Guild Wars 2

quick back of the envelope calculations has magnanimous maintenance oil outperforming toxic maintenance oil with your build. magnanimous will get you about 88 concentration, toxic will get you about 28.

Hi there, I’m looking for some input on a theoretical build. Put simply, the relatively high condition damage from phantasmal duelists matched with the relatively high power damage of mesmers sword.

Ideal equipment would be full vipers armour with berserker runes and full vipers trinkets. For weapons are simply a viper sword and a vipers pistol in the offhand second weapon set slot, sigils are Geomancy and Malice.

Traits are Domination 2-2-2, Dueling 3-3-1, Illusion 1-2-1
Heal skill is Signet of Ether(SoE)
Utilities are (situational), Signet of Domination, Signet of Midnight
- situational slot can take mantra of power for more damage, null field for support, feedback for projectile defense, blink for movement etc.
Elite is situational: Timewarp to take quickness pressure off main chrono, Signet of Humility for big CC.

Rotation is simple consisting of an opening combo, then a continual rotation
- Open with Sw3->P4->SoE->P4->P4 again as soon as its off cd
- Continual rotation is to auto attack as filler, weapon swap when off cd for Geomancy, use Sw2+P5 off cd.
- If Mantra of Pain is taken charge it before battle and use it’s Power Spike once every time it recharges, there is no cast time for Power Spike and as long as you keep one charge and let it recharge full you wont have to wait through the cast time of Mantra of Pain.

Tell me what you guys think of this build, it’s still theoretical, and it’s obviously quite expensive. I don’t expect anyone to rush out and buy the items required just to test it, i’ll get around to doing that myself sometime soon. It was modeled as a mix between quanTify guild’s power mes and condi mes, making the condi mes more engaging and pulling in higher damage than the scepter could.
https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/mesmer/power-mesmer-quick-guide/
https://qtfy.eu/guildwars/mesmer/condi-mesmer-quick-guide/

I may be misunderstanding Australia’s tax laws but i was certain that the advertised cost of anything sold in Australia had to include tax.

Necro’s shine beautifully with their condi damage potential, having a full set of vipers gear to supplement that damage is worth it in my opinion. You can also play around with the traits and skills if you find one part of the build or another just doesn’t suit you and the gear still works fine. In addition if you find that condi damage isn’t too your liking, the vipers stats will still allow for good, if somewhat limited power damage through their power and precision stats.

As a final thought I would say, Don’t Rush. Start with a scepter dagger, add a warhorn or focus into the mix after a bit of time. Add things to the build as your playstyle grows and you get more comfortable with the class. There is nothing worse than running headlong into something, finding it doesn’t suit you and then feeling sad because you spent so many resources on it in the first place.

How about a different direction,
- Reduced the cooldown to 20 or 30 seconds base
- Pet enters a defensive stance for a small amount of time, ie it stops attacking
- Pet will pulse heal to downed allies while in said stance, 3-5% every 1-3 seconds for 10-12 seconds. Not sure where the limits should lie, I imagine something akin to reapers transfusion trait.
- Pet takes reduced damage from condi and power, ignores movement affecting conditions, but can be hard cc’ed out of the stance.
- Healing range is about 180-300 from the ranger. Again not sure of how much is too much.

The idea behind this change would be to bring it alongside the necro transfusion trait. It heals a total of 18% over 9 pulses quite quickly. While this change would result in a higher heal over a longer period of time. The short cooldown makes it more enticing for healers to bring, while the pet still remains vulnerable.

Using a staff in your second weapon set? It’s entirely up to you there are pros and cons it.

As your build stands you wouldn’t benefit much from running a staff, with the exception that you could add a slight condi burst to the start of your attack rotation. To do this you would enter combat in staff, lay down all the marks, swap to scepter and stay in scepter for the duration of the fight. Swapping back to staff during the fight wouldn’t produce any notable condi damage increase and would in fact hinder your condi damage.

You could change speed of shadows in soul reaping to soul marks, this makes your staff marks generate lifeforce which would help you get into shroud quicker, but you’d lose out on the bonus movement speed in shroud for positioning, and the reduced cooldown on shroud.

My suggestion would be to grab a warhorn, and run scepter/dagger & scepter/warhorn. Warhorn gives you access to a nice hard cc for breakbars, and is a reasonable source of swiftness. Staff is not a good damaging weapon in pve, nor does it provide enough utility to make it worthwhile.

As a side note, I understand you’re wanting a “pure minion setup” so that each of your utility skills is a minion, I would ask you give serious consideration at dropping one minion keeping a utility skill open for different scenarios. The necro has a lot of utility in its skills if you know how to use them, anything from dramatically increasing damage, area denial, projectile destruction to buffing and increasing survivability.

If I’m being brutally honest the idea doesn’t work. The Minions simply do not compliment a condition based playstyle very well.

Your DM setup is pretty much standard for any minion necro build with it you should be able to maintain 7-8 minions easily. That said, it does nothing to supplement condi damage of any kind it is there purely to give you and your minions extra survivability.
Your curses setup is not really useful; your blinds chilling enemies does nothing to help you as you have maybe 2 blinds on long cooldowns, there is no point in Terror as you have 1 fear on a 20s cooldown, and lingering curse only really works in your favour if you’re running scepter mainhand for both weapon sets.
Bloodmagic is kinda all over the place as well, you’ve taken quickening thirst to supplement your daggers(good) , but then youve taken vampiric presence and transfusion, neither of which are useful for “solo PVE”.

You weapons don’t fully compliment a condi style of play either, the dagger/focus is purely power and a little crowd control. The vipers stats however will supplement a condi playstyle nicely.

In all, the build is a bit all over the place, you’ve taken things that work with your minions and your dagger and then half kitten d the rest.

I would make the following changes. Ditch weaponset 2, keep just a scepter dagger, or at the very least ditch the dagger on weaponset 2.
Run curses 3-2-3(2-2-3 if not HOT), DM 1-1-1, and then Reaper 2-2-2 or Soul Reaping 3-2-3 if you don’t have HOT.

Chilling darkness is quite useful in combination with Reapers Deathly Chill, however outside of that its quite useless. Plague sending would be a better option if you don’t have HOT, and even then its kind of superseded by your minions passive condi cleanse.
Path of corruption will give you a bit more condi pressure against foes that buff themselves with boons. Lingering curse buffs your scepter attacks which is now all the time.

DM remains the same.

Reaper will increase chill on foes which supplements Deathly Chill, which in and of itself will make use of the chills you apply. In addition attacks from Reaper Shroud can apply burst condi’s #5→#4→#2 can apply 12 stacks of poison and burst up to 42 stacks of bleeding through deathly chill.

If you’re using soulreaping instead, your autoattacks in shroud will now apply burning, you’ll gain access to your shroud quicker and stay in it longer. Meanwhile your minions are just there to look pretty, buff your toughness and provide you with a strong passive condi cleanse.

See if this suits you better, it should in theory provide stronger condi damage while still maintaining your full minion roster.

hylek have immunity to poison

i need the tl;dr there is way too much here.

Not a bad idea, I’d personally like to see them implement this along the lines of the backpieces that they’ve done, it makes the collection more engaging and it’s not just a material grind. I’d get rid of the ability to create multiple of the same and instead have a couple of different amulets to make, remove the profession specific auras and just have full body toggleable Legendary auras. And as extra incentive up the number of enrichment slots. Could go extra hardmode, the ‘precursor’ is an amalgamation of all other core tyria stat combinations, so you have to collect all the different ascended amulets for core tyria.

rapthorne.7345:

Prime Shock.9386:

Here is a hypothetical for you and it’s one that may need to be cleared up with a dev on whether or not it’s allowed.

Arenanet allows for macro’s on the basis of one click one action, therefore you could have a mouse button that would macro to your dodge key. Additionally you are able to set keybinds ingame, if you were to set your secondary jump key to the same mouse button, would that go against terms of service. Specifically, this scenario fulfills requirement 1 of a macro,

“This means that if you program a macro, it must require one keystroke per action. You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions.”

As the macro is only programmed to do one action. But it could still be argued that it’s against the ToS as one key press is doing two actions. The wording needs to be a little more clear on Arenanets side.

smartarsery aside, if one key performs multiple fuctions, it’s not allowed, the only exception to this is musical instrument song macroing.

Playing with technicalities is an easy way to get yourself banhammered.

Best rule of thumb: if you have to theorycraft whether it “might” be against the rules, it probably is and just avoid it, for the sake of keeping your account in good standing

I respectfully disagree, theorycrafting is how we determine where absolute limitations lie, we wouldn’t have meta builds or even shortcuts in SAB if people didn’t push the envelope and think what if.

Additionally when it comes to the rules of a game, especially when the results could be a banning, there can be no grey area, no well maybes, there has to be a line that is clear as day and asking these questions, theorizing in this way will help to make that line clearer.

and give us free crimson skin while you’re at it…

I doubt the outage will last long enough that it requires an extra day to be tacked onto sab

Here is a hypothetical for you and it’s one that may need to be cleared up with a dev on whether or not it’s allowed.

Arenanet allows for macro’s on the basis of one click one action, therefore you could have a mouse button that would macro to your dodge key. Additionally you are able to set keybinds ingame, if you were to set your secondary jump key to the same mouse button, would that go against terms of service. Specifically, this scenario fulfills requirement 1 of a macro,

“This means that if you program a macro, it must require one keystroke per action. You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions.”

As the macro is only programmed to do one action. But it could still be argued that it’s against the ToS as one key press is doing two actions. The wording needs to be a little more clear on Arenanets side.

A possible solution is to actively use your pet, target the enemies you want it to attack and use F1 for guaranteed aggression on that enemy. Don’t just rely on/expect your pet to do 1/3 of your damage with no input, people wouldn’t like it if a warrior did 1/3 of its damage just by standing around, you need to be active in its use.

Obtena.7952:

I love it … if anything, T5 leather drops in SIGNIFICANT abundance in Doric lake. I mean, there is nothing less reasonable than complaining about the price of something you can farm hundreds of as a zerg. How lazy can people get? You wanted a leather farm to avoid the expensive prices on the TP for leather, then there is complaining about the price of T5 leather on the TP … and it’s the MOST frequent drop in Doric Light … no wonder these complaints can’t be taken seriously.

I think you’re misreading, or maybe I am, the problem people have is with the price of leathers other than T5. If anything T5 is in a great if somewhat slightly inflated position, where as the other tiers, T6 in particular, is in a really bad position

I’m a little peeved myself, I bought a new character slot a couple of days ago, at the 800 gem price thinking that because they didn’t put it as a special during the march madness sale they weren’t going to put it on special at all.

Suggested Improvement: Change drop rates of the Bloodstone-Warped Hide. Current rates look awful, heavily skewed towards T5 leather, at least according to the gw2 wiki droprate page: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone-Warped_Hide/Drop_rate

The point of the leather farm was to reduce the price of leather in the market place and it failed. Change the drop rates in the loot tables to skew further towards T6 and taper off towards T1, something like 40%→20%→10%→10%→10%→10% from T6 down to T1.

This way T6 is guaranteed to lower in price after a period of settlement, T5 leather still remains relatively high and the drops don’t undercut the getting of lower leather from low level maps.

OriOri.8724:

Not true. The guaranteed teleport functionality is kittening amazing at hard JQ, especially at Chalice of Tears. I’m not sure if you have made it up by yourself, but without that guaranteed port from portal I never would have been able to finish that JQ. I know that is PvE, but fundamentally changing how portal works would affect PvE as well, so you have to consider it before proposing changing how portal works.

And it still would not fix the actual problem.

I agree with your previous reply to a comment that requiring the portal to adhere to the same requirements as a shadow step would kill it, this is not what I would ever ask for, the ability to portal just about anywhere is unique and shouldn’t be changed in that fashion.
On to your point that they would have to consider the effects such a change may have in pve, no, simply no. It has been a few patches since Anet has announced it has the ability to split skills between the different game modes, they are still using the technique and it can be implemented here without adversely affecting pve.

zealex.9410:

OriOri.8724:

ANet doesn’t have the technology to be able to know if you are too far away from portal entre before placing portal exeunt. What makes you think they would be able to tell if Portal has crossed a wall/gate and be able to check if it has been taken down recently?

Portal is fine as it is, its the exploits that need to be fixed.

As a mismir main who likes things as they are i support this statement

Yes the exploits need to be fixed, but I refer back to my previous argument of which is easier, patching a skill, or patching various holes in 3 maps?

And Anet does have the technology to determine how far away from the portal entrance you are, they just choose not to give you that information, as an example, the next time you’re in a squad, hover over your commanders tag in the mini-map while a distance away and it will show you the actual distance from the commander. In addition, they have predetermined AoE reveals around keeps when first captured, and around sentries, what makes you think that they don’t have the capabilities to work out where you are placing a portal, and how long since a wall or gate was broken?

reduce resistance effectiveness to 30% and bring it in line with protection, make everyone miserable.

I might just be a bit too tired, but I don’t understand your point, is my answer invalid?

Let me ask you a question, while fixing the exploits would be a desirable goal, what would be easier/faster? Patching a dozen potential exploit sites for three different maps, or reworking a single mechanic to check for certain conditions?

I like to think that most people play the game legitimately, however every now and again you get someone exploiting, using a known glitch to appear inside keeps or towers without ever laying down siege. This can be annoying if one or two people do it, but when it’s a mesmer, who then portals in 20 others with the defending squad not finding a single wall or gate down after 5 minutes of searching, then you have a problem.

My solution, rework the portal mechanic identify where on the map it is being used, if it’s within a structure it should determine if any of the walls or gates within is section have been destroyed recently and it should fail to activate in the event that the structure has not been breached in 15-30 minutes.

This would allow for squads to still “insert” a mesmer into an enemy stronghold, but it would give them a time limit on how long they could keep them there for. It would not block mesmers from portalling in reinforcements in the case that a wall is repaired, but it would stop mesmers being able to exploit glitches in such a fashion that is unfair to a defending team.

With the addition of new harvestable currencies I personally would like to see new nodes available as guild hall upgrades that act as a tertiary way to get the new currencies. Just off the top of my head you could make a number of upgrades, a first set based around which currencies you harvest, and then a second set of upgrades on the number of harvest tries you have.

Also it would be good to see these currencies implemented as very rare drops from the wvw nodes. Possibly with an associated wvw mastery.

Thoughts?

imo the warrior has more than enough access to the resistance boon, swap that one out for regeneration instead and make fear me grant swiftness instead

Does anyone happen to know for a fact if there is a target limit to the Tactics GM trait Vigorous Shouts?

The wiki and various gw2 skills editors do not state a target limit in their tool tips, trying to search through the forums is akin to pulling teeth when it comes to very specific questions, and reddit doesn’t seem to hold and answer either. In-game tool tips as well show no limit. If no one knows the answer then I’ll try some in game testing with my guild the next time we meet up but this is the penultimate step to that.

The reason I ask is because it would be theoretical to have a build such as this
(Theory Healer)
be responsible for tanking and healing an entire squad.

Personally I prefer a power druid for pugging fotm t4. The sword/axe + staff tie in nicely with both full zerker or zerker/zealot gear. That said, I absolutely love playing condi ranger/druid. The amount of damage you can drop in an instant is phenomenal and the rotations are usually quite easy.

The traits I run as a condi druid are skirmishing(3,1,1), wilderness survival(2/3,1,2/3) take 2 if you need more survivability or 3 for more dps, and druid(2/3,2,1) 2 for party support or 3 for a very nice aoe stun. I use axe/torch and staff for my weapons and healing spring, GoEquality, GoEmpowerment, frost spirit or sun spirit if a majority of the party is power or condi based respectively , then Entangle. With the right rotation you can upkeep 2/3 GotLm you provide massive support from your glyphs and your heal skill, and you can still lay down a fair amount of damage.

Your request seems a little confusing, are you saying that since we have the toughness stat to reduce incoming physical damage, we should have the vitality stat to reduce incoming condition damage?

If this is the case then I would argue that the vitality stat already does that. It increases our overall health pool, thus requiring that the conditions do more damage to kill us.

Hey all,

A while ago, shortly after ArenaNet added gliding to central tyria I spent a bit of time around Lions Arch and the Trolls Revenge JP looking for ways to cut down the time from the average 15 minutes. Well I succeeded, managing to cut the time down to around 4 minutes, and just recently thought that others may want to know how to do it themselves.

So here is a video describing how I managed to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVjKp8VpGdA

The path I run requires gliding, and you need to do a couple of tricky jumps, but there are no exploits or bugs used, just skill.

Enjoy.

Talindra.4958:

I run this healing build.. no one dies in t4. and in the uncle tom part heal thru everyone stacking in middle, also with molten and other bosses, heal through while everyone stack. healing springs recharge astral force like wonders, and basically you get into celestial mode at all time. skill 4 in celestial mode heals everyone while giving 5 stacks of land of grace, skill 3 in celestial form is a combo blast too. warhorn gives regen and also fury, swap to staff heal everyone due to the rune, and then cast 5 then 3, its a heal plus a heal combo heal blast.
basically it is concentrate on full fury at all time, full stack of land of grace as much up time as possible, protection (if team ok can replace with others) and party dps boost. I usually take glyph of tides for CC in chaos instead of one of the spirit.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBHhZ6kRFoXFsVFwmVgoVswIYMFgvVAwZ0V6iBwP1qaWtkjFG-TFyGQB56JAMk9HUk6PSUJIAOFARSfQlUitElHkCwv9WA-w

This build looks reasonable on paper, I might change around a few things though.
1. Glyph of Unity to Spirit of Natural Renewal : The spirit will give a constant passive healing, it’s an emergency revive, it grants sporadic stability for the party. Your GotL stacks may suffer slightly as a result but it can boost the power of those classes running traits that boost power based on number of boons.
2. Replace Axe MH with Sword, : It has two extra evades, both of which are rather long in duration. It gives you a melee range cleave attack.
3. Replace Cultivated Synergy with Primal Echoes : The stun occurs on CA entry as well if its off cd, this can give you around a +2 second stun rotation right off the bat of entering CA. In addition the reduced cooldown help greatly with staff 2, 3, 5 skills.
4. Furious Tuning Crystal to Something Else : The increase to healing power doesn’t really make enough of a difference and the bonus to ferocity is next to useless. A better option would be bountiful sharpening stones as you get a bigger increase to the boons you apply and you gain bonus damage. The numbers on this :
Healing Spring (w Furious Tuning Crystal) – Heals for 6511, Applies regen(5 3/4 s) for 9870 healing.
Healing Spring (w Bountiful Sharpening Stone) – Heals for 6411, Applies regen(6s) for 11376 healing.

On another note, if you want to deal more damage with the build you could run Bountiful Hunter over Allies Aid, yes you lose the quick rez but you do deal extra damage, its more of a situational thing. Other than that a pretty solid healing build.

So I found something curious whilst looking for my driftwood for the captain, there I found two spots on the beach west and north of the jade boss where gunshots are triggered and an univestigatable investigate prompt may be found. I am wondering if anyone else has come across these and what they do. My theory is they are simply linked to the driftwood spawn locations but I can’t be sure.