to stay in AoEs. Staff already has enough AoE and enough finishers. Perhaps slight minor reductions in some of its CC cooldowns and and extra duration on Unsteady Ground’s cripple would fix this.
(edited by Gareth.2615)
I am confused on the guide. It says Air1 gives you perma swiftness, but how do you get auras on a d/d ele?
Am I misunderstanding something or is this guide outdated or what?
D/D’s auras are Shocking Aura (Dagger Air 3), Frost Aura (Dagger Water 4), any leap finisher through a fire field which give Fire Auras (Dagger Fire 4 + Earth 3 twice; Conjure Fire Axe 4 + 5), and blast finishers in ice fields (D/D has none, but Necros, Staff Eles, and others may) give Frost Aura. With Zephyr’s Boon (Air Trait I), you get fury and swiftness. This alone isn’t enough to make swiftness permanent, but boon duration runes and other sources of swiftness (Air 5, Elemental Attunement Trait, etc.) make it very easy.
(edited by Gareth.2615)
There are several old threads on the web for this topic but not having seen them recently, let’s resurrect this:
Arcane Power + Drake’s Breath + Elemental Surge = ~32 seconds of AoE burning without any condition duration.
This seems like a huge amount of damage in PvE where the burning won’t be cleansed. With carrion type gear, you can probably kite until they die.
Arcane Power + Cone of Cold + Elemental Surge = ~10 seconds of AoE chill
Mix and match with other attunements for an occasional blind or immobilize. With Arcane Blast, runners can be caught at 1500 range.
This easily fits into the standard 0/10/0/30/30 build, possibly taking the trait that gives Arcane Power at 75% health rather than the recently nerfed dodging traits.
Arcane Power is pretty buggy and can easily be consumed with less than 5 crits, but using the right skills with it seems like a huge damage opportunity. Non-damage abilities consume stacks. AoE does not consume more than single-target skills.
So what success have people had with builds that use this combo? What builds do you like for it? Can you add to the discussion?
Not sure why anybody would hate on a Valkyrie amulet. Trait 20 into air while using it with a D/D build and perma fury with really nice heals+vigor on crit. Only thing you really have to watch out for is spike damage, but preemptive shock aura can stop that most of the time.
Not hate; I admitted a lack of understanding as to when it’s useful and asked. You’re helping me reconsider it. This forum has enough Ele hate; I’m glad this thread has been constructive.
If we could pick stats freely in sPvP, I’d think that even at 50% crit chance you’d still want more crit chance over crit damage especially if you include procs, but I haven’t done the math, . However, as I review the amulets out there, I see that Valkyrie is similar to Cleric’s, but with +284x2 moved from Healing Power to Power and Crit Damage. These are the only two choices that have power, toughness, and healing power and none of them add precision but Valkyrie does add crit damage. So… I now see that Valkyrie is a good choice if you want to focus less on healing and more on offense… It sure makes me wish there were more amulet stat combos, like Valkyrie’s with the Crit Damage changed to Precision.
Side question: what’s required to hit perma fury? 30 Arcana, +20% boons on runes, 20% air CD reduction?
Has anyone looked into a Shaman D/D water/X build that tries to line up Earth/Fire conditions with cantrips and then kite/heal while they tick?
It’s more like, I want toughness + more offense, and there’s no power + toughness + condition damage, so I… get less toughness. because precision is just that much of a waste stat without a dedicated build. I don’t actually get any precision. I did consider it, but then decided it wasn’t worth it. I dunno if that’s best, but that’s how I see it.
I’d like to some toughness + healing power + condition damage. That would fill in a lot of holes. Or really just toughness + condition damage + anything not precision, the stat that synergizes least with toughness and condition damage.
And as far as I know (which isn’t very far), Anet hasn’t explained anything related to balance, or stats in general. If they have, I’d certainly like to see it.
In PvP, Shaman’s gear provides toughness + condition damage + healing power. From what I can tell, there is no equivalent in PvE. Odd.
valkyrie gear indeed always struck me as being useless. Crit damage is so weak that it’s only worthwhile if you’re going glass cannon and already have extremely high crit chance and as much power as you can get
Crit chance itself also strikes me as a glass cannon stat. Power is almost always better for damage than precision. With no traits, and with minor investment in either offensive stat, precision adds roughly 1/5 the amount of damage that power adds. It’s not until you have 1200 power and +50% crit damage that adding precision (up from +0!) has equal returns. And that’s with 0 precision, so if you already have, say, +800 precision, adding more only gives 70% as much damage as power. And also without fury. Fury is basically 420 precision.
That’s all ignoring on-crit stuff, but most of the stuff that actually matters has enough of a cooldown that you don’t gain much from addional crit rates once you have a decent crit chance.
Side note: with the given stats (1200 power, +800 precision, +50% crit dmg) and a 50% uptime on fury, 1% crit damage gives the same damage increase as 7 power.but yeah, the only reason I’d get crit anything on builds that balance offense and defense is itemization restrictions. can’t always pick and choose my stats
This is exactly the sort of analysis I was looking for; I had similar thoughts on the math.
When is it that you can’t pick and choose your stats? Is it something like you want toughness + more offense, and there’s no power + toughness + condition damage, so you go power + toughness + precision? What do you typically go with?
Did Anet explain why the combo of toughness + power + condition damage isn’t offered? I know Anet said some stat combos were ‘too powerful’, but this doesn’t strike me as gamebreaking… whereas toughness + vitality + healing power or condi duration + condi damage + X or healing power + boon duration might be. Anyone know?
I was planning to go Power/Toughness/Vitality on my armor, w/ boon extension runes, and get both Carrion and perhaps Cleric’s sets of other gear (offense vs. support). This for S/D and Staff.
But of course with the Staff nerf, I may not play my elementalist at all any more.
Soldier’s P/V/T seems like a great place to start in PvE, if only it were craftable. Instead, since it isn’t, clerics + carrion gives you a good mix of defense/support with some offense, especially as DD.
As a Staff and Scepter user, were you planning only using Cleric’s with Staff (only Fire 3 and Earth 2 to deal condition damage, hard to keep more than 1 up) and only using Carrion with Scepter (which has the poorest synergy with healing builds)? Or am I missing something where you might want Cleric with a Scepter or Carrion with a Staff?
When players discuss builds, they tend to focus on the the traits and utilities while often ignoring the stats (pow/vit/tou/healing…), which I’d argue determine at least a third of how the build plays and its effectiveness.
In PvP, excluding the gem and runes, the amulet locks you into one choice of 3 stats. In PvE, it’s costly to build every set, so it’s wise to think about your investment beforehand. So, let’s discuss stat choice.
I’m a casual player and tend to play D/D in every format, but I switch it up. I love to attunement swap and I like to survive. My thoughts:
Power: Almost always useful with any weapon, though scepter only has weak auto-attacks affected by it. Crit damage need it to scale. I almost always want power on every item. When does it make sense not to, excluding scepter builds where condition damage is your only offense?
Crit Chance: hard to compare to power due to procs; seems to require significant traiting to be worth it. However, this seems to be the primary way to increase burst in addition to power.
Crit Damage: Why would you ever choose this over more power or more crit chance unless you’re going beserker’s? How does Valkyrie gear make any sense? Arcane power builds? Having a ~50% crit chance still makes this seem like adds little compared to more power or more chance to proc. Given that you have to invest in both precision and crit damage to seemingly get the same amount you would from power or condition damage, I rarely choose this stat. Why choose it?
Condition Damage: Drastically increases your condition damage output (seems to scale better than power) but only affects about a third of our abilities.
Crit Chance + Condition Damage: Is the entire point of getting these 2 stats together to leverage traits like % chance on crit to burn or bleed? Does this come anywhere close to power?
Vitality vs Healing Power: Burst survival vs sustained survival. Both scale well with toughness and protection, at least better than the offensive stats which tend to require at least 2 stats to be the equivalent of power. I prefer sustain if I have enough health to survive burst (thieves, boss 1-shots, etc).
Vitality vs Toughness: toughness seems to provide less burst survival, but pairs better with healing power than vitality because more vitality means you need to heal more health while toughness means that health is worth more. If I’m going double defense, I’ll grab enough vitality to survive most burst (maybe 15k health) and then focus on healing power and toughness.
Offense vs Defense: it seems like toughness, vitality, and healing power are close to on par with power while offensive stats tend to be half as valuable as power. Also, for me not dying tends to be more fun than killing and then dying. Hence, I’m often picking soldier’s, cleric’s, and maybe a bit of carrion or knight’s. Auras often provide enough crit chance to proc things I need (vigor) and otherwise, investing in crit or crit damage seems to add little to my chance of winning (or at least surviving).
TLDR: defensive stats seem to be more equivalent to power than other offensive stats; I’d like to hear opinions or evidence otherwise.