Guild Wars 2

I’m also leveling a Rifle Engi. From what I understand the “default” Rifle build would be Static Discharge build. It’s an easy Trait to get, and works well with the rifle (both being power based). Then just slot in Utilities whose Toolbelt skills have low cooldowns (Rifle Turret and Personal Battering Ram come to mind) and maybe add in a Kit to round things out (I took the Bomb kit for close encounters + the toolbelt skill is amazing). As for traits, got Static Discharge (obviously) and now I’m working my way through Firearms to boost my Rifle further. I’ll also likely dip into Explosives to get something for my Bombs.

So far it’s been working pretty well and I especially like the sheer number of methods for keeping enemies of me (Net Shot, Overcharged Shot, PBR, Launch PBR, Big Ol’ Bomb, Glue Bomb) and easy access to AoE (Static Discharge, Blunderbuss, Jump Shot, ALL the bombs, etc.)

Having played every other class, I recently rolled a Warrior and was pleasantly surprised by the class. That being said, I decided to avoid the Greatsword if at all possible because 99% of Warriors I meet are using it (and 80% of those seem to be using a full signet build). Of the other weapons, I fell in love with the Longbow and I like the look of dual Swords.

For this combo, I figured a Condition build would be fitting and it’s not bad. However, I’m getting a bit fed up with it and I’d like to switch back to Power. The question that’s bothering me is if these weapons are any good in a Power build?

So, how does a Sword (either main or offhand) compare to other 1 handed options in a standard power/crit setup and can Longbow measure up to a Rifle in that regard?

Olba.5376:

Wait, are you suggesting that each skill have different base damage and multipliers? Because that’s not the way to go. That would not only make bleed specs confusing as hell, but it would also make stacking bleeds from different skills reach a ridiculous level of complexity in terms of the calculations done.

I am NOT suggesting that. I’m simply suggesting that the base damage and multiplier universal to all bleeds be increased. Unless I’m understanding bleeds completely wrong, all bleeds have the same base damage and scaling, only the durations are different.

So I’m suggesting that the base damage and scaling be UNIVERSALLY increased and that duration and/or application mechanics be revised, with the end result being the same condition DPS with a lower number of stacks per player.

The thing is, the shorter your stacks, the weaker bleeds become in WvW. For example, take the popular Melandru + Lemongrass setup on a 12s bleed. That’ll result in it turning into a 4s bleed. Take the same setup on a 4s bleed and it’ll be down to 1s. The former goes to exactly 1/3 damage, whereas the latter is down to 1/4.

That’s a rounding problem. You could just as easily round it up to 2 seconds.

Also, a lower amount of stacks is going to produce issues with certain skills. For example, what about Caltrops? Make them apply less than the 2 stacks every 1 seconds and you’ve practically ruined them.

Ummm, what? Caltrops are likely on of the LEAST problematic skills for what I’m suggesting. Since I’m basically advocating doubling the bleed damage, Caltrops would simply apply 1 bleed every second instead of 2. The damage would stay the same. I’m not sure how that would “ruin” it…

The thing is, the reason bleeding has lower base damage and worse scaling is because once you reach the cap it’s far superior to all other forms of conditions. For pure damage, anyway. Bleeding is an alternative type of condition damage. Just like for direct damage you have builds that have low but consistent/easy-to-apply damage, whereas others have high but infrequent/easier-to-avoid damage.

And this would change nothing about bleed damage. The output you’d get when playing solo would be the same. All that would change is that in group settings certain players wouldn’t have a chunk of their damage removed for no better reason than poor coding on ANet’s part.

Fair or not, making conditions do more damage isn’t a simple thing. The issue lies pretty much completely with bosses that can take so much damage that the stacks do reach the 25 cap and stay there.

Stacks reach the 25 cap in under 3 seconds. I can get over 20 stacks in around 5 secs alone on my Warr. Unless you’re proposing that bosses drop in a few seconds, I don’t see what you’re trying to say with this.

But the thing is, you have to consider how the new debuff would be calculated. Firstly, it’s duration would have to be calculated based on the 25 stacks that originally triggered it. The damage it deals would also have to be based on the 25 stacks that it originated from. Considering that the new debuff would naturally have to have the duration of the actual 25 stacks, the result would most likely be the new debuff lasting a “glorious” 1-2 seconds.

Exactly, the new debuff wouldn’t last long and calculating it would be a simple matter of adding up two sets of 25 numbers (duration and damage) and averaging the value. It would be a minimum of extra work for the server and would allow cond builds to play together without actively hampering each other.

But you don’t need to change the bleed mechanic or the skills to do that. Make bosses able to resist conditions, able to remove them. We already have Defiant and Determined, why not have a third one?

Wait, so your solution to the problem of condition damage is to basically lower condition damage further? Really? That’s what you got?

Olba.5376:

Higher numbers from where? Are you talking bumping up the base damage? The condition damage multiplier?

Both base damage and the multiplier, so that a skill that would normally apply 2 stacks would now apply 1 stack with the exact same total damage as before.

Tinkering with the amounts of stacks isn’t really going to work, considering that the primary source of Bleeds on a sword warrior are two skills that give 1 stack of bleed.

The thing is, there are multiple ways to stack bleeds. Some builds have a lot of stacks that don’t last that long, but can be reapplied fast. Others have low stack numbers with long durations instead.

Durations can also be changed. Or the skills could be tweaked a bit. For instance, in the case of the Warrior – Either both autoattack bleeds could last half as long but with twice the damage OR only the second attack would apply a single bleed stack that would do as much damage as two “old” stacks.

There are ways to work this out. For instance, Thief Pistol 1 applies a bleed with each shot. Make it a 2 attack chain where the 2nd attack applies a bleed. % chance bleed application (sigils, traits, etc.) could be rebalanced around lower proc chances to account for higher damage for each stack.

The overall idea is to rebalance bleed around a smaller number of stacks (and/or make them last shorter) so that a single player can’t cap out a single mob all on his own.

I don’t really get what you’re trying to say here. Are you asking for the 25 stacks to turn into a new debuff so that you can apply more stacks? Because that’s going to cause issues with not only the damage, but also the amount of calculations the game has to do. More bleeds means more durations to keep track of, more damage figures to calculate, more appliers to keep track of.

Of course this would increase the overall damage, that the point! If multiple players with cond builds are present only one or two of them with the highest cond damage will see any damage done. The others will be plinking away with their zero power base damage attacks since their stacks will never get their turn. Compare this to Power builds who all get to do their damage regardless of the number of people present and I’m sure you can agree that this isn’t really fair. Imagine if mobs had a cap on the amount of direct damage they could take each second and anything above that is ignored.

As for the extra calculations, of course there would be extra calculations. But the idea here is that tracking a single additional debuff (that occasionally recalculates) would be easier than tracking 200+ bleed stacks that would appear in a second if the cap was simply removed.

It’s about finding a way around the cap without simply removing it.

Having recently started playing around with some condition damage builds, I couldn’t help but notice the glaring issue with them – if more than one person is running a cond build, someone’s damage is going to take a big hit. Playing a cond Warr, I can easily maintain 15-20 bleeds, regularly capping at 25 with some luck and over 50% burn uptime. This is fine for solo play, but heaven help me if someone with more cond damage is around. This problem is even bigger in dungeons and simply silly in large scale events.

That being said, I understand that technical limitations are preventing the Devs from simply uncapping the stacks and letting it all run rampant. Each individual bleed would need to be tracked for cond damage and duration and it would get out of hand pretty quickly.

However, I believe that some kind of compromise could be implemented to mitigate the problem, if removing it altogether is impossible. To that end, I propose two methods of dealing with Bleeds, which are the main damaging condition for most cond builds. These changes are mostly aimed at small group content and I honestly can’t think of anything practical for massive zergfests.

1. Rebalance bleed numbers – higher damage, fewer stacks, maybe shorter duration. So instead of me applying 20 stacks of bleed I’d get to 10 stacks, each doing double the damage, resulting in the same overall DPS. Now, this wouldn’t solve everything, but it might allow 2-3 cond build people in the same group to not step all over each other’s toes. Lowering the duration but increasing the damage might also work, though it might make cond too bursty…

2. Create a new debuff. Let’s call it Hemorrhage (or something along those lines). When bleeds reach 25 stacks, they are removed, a single stack of Hemorrhage is applied, with the damage and duration equal to the average for the 25 stack previously in place. Maybe Hemo could stack to a degree as well.

Now, this is hardly perfect. For one thing, PvP is a definite consideration. For another, the second option might be limited to Champ and Boss fights only. But I think that saying technical limitations prevent any solution to this problem is lazy and that solutions could be found that don’t push the technical side too much and still allow cond build players not to dread group situations…

I would particularly like to commend the fact that the dungeon doesn’t require fully geared level 80s, but rather common sense and good play. Even the trash pulls are made much easier if people understand the basics, like pulling the Protectors out of their invulnerability AoE.

The first boss is more of an environmental fight than it is a fight against actual enemies and as such is pretty cool, particularly how different classes can deal with the mobility requirements, as well as the multiple methods of avoiding damage (avoiding flaming tornadoes by hiding behind the core or dodging through them or blinking behind them).

The final boss battle is just great. Challenging, but not unfair. Everything can be avoided, there’s room for error, but slacking off means you’re going down. The second stage of the Charr boss was great fun in particular and once my group managed to get the patterns down, we barely took any damage, but it didn’t feel boring or easy. It felt like we were playing well and being rewarded for it.

Also, I very much appreciate that the dungeon can be done by almost any level. I cleared it on my level 50 Thief in full green gear. There was only one lvl 80 in the group and our lowest was 36. In fact, this was the first time I went into a dungeon in GW2, though I am a bit saddened by all the people agreeing that this is the best dungeon in the game…

I was worried when I saw that the finale of Flame and Frost was a limited time dungeon, since despite the fact that I’ve been playing for over a month I still have no level 80 characters (can’t stop rolling alts), but was happy to see my fears unfounded.

Now to decide which of my characters gets the cool gloves…

Forgive me if I’m asking something blindingly obvious, but I’ve been seeing quite a few posts mention how Phantasmal Berserker is bugged, but I can’t find anything definite about the bug. Something about it missing targets?

The thing is, I’ve been leveling a Mesmer lately and using GS almost exclusively (S/S as backup) and I’ve never seen the Berserker miss, not on the first “spin” and neither on the subsequent ones. Ever. And I’ve been watching for it since I started this character.

Am I missing something here? Does the skill bug out only under certain conditions?

… with a 4th Utility, would you?

From what I’ve seen in the game and heard from other people, quite a few Elite skills leave something to be desired, especially considering their cooldowns. This got me thinking, what if the “0” slot could also be used for regular Utility skills?

Would you still keep using your Elites or would you use the slot for a 4th Utility? If you would go for a 4th Utility, what class/build and why?

Please note that I’m not asking for this to be implemented or anything, I’m just curious.

Personally, I’d drop my Elite on my Guardian since I don’t like the two Tomes and Renewed Focus is kinda meh.

To add one more question:

To salvage or not to salvage? I understand that people likely use high-end salvage kits to extract upgrades from items when switching to new gear, but I’m talking about vendor trash items, whites and random blues. I’ve been salvaging them with regular merchant-bought kits, but it occurred to me that it might be a waste of money and that I might be better off vendoring it all for cash and using that money (plus the money I saved on kits) to just buy materials.

Is there some sort of consensus on this? Salvage trash (because mats are better value)? Don’t salvage unless it’s something you really need? Only salvage if you can get mats for your crafting skill(s), otherwise vendor?

First of all, I hope I’m posting this in the right forum section, this is the closes I could find to a New Players forum…

I’m fairly new to the game (43 guardian, 20ish mesmer, a few chars under 10) and I’ve been getting a handle on it fairly well, but I do have a few questions that I’d appreciate some help with. I’m mostly interested in exploration and dungeons, with maybe some large scale PvP on the side.

1. What’s the “accepted” method for finding dungeon groups? Most MMOs I played would have presented some option by this point, either through a LFG channel, a Global chat, a Dungeon Finder or at least a Local chat in some obvious location. I’ve found no such answer in GW2 thus far. I kinda hoped Lion’s Arch would turn out to be such a place, but no luck. I’d like to try running some AC on my Guardian, but I’m not sure how to go about finding a group…

2. I’ve been trying to sort out the class situation at high levels. From what I can gather, Warriors and Mesmers rule high end PvE, Hunters suck in dungeons, Thiefs suck in PvE and Engis and Necros suck everywhere (not my words, just repeating what I heard). My current main, 43 Guardian is OK, but getting kinda boring and I’d like to try another class. Hunter, Necro and Ele look like fun, but I’d hate to put in time to level one only to run into a brick wall at 80. As I said, I’m mostly a solo player. I enjoy exploring, events, and I’d like to run the occasional dungeon or some WvWvW from time to time. I’m not looking to be a PvP god or a high-end raider.

3. Is crafting worth the time? From what I could see, crafting produces gear on par with top level exotic stuff. But that’s just the thing – why spend time and money leveling, say, armorsmithing if I can just buy equivalent gear with karma or gold? Maybe Cooking and Jewelcrafting would be more worthwhile? What’s the overall position of crafting in the game? Does it maybe start to turn a profit at some point?

4. Any advice you think a new player might need is welcome. I’ve read a ton of useful info on this forum and in the wiki, but there’s always more to learn.

Thx in advance for your help