Guild Wars 2

I mean are you really scared of Winds of Disenchantment and not scourge F2’s spread around corrupting 2 boons and cleansing 2 conditions on allies? Only limit is life force, rather than 90 seconds on a point blank aoe.

Personally, I feel like Berserker bursts make sense only counting for 1 bar. It kinda feels like berserker is the all in juggernaut, become super strong for a short time then tire out. Entering Berserker mode should grant a big barrier (25% of your hp, dead or alive grants another barrier if it triggers in addition to healing) and the fury and quickness should last longer, if not pulse throughout the mode. Or something, i dunno, a straight damage boost would be dangerous.

Core warrior is more about a practiced soldier, disciplined, confident, able to use any weapon to suit the job. War is his job, which means extended sequences of battles should be his forte thanks to his strength and endurance.

Spellbreaker needs to break more spells, it is currently very limiting as to which weapons synergize (aka hammer and mace) with the theme (locking down enemy magic). Stripping boons regularly is difficult (you must not miss any hammer or mace bursts), and the utilities have long cooldowns for their effect.

It is possible to make players fight, you just need an incentive: and it’s called a cash out system.

A CHEAP EXAMPLE:

1.) Every player killed grants a stacking buff that is consumed on the next tower or keep capture. Every 1000 ranks on the target gives an additional stack, representing their increased experience (and thus they should be more difficult to kill).

2.) When you flip a tower, you get a heavy loot bag for every 10 stacks of said buff. If you flip a keep, you get a heavy loot bag for every 8 stacks. So if you have 100 stacks (from 100 kills), you would get 10 heavy loot bags when you flip a tier 0 tower. (As an example).

3.) Every tier of the structure flipped reduces the stack requirement by 1. So if you flip a tier 3 keep and have 100 stacks, you would get 20 heavy loot bags (100 / 5 instead of 100 / 8 ).

4.) Defense gets the same, although the base reward requirement is doubled (20 for towers, 16 for keeps, and a reduction of 1 per tier), with a minimum of 1 heavy loot bag (you defend a tower and kill 1 person, you may not have the required stacks but you get 1 loot bag for sure).

5.) Camps do not use stacks, but when flipped they will grant you 5 stacks. Successful defense events in camps also grant 5 stacks. Defend your camp, then flip something to cash out! Escorting yaks grants 10 stacks.

tl;dr:
Kill dudes and hold camps, get rewards on next objective flip. This creates an interesting flow.

I would, however, also like to see 5 camps feeding into each keep, and nerfing yak supply accordingly (to try to split up the action and add more directions from which to siege).

I feel like if Imminent Threat gets buffed, Fear Me deserves some love as well. It just fears (which is arguably worse than taunt), has no extra benefits, and a longer cooldown (freaking 60 seconds).

I feel like Imminent Threat should not give you boons/adrenaline, but instead hurt enemies more. Magebane Tether up to 3 (5 would be a little silly) targets around you might be an interesting choice, forcing them to deal with you or get pulled back in. EG Kill the warrior quick or get punished (because he is a threat to you).

Fear Me would then be the one that empowers the warrior (plus his allies) as his foes flee from his presence, giving adrenaline to himself, and boons per foe feared to him and his allies (the warrior gets more of course). Maybe reduce the cooldowns of all shouts by 1 per target feared. I dunno, something interesting.

That’s fair, although I do hope they would have a way to stop that kind of loop. I mean they have to, since otherwise Enchantment Collapse would cause a feedback loop on itself (which it doesn’t).

Those sigils are available to ALL classes and has nothing to do with the class theming with itself, as well as its synergy with the entirety of Warrior’s kit.

And relegating boon corruption (not boon stripping) to Scourge is a boring way to say “yeah, it’s just full counter warrior, not SPELLBREAKER” xD

For me, the answer is no. Why? Because the spellbreaker barely has any anti boon capabilities.

By default, the only baseline boon strips are on hard CC abilities. This means that core warrior only has Mace (notable mention to offhand mace for being 6 target knockdown), Hammer, and Shield for boon strip as far as weapons go. For utilities, all of the physicals EXCEPT throw bolas (forever sad =/ ) work. But if you take physicals, that means less sustain and less space for the new meditations.

Speaking of which, how does the default spellbreaker fair?
Full Counter has a daze on a low cooldown, and it’s aoe. Excellent, it’s basically an aoe Mace 2 with a daze on top.

Dagger Burst strips 2 boons, is a leap finisher with some damage. Boring, but it does strip 2 boons. Everything else however has nothing to do with spellbreaking. Dagger 3 is a daze/stun and that’s it.

Ok, so how about utilities? There’s only 1 boon strip utility, Break Enchantments. It has a cast time (can’t be used mid burst to strip critical boons), only strips 2 boons (same as dagger burst with double the cd), and does a bit of damage (bonus if you do strip any but it is still not a ton).

The elite is quite amazing, and I believe the spellbreaker should be centered around the elite’s unique debuff, Disenchantment. This is what spellbreaker should be all about.

How do we fix this? To start all WEAPON (not full counter) burst skills should apply Disenchantment for 1-2 seconds per hit. While spellbreaker is not a condi class, this gives main hand Sword a unique use for its lockdown, while making ALL weapons have the spellbreaker theme of boon supression (instead of just hammer and mace).

Break Enchantment should also do the same, applying Disenchantment per boon stripped.

Enchantment Collapse now doesn’t need to be an aoe boon strip on boon strip, since more weapons can actually strip boons. I propose that it instead be: Instead of stripping boons, boons are converted to slow. Strip a boon whenever you apply slow or immobolize. This allows for synergy with things like Sword Burst (remember immobolize is only applied once, not per hit), Longbow, THROW BOLAS, the immobolize on cripple trait, and even the No Escape trait. This makes weapons like hammer and mace still powerful and disruptive, while enabling other weapons (including that jank dagger 2 leap) to have more options.

Thoughts/ideas for change are welcome.

One of my problems with spellbreaker is that barely any of the boonstrips are innate to the unique weapon set. I mean, it’s literally a single boonstrip on a single target, dagger 3 (assumes you stun). The rest have NOTHING to do with breaking spells. Additionally, you can’t even keep up boon strip pressure since d/d can only strip with burst and a single utility (not counting the elite or Full Counter dazes).

Dagger 2 should CONVERT boons into slow. Slice through their spells, rupturing them and making them hinder their caster.

Dagger auto chain should also boon strip on the last hit, a-la necro scepter. It’s a melee weapon with little to no chase potential so landing all the hits should get a reward.

Non-CC weapons need a way to proc boon strip. Perhaps the boon strip minor can be changed to count burst skills in addition to CC, so these 2 weapons have a way to work with spellbreaker. Hammer and Mace then benefit from being lockdown by stripping twice on burst (1 for landing a burst, 1 for cc).

I actually like the meditations, but they mostly underperform for their cd’s.
Break Enchantments has a cast time, which is really awkward compared to Smite Condition. As long as there is so little boonstrip on other weapon sets, I think it would be better to reduce its cd or make it strip 3 boons.

Natural Healing is actually quite nice, especially with all the scourges running around corrupting boons left and right. Being able to cleanse and heal, without adding corrupt targets is quite nice.

Sight Beyond Sight is practically useless, but it is superior to On My Mark for reveals. The blind removal should trigger on the attack rather than just instantly, similar to the Berserkers Wild Blow removing blind/weakness on the attack.

Imminent Threat, like Fear Me, is a joke skill. Fear and Taunt do not synergize with spellbreaker at all as the minor does not count them for boon strips. However, it does give the warrior taunt access, albeit at a tiny range (why is it not shout radius).

Featherfoot Grace is pretty good, but it has a long cd. I’d make it ammo based but cut the superspeed and resistance to 3 seconds with a 30 second ammo recharge. That way you can use it repeatedly if you need to, rather than commit to resistance for a 60 second cd like Berserker Stance.

The elite is pretty strong but I think that it doesn’t need to strip boons. Let weapon skills and the other meditations do that, let it only prevent new boons.

TL;DR
I don’t feel like a breaker of spells because most of the Warrior kit doesn’t actually break spells (1 utility, 1 elite). I’m just here for the elite and full counter.

Just noticed this as well. I’d actually be okay with the radius at 240 (to match arcing arrow) and boosting the duration (5-6 seconds for weapon swap synergy) instead.

First off, for things that function like wells (with ammo), the offensive spirit weapons have cast times that are like 3x that of necro wells.

Immediately put hammer and sword to 1/4 cast times.

Personally, I would love it if bow became a healing skill, but since that probably will never happen, but it is an aoe support skill, those usually are 3/4 or 1 second cast times. However, bow should pulse an aoe condi cleanse (when traited) since Guard could use some group cleanse that isn’t purging flames (aoe burst cleanse vs cleanse over time).

Shield should be either instant, or function like those stun breaks that have cast times (eg it’s a stun break like well of power).

Shout Warrior doesn’t work for healing because that’s all they do, and they don’t work with any of the warrior mechanics, or any other mechanics really.

The warrior shouts are mostly offensive, but they all are terrible in comparison to necro shouts. On my Mark applies vulnerability to 1 target, Reaper’s Nothing Can Save you can strip 2 boons on 5 targets, converting them into vulnerability, and you gain unblockable. Fear Me fears 5 people based on range, but Chilled to the Bone stuns up to 5 people, chills them (trait synergy), and grants stability per target.

As far as support goes, Vigorous shouts do have higher healing (base and scaling) than the Tempest’s Elemental Bastion, but Elemental Bastion has synergy OUTSIDE the shouts. For example, an ele could trigger Elemental Bastion by blasting an ice field for AoE Ice Aura. And we haven’t even talked about how powerful auras are compared to 1 shot healing shouts (from warrior).

Warrior shouts would need significant changes (read buffs) in order to displace the other class shouts.

For Great Justice: The GW1 version boosted adrenaline gain, neat concept. Make it also boost allies unique profession resource gain rates and acts as alacrity for profession skills.

On My Mark: The target is unable to block. The target is Crippled for 1 second when hit (1 second icd). It’s already a single target vulnerability dump, rather dull for a shout (not counting the reveal). These should improve it’s “Focus this guy now” theme by negating blocks (evades/invulns/stances still work).

Fear Me: For every target feared, the warrior pulses Weakness and Cripple and applies a hit (tiny damage, just for adrenaline) for 1 second (max 5 seconds). Fear Me’s biggest weakness is that it makes enemies run away from the Warrior, but he wants them close so he can hit them. So Fear Me now makes it harder for those feared to flee by slowing them and reducing endurance regen, while granting the Warrior additional adrenaline so he can follow up with the extra hits.

Shake it Off: Allies are granted resistance for 2 second per condi removed. If a stun is broken, the resistance duration is increased by 50% and they gain Regeneration for 3 seconds. How better to shake things off then just ignoring the pain with resistance. Rewards timely stun breaks by boosting the effects and granting regen (helping you shake off the pain even more). Adds a much needed resistance alternative to Mallyx.

To the Limit: Hard to address. It heals a loooot, restores endurance to allies, and fills your adrenaline bar. Not sure what the theme of this skill is, honestly, so I’m not sure how this could be improved.

Actually there is a third, Staff 3 which has no animation to commit to (the thief just jumps back while evading) and costs less initiative (4, very cheap) than vault. This skill is much more annoying to deal with against Staff Master thieves since it purges immob and refunds endurance. If they are Staff Acrobatics, the evades even feed into initiative (1 extra every 3 seconds, lose some damage but much more sustain/dodge feedback loop).

But as you say the Vault and Deathblossom thieves are much more predictable and there’s parts of the skills that don’t have evade frames. Mace 3 is the easiest way to interrupt these skills but shield bash is definitely doable. I wouldn’t risk Headbutt since it does so much damage and if you miss you’ll miss the extra adrenaline.

I’d be happy if they nerfed all the power/condi attacks that either do a lot that have under 1/2 cast times (as their listed ones). These ones are the ones I feel are the most overloaded.

Steal (Dem traits and instant cast, does waaaaay too many things for its CD and ease of use)
D/P maybe, it’s virtually in a good spot.
Thief Staff 3. Why take dash when you can go staff/acro and never run out of endurance if you’re gewd

Then nerf endurance gain (Signet of Agility lol), and we can probably start buffing things that aren’t D/P or Staff. Shortbow is probably fine at this point although it’s still weird and the 5 skill is still godtier.

Sword buffs. Mainhand chain is slow but powerful, endurance should be granted on the final hit similar to the dagger chain’s second hit (remove this please) since it is an acrobatics traitline weapon. Sword 2 should cleanse on both parts. S/D 3 needs to reverse the skill orders, having the roll set up the boon steal is weird. Make it offensive (the steal comes first), then reward you with a roll for landing it. S/P needs something, but it is a relatively superior version of 100 Blades although it does less damage, so buffing the damage is a good start. the thing has decent telegraph and the stun doesnt last the entire cleave duration anyways.

Utilities: Caltrops active should be like Caithe’s. Or at the very least cause torment (but not the trait roll caltrops). Scorpion Wire needs fixing. Distracting Daggers needs to not be completely and totally invalidated by OH Pistol (maybe applies interrupt effects twice? Or they automagically return for another use if you land an interrupt). Fist Flurry usability, make it always flip to Palm Strike. Palm Strike will apply Pulm stacks based off the number of fist flurry hits.

Some bonus mentions:
Reaper Rune + Deathly Chill Shouts (Really annoying, for everyone, condi meta op =P)
All Mesmer shatters. (Always have been annoying, power and condi variants, huge trait synergy)
Dragonhunter Longbow 3 (Unblockable, destroys projectiles, and can knockback)

I mean as long as you’re using like mace/shield it’s fine, since I run Axe/Torch/Longbow for all the King of Fire procs i definitely have to take Endure Pain and Shattering Blow to have any defenses at all xD.

The reason why Endure Pain is good is because it scales infinitely with the number of enemy attacks, while other abilities do not. Unless you ALWAYS get 1v1s, Endure Pain is always a good option to negate any power damage for 4 seconds. It can’t be blocked, corrupted, interrupted, anything. Whether you get jumped by 1 thief or 10 thieves, it performs just as well. Also a stun break if you really need rousing resilience or free stab and might from Eternal Champion. Additionally, it’s basically a healing skill on its own, since Warrior works off of regen, it’s 4 seconds of uninterrupted healing, a lot of classes would kill for uninterruptable healing. Assuming full marauders, you get 1528, not bad for a utility skill, and with 3 stacks of Adrenal Health, it goes up to 3508. If you’re really good at timing, you can chain that into the auto Endure Pain for another 4 seconds, bringing you up to 3056/7016. All while allowing you to go full offense when being focused by 1-infinite number of power builds. Honestly Endure Pain is probably one of the better designed skills on Warrior, long cooldown, large impact, good synergy with traits, and fits thematically with an unstoppable juggernaut.

Taking CC utilities that are not named Wild Blow is pointless since they either have long cds for their effect (bull’s charge and stomp), are Throw Bolas bad (like scorp wire and spectral grasp), or aren’t terrible but just doesn’t setup much (like Kick). Kick isn’t the worst skill, a 9 second cooldown when traited that breaks immob is hilarious but it doesn’t really enable much since it has 300 range and is kinda slow. Also, Wild Blow does the exact same thing, but also gives Adrenaline (even on whiff), cleanses Blind and Weakness (got a thief spamming blind? give them the falcon punch), and does huge damage and is a guaranteed crit.

But Wild Blow and Headbutt are super overloaded for their cooldown so it isn’t fair to compare them to Physicals =P

Those tells made sense back before HoT because everyone had 2 dodges and maybe 1 stun break to burn through before you mashed someone’s head in.

Thankfully, you had 3 stuns, Shield Bash, Bull’s Charge, and Skullcrack. 1 dodge usually gets burned on weapon skills, so a warrior would eventually reach a situation where damage could be landed through one of these setup skills.

But now with HoT, stun breaks are everywhere with low cd’s. Why? Because they added more CC everywhere. The thing is, Warrior can’t actually slot more stuns without giving up their stances (usually you only get 1 free utility since Endure Pain and Zerker Stance are typically mandatory). So defenses increase, but offense (for warrior) didn’t.

Thus making it difficult to land setup skills. If Warrior had more natural defenses in their weapon skills/traits, then you could run all the cc’s you’d ever want and actually land them (burn through limited defenses with raw output), except against Daredevil of course which is up to him to screw up his dodges.

Also ignore Throw Bolas. It’s worse than Kick. Kick has the benefit of 12 second cd (9 if traited lol), so you can use it to bait stun breaks (even outrage), but because it’s a knockback it’s hard to follow up with damage. But throw bolas? Wonky projectile, and a 4 second immobolize that can get purged super easily (if you’re power)? You’re better off with just taking longbow, at least you get guaranteed CI procs.

Buffing Bolas to be either AoE, Pulses Immob like ranger root, or gives a pull would make it easier to land setup skills even without shield bash.

There’s an easy solution for condi tank issues, it’s called make it work with Precision and Ferocity. Nerf condi damage across the board and let them crit, suddenly Trailblazers loses a ton of its damage, and Viper becomes a lot more risk reward. Also allows for new stat sets like Condi zerker (Condi, Prec, Fero).
Also nerf Resistance to be like Protection and make it accessible to all classes.

Some other stuff that would be nice:

Auras only apply on melee hits (like shocking aura, seriously ranged auto chill on necros is annoying if they have ele friends).
More supply driven gameplay.
Gates weaker than walls to provide risk/reward incentive when attacking structures.

I don’t understand why they didn’t nerf the range of Arc Divider (I personally cannot tell if I’m standing far away enough as the shockwave is really hard to see on low settings + effect LOD), as opposed to the cast speed. Now it just looks silly.

But headbutt can die in a fire, it outperforms Rampage on all levels. Same with the physical utilities vs the rage utilities. I mean have you seen Kick vs Wild Blow? That’s laughable how sad Kick is. Maybe if kick was a stun break and had 450 range it’d be usable and give competition to Outrage.

Turtling isn’t truly time-gated due to group mentality and map structure. To take any keep, you actually have to contend with 2 structures worth of supplies, the garrison and the target keep. Worst case scenario, you have to burn through 2200 (tier 3 keep target, tier 3 garrison to supply, with only 100 of your own (offense can only take 1 camp to siege from without risk assuming trebs as the method of assault, plus whatever they carry with them). This doesn’t count 80/160 supply per yak, which is very hard to gank solo as the yak travels along the reinforcement path. It will take ages to break through a T3 wall that is properly sieged up, unless the offense takes HUGE risk (eg proxy catas) which can get rained on by ac’s.

If Offense plays safe and uses trebs, they can only destroy certain walls safely, and will be unable to deplete inner siege without taking more risk, while defense can easily camp shield gens to stop any collection of trebs, filling in extra supply as necessary. Even if they manage to break through supply in the keep, there’s still the garrison supply, requiring even more time/effort. This is very draining on the offense morale as for the most part, the majority of a group is just standing around doing nothing. If they split, they risk losing their siege, if not, they never had much momentum to begin with. It’s terribly boring all around, so it isn’t actually necessary to counter-siege everything, you just have to counter-siege to break even on supply expenditure.

I mean yes, it is time-gated if you want to siege for hours on end and gank all the yaks/camps, but it’s extremely taxing on both sides since the majority of people won’t be playing, they’ll just be waiting for the rest to do things. But defense is just way too strong if you all in turtle.

First, running around is annoying, so all camps should have waypoints after their RI is expended and there is a “supply” route from the natural spawn to the camp. For example, if you spawn in the SW side, and you want the NEC to have a waypoint, you could capture SWC, Bay, Garri, and the sentries in between, you can have a waypoint to the camp. Or you could go through the south side by taking South camp, SET, Hills, NEC, and the sentries in between. You should be rewarded for maintaining clear supply routes between your home spawn and your territory.

Second: supply should be the main thing to fight around. Whoever controls the supply controls the universe. SIEGES (not fights) should be driven on how effective the supply the offense spends is vs the supply the defense spends.

Ideal Siege Flow:
Whoever controls the supply over time should win the siege. This means owning a majority (not 100%) of the camps that feed into a structure (3 out of 5, or 2 out of 3, or w/e).

To facilitate this, we make all ranged siege (Arrow Carts, Catapults, Trebs, Cannons, Mortars, Ballistas, Shield Generators) cost supply to rearm (they spawn with a few shots based on the type of siege), but any siege with a charge up bar does increasing damage based on the charge (optimal damage comes from fully charging the bar). This indirectly buffs rams and golems since you spend supply and you get infinite uses, but they are riskier as they have to melee structures and are very vulnerable to disablers, and boiling oil is also free to use so you have to contest that as well.

This means offense and defense need to constantly resupply in order to continue their siege. This means you need to secure camps. If one side has more camps, they will win over time assuming there are no heavy fights that break one side completely as the other side will eventually run out of supply faster than the other (odd number of camps means one side runs out first).

Securing a MAJORITY of camps means that your zergs have to split. Thus the siege combat flow will actually start with multiple (ideally you hit all camps) smaller skirmishes, allowing for the small group fights to occur, or even “gvg” over camps. With 5 camps, you need to secure 3, which means you can afford 3 groups of 15 with extra roamers/pugs. Since defenders will probably own the camps long enough to have waypoints available, you must contest multiple, if not all camps in order to prevent reinforcements from arriving quickly (maps are ideally larger to make up for all the waypoints).

With some structure changes, the offense should be able to focus the same wall from at least 2 camps trebs, or they can take the risk and go for the cheaper catas. In order to break the offense, the defense will need to not only hold their defensive camps for resupplying, but destroy the enemy siege(or w/e) at all of the offensive foward bases, as the offense can quickly and easily respawn and resupply at each camp they control if uncontested. The defense could zerg, but this would be inefficient as there are 5 locations you have to potentially zerg, while the offense can build at potentially any of them and respawn at the ones they have proper routes to.

Presumably once the walls are down on outer/inner (if offense wins), the individual groups on both sides can team up and make the final pushes/defense on the keep/tower lord. This is where the large zerg battle occurs, while roamers can still focus on camps through backcapping and such. If the defense wins the zerg fight, it helps for roamers to contest the camps to avoid enemy reinforcements (and vice versa) since camps allow for waypoints if held (see the top of the post).

This kind of siege warfare allows for all sizes of play (zerg and skirmishing), although the sheer number of things to cap does make it harder to siege effectively if the offense is small in numbers (which is practically impossible now too anyways). The other nice part is that it forces people OUT of camping their structures. Since you have to spend supply to use ranged siege, the “safe” strategy of turtling will inevitably deplete the supply of the turtle. If they refuse to exit, they will lose the ability to use their defensive siege and their walls will inevitably crumble. Fight for your supply, or lose your structure.

With adjustments, this kind of high level warfare would be ideal to me as it rewards various playstyles and hurts the turtle strategy.

An easier change would be to make using siege spend supply. Can’t turtle if you keep losing your camps, and it affects offense too as the defenders can snipe the camp if you aren’t paying attention.

It’d work better with more camps so you have to split up in order to attack/defend but that is a map change which takes a ton of work.

But to address the original post, those are good ideas but I think shield gens need a change to make them not super lame to play against. Like an anti stacking effect so you can’t target an area with too many different shield gens, forcing you to spread out siege (also stops you from perma-bubbling a wall).

I think the reason defense isn’t “profitable” is because of how much easier (but not easy) it is to defend. The risk is super low with siege turtle strategies, so of course there can never be a high reward.

That’s why turtling and zerging need to go, then everyone can get more rewards (offense and defense).

Solutions may vary, I prefer making larger maps with more camps that have waypoints. Holding objectives means more mobility! Make them within treb range of keeps and they also become excellent staging areas for sieges. I made a post in a different thread but supply control should become more important, fighting over camps and yaks should be the key to any siege. We should assign at a minimum 4 camps per keep, paired with upkeep on siege (spend supply to use, with different siege costing different amounts of supply to use). Now you can’t turtle inside an objective as you will eventually burn out of supply. Even zergs on offense cant turtle a single camp, as they will run out of supply compared to the defender (since they have 3 to resupply at). This means assaulting multiple areas is the key, thus breaking up zergs. If the defense refused to secure multiple camps, they will starve and all of their siege/walls will become useless against the better supplied attacker.

Obviously, camp waypoints would not be active during RI and can be contested by killing any of the npcs. Havoc crews can hurt the enemy more effectively by contesting camps and killing yaks if they are unguarded by a defense that is too afraid to split up.

More objectives to flip means more bags for everyone after the fight so yay! Additionally, increase rewards for protracted sieges, so there’s a large payout for defense and offense if the fights go long, perhaps using the kill streak system that cashes out when the defense event ends. For both, it would be based on players killed and siege destroyed, but offense would gain bonuses for structure damage, and defense would get extra bonuses for yak escorts (extra multipliers if you kill someone while protecting a yak) during the defense.

Stat scaling and such doesn’t fix the core problem, a defended wall with lots of siege inside is still easier to hold than to attack when the group sizes are similar. Stats wise, defenders will always have an advantage by turtling, and that is NEVER a healthy design. Except for one thing, gates should always be weaker than walls, as the risk/reward of having ALL the structure siege pointed at it (plus boiling oil) should be better.

Of course, logically you need to greatly outnumber a fortified group in order to take any structure as they would confer huge advantages to the defending force. So to avoid this, we need to make it about who controls the surrounding area (aka a true siege), and therefore the supply.

Supply management should be the key to any of the sieges since we do not have true asymmetric warfare. Repairing walls and gates should be effective, but siege should have a supply upkeep (based on time before despawn). Of course, actively using siege can prevent the costs from being incurred, but no one will camp siege for that long =P.

So now you need supply in all keeps/towers for defense since you gotta maintain siege for defense. 2 camps per keep is too few and is too easily defended (the camp south of alpine bay is super choke pointy and very close to the keep), but once you lose one, it cuts off 50% of your supply (huge reduction for minimal effort). How to fix this? Add more camps to the SIDES of the keeps (example: further west for bay). 4 camps per keep would be good, all within treb range of the structure. Ideally, holding only 50% of the camps would lead to a tie/stalemate during a siege (spend as much as attackers use as well). If an attacking force is able to hold at least 3 camps, they should put a major dent in the defensive forces structure and damage their defensive siege. As a side note, yaks should instead grant 25/50 supply per yak (down from 35/70). With 4 camps there is more supply to go around but only if supply lines are held.

With more camps to hold, we can also change the defender dynamics as well. You all know about the guild aura and how it gives pretty huge stat boosts to defenders right? Well, we can make the stats scale based off of the number of camps held, so the defenders are getting starved out more and more, while the offense gains more and more supply chains to feed their forces. Only camps without RI count, and camp auras still have their full effect (but are extremely localized so they help you hold the camp, but not break into the keep).

Another thing is that camps should have waypoints. Since we are expanding the map, mobility is more valuable, so why not tie it to objectives? Camps should gain a waypoint immediately as long as RI is not up, representing a connected supply chain. So no, you cant just flip a camp then port all your golems to it unless you defend for 5 minutes (you can contest RI camps so even when it runs out, waypoint will be contested). If offense holds a camp, they can acquire superior mobility compared to defenders, representing a good hold on the area. Camps owned by the defenders allow you to respawn and reinforce areas without running from spawn unless contested by proper havoc groups (remember there’s 4 camps per keep in this change) or zergs that are able to split (USE THOSE SUB GROUPS!)

Zerging around to each camp becomes incredibly inefficient since as you hit one, the others are still available for use by the opponent. You should try splitting your forces to suppress the enemy. With more respawn points, you can get back to the action quicker and acquire more bags, but so can your opponent. Additionally, even if greatly outnumbered, there’s more areas for small groups to manuever through and more small scale objectives to flip, which means more loot for everyone!

tl;dr: Supply driven siege warfare that enables more bags, more mobility, and breaks up the omniblobs.

I think rather than purely combat jobs, WvW jobs would be better focused to mutually exclusive (but respeccable) game style roles.

Examples:
~ Zerg ~
Rout the Enemy – Gain a stacking magic find and stat buff per enemy player killed in a short time. Stomps grant 5 times the boost. All stacks are lost when downed.

Conquerer’s Momentum – Gain a stacking bonus damage to gates/walls per enemy cc’d in a short time (Rams/Golems). All stacks are lost if you exit the siege (no swapping to catas).

Suppressing Fire – Arrow cart radius increased by 50%, damage reduced by 50%. Catapult shrapnel round projectiles increased by 200%. Damage reduced by 50%. Shield generator 1 (force ball) bounces a MINIMUM of 3 times but no longer grants aegis and does 66% reduced damage.

~ Havoc ~
Saboteur – Spend 100 supply at a camp to send a saboteur yak that destroys supply at enemy structures. Destroys 35 at towers, 70 at keeps, doubled if the camp is upgraded, stacks with Packed Yaks (so 140/280 at towers/keeps if upgraded and packed).

Behind Enemy Lines – On camp capture WITH 5 OR LESS PLAYERS, gain the “Behind Enemy Lines” buff. You are immune to mark, disable watchtower with siege damage, and prevent contest swords from appearing on towers (not keeps) when attacking guards, walls, or gates. Taking player damage immediately ends the buff. Allied players without the buff dispel the tower debuffs if they contest the tower in any way (hit guards or the structure).

~ Scouting/Defense ~
Overwatch – Can replace scout npcs or patrol npc groups, gaining pulsing boons. Can mark enemies with the special action button (has a cooldown). Gain bonus magic from marked enemies. Must stay within designated scout zones or patrol areas or lose all bonuses and get “Deserter” penalty reducing all stats by 20% for a time. If you mark at least 15 enemies with one cast, the special action button turns to “Return to Base” and allows you to cancel the scout job.

Yak Walker – Gain a stacking magic find boost per yak escort mission, with an increased boost if you kill an enemy during the escort. Share defensive boons (like the ranger pet boon share) with nearby yaks and their guards.

Pack Yak – Gain the ability to carry supply to structures by talking to a camp npc. Movespeed is reduced while carrying supply and endurance is set to 0. Costs 35 supply at a camp to deliver to a tower, 70 to deliver to a keep. Scout npcs and Overwatch players cripple you on hit and do bonus damage.

Not that these lines would be used but these would offer more depth/rewards to the main gamestyles of wvw, rather than things like boosting their direct combat prowress (which will be a huge hassle to balance between all the classes).

Well, in Killer Instinct, there’s a character called Hisako who has 2 bars of a resource that can be spent to convert ordinary attacks into a counter. So, using that as a basis, the “counter dare devil” would instead only have 2 endurance bars, but would gain an F3 to spend 50% in order to enter a counter state.

The counter would force the thief to stand still and only block a single hit. Successful counters should stun the opponent (ignore stab and prevents mobility) but missed ones should stun the thief instead.

Traits could improve the block window, reduce the whiff penalty to a daze, stuff like that, make it ranged but weaker, or attach a steal effect to the counter itself. Other traits would enhance your other utilities and stats as long as you kept the counter gauge mostly full (lower cds, longer duration condis, more damage, etc).

And that’s just a quick brainstorm using something from another game.

Personally Arc Divider should have a RADIUS that matches Arcing Slice. Let Decapitate be the rangish mobile power attack with a narrow cone, while Arc Divider is the hard hitting but hits near you (run through the enemy but you can still hit them and stuff). Cause really, kiting wouldn’t be AS bad (warrior sprint isn’t op but it can make things tough) if that move didnt have a 450 radius (900 diameter centered on you). Plus, unlike decapitate, it actually benefits from the speed/quickness boost since it isn’t a “leap” skill so you have to be psychic to dodge it on reaction. It even does more damage than Arcing Slice level 3.

Just making it 300 radius would be a good start but that still irritates me, decapitate wouldn’t outrange it still =/.

nintama.9436:

Haematic.4913:

See attached, obviously the “25” cap isn’t working. If 31 bleed stacks are being applied on one epidemic.

There fear and chill come with the epi. Chill =3 bleed, fear =chill = 3 bleed.
25 + 3 + 3=31
Idk, maybe.

No down player can hold that amount of condi. The ele either stay close to lord, sieges or someone abuse resistance to tank condi. Maybe they epi from ranger’s pet.

The number one counter to condi: Pain Absorption (0 cooldown, purely energy based), just so happens to make the revenant a GREAT target for epidemic. So no, it isn’t just lords and siege that make great condi pylons.

But there’s an easy way to fix epidemic, make it only share the condis applied by the necro casting epidemic. This keeps epidemic’s identity, puts more effort on the casting necro to make sure that epidemic hurts, and prevents others from abusing your condis too hard.

Akashi.3245:

if the ele in the revs group was positioned where he should have been he would have had the resistance and all other boons which the rev had is all im saying.

If your in an organised group and you run away from your support classes you need to rethink your gameplay because 9/10 you get punished for it.

This is valid, and also not. Revenant resistance uptime is only 100% for themselves; on allies, it has about 57% uptime if there’s only 1 revenant (7 seconds to regenerate 35 energy, resistance on allies lasts 4 with 100% boon duration). This also assumes that revenant will not spend energy on anything except spamming pain absorption, aka really boring/unfun (you might win, but you’ll also press 2 buttons to do so). Additionally, it actually makes the revenant more useful target for epidemic, as they just pulled 5 condis (at worst) from their squad. Which means 25 more stacks of condi if the revenant gets hit with epi.

This is slightly mitigated by a dedicated boon share mesmer (can spread 8 seconds of resistance every 24 seconds using inspiration twice, not counting phantasm trait), but you still have a downtime and that’s not even counting boon corruption (which will destroy any stacked time leading to longer vulnerable periods).

Compare to power burst? Most AOE power burst comes in waves or pulses. Necro Well of Suffering? 6 ticks. Meteor? 24 individual hits. Gunflame? is a projectile. Guardian symbols? 4-6 ticks. True, you can bypass this by layering multiple instances, but that damage scales linearly, but you can do something similar with epidemic.

Cast 2 purging flames on a group and ALL of them have 3-6 burning (purging flames line cross burn has no target cap if i recall), wait for the friendly neighborhood enemy revenant to use pain absorption, and now you have a nice time bomb of 8-11 burn stacks to use on his friends (not counting any marks or whatnot).

Better cleanse the revenant for doing his job before his job kills you!

Warning: Wall of Text inbound. Read at your own peril.

Kiroshima.8497:

My only problem with epidemic is that it scales way too well compared to power based bombs (multiplicative rather than additive).

Example, you take 1 necro, scepter auto a guy for 1 bleed, then epidemic that bleed to get 5 more. That’s not too bad. Two necros auto a guy resulting in 2 bleeds, epidemic results in 20 new bleeds (2 bleeds * 2 necros * 5 targets). 3, 3, 5 is 45 total bleeds.

I think you get the point, but wow a n^2 * 5 formula for condi output.

I cut some unecessary stuff from my original post but this sums up the issue with epidemic just through design. (no numbers even needed to see this problem)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But hey, we like numbers, right? Let’s crunch some performance numbers for 2 groups of necros, both of which are trying to kill things.

Let’s break things down:
Assumption: Condi and Power should be equal in over all performance.

Group A of necros uses coordinated epidemic bombs.
Group B of necros uses coordinated power wells (there’s only 1 of these by the way).

Group B is obviously full glass, or mostly glass, since power needs to scale with precision and ferocity. That’s a point off, as if they get caught, they die; whereas Group A is probably in full trailblazers, giving them a huge amount of bulk.

Group A can nuke 5 dudes every 20/14 seconds (no trait vs traited)… Casting corrupt boon on one guy into epidemic probably takes about 2 seconds (after cast delays or w/e). You can probably even sneak in a staff mark for a condi bonus.

Group B can nuke 5 dudes every 35/28 seconds (no trait vs traited). This takes about 6 seconds to land all well damage ticks. Now ideally you would add on to this damage with extra attacks, but necro has 0 long range power attacks that are not slow projectiles, and thus are unreliable. Did I mention that enemies have to stand in a small circle to do the damage?

Group A can engage much sooner on any team cc (static field has 1200, same as both corrupt boon and epidemic).

Group B must get a little closer (300 units) and is thus takes free damage on entry. Too bad they’re also extra squishy because they’re using power gear.

Group A gets bonus scaling with any teammates who inflict conditions (say the Condi Guard’s Purging Flames, which by the way was never hit with the fixed target cap that other line abilities were).

Group B does not do bonus damage if they coordinate with teammates. There is no extra reward for doing so.

I think you get the point. Sure, it’s a vacuum comparison sure, but this is 2 groups of the same class trying to do the same thing: kill 5 or more enemies. Epidemic clearly outperforms in concept and numbers.

Karl McLain.5604:

The ability (in its design and in-game-play) does what we would like it to, where if conditions stack up you get to condition-bomb everything.

But if this is intended, you might as well give a power version of epidemic. That way both strategies (condi and power) are equally viable.

Hamstring receiving a bleed was a good idea Anet, it was always strange that IF you were a hybrid or condi warrior, your could only bleed 2 out of 3 hits (especially since generally the final auto is supposed to be the strongest for any damage type).

You even buffed Deep Strike to be an alternative to Blademaster (more power damage against people you condi) where it synergizes with other teammates (fury from revenants being the easiest condi boost).

But there is one problem still: Off Hand sword.
Impale is a telegraphed (throwing animation), slow projectile, which pulses an almost neglible amount of torment. Even Necro scepter 3 is better for that. Rip is also pretty kitten hard to hit with a payout that is less than final thrust.

Let’s not even get started on Riposte, which is just really good for being an extra reflect (against ranged attacks, it’s actually a 2 second block, that’s like having toolkit block) when traited with shield master. It has tiny range, does no power damage (odd for a hybrid weapon), and stacks a paltry number of bleeds (the reaper chill trait does 3, this does 4 but must be in 130 range and counter an attack).

Potential Fixes For Impale:
a) Merge impale’s effects into final thrust, it causes a minor amount of torment unless they are under 50% in which is pulses extra torment like it does now, add in a new sword 4. [Unlikely]

b) Impale is now a melee attack instead of a projectile (single target). [Easiest fix but bland]

c) Rip CONVERTS any of your OWN bleeds into torment. No scaling off your friends. Landing rip is now threatening to those who try to flee and recover. Side benefit is that it actually synergizes with the Core Warrior sword burst (OMG), immobolize them, then as they try to heal, rip them and all of those bleeds convert to torment. neat!

d) Rip detonates bleed (or torment) stacks on the target, dealing additional power damage. [good for hybrid design, run your condis down to their last tick then rip, works well with option a]

Potential Fixes for Riposte:
a) I see you added evasion to the mesmer counter attacks on scepter 2 and sword 4. Why not extend that benefit to warrior? Did you know that mesmer counters are ranged, and have a bonus effect if you choose to use them before countering? That’s way more utility in a counter attack weapon skill.
b) Make it work like the daredevil’s bandit’s defense. Gain the flip skill for X seconds for you to use. Gives you complete control over the counter.
c) It has 130 range, why not make the counter attack a dash. Sword is more about finesse and such, mobility options are a good way to represent that. If a dash is too risky (too many warrior’s sprint procs I can understand), super speed (“fancy footwork” warrior) is a good alternative.

BONUS MENTION:
Why is arc divider still a 450 range, omni directional attack still? Decapitate has a narrow cone, and is only a 300 range leap making it MUCH harder to land (damage is good though).

tldr: rework off hand sword, reduce range on arc divider =P

The thing with PI that always confounds me design wise is that it was supposed to be attached to the Fist Flurry as it’s thing, you Fist of the North Star a sap, then one more time and “they are already dead” triggers a bit later (if you didn’t know, Fist Flurry flips to Palm Strike which applies 1 stack of PI).

The thing is, it is impossible to land all kittens of fist flurry against people with a brain, so you never flip to Palm Strike (which is supposed to be “THE BIG DAMAGE”). Why is PI so easy in comparison (design wise)?

The easiest fix would be to reduce the damage per stack of PI by about 66%, adjust Fist Flurry to only require 3 out of kittens to flip to palm strike, and make palm strike apply 3 stacks of PI, 6 if you interrupt with it (it causes a hard stun fyi). Palm Strike is now the offensive PI tool with a huge amount damage if you interrupt with it (6 stacks means it does 2 current PI’s worth of damage).

Also, personally, I think Fist Flurry should do 10 hits (reduce the damage per hit in half) and require 6 to land. The channel time should not increase much (if it all). Much more thematically appopriately to true ATATATATA.

Stun breaks should perform like the warrior Eternal Champion trait that grants “infinite” stability (BUT ONLY IF YOU BREAK A STUN) for a tiny duration to avoid getting chain cc’d after. This “stun break stability” should not be affected by boon duration and should only be used to quickly relocate after breaking a stun.

Immobolize should count as hard cc, be countered by stun breaks and stability instead of condition clears. It is CLEARLY the opposite cc of daze (which prevents skills but allows movement) and should be categorized as such. This will reduce issues with resistance and make stability and stun breaks the obvious tool to avoid getting cc’d, while resistance and condi clears handle the things that make you worse at performing actions.

Potential changes to epidemic (with the reasoning) that can preserve the skill identity. Also shamelessly taken from the previous thread.

Kiroshima.8497:

My only problem with epidemic is that it scales way too well compared to power based bombs (multiplicative rather than additive).

Example, you take 1 necro, scepter auto a guy for 1 bleed, then epidemic that bleed to get 5 more. That’s not too bad. Two necros auto a guy resulting in 2 bleeds, epidemic results in 20 new bleeds (2 bleeds * 2 necros * 5 targets). 3, 3, 5 is 45 total bleeds.

I think you get the point, but wow a n^2 * 5 formula for condi output.

Compare to a coordinated hammer bomb, you increase additively. Say 1 warrior earthshakers 5 targets: you get 1 earthshakers worth of damage on 5 dudes. Not bad. Add a second warrior, you get 2 earthshakers worth of damage (10 damage instances). Hmm, ok, this is ramping a lot slower than epidemic with just 1 person. 3 you just get 3 earthshakers worth of damage (15 damage instances). Man, compared to epidemic this is terrible.

So yeah, now apply this to zerg scales, and I would think that epidemic is definitely an overperformer.

---

Possible solution: Epidemic only copies the casting necros conditions. Now you don’t get that exponential scaling issue.

Alternative: Using the druid elite glyph tech, make epidemic bind to 5 enemies near the first target. Damage (power and condition) dealt to the “corrupted” target is shared (at a reduced rate) to those 5 targets. This lets power get in on the action, while also taming the damage share rate since it’s quite ridiculous as it is now. Allows for counterplay by letting the 5 position far away (potentially exposing them in a zerg fight). If we go with say, 33% damage share, this lets a targetted necro with 19000 hp cause up to 6270 damage (assuming he loses all of his life while corrupted) to 5 other targets. Tether range should be 600 to force targets to either move outside of range of any support shouts, or risk the damage while using supportive abilities.

My only problem with epidemic is that it scales way too well compared to power based bombs (multiplicative rather than additive).

Example, you take 1 necro, scepter auto a guy for 1 bleed, then epidemic that bleed to get 5 more. That’s not too bad. Two necros auto a guy resulting in 2 bleeds, epidemic results in 20 new bleeds (2 bleeds * 2 necros * 5 targets). 3, 3, 5 is 45 total bleeds.

I think you get the point, but wow a n^2 * 5 formula for condi output.

Compare to a coordinated hammer bomb, you increase additively. Say 1 warrior earthshakers 5 targets: you get 1 earthshakers worth of damage on 5 dudes. Not bad. Add a second warrior, you get 2 earthshakers worth of damage (10 damage instances). Hmm, ok, this is ramping a lot slower than epidemic with just 1 person. 3 you just get 3 earthshakers worth of damage (15 damage instances). Man, compared to epidemic this is terrible.

So yeah, now apply this to zerg scales, and I would think that epidemic is definitely an overperformer.

Possible solution: Epidemic only copies the casting necros conditions. Now you don’t get that exponential scaling issue.

Alternative: Using the druid elite glyph tech, make epidemic bind to 5 enemies near the first target. Damage (power and condition) dealt to the “corrupted” target is shared (at a reduced rate) to those 5 targets. This lets power get in on the action, while also taming the damage share rate since it’s quite ridiculous as it is now. Allows for counterplay by letting the 5 position far away (potentially exposing them in a zerg fight). If we go with say, 33% damage share, this lets a targetted necro with 19000 hp cause up to 6270 damage (assuming he loses all of his life while corrupted) to 5 other targets. Tether range should be 600 to force targets to either move outside of range of any support shouts, or risk the damage while using supportive abilities.

One thing that needs to be done is a “Shroud 1 modifier” that alters any shroud auto attack traits based on the difference in cast time between it and the “base balance line”.

Assumption Made: Wiki values are used here.
Reaper auto series is the base balance line (.6, .6, .1.2 auto series, wiki states 2.5 for whole chain). After cast delays are included here.

Core Death Shroud Life Blast has a 1.4 second cast time, giving us something like 26.5% power per second (wiki base damage of 372, assumes 1000 power).

Reaper Shroud chain takes 2.5 seconds, and gives us 25.5% power damage per chain.

That’s not bad, although personally I’d like to see life blast get a bit more power damage since it’s a weird, HOMING, piercing ranged attack which makes it difficult to hit more than 1 target (compared to melee cleave where hitting 3-5 is super easy).

The problem shows up when the dhuumfire, reaper’s might (spite minor), and unyielding blast traits show up.

With reaper, in 2.5 seconds you get 3 stacks of burning, 3 stacks of might, and/or 3 stacks of vulnerability. With core shroud you get 1 of each, because you’re still in the middle of casting the next life blast (takes 2.8 to get the second). This is a HUGE drop in performance for any necro build that is purely core.

Thus we need to normalize these traits (and any like it) so performance is stable amongst them. With the reaper chain you get roughly 3 stacks per 2.5 seconds, or 1.2 per second. With the core chain you get 1 per 1.4 seconds, or .71 stacks per second.

This difference needs to be made up with some kind of shroud modifier, whether duration (core necro can stack longer but less burst) or higher stacks per auto (more burst). I think duration is a safer change, and will be less dangerous as new shrouds are added.

For example, we need to make the .71 stacks per second for core necro match the 1.2 stacks per second of the reaper. It’s roughly a 70% increase to get from .71 to 1.2, so while it may look awkward, the core necro dhuumfire could get a built in 70% duration increase (5.1 seconds), the might could last 25 seconds, and the vulnerability 17 seconds.

This kind of change would easily be portable to any future shrouds (speedy or multihit can have negative modifiers from the reaper shroud auto chain). Obviously it should be a flat added modifier but doesn’t count towards boon duration or condi duration, because that would get silly really fast (100% boon duration necro for 50 second might life blasts lol?) or maybe it wouldn’t, but better to be on the safe side when it comes to stacking percentage modifiers.

Also; dark path needs to have a reliability boost and a little more oomph, doom is pretty solid (it’s instant cast, short cooldown), life transfer needs a damaging condition like bleed (to match reaper shroud).

Tainted shackles is fairly interesting, but there’s a problem: You stack at torment to prevent enemies from running, but then you immobolize them, negating the damage the torment wants to do.

There are a 2 ways to solve this that I can see.
1) Make it more punishing to flee: More torment at the start, less later, and all much shorter duration than 10 seconds. Dark Binding ticks 3 times (duration about 3-4 seconds) we COULD make the first tick have 3 stacks for 3 seconds, 5 stacks for 2 seconds, and 10 stacks for 1 second. Get out early or take burst, but technically it should do about the same total damage (compare to 3 stacks for 10 seconds each as it is now).
2) All torment on the target (but only from the necro, not his allies) is converted to poison or some other damaging condition with a minimum of 3, without preserving their duration. This lets you do some damage to people caught by the full binding, as immobolizing targets kills the damage of torment.

~~~~~~~

TLDR: Normalize all shroud autos to some standard (reaper for now) for traits;
Update tainted shackles to actually do its job (either stop people from running away with LOTS of torment, or punish people who fail to run away by converting the torment to a better damaging condition).

NOTE: I didn’t address lack of sustain/stability since that can be a bit more nuanced than just the shroud skills. Someone else may have better ways to change those to make core necro more interesting/viable.

While I’m all for Well of Blood being a water field, I want to point out that if you make self created combo finishers heal the necro (eg whirling or leaping in a water field), this doesn’t help core necro like at all and this should be taken into account.

To keep it with its blood theme, why not make it bleed enemies and grant regen per enemy (aka super mark of blood). Grants lifeforce for allies bleeding in the area (you siphon their blood and generate lifeforce from it?)

Or maybe signet of vampirism (cause it’s VAMPIRISM) could do something based on bleed instead. “Apply 3 bleeds to your target, then detonate all bleed stacks on the target, siphoning health to the bleed source.” The 3 bleeds is just to have a minimum siphon amount, but allies can still benefit since their bleeds will trigger siphons as well.

Just some ideas.

Reworking/Redesigning ele depends on what you want ele to be. Do you want them to be focused on certain elements (up to 3 if you don’t use an elite spec) or do you want them to be generalists, dabbling in all elements (traitlines are generic with limited attunement limitations).

I don’t know which one is correct and Anet is the only true answer, but I can propose a method to enable both.

A) Weapon skills in non-active attunements cooldown 50% slower.
B) The first minor in each elemental traitline lets that element set cooldown at standard speed even when inactive (in addition to current effects).
C) Arcane gains more attunement swapping traits and loses its on critical ones. It should also have a cooldown boost to non-active attunements through swaps to reinforce its (new) role as the generalist/swapping traitline.
D) Elemental traitlines reworked to better enhance their own attunement a lot, or have more general benefits but are weaker.
E) Open up more role options within each element (earth and water damage mostly, air support, ironically fire actually has a lot of support)
F) Cantrips benefit from their elemental traitline, not their own utility trait.
G) Arcanes merged into Glyphs, Glyph trait moved to Arcane tree.
- HEAL -Glyph of Brilliance (blast, boons and healing per enemy struck)
- Glyph of Power (condi + crit on activation)
- Glyph of Storms (Blasts at the start and the end, otherwise similar to current version)
- Glyph of Shielding (Gain an aura and block 3 hits, detonate any auras on you if the block is unbroken [bonus, all auras gain a detonation effect])
- Glyph of Revival ~No idea here
- Glyph of Elementals (Fires off the projectile finisher like arcane blast, summons the elemental there unless cast without a target where it summons at your position).

But this is basically a huge rework of elementalist gameplay (not necessarily the style everyone would want) but its the style of what I would like to see. It would necessitate balance changes on a similar scale on the other classes so this would never be viable on its own (perhaps even a nerf given power creep of the other classes).

One thing about phantasms that is weird to me is that they don’t have some sub skill like a lot of the clone generation weapon skills do.

Sword 3 generates a clone, but you can team up with it to immobolize enemies (and confuse them with swap)
Sword 4 is a block that does all right power damage or can be activated to daze.
Scepter 2 blocks and can be activated to blind.
Staff 2 blinks you backwards (and is a leap finisher).
Greatsword 2… okay yeah this one is pretty bland in comparison (lot of damage/might).

Besides the shield phantasm (which is hilariously strong compared to others in terms of usability) and the utility versions (which do a small version of their auto basically), the other phantasms don’t seem to do anything outside of their attack. Clone generation skills seem to have a lot more utility on a lower cooldown than phantasms (which just hit hard every so often).

EG maybe we can make sub skills on phantasm slots that can be a tiny bit less dependant on the phantasm (effect doubles if its alive maybe but does a little bit if it’s just the mesmer). This could shift some damage reliance away from the phantasms and back to the mesmer while also boosting the power of positioning, and you can still focus phantasms in order to prevent dangerous combos.

Alternatively that could be an elite spec that swaps out shatters with “phantasmal” attacks. f1-4 could light up or hide based on which phantasms are out (if the defender is out, press the button and both will block for 3 seconds or w/e) f5 would be a bonus phantasm or something (maybe a “full” phantasm that mimics your utility casts and could command its own phantasms, kill it and its clones die).

Decapitate has another purpose (also counter to axe role like skull grinder is to the mace) and that is superior synergy with King of Fires due to being a leap finisher and a berserker skill, allowing you to instantly create and detonate fire auras (assuming you are using torch or longbow for the fire fields). The problem is that it works horribly with teammates (if they put a field down first, you lose your condi damage) and you have 0 defense (lol axe/torch/longbow). Too bad the Powerful Synergy trait sucks (detonate 2 fire auras would be nice) and King of Fires is so hard to use consistently (unless solo). Additionally you can’t even really fit tactics since defense is mandatory (you have no defensive weapons) and you need discipline in order to have axe available whenever you use a firefield.

So rip. It’s fun though when it works.

Also why is skull grinder a blast finisher? really gotta boost that might for everyone on a defensive condi weapon i guess?

The fact that Wild Blow does like 2.5x the damage of Kick, removes blind and weakness on hit, is a launch, and CAN knockback multiple enemies, and generates a lot of adrenaline (miss or hit) , is very offensive to Kick. Kick would have to have a cooldown so low you could chain stun people for it to be better than Wild Blow.

Oh and it’s a 20 second cd to kick’s 9.5 when traited.

So what are physicals supposed to do, heavy CC? you’d have to buff them a lot to accomplish that.

Personally I think Bull’s Rush has a good identity as of now, it’s a 3s knockdown and a leap finisher, so use it through fire fields if using King of Fires for some fun.

Kick being a stun break isn’t bad and makes it the core warrior’s Outrage. It should have a leap finisher though. Although it would be fun to make it like the Tatsu in fighting games (so now the warrior with 3 physicals could have Projectile, Blast, Leap, and a Whirl).

Bolas needs to pulse immobolize (and weakness preferably) like the ranger root. The other physicals synergize with Body Blow, but Bolas is a root and does not benefit from the trait. Making it apply weakness makes it harder to dodge out of the incoming assault (I mean you did magically hit Bolas). Alternatively, make it destroy Endurance (100 preferably) but still apply only 1 long root. Thus you don’t dodge out but block, and you can cleanse to gain movement back (also lets bolas actually function against thieves since it’s super hard to hit with).

Stomp has a nice identity, but falls short due to the cd. Reducing it would go a long way, but I think making it grant protection per target hit (in addition to the stab) would let it be a good initiation tool, or res disruption (since it launches, it’ll move the down body and let you cleave on it afterwards with stab + protection). It’s a blast so that is cool too.

Rampage is rampage. If you buff the warrior version, make sure not to buff the Engi version (which has a drastically lower cooldown when traited so it’s really annoying). If anything, I’d make Rampage have its own Burst Skill. That would be a good change without drastically overtuning it.

SPECIAL MENTION:
Mending being a physical would be a good start.

Something I find very amusing about Engi rifle is that the trait is called “Skilled Marksman” but none of the weapon skills are about aim/precision/technique. Same with the bonus (10% faster speed is spray and pray, not skill).

Why not instead make the trait do this: “Rifle/Harpoon Gun attacks against immobolized opponents are unblockable.” Maybe then the engineer will be skilled enough the be a marksman by exploiting weak points. Utility synergies include Net Turret, Glue Bomb, and the Elixir Gun Streamlined Kits ability (durations could be buffed though on glue bomb cause it’s waaaaay too short to use a lot of skills against).

Here’s a way to buff turrets without making them afk doom bots:

Toolkit.

When traited, smack whack and thwack prioritize turrets instead of enemies. Additionally, certain attacks grant turrets boons. (JUST AN EXAMPLE, CAN BE ANY BOON)
Smack grants Protection to turrets.
Whack grants Resistance to turrets.
Thwack grants Quickness to turrets.

OTHER OPTIONAL CHANGES
Magnet:
Turns into a flip skill that pulls turrets towards you and repairs them slightly. (Call it emergency repairs?)

Experimental Turrets:
Turrets gain boons every few seconds (applied from the Engineer for source). Whenever the Engineer grants turrets boons, boons are shared in a radius.
Boon shares are like Signet of Inspiration in that they are fixed duration for each boon type (might stack count should be copied however).

Advanced Turrets: Turrets gain Power/Toughness/Vitality/CondiDamage based off the engi’s.

As for gadgets, they need to be stronger for the niche they are in. (when traited)

Battering ram for destroying defenses (unblockable when enhanced?)
Utility Goggles for hitting enemies in their weak point for massive damage (vulnerability on hit; damage on interrupt when enhanced?)
Mines for area control and boon denial (more mines when enhanced?)
Rocket Boots aimable and stun break for quality of life (immunity to soft cc when enhanced?)
Slick Shoes is pretty solid, super speed and knockdown. (gain extra knockdown per target if enhanced by trait)
AED… needs better payout for its risk, not sure what to do with it. Also static shock should grant the engi Lightning Aura for a time.

To fix (some) exploits you could make it only work for 2nd/3rd place during any given moment.

EG without a fix 1st place obtains solid lead, logs out to reduce ppt for other servers.

Instead, they just don’t benefit (or not as much instead of not at all) from the “no pop active” status.

Also rather than instant checks, the tracker should “move towards” the desired rates (per map). So if a server secures a bunch of stuff on a bl, then ports to a different one, instead of instantly adjusting ppt, it would slowly shift towards the adjusted value over time.

Pulmonary Impact THE TRAIT needs to be nerfed, while Fist Flurry→Palm Strike should be buffed. PI is too accessible for all the off hand pistols (and also the steal daze trait) and does not warrant such power compared to the skill it is based on (which is laughably awful, good luck hitting all hits on fist flurry).

Instead, increase the number of hits dealt by fist flurry to 6 (nice even number), then make it so you only need 3 (or 50% of whatever number) hits to flip to palm strike.

Then adjust palm strike to apply two stacks of pulmonary impact on interrupt, 1 if you just hit the stun.

So if you take the trait and land palm strike with interrupt, it should do a TON of damage. If you don’t have the trait, palm strike is still dangerous. The trait on its own can still be pressure, but not so rewarding on its own (especially against slow cast abilities on classes like necro, they probably aren’t spamming, it just takes forever to cast one move).

Note: PI is currently a 3.28 damage multiplier; instead make it a 1.66 base (nerfing the trait standalone and poorly timed palm strikes). With the above changes, a palm strike interrupt with trait does a 5 multiplier (3 stacks of PI). With no trait, palm strike interrupt does 3.32 multiplier (tiny bit higher than current PI, 2 stacks). And of course, a single stack on its own would be a 1.66, not too annoying for a trait with no ICD (as it is now). Thus we have buffed Fist Flurry, Palm Strike, and well timed interrupts while reducing the heavy spam potency of off hand pistol.

I kinda feel like corruptions (and other skills) should play on more condition manipulation and have scaling tricks similar to Epidemic.

Examples:

Blood is Power is based on the number of bleed stacks on you and the target, boosting the might duration by 2% per stack (calculated after the bleeds are put on you and the opponent, so as the skill is now it would gain 12% boosted might duration ).
Corrosive Poison Field poisons you and the target, then places a poison field on the nearest 5 poisoned targets (and you automatically), although the downside would be to make it so only one field can affect enemies (per necro) at a time (so even if 5 overlap, they only take damage from one, it’s more of a zone denial effect)

And so on. Convert condis into other condis, move condis around, spread condis, reflect condis, etc etc.

I’m sure others could think of more tricks.

Besides player stat scaling on shredder gyro, I think the gyros are fine at this point. Sadly, the minor trait scrapper gets that boosts daze/stun duration is somewhat useless now, only increasing a few abilities on scrapper itself (hammer 5, leap finishers through lightning fields). If this (and expert examination) were to apply to all cc types, it’d be a lot more usable by both scrapper (boosting blast gyro launch distance) and core engi (rifle 4, turret stuff, battering ram etc).

As for gadgets, Slick Shoes is pretty decent, huge super speed duration that combos with regen on scrapper, a useful knockdown. It could make you immune to new applications of chill/cripple/immobolize but I don’t think it’s necessary.

AED needs help, but I’m not sure what to do besides give say protection and resistance IF you trigger it with the enhancement trait as a sort of comeback mechanic. Its toolbelt should probably be “Overload AED” or something, which would grant you lightning aura and there, useful toolbelt (even synergizes with scrapper stun trait!).

Rocket Boots would be fine “for damage” if you could target the landing point like Rifle 5. Additionally, 2 blast finishers wouldn’t be out of place when trait empowered to give it some interesting use (you get hit 5 times, better double blast a water kinda trick). The toolbelt should probably be a charge type move too rather than the awkwardly hard to target thing it is now. Not sure really what to do with it though.

Personal Battering Ram is an interesting launch utility that does a fraction of the damage that blast gyro does with a cd that is 10 seconds longer, and only hits 1 target. A good minimum would be to make it work like Wild Blow (Berserker Rage utility) so it knockbacks additional targets with the body, or even affect like 3 targets in front of you. For the gadget trait empower, it should work like a true battering ram and destroy any protection and stability on the target when it hits (the dispel would happen just before the hit but not on cast). The toolbelt here is quite nice with a low cooldown, good power damage, and a daze.

As for Utility Goggles, the blind immunity is pretty neat, but the gadget trait giving it might seems rather out of place. Maybe the gadget trait could make you unblockable (for half the duration, 5s) as it identifies new weak points with the extra power boost?

There’s a lot of places Gadgets could be interesting, since they have to make up the lack of a kit in terms of impact/utility, but they’re rather underdeveloped unfortunately.

I actually find that the cannons could be interesting, but the siege (anti-personnel) we have now have no identity, or not enough of one. Arrow carts control large areas, ballistas kinda kill people in a line (but not very well really), and cannons do both (but is direct fire of course).

Obviously the cannon being 50 supply is a huge error, as at that cost it all but voids out superior ballista in terms of usability (even if its direct damage is lower, its ease of use is far higher). Plus it hits 50 targets with 0 effort, while the ballista only hits people in a line (or a cone at a short range). Like, why use a ballista, to destroy siege? OH WAIT, cannon 1 has an anti siege bonus to it.

RIP

We need to give the siege identities and then cannons should fit in just fine (also a cost adjustment). Boost arrow carts ability to do area denial/control (slightly more damage, more soft cc BUT OVER TIME ONLY, maybe over 10-12 hits, more cripple, maybe some weakness). Boost ballista damage to people caught in their direct fire, i mean you have to line people up with the dang things, these should be your primary anti-personnel weaponry at range for cost efficiency. Cannons would be generalized with burst damage in a large radius, but expensive. Also buff gravel shot on catapults to be an anti-personnel option (it arcs, so it is good for defensive spots), cause seriously: 3 tiny rocks that shoot over a HUGE random spread is really terrible. Like why!? Give it like 10 rocks, rain on the enemies parade, or make them tumble like shield gen 1. SOMETHING. Plus, if someone tries to use a catapult like that, you can rush em in between shots, unlike arrow carts, so it isnt really a balance issue.

Any Skirmish reward should factor in relative Glicko (at a minimum, matchups are important when doing odds of winning) during the skirmish time slot. Servers more likely to win (odds wise) will get less while servers less likely to win should earn more.

This could hinder stacking, as stacking leads to higher odds of winning (due to population/coverage), and could help balance time slots out (therefore making odds of winning even for the highest rewards).

Flat rewards are not a good idea to add to any of the objectives, the reward should be proportional to the participants.

A better idea would be to have the reward scale similar to the lords scaling style, but then also modified by the ratio of attackers vs defenders. Thus outnumbering your opponent is not rewarded as much but beating the odds is valuable towards organized groups.

Additionally, every kill could add a bonus to the teams prize pool, maybe with a bonus on stomps (to keep the bloodlust theme of rewarding stomps rather than just cleaving everything down), so if you just force the enemy away from an objective, you don’t get as much.

This can even apply to yak escort missions, the more enemies you defeat/encounter while escorting the yak, the more you get at the end, with kills being worth more than just fighting then running away.

Defense events should be tuned to actual KOs with enemies who flee being worth less (and they don’t get any rewards at all since they don’t take the objective).

So currently the GS auto stacks 2s of chill (base) every 2.5 seconds.

Why not reduce the auto chain and the number values by a similar amount so you can actually finish your gs auto chain, cause lets be honest, 1 second cast times on auto chains are pretty terrible.

For example, make the auto chain be 1/2, 1/2, 1/2. Cut the damage, life force, and chill by the difference (so 3/4 into 1/2 would be a 33% reduction in damage/life force).

Theory craft wise, you would be applying 1 second of chill every 1.5 seconds. While the chill up time is lower, you can apply it more often, helping any builds using Deathly Chill (hybrid necro gs anyone?)

The cast times on the rest should be fine since they are more like the dagger 2 and dagger 3, specialized utility attacks that help you use your utilities, put enemies in range of reaper shroud, etc. GS5 could use a reliability buff (750 range is plenty but it is very awkward).

Oh, this won’t ever happen, but the GS trait should make it so gs 2-5 grant 1 stack of stab with duration equal to the ability’s cast time, so you can be a kind of necro juggernaut (maybe more suited to a necro hammer if it ever existed). Not sure if this would even be OP given the state of GS but it would work pretty well.