Guild Wars 2

spoj.9672:

We ran 2 necros in hotw p1 for funs last night. Me on rampager and the other on rabid. It didnt really improve the kill time of ginva tbh. Still a huge meatshield.

Not at all surprised, as I mentioned I don’t think it really works as a condi fight if that was even the intention. He’s just annoying for everyone.

I like leaping at him on my guardian just as he starts to spin. Always makes me happy, and I do it nearly every time…

durend.6237:

Oxxy.7068:

I guess control is… fix’able somehow, not so sure about condition tho, i just can’t see it working on PvE without some sort of big revamp.

Scale up monster toughness and drop down vitality to the point condition damage is the strongest option to use, but keep the current caps.

Anyone else think that Ginva the Butcher in HotW1 was maybe a sort-of-attempt at condi-friendly boss mechanics?

He’s got those boon-spamming totems. Protection is ignored by conditions, regen reduced in effectiveness by poison, retaliation is… um… just as annoying for everyone, but two outta three ain’t bad.

Conditions keep ticking on him when he does his blender move, and I think at least some professions have non-projectile, non-melee ways to apply more through it. (Yes, equally you can melee attack from just outside its range or use equally non-projectile ways to apply direct damage)

Sadly the utility of poison can be provided by some ’zerkers specs and the regen he gets is kind of negligible anyway, he has a mountain of health to chew through, and pure condition builds do laughable damage to his totems. I never said it was a shining success.

With a guild group that doesn’t mind (partial) trash clears on new paths, would folks still recommend P1 and taking it slow and steady? I’m sure it’ll take us ages regardless, and we’ll wipe often enough to justify clearing.

Bah, I might be talking kitten. I’ll have to test again. I went and downed/rallied a few times off of the infinite krait in an obviously doomed Tequatl attempt after trying a few dungeons, and seemed to lose Power Break reliably on down. Not so sure about resolve/recovery as I was actively using those at times.

The extra damage is very noticeable when not faceplanting, regardless.

Edit: The below is nonsense, I’m not even sure how I managed to convince myself of it now. Durend has the right of it.

After messing around with the GM dueling trait: Mantras lose their readied status if you get downed. I suppose this encourages better play in the same way as Scholar runes and sigil stacks, but man does it feel punitive facing nearly 9 seconds of casting time to get back to where you were.

Something to bear in mind if you are some combination of bad, still learning, pugging.

durend.6237:

spoj.9672:

Its also the extra precision and crit damage. I wouldnt say its a big problem. But I will probably stick with 10/30/0/20/10.

This. Personal stats do get reflected in phantasm stats. So only taking 15 in dueling results in a loss of 15% crit damage and 150 precision (7~% crit chance) for them and you. That stats loss would also effect your reflect damage (beyond the ability to get 12% damage through mantras).

In places where reflects aren’t as needed (CoE) a 10/20/0/25/15 or 10/15/0/25/20 build may work better, but I don’t think the damage would be that noticeable compared to 10/30/0/20/10 to justify changing for a casual speed clear.

Thanks to both of you, the extra stats as well as the multiplier make a ton of sense, as well as dropping points from illusion/inspiration instead of domination. Definitely going to have to give this a try and see if I can live without IC and PH.

I did try a mantra build ages ago, just after hitting 80. I found them to be really clunky when running around the open world, but since I mainly just run dungeons on the mesmer maybe it’ll be bearable now :P

LordByron.8369:

Oom.3205:

As for the minors, I like shatter builds too (just not for dungeons), and might on shatter is quite nice – even nicer when I won’t have to pick it up in a phantasm build. I find it hard to believe you’d call IC useless, even if you don’t think it is mandatory it’s a solid minor for most builds.

sry i meant adept….
not minor

Compounding Power? 9% more damage on reflects and your personal DPS. More options might be nice, but if you can keep illusions up it’s a great Adept-tier trait.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Not having 30 points in Dueling is a pretty big problem for quite a few places.

Scrub question, but where would you consider this indispensable? Arah and Fractals sprint to mind, but I don’t have the experience necessary to judge. I assume it’s primarily for the extra 12% damage on reflects when slotting 3 mantras and Feedback, and the personal DPS improvement would make up for the build picking not up 15% illusion damage from Domination.

Edit for missing word.

LordByron.8369:

Oom.3205:

For general stuff, 10/20/0/25/15 is sounding mighty tempting post-patch.

No wonder…when something gets overnerfed…and half reverted you have your best builds back (almost we still don t have any minor useful trait in illusion).

I went on hiatus for a few months and apparently missed a whole bunch of nerf/buff passes – I have no opinion on the great rollercoaster of balance patches.

As for the minors, I like shatter builds too (just not for dungeons), and might on shatter is quite nice – even nicer when I won’t have to pick it up in a phantasm build. I find it hard to believe you’d call IC useless, even if you don’t think it is mandatory it’s a solid minor for most builds.

Bonus tokens for trash awarded on dungeon completion would be quite lovely, and can’t be farmed by just clearing the first room and resetting the dungeon. Maybe that’s not a problem, but ISTR people were farming the first bosses in Arah for a measly four tokens a pop.

If bonus tokens are immediate drops or per character rather than shared over the group, it might impact path selling, at least buyers who want tokens might be slightly more inclined to do full runs and at least partial clears. Those just after DM title or maximum efficiency will probably still happily pay to join just before final
award, of course.

If bonus tokens are awarded at the end and are a shared resource attached to the party, it might lead to an interesting situation where solo/duo sellers offer low prices for just the end reward, while 3/4 people could clear more trash and offer ‘end reward +XX bonus tokens’ in their ads. Might be a danger of more kicks of players near the end to sell their spot in that case, which would be horrible.

Disclaimer: I have no problem with folks buying or selling legit runs, just wondering if it would affect the market for them. Somewhat pointlessly, I’m sure, as there doesn’t seem to be a huge motion from ArenaNet to change dungeon reward structure at the moment.

frifox.5283:

I would rather pick extra glamour duration than 15% illusion damage for dungeons requiring reflects. After Dec 10 with 0/20/0/30/20 you should be able to pull off perma-reflect which is perfect for CM/SE. Other dungeons I run p/f offhand and since Phantasmal Haste does apply to those phantasm so I’d still go 20 into illusions. With that build you get IC + PH + Duelist Discipline which brings our best phantasm to 12s CD that unloads every 6.5s (zerker gear that’s usually 6k to 8k per unload). Slot in Signet of Illusions + Persisting Images traits and you should be able to keep up 3 phantasms much more often. Set up 3 properly staggered iWardens vs ranged mob and your party will throw gold at you for making those fights a breeze (aka majority of CM)

I feel incredibly stupid. I didn’t think to swap Persisting Images in for those fights – that is an excellent point. Granted lower warden cooldown has marginal benefits if you’re still bringing focus for AoE or RNG condi clear on light fields, but in general if you’re not slotting Feedback you might as well have tankier phantasms.

2 seconds additional Feedback duration doesn’t seem as useful to me as getting extra power and harder hitting phantasms. Plus 30 points in the healing/tanky line gives me flashbacks to running AH grauniad…

For general stuff, 10/20/0/25/15 is sounding mighty tempting post-patch.

Great stuff. I’m still working on being less bad at using curtain, and I’m generally really reluctant to slot Portal when pugging. So many people just kind of stare at the pretty pink thing until it stops making plinky-plonky noises and leaves me with a utility slot cooling down forever, or they run straight past it. I swear some of them dodge through it in case it accidentally makes them go faster…

Anyone have strong opinions on Signet of Illusion as a situational thing? I’ve taken to slotting it for Alpha fights in CoE, replacing Feedback (other utilities usually being Null Field and Blink). It seems to help in keeping multiple phantasms up in P1 at least, where they’re only regularly being hit by the attack that inflicts burning. Also I can’t really think of much else to take for this fight. SoI for boon multiplication, maybe. Disenchanter and Defender are alright but hit like an imaginary noodle. Mantra for more condi clear is a different option if the group is lacking there, I guess.

I really like sword/sword as my primary set, focus or pistol on swap. As the sword phantasm isn’t affected by Phantasmal Haste, any thoughts on only going 15 Illusions after the Dec 10 patch? Lower uptime on warden reflects, but nabbing an extra 15% illusion damage from Domination III looks pretty good.

Syn Sity.5826:

Your problem is that you have been saying crit damage when you meant precision/crit chance.

I don’t think the OP mentioned crit damage anywhere, except in passing when linking to the wiki in a later post. Admittedly just talking about ‘crit’ is ambiguous, but it was always in the context of precision and crit chance as far as I can see.

Not that it matters, Wethospu has the wisdom.

Anicetus.1253:

You can’t get critical damage infusions anyway.

Mmm. But if the choice is between power and precision… it probably depends. Precision is wasted as soon as you go over 100% (or 99% according to some threads), so even if it’s worth more damage point-for-point than power with your current build, it might only take a pug ranger with Spotter (hah?) to render it pointless.

The flip side of that is that if you pug a bunch you might expect poor uptime on fury, discipline banner and perception stacks if using that sigil, so static precision might be more useful to you.

A spreadsheet can tell you which is optimal given a certain set of assumptions, you just have to decide how well those assumptions match your circumstances.

Can you get infusions with both? I think that’s what the OP is asking about, specifically, rather than gear in general. The basic infusions are just +5 power/precision/AR/irrelevantstats, right?

They’re fairly tiny boosts either way. You can’t go wrong with more power – my rule of thumb when I can’t be bothered to think about things.

On the subject of coverage and recovery from a point deficit, rather than purely scaling rewards based on population ratios (which is fiddly and could lead to players from the same server resenting each other for reducing their score multiplier), you could buff the PPT value of an objective based on the length of time it has been owned by an enemy server.

For example, you could allocate points into that objective’s “bonus pool” after, say, two hours of ownership by another server. The pool continues to accumulate whilst owned by that enemy, up to a cap (8 hours? 12?). If you then take that objective, the bonus points are given to your server over several ticks. The bonus points should never outweigh the PPT total you’d get from holding the objective normally, but provide a way to partially recover from coverage gaps and could encourage risky sorties deep into enemy territory to take infrequently flipped towers etc.

If you feel like it, you could scale rewards (WXP/karma) for defending objectives with such bonus pools too.

I guess the dominant server could abuse this by deliberately losing then re-flipping front-line objectives, but at least that means the underdogs are getting a chance to take things – maybe some of the other ideas to buff defensive capabilities would help there, giving the servers a better chance of keeping that toehold.

+1 for all ideas to show approximate queue length/position for all WvW maps before joining, and providing information as you sit in queue. Making sensible decisions about allocating play time is important to me, and I’m sure many others.

What about a more forgiving version of the Vanquishing mechanic from GW1? Essentially if you kill most (90%?) of the trash in a dungeon, you get a bit of bonus coin/karma/yellow item as a secondary reward at the end. Scaled to the amount of trash along that path and how long it takes, obviously.

Make it less efficient than skipping in terms of gold/time, but it gives some reward for murdering everything and dawdling. You could even make it tiered rather than all-or-nothing, but I’d suggest requiring every boss to prevent at least some weird abuses of the system. I’d quite like it as a way to reintroduce karma rewards to dungeons.

NB: I am bad at the game, don’t care for efficiency that much and pug a lot, so my opinion is not worth much and doesn’t fall strongly on either side anyway. The only reason I encourage killing some trash packs is if people (often me) are bad at skipping them, but I’m fine with slaughtering more or less of the dungeon depending on what the group wants.

Nuadu.4590:

I found it pretty curious that the highest gear the vendors for the first two dungeons offer is for 60-70. Who was thinking that a person would really buy those things while leveling? They are just useless, which makes the dungeons pretty useless.

The skins, especially for medium armor, are not that great to justify 50+ runs, especially
when there are 50+ runs more to do to get an amor that has the stats for transmutation.

I must agree with the first point. I rather like the way the CM light set looks, and was considering getting it to start a Magic Find set or something. But at level 70 stats… no, it is suddenly very uninteresting. Are many people going to farm up sufficient tokens to get this at an appropriate level? Our gracious hosts must have the numbers, but I’d bet not.

Given the high time investment these sets represent, I cannot think why they’re not all level 80 exotics. It’s a bit sad that the lower level sets share a skin, but given the existence of such low-level sets the lack of level 80 sets for AC and CM is even more baffling.

I like suggestions seen elsewhere to bump up the number of tokens earned in the first run of a dungeon per day/week/month, and making all the tokens account bound. Reducing the total cost of an armour set or adding bonus tokens to loot tables within the dungeon also sound nice, although the latter might cause issues with endlessly spawning trash that could be farmed.