Guild Wars 2

The Smoke Cloud ability gives the pet a 5-second evade on use, as long as the smokescale doesn’t leave the cloud. That’s its primary purpose. That it counts as a smoke field for combos is just a bonus (though when the pet was auto-dropping it on top of fire fields in PvE it didn’t seem like much of one, but I digress…).

That’s how combo fields work. They don’t do anything unless you combo off of them. They are a secondary effect tacked onto another ability. And this ability happens to be a pet defensive cooldown.

Other smoke fields happen to be attached to abilities which blind. That’s not a set-in-stone rule. Meet the exception.

Uh oh, you mean the golems still have high armor values? Say it isn’t so!

Smoke Assault’s overall damage appears to be higher by about 7%, but it takes up a slightly greater part of the pet’s ability rotation, making it pretty much a wash.

Smokescale does the same dps as before the patch, but with weaker and less controllable burst. But at least now the combo field is usable.

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but while the burst output of Smoke Assault was lowered, its dps in PvE probably remains pretty much the same.

The cooldown was reduced from 24 to 16 seconds, meaning the Smokescale can use Smoke Assault 50% more often. A reduction in the number of hits from 7 to 5 is only a damage drop of 29% per cast unless the damage of the individual hits was also reduced. That results in a dps increase from Smoke Assault of about 7%.

The pet will spend effectively 50% more time using this ability if it’s activated on cooldown, resulting in an opportunity cost vs. using one of its other auto-attacks, so this slight increase in total Smoke Assault damage over time is probably a wash insofar as overall dps is concerned.

I don’t think PvE players should be worried about that change (though Smokescale dps has actually never been particulary good — stick with a cat or a bristleback). PvP players, on the other hand, were pretty much shafted.

Tragic Positive.9356

From PvE it doesn’t matter at all because it’s not your job to bring smoke field so you just might have it random and you want the pet to use assault as often as possible – so having it on random makes no difference as having it on demand.

It may not be the ranger’s “job” to bring smoke fields in PvE, but it’s certainly not appreciated when the pet decides to make that its job … right on top of a strategically placed fire or water field.

While I can appreciate a PvPer’s desire to manually control the Smoke Assault cooldown for burst, if that’s to be the ability bound to F2, the smoke field really needs to be replaced with something else entirely. While on-demand burst may be preferable in PvP, having a zero-damage (read: “dps-lowering”) skill that interferes with other combo fields is an absolute deal breaker in PvE.

The smokescale is just plain unusable in PvE in any group setting with the smoke field as an AI auto-cast ability.

For one reason or another, it’s now a locked thread. No one can respond to it.

Ranger was the last class I really, truly enjoyed prior to HoT, so for the present moment I’ve already uninstalled.

Still lurking on the forums (MMO addiction, yo) waiting for a promising dev post, but it’s been three years already, so not holding my breath.

My expectations for druid in non-raid PvE were not high to begin with, but even then I wasn’t prepared for what was dumped upon us on launch day and the days that followed.

It was announced last month that players who purchased the original game directly from Arenanet between January 2015 and June 16, 2015, and subsequently preordered HoT (again directly from Anet) by July 31, would be refunded their original GW2 purchase price.

Just curious then, has anyone here who meets both of these criteria seen that refund yet? If so, when did you peeordered HoT, and about how long did you wait for your refund afterwards?

There’s an option to change ground-targeted skills to fire on the initial press of the hotkey — or when it’s released — rather than requiring a mouse click. The latter option (fire upon release) even displays the targeting circle when you hold the key down.

So it’s a lot like firing at a target you have selected, except that the target is the ground under your mouse cursor.

Alone.1784:

The reason being that on a given roll for if an ability will crit everything past that up to your critical chance is basically wasted stats. I have never seen a GW2 theory crafter take that into account and I’ve never understood why, have any insight?

Because that line of reasoning is pretty nonsensical.

Your crit rate determines how frequently you critically hit. Whether a particular roll of the random number generator would be a critical hit with a 20% or lower crit chance, a prior or later roll will require 80% or more. The distribution of RNG rolls over time should be more or less even, and your number of crits over time will likewise correspond roughly to your crit chance.

If you’re concerned about reliable burst damage, and you’re using a slow attack or one with a lengthy cooldown, more power in lieu of crit will let you down less often. But where damage per second is concerned, you want to worry about your average output over time, not how much crit chance is “enough” (unless you’re in danger of exceeding 100%, of course) for an individual roll to be a crit.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

I think that the medkit is not worth it ( as it got nerfed ) , what is the best healing skill atm ?

Healing Turret, as always. Every skill in the Med Kit line (aside, possibly, from its toolbelt skill) has very weak numbers and is very awkward to use. Even the #1, Med Blast, only pumps out ~180 healing per second on a single target at level 80 and is not self-targetable.

The turret, in comparison, can AoE burst a few thousand healing every 20 seconds and, untraited, removes more conditions than the entire Med Kit bar. Its toolbelt skill doesn’t heal you as much as Bandage Self (Med Kit), but it’s an AoE regen.

And the #1 skill’s throughput is so low that you’re pretty much better off doing absolutely anything else than channeling this ability. It might have had a niche use in self-casting while kiting, but it’s not self-targetable.

Aside from the toolbelt ability, everything about Med Kit in this patch works out to one step forward and two steps back.

Already submitted via /bug in game, but figured I’d share with all of you:

Mortar Kit’s #1 attack does regularly proc Steel-Packed Powder (which only procs from “explosive” skills) but never procs Shrapnel (“never” = not once in ten minutes of testing). Kind of a bummer, as much as I’m loving the new Mortar Kit.

The patch is live. Mortar Kit #1 can proc Steel-Packed Powder, but it does NOT proc Shrapnel (at least not after ten straight minutes of fishing for a single proc, on mobs that I first confirmed via Grenade Kit can be crippled and bled). I have already reported this as a bug in-game.

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Koja.5169:

Do we have any confirmation yet whether the updated mortar’s effects will count as “explosions” for the traits which modify such abilities? Unless I’m mistaken, the current mokittenoes not trigger “explosion” traits (Shrapnel, Steel-Packed Powder).

The current Mortar is affected from explosive traits, however it cannot trigger sharpnel because it cannot crit!

Thank you! And this may hopefully change, because the only reason the pre-patch mortar skill cannot crit is that it’s a deployed object, while the post-patch mortar is a kit. FINGERS CROSSED!

Do we have any confirmation yet whether the updated mortar’s effects will counts as “explosions” for the traits which modify such abilities? Unless I’m mistaken, the current mokittenoes not trigger “explosion” traits (Shrapnel, Steel-Packed Powder).

I’m hedging my bets and crafting some Rampager pieces in preparation for the patch. As long as I don’t stack so much precision that I over cap on crit chance, I figure that’s the best of both worlds (condition and power) until we’ve had a couple of weeks to figure out the new meta.