Guild Wars 2

Protip: use OBS, Nvidia Shadowplay or AMD Gaming Evolved instead of Bandicam.

Reverting stability won’t fix anything by itself. Anet would also have to make boon stripping to not be random again, because even with the old stability you would rely on RNGesus. If it randomly decides to strip your stab, you will still die (regardless of stacks or duration).

A good example why random boon stripping is undesired:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wEzocIAiqo

I would like to use this opportunity to adress a more serious issue, which is much worse than the stability change some people like to mention above. It is the random stripping of boons!!

Skillful players were able to cover their stability with less valuable boons, even after the stability patch. That way, one could play in a melee zerg and still survive reliably. However, since HoT boons get stripped randomly by (Necromancer) corrupts . This means that we now have to be lucky to survive a bomb, not skillful.

This has also further enforced the pirateship meta that is so disliked in the community, as one tick from one random corruption well in a large scale fight can kill you. Note that you cannot dodge after your stability gets corrupted, because it turns into fear – meaning instant death unless you have some sort of blink.

Before HoT it would take at least 5 ticks of corruption wells to lose the stability (on a buffed melee player), meaning there was always time for skillful players to dodge out of the bomb. Like I just said, that is not the case anymore.

TLDR; In competitive games, you want as little RNG as possible. Making boons get stripped randomly was a step in the wrong direction, taking skill away from fights in exchange for luck.

A video proving my point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wEzocIAiqo

I just looked at the leaked balance changes (http://pastebin.com/2bk8bnHx), and funnily enough Anet seems to have decided Air sigil with 3 second cooldown is overpowered and it needs a nerf to 5 seconds again.

That makes me wonder if they are actually aware it still has a 5 second cooldown, or that they simply can’t be asked to make it 3 seconds as the tooltip now states. (technically, they would only have to change the tooltip to incorporate the ‘nerf’)

Even then, it would still be bugged as that isn’t supposed to happen.

I just tested it myself though (without fire sigil) and the result stayed the same: Superior Sigil of Air has a 5 second cooldown.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

The sigil has a 50% chance to proc on any crit if it is off of cooldown.

That means it does not automatically proc every 3 seconds.

In normal situations, that would be true. However, with the flamethrower and near 100% crit chance, it should proc pretty quick after it comes off cooldown.

This is very clearly demonstrated with the Superior Sigil of Fire: it procs just a little over every 5 seconds. There is no reason why Superior Sigil of Air would proc at the exact same times for minutes on end.

If you have experienced it proccing twice in a 3 second window, I would like to see evidence of that. As far as I’ve been able to see, ANET just didn’t change the cooldown even though they said they did. Maybe the programmers simply forgot to implement the change.

At this point, there is barely any reason to pick Air over Fire. That would be different with a lower (the right) cooldown on Air.

5 second cooldown in game doesn’t match the design of Superior Sigil of Air

In the April feature patch, Anet said the following:
Sigil of Air: This sigil now has a 50% activation chance on critical hit. Rescaled the cooldown from 5, 5, and 5 seconds to 5, 4, and 3 seconds for the minor, major, and superior versions, respectively. This sigil remains unable to critically hit.

I am afraid however, that there has been a miscommunication between the designers and programmers. Namely, the Superior Sigil of Air still has its old 5 seconds cooldown: only the tooltip has changed to 3 seconds.

Build the bug has been found in:
Every build since April 15th 2014

Reproduction rate:
100%

Video of bug
Data collected from the video below. Used an Engineer with a flamethrower, coming in at around 80% crit chance. As you can see, the Superior Fire and Superior Air have the same 5 second cooldown. Superior Sigil of Air however, was intended to have a 3 second cooldown.

Superior Sigil of Air: activated 16 times over 84 seconds (proc every 5.25 seconds)
Superior Sigil of Fire: activated 16 times over 85 seconds (proc every 5.3 seconds)

http://youtu.be/4Gr8_NKf7QQ

Severity
This bug makes Superior Sigil of Air very weak compared to its direct counterpart, the Superior Sigil of Fire. Air does around 30% extra damage on a single target, but Fire can hit 5 enemies which means it could do almost 4 times as much damage in total.

It has nothing to do with lag or double tapping it. It’s a bug that happens when you run out of Life Force while in Death Shroud and then try to go into Plague immediately. It will cancel itself within half a second, leaving you vulnerable as seen in the videos below.

http://youtu.be/nJS3eOtOZeg
http://youtu.be/4t6eqbZNZ4M

The bug was introduced with the April feature pack, half a year ago. Even though I have made it clear in the forums, nobody from Anet bothers to read or fix it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Running-out-of-Life-Force-cancels-Plague

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Plague-cancels-itself-immediately-after-DS

It has been half a year since i’ve first mentioned it, but with the Death Shroud nerf of last Tuesday this issue has become so much more important to fix.

If you let your Life Force run out while in Death Shroud and then immediately go into Plague, you get kicked out within half a second wasting the Plague and opening you up for any incoming damage. (this is not a player mistake: one can only cancel plague manually 1 second after activating it)

A demonstration of how this can kill a Necro in combat:
http://youtu.be/4t6eqbZNZ4M

And one in PvP without external factors:
http://youtu.be/nJS3eOtOZeg

The reason this has to be fixed fast, is very clear:

Before last Tuesday, when you ran out of Death Shroud and went into Plague, the elite skill would cancel itself immediately. However, you would at least have no (or a reduced) cooldown on Death Shroud, so even though your Plague was cancelled automatically you would still be able to save yourself with Death Shroud sometimes.

Now, when you run out of Death Shroud and the Plague bugs, you are left without any possibility to get out alive.

With the Death Shroud nerf of last Tuesday, this has become so much more important to fix.

Before, when you ran out of Death Shroud and went into Plague, the elite skill would cancel itself immediately. However, you would at least have no (or a reduced) cooldown on Death Shroud, so even though your Plague was cancelled automatically you would still be able to save yourself with Death Shroud sometimes.

Now, when you run out of Death Shroud and the Plague bugs, you are left without any possibility to get out alive. I hope this does not take 2 years to ‘fix’ like the Death Shroud, although it starts being quite likely seeing how the Plague bug has been in the game since the April patch.

Turned off the video after 5 seconds. For anyone that has plans to record gameplay, TURN CAMERA SHAKE OFF!!!! (or just do it in general to save yourself a migrane)

It is annoying to look at and will even decrease the quality of the video because you’re artificially creating movement and making the compression a lot less effective (notice the blurry text and blocks on-screen because of this).

You might still be able to fix it a little bit by using YouTube’s video stabilizer.

Sure, it might be a bug fix. However, It wasn’t really that big of a problem since you would always be at 0% life force anyway. Having the cooldown ‘bugged’ also increased the skill cap, as there were more ways of using it. Anyway, this is pretty much a deathblow to any dagger/warhorn necromancers in WvW zergs.

This nerf also doesn’t make any sense whatsoever given what they were trying to do (but failed so miserably at) last feature patch:

Our focus for necromancers in this balance update has been on improving their survivability through utilities and traits (…) Along with weapon skill updates, your utility skills have been updated to provide more survivability over time.

For high level WvW guild raids you can check out my daily Twitch stream or my YouTube channel:

Twitch.tv/impieyay
youtube.com/user/impieyay

I usually upload WvW video’s, but this time I present to you my musical talents with the Marriner’s Horn. The songs featured in this video are as follows:

00:05 – My Heart Will Go On (Titanic Theme)
00:33 – Game of Thrones intro
00:45 – Harry Potter
01:07 – Star Wars
01:30 – The Hobbit
01:40 – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
01:57 – Lullaby
02:23 – Old MacDonald Had a Farm
02:35 – Thrift Shop – Macklemore
02:53 – The Wheels On The Bus
03:07 – Wilhelmus (Dutch National Anthem)
03:37 – The Star-Spangled Banner (national anthem USA)

Here is the Youtube link:
http://youtu.be/fc5rwIevk6c

You might be wondering how I did this. Firstly, I looked up sheet music for the trumpet or French Horn, then I converted those into key presses while noting the duration of the note. Unlike with the other instruments, in order to play the same note twice you will have to press ‘escape’ before playing the note again. This might be challenging at first, especially first short repeating notes, but you’ll get used to it eventually.

Here is the Team Aggression [TA] point-of-view:

http://youtu.be/J-JTFY_kFZk

If you let your Life Force run out while in Death Shroud and then immediately go into Plague, Plague gets cancelled immediately.

A demonstration of it in combat:
http://youtu.be/4t6eqbZNZ4M

And one in PvP without external factors:
http://youtu.be/nJS3eOtOZeg

If you let your Life Force run out while in Death Shroud and then immediately go into Plague, Plague gets cancelled immediately.

A demonstration of it in combat:
http://youtu.be/4t6eqbZNZ4M

And one in PvP without external factors:
http://youtu.be/nJS3eOtOZeg

This bug has still not been fixed. Anet… Plz…

It seems like the Feature Patch has introduced a bug for Necromancers. If you let your Life Force run out while in Death Shroud and then immediately go into Plague, you get kicked out in half a second.

A demonstration of it in combat:
http://youtu.be/4t6eqbZNZ4M

And one in PvP without external factors:
http://youtu.be/nJS3eOtOZeg