Guild Wars 2

why is it that 95% of the time where people talk about the difficulty of Raids what the means is difficulty of the first boss and just assume everyone thinks raids = first boss?

at least this way the higher scales don’t get a response of “what is AR?” when you ask them how much AR they have. and from what I have noticed no fractal anyone actually does is restricted for those < scale 76, because swamp 56, swamp 67, and swamp 77 that most people do for dailies (variations include some jade maws that could also get you past 76) people always post in the 51-75 category. and if you go with the swamp option their easy enough that getting above 0 AR is pointless anyway so it saves you money. believe me when I tell you there are 0 posts for LFG in the 76+ category, the only one worth doing (swamp) is posted in the lower category to find people faster

in the Raids beta awhile ago there were a few mobs that were completely immune to direct damage, so groups were required to bring condition builds (not everyone, but 3 or 4 people) currently the only classes that are very good at doing a lot of condition damage are trap rangers and engineers. and because trap rangers need to be in melee, and engineers don’t. engineers will be in very high demand for raids. and at least for what we saw in the beta, ascended gear was not needed

most of these are great changes, however the change with stabilizing matrices sounds like it will make a salvage kit worth more than ascended rings making people just merch all of their ascended rings again (its already like this for ascended back-pieces.)

the toughness change is good, but needs to be replaced with scaling power, or more instabilities or something so that the challenge goes up the higher the scale.

these changes also fail to address people just doing all swamps for the daily. currently scale 100 and 56 have about the same reward, that needs fixed. I would like a separate daily for 76-100 than the 51-75, as well as making all the dailies be recommended to prevent just doing swamps.

Rather than increasing the rewards for the 76-100 I would like it that loot rewards remain the same, only make getting the daily complete require 2 islands instead of 3 as the higher scales take more time to complete than the lower scales.

I would estimate about 15 minutes before you can start playing. remember that you only need to download a small portion of the expansion before the game allows you to download while you play like any other patch.

feedback on what I played this weekend. played a shiro/glint devastation/invocation/herald full zerk in scholar runes in the beta map/fractal 50/arah
very fun playstyle, lots of little things to improve on as I learn the class better to keep me wanting to get better, very helpful to my team. its one of the better classes for the current zerk meta in pve, still felt a little weaker than my ele, but much easier to survive and that could still be a L2P issue as I noticed a few things I can get better at.

played a marauder rev with the same above build for pvp. very strong against current meta builds, but does have counters with conditions, stealth at the right time to avoid damage from UA, not a lot of stability in the build I was running. felt about on par with other elite specs, there is a bit of a power creep with all elite specs (but that’s deserving of another post entirely.)

I played a mallyx/glint corruption/retribution/herald in wvw/pvp, in wvw I tried dire stats with tormenting runes food and utility, pvp I had rabid stats with undead runes.
for pvp it felt a little underpowered I was able to win a good bit of the 1v1s, but it felt a little underpowered compared to the power build I was running before. in wvw it felt way OP, it does have some counters like diamond skin eles, and some builds are able to kite you around as mace/axe/shield it can be hard to keep up with some builds and you have a lot of health/armor, but very little heals for extended fights.

I tried full sinister axe/mace/shield corruption/invocation/herald with malyx/glint in the beta map. totally useless set of gear. die even easier than any power builds as unrelenting assault is such a great evade it makes it far easier to survive in a zerk build. not only is the damage far inferior to a power zerk build even on moving targets (which I couldn’t find a single moving target in the beta map, not easy to kite with 130 range,) but the damage is barely better than my dire set. power/precision scales very poorly with a mace.

things I want changed.
the elite on mallyx competes a bit too much with unyielding anguish, they both pretty much accomplish the same goal, only the elite is better for keeping up with people trying to kite you as the chill doesn’t last long when your aiming at moving targets that don’t stay in it long. please change what the elite does.

Pain absorption has no reason to draw the condition away from our allies and put them on us. condi’s are our weakness not theirs. our allies can handle the conditions on them much better than we can, we do not want theirs.

revenants are the masters of torment. so why are most of our torment skills point blank range? torment does more damage vs moving targets. we need at least 300 range or so to kite someone around so we can get those targets moving (would fix a lot of the condi rev in pve problems)

Rev is overall in a good spot, but Glint is OP compared to every other legend. Glint needs a nerf, and all other legends need a buff to compensate. I wanna be able to use a build that doesn’t bring Glint, but I can’t because Glint is OP no matter what build your trying to run.

it would help the rev out a lot of you would add superior sigil of cleansing into pvp (condi clear on weapon swap) same goes for superior runes of tormenting, would really help condi revs get a foothold into the pvp scene.

power/precision needs to scale better with a mace, in most of pve defensive stats are worthless as theres no “challenging content” (at least that I have seen so far) , and on a mace so is power/precision as it scales so poorly, so why go condi unless somethings immune to power?

I still don’t understand how pvp guild missions will work. could you expand on that? what does it mean by several guild teams? are these missions done in ranked/unranked/hot joins, or is it something you do in the arena guild hall?

because of patch notes I thought I would test line casting (getting all aoe’s to land in same spot) as patch notes said they fixed this on Ice Storm, as well as Meteor Shower. but I guess dev’s were unaware these were not the only skills that used line casting. it works better on Lightning Storm (Glyph of Storms used in air attunement) than Ice Storm or Meteor Shower ever did.

Are the dev’s not aware that their are far more AOE skills that use line casting that just Icebow and Meteor Shower? if they fixed it for those 2 skills it must be a bug for every skill line casting still works on, right?

only reason hammer is a great weapon right now is because of weapon swap. sounds like the OP just doesn’t know how to swap weapons at the right time.

in the future I want the players on the map to be more spread out, so that I can actually feel like I am contributing to what is going on. right now it’s more of a “I hope I can tag that before it dies.”
I want to be rewarded on the spot, so that I don’t get so angry whenever I dc, or don’t have time to finish.
I want account bonuses to make a difference, so I don’t feel like I have all this magic find, gold find, karma gain, exp gain, and yet not any of it is helping. I want straight up loot, not guaranteed champ bags that are not effected by magic find (maybe have different rarities of champ bags?)
I do like the things you can buy with the blooms, good job on the merchant items.

I don’t think this would work for raids, but it does sound like it could be a good instability for fractals

you don’t need a walk-able path to teleport up walls, just look at the walls behind mid point in forest, you would have to walk half way across the map and back to get back there, yet a 450 range teleport can get you up there in an instant. the same goes for phase traversal, you do not need a valid walkable path. “new” issue or not, the same issue in a different way creates “new” ways to cheese.

I just fail to see how wanting a fix for the ability to ignoring walls can be written off as QQ. it’s normal for teleports to teleport up walls, not through them. this ability gets you access to all sorts of area’s in every game mode that you were never meant to get to, but hey if I’m the only one that wants a fix then so be it.

it’s one thing to have UA follow your target through portals and teleports (though even that does break some boss encounters like svaniir boss on snowblind fractal.) but Phase Traversal ignoring walls completely just breaks the game in my opinion.

when a Mesmer blinks up a wall in pvp people may complain a bit, but a lot of classes can do that and it adds a lot of fun and gameplay to the game so people have generally allowed this. but when a revenant blinks past a huge wall or cliff, or through a gate entirely this is massively OP because normal blink skills cannot do this, why bother to even open gates when you can blink through them?

currently a lot of people like to line of sight in pvp by going behind a wall, a pillar or something like it; revenants ignore all line of sight so why bother to use the terrain to your advantage at all when it can’t help you? when people can just ignore all the terrain of a map it makes all maps feel way too similar.

oh sure, this is obviously a bug, but how can this bug be fixed? it’s the same bug that allows ground targeted teleport skills to go up walls and a lot of people don’t want that fixed. here are a few ways this could be fixed.
1) make it throw a rock and have it teleport you to where the rock hits (though this would mean you can’t use it when out of range which a lot of us don’t want)
2) make it a ground targeted blink skill (my personal favorite)
3) just try to fix it so it doesn’t go through walls (I foresee a lot of terrain bugs with this of the skill not working correctly on uneven terrain ect.)
4) turn it into a leap skill

also would like to ask where the revenant is supposed to be in relation to mobility, currently between phase traversal, perma swiftness, and good access to super speed, and Frigid Blitz revenants are the most mobile class in the game, they can be sitting on mid point, see someone capping home and make it home before the point even gets de-capped. I thought thieves were supposed to be the most mobile class in the game? with revenants this mobile, is there ever any reason to take a thief?

I didn’t try revenant in pvp at all this weekend, but I know cele ele builds very well, and I can assure you that Hoelbrak runes are way better than strength in any cele build. your a hybrid damage build so that 5% damage only effecting power damage is more like +2.5% damage, whereas the -20% condi duration from hoelbrak really sync’s well with all that resistance you’re using.

Rygg.6237:

IMO it’s a bit too much considering the 50% boon duration increase, also paired with the Glint stance moves you can set up a burst with fury ,25 might and 10 vuln, it takes a great chunk of HP off people in PvP, giving it more boons would just scream nerf.

I’m not talking about giving it more boons, I’m talking about replacing the boons it currently has (as in taking away all the boons it currently has) and this is just about the active effect, I don’t want to change the passive at all.

I like how the passive skill on this ability can be great in some places (like helping an ele pre stack might, or extending a TW duration,) while not being too good at the wrong time. but it’s always a good time to use the active (anytime you don’t need the passive at least.) would really make this ability more fun to play if it was best to only use it under some circumstances (so I don’t need to keep spamming the skill every time it’s off cd.)

listing a couple of idea’s I have to fix this issue, and I would love to hear more peoples idea’s of a good active F2 skill.
1) make it give a 3s resistance boon. this fits in the theme of the specialization being about boons, is a great skill to use some times (not good to spam,) it gives the rev some much needed anti condi stuff, while still maintaining their weakness of condi/boonstrip.
2) 7s of super speed, this would only work if super speed was changed into a boon (not sure why it’s not already.) as super speed is only useful in some situations this could be more fun.

having your back against a wall may sound stupid, but vs a rev that’s actually a good strategy. get too close to a wall and their sword 3 doesn’t work

was playing as a Herald all yesterday, and a bit this morning, I swapped over to a condi build that didn’t use the elite spec, logged off for a few hours, and no it’s no longer an option to spec into. the Herald elite spec is completely missing as an option.
anyone else having this issue?

Kidel.2057:

So if the room is not large, or has obstacles, jalis is useless and our highest dps skill too. Sure, keep it this way

you were giving an offhand sword for a reason, would be a useless #5 skill if it wasn’t for stuff like this

personally I would love it if this doesn’t change. having one class that’s better if their target is wide open, rather than against a wall or a cliff is great gameplay. that way, people can have their backs against a wall to make fighting a rev easier, yet it still makes it harder to fight some other professions. normally trying to fight at the edge of a cliff is suicide, having reason to get close to death without actually falling off is a good change of pace every now and then.

can’t say for sure till we know raid mechanics, but based on the trailer there is too much movement for the tablet to keep up. need something more mobile (assuming we were recreating the trailer, which is all we know about raids atm.)

why is there a cap on condition duration? if you spec for conditions you are obviously going to spec into your classes condition trait line, a lot of which have + duration from traits, you get + duration from runes, sigils, and even some from weapon stats. you don’t need to be using some min/max build to reach a cap on condition duration (especially if you use +40% duration food, or use runes that specialize in 1 condition rather than give +duration in general.)
I don’t see a cap on power, or +crit damage, theres not even a cap on +damage in general multipliers. this cap is one of the main things holding condi builds back in pve, and with HOT right around the corner this is the best time to take away the cap on +condi duration.
was originally thinking this was a rev issue while I was theory crafting, but now realize this effects quite a few classes and takes away a lot of build diversity, would really help the game out a lot of they fixed this.

anything like this in English?

you forgot about the pre armor for the legendary armor. also, legendary / pre legendary armor is not launch stuff, takes a couple weeks before they make the first raid wing available, and longer after that for the next couple wings.

this is not a suggestion for nerfing the revenant, if 20% more damage isn’t enough of a replacement, they can buff that. this is merely trying to fix the cap on condition duration in a roundabout way to promote more build diversity, makes more rune options worth using, and is a easier to understand system (as the game fails to communicate a cap on condition duration very well.)

my vote goes for main hand dagger to be used as a throwing knife for the next elite spec (mid range condi weapon)

currently this trait increases torment duration by 33%. I like the idea of this condition trait line improving your torment. the problem with this is that there is a cap of 100% condition duration, and this trait makes that too easy to cap. this trait +40% duration from food = 73% duration for torment, that only leaves 27% duration left for runes and sigils. the tormenting runes sound like they were made specifically for a condi revenant, yet in pve and wvw these runes make you go above and beyond the cap on duration making the whole rune set feel wasted, and this is not counting sigil of malice or a future +20% torment duration sigil like they have for every other condi.

my suggestion, change this trait to a +20% torment damage, rather than duration (similar to what ranger traits do with bleed.) you could also change what condition food does, as +40% duration is way overpowered for food, making it pretty much required for any condition build. or you could just take away the +duration cap (as I have no idea why there is one anyway.)

Wolfric.9380:

another solution might be swap glyps and cantrips in the trait lines. So air affects cantrips and water glyphs. So cantrips will get a boon regarding the element used in and glyphs the regen + vigor. Then see what will happen.

ele’s get 5.5 secs of vigor on a 5 sec cd every time they crit without even changing their build. the vigor part of that trait is useless. they get 5 1/2 secs of regen on a 8.5s recharge with elemental attunement, the main thing that trait gives is the reduced recharge on cantrips, it is not that great of a trait, d/d would just swap to cleansing a condi on attuning to water (also cleanses for allies.) that trait really is not as good as you make it sound

same issue here. would really appreciate it.

Naurgalen.2374:

- People that claim for sustain nerfs clearly don’t play ele and what is worse: dont even try to think that sustain is the only thing that lets eles be played: Eles have no invulnerability skills like warrior, or life, or armor, or second health like necros, or stealth like thief’s and mesmers or range if they are d/d. You focus a ele without cantrips and water attunement and he is totally dead. SUSTAIN lets you PLAY the class.

- People that claim more than 2/3 nerfs without thinking on buffing other thing don’t understand how much changing things can ruin the class. Just play the d/d meta without 2 or 3 traits that grant you might and you will totally feel the drop in dps.

- DMG wise, burning is the problem with the class, but with only burning and limited bleeding as dmg conditions a nerf in burning needs to consider how it can affect condition builds to not destroy them. This balancing approach is good but not easy.

- Another (and probably better) way of fixing the dmg is reducing the free might traits, and making eles need to blast fire fields to maintain the dmg pressure (a thing that in combat is not that easy).

specing into arcane for elemental attunement (baseline) alone gives you near perma protection, and protection gives more armor rating than a warriors heavy armor. this post about the nerfs to the meta d/d fire build which takes cantrips to include mist form (which is an invulnerability.) a lot of other classes count on vamp runes to survive, you could too. personally I like to play a cele D/F build similar to the meta, only take air instead of fire, arcane shield, arcane wave, and lightning flash. the mobility alone makes me highly survivable with the passive 25% speed boost + lightning flash, then theres obsidian flesh (4 sec invuln that can be used while attacking and is not a cantrip.) and yet somehow the build is still OP.

as a main ele, I support ele sustain nerfs (as long as it comes from the water trait line.) the insane sustain from soothing mists gives way too much healing to make it required to take in any build ele’s can think up, nerfing the water trait line would help open the door to make more builds viable. there is a lot buffs I would love to see to scepter and some utility skills, but nerfing soothing mist is the first step to open the door to new builds.

I disagree about the burning nerf, as there are a lot of builds this would effect, and as the light armor lowest HP class, ele was made to do tons of damage, burning on ele is balanced with the other awesome things we can do.
what I suggest is to a fix soothing mist bug (been like this sense release,) currently (and in the past) soothing mist by default lasts for 5 secs after you leave water attunement. this is very strong as ele’s always attune to water on cd (which is an 8.5s recharge as everyone takes arcane trait line) that leaves soothing mist up at about 80% uptime (and most people take the trait for soothing mist does double the healing.) that is way too much passive healing. making soothing mist leave you as soon as you leave water attunement wouldn’t effect support builds soo much as they tend to stay in water attunement for a bit longer, this would encourage people to stay in water attunement longer if they really needed heals, rather than swap attunements knowing their healing would remain the same.

I know these skills are not final, so these are changes that I currently think need to be changed.
currently, most of the revenants condition damage comes from torment. this is all well and good, the problem comes in when people start spec’ing for +torment duration.
runes of tormenting +the +30% torment duration trait give +75% torment duration together, and that’s before some +20% torment duration sigil (doesn’t currently exist, but they have one for every other condition, so that will probably change soon.)
I have no issues with this high amount of +torment duration, except when it comes to the maces 3rd auto attack applying poison, this is a condition weapon, not everyone will bring power. this means that the first 2 mace auto attacks will do about the same, if not more damage than the 3rd auto attack hit in the chain. the 3rd auto attack is meant to deal significantly more damage than the 2 hits before, it just doesn’t feel right for the 3rd hit to feel so weak (may even be optimal to cancel a cast to avoid the 3rd hit for max condition damage)

for power builds, the sword/sword combo is supposed to be the damage set (or so they claim.) yet all the builds I find on the forums (or can think up myself) say to bring an offhand axe (which is supposed to be a condition weapon) in a power build for max damage. also, sword skill 4 looks way too similar to shield skill 5. if I bring an offhand sword, I want to deal as much damage as I can, if I wanted to avoid damage I would of brought a shield, these 2 offhand weapons sound like they fill the same roll.

I didn’t test these changes in the last beta weekend (as that was back when I still had hopes and dreams for the tempest) so I would like to hear from people if these concerns are valid.

if they thought Skyhammer was balanced they would of put it in ranked. but no, there is already engineers that can pull you off the edge from stealth. if they really want to make a reverse blink skill balanced for skyhammer they could add a 2 sec cast time, some very visible animation or something. there are ways to balance these skills, its about how awesome the idea of this skill is that I wanna see

to me, one of the most revenant theme defining skills for the revenant is the downstate #2 skill that teleports your foe, rather than yourself. it would be awesome if revenants had a utility skill (or maybe weapon skill) that worked like blink, only instead of teleporting yourself, you teleport your target. because you cannot teleport off cliffs, this could become balanced with some work. this doesn’t have to interrupt your foe, just displace them to exactly where you want them.

this would be an awesome support skill, as you could set other people up to launch the foe off the cliff, or teleport someone into a massive amount of AOE they just ran out of. please Anet, make it happen

just thought of a couple awesome idea’s that could partially fix tempest and thought I would write them out here
grandmaster traits to compete with that aura heal trait.
1) deal 10% more damage for 5s while attuned to the same attunement for 5s. this would be a damage increase trait that encourages people to attunement camp long enough to be able to use the overcharges, without requiring them to use the overcharges. should help make tempest viable in a pve setting and wouldn’t be bad in pvp. though in order to make anyone wanna take this instead of water they would need to take away some of the damage from the water traitline. I say take away the +10% while health is >90%, as the other one encourages staff ele’s to swap out of fire for once.
2) earth warhorn skills cause a 1/2 sec knockdown to foes they hit. this has great sync with lightning rod, gives the interrupt feeling to warhorn they were after, and gives people a reason to spec into earth for the -33% cd of earth skills trait.

redo what water overload does. right now you have the choice of overloading water to gain heals and condi cleanses, or not camp water for heals and condi cleanses. overloading and not overloading water should not do the exact same thing.
my suggestion.
after camping water attunement for 5s, the target is going to have a good bit more health, I will already be in good health as that’s what happens right after you attune to water, blast your water field ect. I suggest using the overload as a damage support, don’t make the overload do damage itself, I’m saying let it pulse tons of vulnerability and chill (keeping with the water theme) to let others get in their burst skills, and then swap out of water to use some burst skills of your own.

these changes would not completely fix where I want the tempest to be. but I thought they were some cool idea’s that should help

The new Herald elite spec for the Revenant is getting a shield, the shield skill 5 is a 3 sec invulnerability (they heal while channeling). Churning earth with a 3.25 sec cast could be cast right after you see a revenant uses this skill. should finally be a good use for churning earth in pvp. and they even get a trait to proc that shield skill at 25% health, and even if they cancel their cast, they lose healing, so we had a use for churning earth to scare them out of an invuln.
so instead of concentrating on how kitten the tempest is, why not think about how awesome our current builds are going to be vs other classes elite specs?

right now eles are a bit over powered, but if all of our traits were as bad as tempest, we would be the weakest class in the game. the core ele needs a nerf. but tempest is so poorly thought out it needs a complete revamp.

my main issue with tempest (like many others) is that it tries to do the same stuff that we were already best at, adding nothing new.
I just find it funny how troll the water portion of this line is. there’s a tempest trait to give vigor on attuning to water, the whole water trait line tells you to attune to water, yet the overload requires you to not only camp water, but greatly increase the recharge of it, to ensure you cannot maximize any of the water traits, halving the effectiveness of every other water trait. and then try using the overload. you stay in water for 5 secs to use it, then cast it for another 3. that’s 8 seconds of camping water, if anyone has ever tried that, you do near to 0 damage. 8 seconds without doing damage gives even most pvp zerk builds time to heal up. you may heal, but so will they, and who wants more never ending fights?

just want to point out that even if the current fractal skins are only 20 pristines, that may not be as bad as it sounds. I would be perfectly fine with that cost as long as they also create more things to spend pristines on. so it actually means something that you spend all of them on skins. they just need to add more things to buy with pristine relics.

with the current AR system the required AR goes up by 15 every 10 scales. 30 takes 40 AR, 40 takes 55 AR, 50 takes 70 AR. if this trend continues fractal 100 will take 145 AR.

because that is not reasonably attainable, what will the new goal be for AR?
the most AR you can get currently with 3 +10 agony infusions is 100, and even that is only if you replace your +20% MF infusion with a +5 AR for the amulet (which gets rid of the main goal of going to a higher fractal as you wouldn’t be getting better loot anymore)

I am guessing there will be a new system for AR. any chance a dev is willing to explain it?

it’s an elite spec, they will surely balance this spec to be perfectly viable. the problem is that it’s aimed at adding group support and defense. ele’s are already the best class at group support and have 3 trait options already for group support and defense already (water, arcane, and earth) the more they make tempest viable, the more one of the 3 defensive support lines that already exist become unviable (currently weakest is earth)

Right now, we have plenty of good utility skills that are great, but too few elite skills. to fix this I have heard many people in the past say to allow the option of placing a utility skill in the elite skill slot. personally I would love it if they simply did swaps (meaning swapping a few utility skills and calling them elite;) think of it, glyph of storms fits the theme and feel of the tempest far more than that recharge skill, simply call glyph of storms an elite shout, that current elite shout a utility glyph. and while their at it, swap FGS and Icebow (Icebow is far more elite worthy than FGS.) would also slightly lower the pve ele’s damage as they could not take both glyph of storms and icebow at the same time, while not effecting pvp or wvw (which needs to happen.)

assuming that elite skill is an instant cast, reducing the recharge of something like obsidian flesh (as focus will still probably be better than WH) does sound like it could be slightly useful, as in worth using. an elite skill worth using is more than I can say about any of the other ele elites right now, wouldn’t want to make one elite skill too much better than all the rest. balance needs to be there.

personally I would love it if instead of weapon swap, they could get armor swaps. it would add a new and unique gameplay element to the rev, with great customizability (being able to swap between like berserker and cleric armor on a 10 sec cd) and it wouldn’t require too much work on the development end to boot.

by unwanted ascended gear, will we be able to salvage all that for an item to put into the forge, so that the salvage items can stack? or will we have to keep all of those pieces around taking up tons of bank space to change stats later?

if you think that’s confusing, look at the ele trait line “arcana,” not only is it constantly confused with the ele skill set “arcane,” but even on the dev livestream introducing the core specialization system the dev’s confused the two, and no one caught the mistake!

this does not happen all the time, however this usually happens about twice in a 4 hour period following the commander in wvw. I will get guard, gate and lord credit, stand in the circle to cap the tower/keep or castle, and yet somehow not get credit for capping. I do not have a prevent point capture skill on ever at these times, its as if there is no way to get credit sometimes. this has been extremely annoying lately as the last 4 times I have capped stonemist I only got credit once, all 4 of which I was in the circle alive at the end. I know this is not new issue as it has happened to me for many months now, however it seems to happen a lot more often lately. please fix

even if we can’t watch the interview for a week, are you able to talk through this forum about what was said?

“S.A.B.” “Super Adventure Box” any news? I would of it if you would ask