Showing Posts For Quetz.4389:
No, I didn’t play courtyard yesterday. I was at 7 ladder points, and after 5 wins and no loses I’m now at 8 total ladder points. Something seems off.
On Tuesday I had a record of 7-1 and 7 ladder points, I then played 5 games yesterday and won all of them so now I’m at 12-1 but I only gained one ladder point for all of those wins.
I play pretty late, so I guess the matchups are not as balanced, but shouldn’t I have gotten at least one point per game? It just seems like I won’t be able to progress at all at this rate.
I wouldn’t argue against a reduction in damage for reflected projectiles against bosses but I think there’s an issue where taking reflects out of a lot of fights reduces the type of complexity that makes dungeons interesting.
As someone else pointed out, knowing which bosses you can use refelcts on, and when you need to switch to absorbs is becoming too inconsistent.
It’s cheaper to buy gems and trade for gold than to buy BL keys and open chests.
Assuming a 2.5% drop rate on tickets and a 25% drop rate on scraps you need to open on average 100 chests for 5 tickets, which costs $105. You can buy about 350 gold for 4,800 gems which costs $60 and you’ll have enough gold for almost any of the dreamthistle skins with gold left over.
I bought two packs of 5 dyes and got none of the new ones and one rare. I’m still kicking myself a few days later over it.
Not the best way to welcome a new player back. At the very least the real chances of getting the new dyes should be on the description instead of a vague “you may win something”
The word “chance” does not mean the same as “guaranteed”. Even if you knew the exact odds, you could realistically be in the same position if you took that chance. Tis RNG.
If I knew the general odds it would definitely affect my buying.
But I guess that is what they are counting on… that the person buying believes it’s a better deal than it really is.
I bought two packs of 5 dyes and got none of the new ones and one rare. I’m still kicking myself a few days later over it.
Not the best way to welcome a new player back. At the very least the real chances of getting the new dyes should be on the description instead of a vague “you may win something”
I tried a few different strategies and here’s what worked for me, this was pre any patch so it should still work.
- Pick Boast as your signature move
- Always bluff… if he interrupts it with a belch, belch back and drink water in that order.
- This should keep your own health from dropping as fast as his, with luck you’ll interrupt a heal or two and you’ll go into the next phase with a big advantage.
- Eventually he hits a threshold where he’ll start spamming his signature move.
- Use belch, drink water, drink in that priority unless you can get a bluff in.
- Once you get close to 3,000 or so health use boast.
- Try to time your abilities so you use belch at below 20% health to do a large amount of damage.
If he gets too many belches, or your losing health much faster than him just surrender and try again. It will take some luck but it’s possible and this strategy is simple enough that you can spam games until you get lucky.
30/25/0/0/15 = 3320*(1+0.7057*1.42)*1.38 = 9173
30/0/0/10/30 = 3320*(1+0.7367*1.57)*1.34 = 9594
It’s not about viable, it’s about optimal. This effective power calculation is only assuming 3 boons from Empowered because I wanted to be conservative. In an actual dungeon run besides cof it would be 5 boons (or more) and the gap would be even larger.
edit: 30/10 is absolutely the worst option of the 3 by a gigantic margin. 30/25 is actually decent… if you run solo open world stuff and won’t be capping Might and won’t be getting vuln from your teammates. In dungeons is significantly less viable.
With the might from greatsword crits and the cooldown reduction you are a bit ahead on the 30/25 build until you max might stacks from other sources, then 30/0/0/10/30 scales better.
I actually found it a lot more responsive, but i’ve only used it in pve…
Axe/Axe still sucks… the buff to Axe offhand was PVP ONLY
Now, with that out of the way…
I think 30/25/0/0/15 and 30/0/0/10/30 with Axe/Mace and Greatsword are pretty close now damage wise.
30/25/0/0/15 has the advantage of stacking might with greatsword as well as the CD reduction on hundred blades allowing you to swap every 5 seconds.
For the 30/0/0/10/30 build there is a loss in damage from going into GS unless you can use a Hundred Blades and Whirlwind Attack, but if you are getting maxed out on might it scales better.
Don’t agree about 5% blablabla minor grandmaster defense trait. It is like 5% raw damage in soldiers-knights-cavalier gear. It much better that any warrior minor trait besides those in arms tree and damage-on-dodge minor.
If it will be removed for something like “Nearby enemies get 1 stack of bleed when you revive an ally”, i will go mad(
I think you may be overestimating the amount of power you’re getting. In full Knight’s/Cavalier you’ll have around 2k toughness which is only about 100 power.
Tactics Trait Line Burning Arrows is the one bright light among the rest of the changes. Desperate Power becomes a bit interesting and Empower Allies sucks less, but the biggest crime is that none of the minor traits got touched. They suck. 1 stack of might when you revive someone is not a grandmaster trait. It’s not even an adept trait. Come on. Stronger Bowstrings is still a weird trait, I’m never sure if it’s any good because it’s a big investment for a small return.
Ugly
Defense Trait Line: Maybe we should change the name of this trait line so that we can get some defensive traits in other places. Cleansing Ire is a good trait, but its hard to pick it up and still grab other defensive traits when they are all on the same trait line. Defy Pain is a better GM trait with the cd reduction. Vigorous Return is still not worth it, better grab a trait that helps you prevent getting downed. Shield Master is in a better spot. I’m surprised Adrenal Health had no scaling, but if you’re investing in healing power what are you doing in the defense tree? Finally, can we get rid of 5% toughness/vitality/power etc… traits, they are almost universally bad, especially for gm minor traits.
Heightened Focus and Berseker’s Power These traits needed to be changed, and they are in a better spot now. The problem is that instead of moving them around carefully it seems like they were yanked out and stuffed into the GM tier without looking at the big picture. Berserker’s Power is in almost all cases better than Berserker’s Might. Unless you’re getting more than 15% damage from the extra adrenaline it’s a damage loss and the only reason to go that far in the Strength tree is if you’re running greatswords, which have a horrible burst skill. Heightened Focus is probably at least comparable to Burst Mastery since different builds will want to focus on sitting on or spending adrenaline.
Overall I’m not too happy with the changes. While I do see some potential in using some of the less common weapons, overall Warriors lost power in their main combo just to make other weapon sets look better in comparison, and most of the positive changes are in a few trait lines rather than being spread out.
I don’t get to experience the changes yet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t rant about them. A few thoughts on what I feel are the good changes, the bad changes and finally, what really hurts about this update.
Good
Main Hand Sword Moving around the skills will hopefully result in more direct damage, the weapon lacked a power move like the new Final Thrust. MH Sword also keeps it’s lock down ability with a ton of cripples. Now, can they just make the burst skill worth using for something other than the immobilize?
Main Hand Mace: Skull Crack was already one of the few good burst abilities, now the stun lasts longer and it does more damage.
Hammer I’m looking forward to trying it out, the after cast reductions address the more annoying parts of using this weapon.
Longbow Another weapon with a lot of positive changes. Increased base range and access to 20% CD reduction.
Off Hand Mace: Increased projectile velocity on Tremor makes it a bit harder to dodge. Dual Wielding is more accessible.
Off Hand Axe: Less after cast on both skills and a big damage buff on Whirling Axes. Maybe it’s worth picking up. Also benefits from changes to Dual Wielding and Sharpened Axes
Off Hand Sword The change to Riposte may seem small but it will probably result in offhand swords getting into a few builds. It will interact well with Missile Deflection.
Stances: Reduced recharge on Endure Pain is never a bad thing. Berskerer’s Stance may be useful now? Even Balanced Stance got a buff. Vigorous Focus was never my favorite trait, but with Heightened Focus no longer an adept trait it could be worth picking up.
Physical Utility Skills: Stomp gets a reduced recharge and stun breaker, Bolas get a shorter after cast delay and Kick does more damage. Physical Training is now master tier. Overall its a number of small changes which may add up to something.
Rampage: A cooldown reduction is not a bad thing… this elite is starting to grow on me.
Signets: Dolyak is now a stun breaker, but the passive still sucks. Deep Strike is the new heightened focus for horrible warriors.
Shouts Fear Me! CD reduction means more people running over cliffs in WvW, never a bad thing.
Speargun: Knot Shot CD reduced… wait, whats this do again? It’s here for lack of a I Don’t Really Care category
Arms Trait Line Probably our best trait line right now. A lot of good choices for utility, offense and even some defense in traits and two solid choices for grandmaster tier. Even the minor traits are good. Overall it shows consistency that lacks in other trait line, with most trait choices being related to critical hits, fury or bleeding. Blademaster stands out as a weak trait in an otherwise solid selection. I will still probably never put more than 25 points into it.
Discipline Trait Line The change to Burst Damage was necessary, and it was about time. Warrior’s Sprint is icing on the cake, as well as Sharpened Axes. Vigorous Focus has always felt awkward, I never feel like the extra vigor is making a difference. Destruction of the empowered gets more accessible, and the change to Burst Mastery is an overall gain. I won’t mention the change to Heightened Focus yet…
Bad
Axe: Ouch… as if warrior damage wasn’t predictable enough this loads too much damage into the end of the chain. Axe auto chain was our one source of good sustained damage, now it relies too much on the last hit.
Greatsword: The burst skill is still not worth the cast time, Hundred Blades is still too hard to land the full channel and the auto attack still does weak damage. At least Rush will be less annoying to use…
Rifle: Brutal shot gets an aftercast reduction and better vulnerability stacking… but the auto attack will still feel like shooting spitballs and the burst skill still has an eternal cast time.
Leg Specialist: Adding an ICD is not the end of the world, but will it apply to multiple targets?
Strength Trait Line: Overall there are a lot of poor traits in this line. Slashing power has too narrow a scope and it’s hard to understand why only greatswords get a trait like this. Axe Mastery is just always inferior to Slashing Power. Great Fortitude and Death from Above are a joke. I can kind of see how Short Temper may be useful but it’s hard to find a use for such a situational trait. Powerful Banners is a useless trait… banner have too long a cool down and the damage is too low for this to ever be useful. Distracting Strikes is hard to pick up because the warrior weapons that focus on condition damage don’t have interrupts. At least the new Berserker’s Might is interesting but it’s hardly worth going up the trait line just for this trait.
The closest analogue we will have to the current 20/25/0/10/15 will be to simply move points from tactics to arms for 30/25/0/0/15.
You trade off empowered for stick and move and 15% on berserker’s power, so you actually gain on the %damage bonus.
You lose 9% crit and none of the adept discipline traits are really attractive, either a small reduction to signet of rage or a small boost to adrenaline generation from shout but none of them really stand out.
Same on the adept strength line, you can get dual wielding for a situation bonus damage boost but the rest of the adept strength talents are weak.
I’m not sure that Berserker’s Power is really the problem. And if sitting on adrenaline is a problem then there need to be reasons to use adrenaline.
The only real issue I see is that, barring additional skill changes, most of our defensive options are in one tree and there aren’t any good traits for mitigating damage in the strength, arms or discipline trees.
I hope it’s fake… Although dual wielding will reduce the sting a bit since it’s more accessible. Overall though losing out on being able to have both adrenal skills on most builds, and moving axe mainhand damage towards the latter part of the chain is worrying.
I don’t feel like any of the other buffs make up for those changes. The sword mainhand is going to be stronger, but the autoattack chain may suck now depending on if hamstring damage is going to be improved.
Any updates to the fractals will need to include additional update to the reward systems as well, agreed.
As for the jet pack, those specific rewards are intended as limited rewards you can only earn during that time, thus making them valuable. It wouldn’t be fair to the people who did earn jet packs for us to bring them back, and suddenly undercut their value entirely.
And yeah that F&F dungeon updated for size would make a good fractal wouldn’t it? =)
I have a hard time classifying a random drop like the Jetpack as earned rather than just chance.
I ran the F&F instance as much as I could, and got pretty good at it but never got any of the rarer drops. I don’t feel bad about it, I accept that I just wasn’t lucky, but don’t infer that the guy who got a jetpack his first run, or even in his first five runs, did as much to earn it as others who got no drops for their time.
Player’s aren’t really rewarded for effort, it’s just luck and how much time you can devote to sitting in front of your computer.
Why?
The Crabtoss achievements counted for the Southsun Meta Event, and there’s no indication in the in game achievement window that the dragon ball achievements would be any different.
On top of that, the reward for wining dragon ball is already lacking…
You also have to consider that any triggered sigil will prevent you from triggering fire or air.
So, if you plan on using sigil of might or sigil of battle then force will be a better choice.
Burst mastery should lower the cooldown, easy to implement at least
The 1 and 2 chains should weaken so mace can apply it quicker.
The ones you see running by killing mobs in a few seconds aren’t playing a more powerful profession, they just have exotic level 80 gear with good traits, sigils and runes.
While I agree on a lot of your points…. Shrapnel is already very powerful for grenades and beats out incendiary powder by a large margin.
At 3 grenades per second, with 15% and 12 second duration it’s a bit more than 5 bleed stacks constantly. Which is about twice the damage 40% burning up time with incendiary powder will give you.
For grenades, yes i’m normalizing and assuming the 1 second cast time on everything i said since it’s the most likely result from my in game testing. And yes, it’s exactly 50% more haha.
I agree that the FT is not abysmal, but the numbers as shown don’t tell tell the full story yet.
For hundred blades, it may not be a perfect comparison due to being a melee ability and a cooldown ability. Cooldown abilities usually have larger skill coefficients than the auto attack abilities , with a few exceptions, but it shows a comparison point for perspective.
I suspect that the balancing reason is more likely due to the larger cone and area of effect that the flamethrower has over other cleaves like greatsword, but the weapon kit gives up too much for it.
Once you actually start making a build focusing on flamethrower versus other kits the gap widens a lot from what starts off as a small difference, so what I see as the shortcoming of the kit boil down to three main points.
1. Low skill coefficients lead to low damage and poor scaling.
2. Overemphasis on burning reduces synergy between skills and usefulness of condition damage/duration and other scaling stats
3. Lack of utility to make up for points 1 and 2
Finally, I agree that once you are in game, a lot of the perfect scenarios do not happen and personal preference and enjoyment are much more important.
My purpose is more in trying to show why abilities or kits don’t feel satisfying due to the numbers behind them as well as in trying to figure out if there are any tricks that may not be straightforward to improving builds.
For grenades the values I used are conservative, I’ve done testing and the cast time seems to be closer to 1 second than the 1/2 second listed on the skill.
Untraited the damage values are already in favor of grenades, traited the grenade kit does over 50% more direct damage, with just it’s auto attack. Grenade kit utility skills do damage in addition to their effects and with grenades you can have massive bleed, vulnerability and poison stacks on top of the direct damage.
For comparison that the flame jet coefficient is not very good here are a few examples. Hundred blades gets a total coefficient of 5.5 over 9 hits in 3.5 seconds. The tool kit 1 chain has skill coefficients of 0.76/0.65/1.66 for 3 hits over 0.5/0.5/1.0 second cast times.
Longer ranged weapons usually get lower coefficients, but the engineer rifle hip shot has a skill coefficient of 0.65 and a 3/4 s cast time.
First of all, the flamethrower has horrible damage ratios.
Flame jet has a measly ratio of 0.14 per hit, for a total of 10 hits over 2 1/4 seconds that is only a ratio of 0.62 per second. Grenade Kit’s Grenade does 0.35 per grenade per second, so even with two grenades you’re already over and you’re hitting from range.
…
I don’t even know what this means. Ratio of what to what? power:damage?
The damage formula is:
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)
Each skill has a unique coefficient, for the flamethrower flame jet it’s 0.14 per hit and it hits 10 times over 2 1/4 seconds.
So from the formula the skill coefficient directly affects how well the weapon scales with additional power.
First of all, the flamethrower has horrible damage ratios.
Flame jet has a measly ratio of 0.14 per hit, for a total of 10 hits over 2 1/4 seconds that is only a ratio of 0.62 per second. Grenade Kit’s Grenade does 0.35 per grenade per second, so even with two grenades you’re already over and you’re hitting from range.
And it gets worse from there, the flamethrower kit has only one other damaging ability out of 6 total! Flame Blast has a good ratio when you hit with both parts but it’s not enough to make up for the rest of the kit’s lack of damage.
So, the flamethrower isnt’a great direct damage weapon, maybe it’s good at condition damage?
Not really, it stacks too much burning and nothing else. With just flame blast you have 1/2.25 seconds or 44% uptime of burning. Add in burning from incendiary powder or napalm and you have easy 100% uptime without any condition duration.
With two easily accessible options to get 100% uptime what’s the point of incendiary ammo? 9 seconds of burning every 60 seconds is very weak.
Ok, so it’s not really a great damage, or condition damage weapon. Really people grab it for it’s utility….
Smoke vent is nice, instant cast blind, but still not better than flash grenades due to the cooldown. Air blast does no damage, only stacks more burning, and Napalm, while it is a fire field, also only stacks burning.
Compare napalm to mesmer’s temporal curtain, it’s on a shorter cooldown, applies cripple and grants swiftness, is also a combo field and it can be reactivated to pull enemies.
Overall the flamethrower lacks in every area. It does very little direct damage, stacks a condition which benefits very little from stacking and sacrifices a lot for utility, including direct damage on most of it’s abilities.
I would disagree that there is a general consensus about players not being happy with abilities…
Banners are fine. They provide powerful buffs, are unique to the warrior class and have a lot of uses in pve and pvp.
Signets may be more useful in general, but the +40 precision trait is still not worth it. It’s already easy to max crit chance with food buffs and discipline banner, and they both give boosts to crit damage. Plus, you lose FGJ. and any other group utility.
Arah takes longer, if it’s a good pug, story mode is a couple of hours. Explorable… I’ve spent 4-5 hours on some runs of path 1 or 4, path 2 and 3 can be done in under an hour by experienced groups.
And this is why I think every dungeon I’ve been in in Guild Wars 2 is crap compared to the dungeons I ran in WOW. WOW had much better dungeon design (I only played it the first year so I don’t know what happened after that) than GW2. I don’t play GW2 for dungeons and I never will. Thank God there is enough other stuff to do or this game would have been quit as fast as I quit Diablo III.
Either this is a lie or you’re not correctly remembering launch WoW dungeons… I remember running Wailing Caverns at low levels and spending four hours just to get a couple of random blue pieces that had to be rolled by everyone in the group. I also remember UBRS groups stalling because no one had the key… or running dungeons for dozens of times waiting for a lucky drop. Scholo had similar trash problems as Arah and way more boring bosses.
Yeah, WoW has done a great job on their dungeons but it took a while to get there. I just hope that Arena can put the same effort towards tweaking their dungeons.
Trash mobs take time to kill, can wipe groups, and don’t drop anything worthwhile. As long as they can be skipped players will make the choice that leads to the least headaches.
I think all the relevant points have been brought up. Most of the other explorables have been brought up.
I kind of hoped that during the BWE’s the dungeon mob health issues would be reduced with better builds, more gear and more levels, but even with consumables and good builds the fights take too long even against just the trash mobs.
Is there any way to rejoin a group if you step outside of the instance? It seems like once you try to zone back in you get taken into a new separate instance.
The Ghastly Shield skin is the only one that really compares at all. The one handed sword especially is lacking, it’s hard to put it in the same category as the greatsword and there’s no clear reason why it’s so much less detailed, and with no animations.
I know there’s a weekend’s worth of content that will be fun, and the story so far has been fun, but how many people are actually happy with what they get out of the ToT bags? A slim chance for an endless tonic is not enough.
Also, nothing will take away from the sloppy implementation of the runes, jewelery and sigils. The bottom line is that right now fangs, nougats and skulls are selling for 40c each because there’s nothing interesting to do with them.
Omnomberry ghosts will be super great for crit builds with an UNPRECEDENTED 66% chance of life steal, combined with a life steal sigil, warriors and especially thieves can have guardian level heals on a successful dagger storm/hundred blades series of hits. That requires candy corn glaze and will probably be the most sought after buff for glass cannon WvWers and magic find farmers.
The omnomberry ghosts are a slightly cheaper version of omnomberry pies. So no, they are not unprecedented.
What is frustrating is that there is nothing to do with most of the recipes and materials from Halloween activities..
Apart from the weapons the items are pretty much garbage. The sigils have a weird bonus of 10% damage at night, and crafting one superior sigil costs more than a gold on top of getting the recipe to craft it. The runes likewise have awful stats, they focus on power but the other bonuses are to condition damage. The jewelcrafting necklaces are a joke, the recipes skip the platinum and mithril tiers for some reason and offer an exotic magic find necklace with that is only marginally different in cost and function from an opal orichalcum amulet, but instead of power/precision it’s the much less desirable power/condition damage but with a standard opal jewel.
The fact that these items are so uninteresting means that the rewards from bags and from chests are depreciated. Players can’t do anything with nougat, fangs or skulls that’s worthwhile unless they are investing over 100g in getting the permanent skins.
So where does this leave the average player if there are no middle tier rewards? There’s nothing interesting in the ToT bags except recipes for stuff we will never make, and the black lion chests are a gamble. The only reward that doesn’t require massive amounts of luck is the backpiece from doing the scavenger hunt.
The damage coefficient information is crucial and very telling.
Rifle auto attack is way too weak for a power scaling weapon, which I guess is what it’s supposed to be, and it shows when you use the weapon DPS is terrible.
Rifle 0.4/NA/NA* 0.35* 3* 0.5* 1*
Swords are for stabbing, also for slashing.
Another overlooked aspect that isn’t necessarily bugged, or needs to be balanced right away but that just feels wrong is the discipline trait line and specifically increasing burst skill damage by 0.1% per point. This is really, really bad compared to just about any other profession specific skill investment. Some of the burst abilities aren’t even really about damage.
I was just about to dismiss your whole post just due to the defensiveness and insults you threw out at the beginning, but I persevered and kept reading.
Overall, you’re asking for too much. Warriors stack vulnerability, weakness and bleeding at a pretty good rate and most abilities would be too powerful with more conditions.
I do think that the mace burst skill should apply weakness and the 3rd chain hit on the mace has a windup that is too long for both the duration of the weakness and the attacks damage. Most other weapons are ok with the exception of maybe the rifle, it shoots slow and doesn’t do that much damage.
Banners, and the traits deep strike and empower allies need to scale in level. 70 power becomes completely irrelevant between level 20 and level 80. Banners only giving 90 power and 90 condition damage at 80 makes them only relevant for the regeneration they can provide when you trait it.
Hate to break it to you, but Juggernaut no longer has stability and sigils don’t affect kits.
If you stick around after the norn storyline where they defend the priory you can speak with Ogden Stonehammer and he says there are more dwarves fighting deep beneath the surface