Guild Wars 2

- All of those things you mentioned I agree with and also one big thing really irks me and that is how they price stuff. When you buy gems with real money, they intentionally price everything in the store so that you either wind up with too much or too little gems (and in the case of too much, you rarely have enough left over to buy anything meaningful). That problem along with the other stuff is what turns me away from the gem store. And I’m no stranger to dropping money on a game but I haven’t bought gems in almost 3 years and don’t see myself doing it anytime soon unless they do some major changes. Things are overpriced that shouldn’t be, and mis-match priced to how gems are sold. The easiest solutions are to either adjust how many gems you get per bundle bought, offer a wider variety of gem packages, or just make the item prices more “even” so they line up better with the gem packages.
- Lastly I hate how “limited time” some items are. I can understand things like the gathering tools going through a release cycle so they can get new models in to sell, but there are cosmetic items that are not seasonal items that disappear from the store without explanation.

So this is just my gripes about it I figured I would throw into the pot. They are losing money from someone who is more than willing to throw money at them if they can just sell me something that appeals to me or do it in a way I feel my money and time are being valued.

technophebe.7631:

You should be switching legends on cooldown; so the essence of energy management for rev is consuming energy at a rate such that you hit zero as your legend switch refreshes. If weapons didn’t use energy this would be pretty much impossible.

I do wish there was a way to cancel Facet of Nature without consuming it or hitting zero energy though; if you switch to Shiro before you’ve hit zero, it stops you activating Impossible Odds which always irritates me (L2P right?).

you see what you’re saying here though? In order to manage energy, you are forced to abandon a legend to use another, there’s no other choice. then on swap you only get 50% so then you’re stuck with waiting on regen to get much use out of it should you need to use an elite. All of this is slapped very poorly on top of cooldowns and energy usage for simply using your weapon (which also has cooldowns). So basically revs are triple punished for simply playing. If we got energy on weapon swap, or small amounts of energy for auto attack (since that seems to be what the devs prefer we do) then all of this would make sense. You’d still be forced to legend swap in clutch situations, you’d still mainly rely on swapping as the biggest energy return, but there would be a more creative and less boring auto-spam way to play revenant. All of this of course relies on glint being properly balanced since it is the one major thing holding back creative and fun rev builds.

You can upkeep swiftness easily with jalis and a mace if you’re not too lazy to press 1 extra button. You can even hit mace 3 early and make the combo almost as fast as 1 key press. Lay out the silver brick road (Inspiring Reinforcement) and before it even finishes casting, hit mace 3 (Echoing Eruption). The swiftness duration with zero boon duration is the same as the cd on the brick road and mace 3. If you have a staff for weapon swap you can always hit staff 5 to charge through or past any enemies so you don’t have to lay bricks over them and get stuck in combat or possibly snared. So if you’re like me and hate using glint because it’s a giant snorefest boon-bot try jalis.

Seems one glaring problem with rev right now is how there is no way at all to manage energy other than canceling skills or just auto attacking and waiting out the regen. Why we have no skills or traits at all to manage energy use is beyond me. It would alleviate so many problems with the weaker legends but not really affect stronger ones like shiro and glint with upkeep skills because upkeeps are on a fixed rate. Having ways to get a little bit of energy back (static amount, not regeneration pips) would be a difference between night and day for ventari, mallyx, and jalis. Traits would the the ideal place for it, but having those mostly worthless orbs the staff vomits out give a little energy back too would be a good idea.

The reason I bring this up is this: rev is punished for using skills in multiple ways: energy costs, energy degen for upkeep skills, and cooldowns (some even have a pretty high cooldown especially considering the energy cost). THis is most prevalent on weapons. Why weapons use energy too is beyond me. If there were some way to manage energy usage then all of those things mentioned would make perfect sense. But there is not.

I agree that there are better elites for many situations. When it comes to deciding between the two though I would like to point out that plague quadruples toughness and gives a lot more hp, reaper of grenth does not.

Didn’t it get slapped with a hidden ICD too? I’ve tried running it recently in large fights like dragons stand or wvw zergs and I might as well not even be running it at all. Don’t think I’ll make that mistake again

About the only problem I have with any necro siphon is sig of vampirism. The trait works better than the real one. I still don’t understand the “passive” portion of the signet because it does pretty much nothing. Yes yes everyone heralds it as a form of “damage reduction” but a few hundred points matters neither here nor there. Plus it doesn’t work in death shroud which has been the major problem of signets all along. Fix those things and I would have zero complaints about siphons now that we have more control over how they work.

gavyne.6847:

Someone died to a necro.

^ This. And also, not many people are asking for necro buffs anymore so idk what you are crying about. Reaper brought necro into balanced gameplay for the first time since betas, and core necro hasn’t changed at all minus some minor bug fixes we’ve had for 3 years. If any part of necro needs a buff it’s core, but even then no one is crying about how bad off they are anymore. This whole thread seems to just be an excuse for everyone who dies to a necro to whine about it.

JVJD.4912:

It takes 20 flax seeds to create 1 linseed oil

You want me to farm less then reduce the cost to 2 flax seeds

Your welcome

^^^^^^^^ this

Still nothing for this bug, was really hoping with all the new game breaking lags and disconnects this last patch brought we would at least get some solid bug fixes like this…

Ever since I installed large address aware I stopped getting crashes. Been crash free for over 2 months I think until last patch. Now I crash every 5 mins almost on the dot….I think it’s time to seriously address this issue. 3 years in and the only fix we got was a 64 bit client and even now that no longer fixes it.

So I heard there are no plans to bring back guild crafting stations (other than the scribe which we get in the upgrade process). Where is the sense in this? Afraid towns will ghost out? Not hardly. Only a small percentage of town populations are there to craft. In LA you have the mystic toilet, dungeon vendor, fractals, tp, ecft ect. In racial cities usually the only people who go there are a few crafters, new players, and people who simply enjoy the cities themselves or do roleplay. So adding crafting stations to halls won’t impact that much, if at all. I doubt we will ever get a dev response about this, but it sure would be nice to get some clarification or even better to get crafting stations back even if it becomes a consumable again.

I’ve also noticed that the healing “orbs” from staff auto sometimes fail to proc when you walk over them. Do they have some kind of internal cd I’m unaware of? If you want solid proof of this, enable the staff trait to get regen and swiftness and see how many times it fails to proc. It’s not just traited though, it does it base as well when just trying to get healing out of an orb

I noticed this too. Started using staff more recently and saw it fail a lot. I agree, it’s mostly (though not all) when enemies are not nearby, and forget it cleansing if you’re not actively in combat (enemies are dead already). The heal works fine, only the cleanse part failing. And no, I was not jumping.

Potato Slayer.3107:

I will try to make this short. TLDR: Mallyx still needs work.

Mallyx was once a polished, great legend (due to revolving around self inflicted conditions and pulsating pestilence effect being incorporated on Embrace the Darkness) but is now a shell of what it once was due to it being reworked for being conflicted in roles with that other profession that pulls/self inflicts conditions. I have seen Mallyx mainly used for the Embrace the Darkness effect of plus 10% stats on POWER builds in conjunction with Shiro, in between impossible odds/legend swaps for energy.

As a condition focused legend, this is not right.

Unfortunately, Mallyx does not couple well with other legends (aside from Glint’s facet of elements). So here is a breakdown of some of the shortcomings I have personally encountered using Mallyx and maybe how they can be improved, in comparison to the other legends that I feel are fully fleshed out.

Weapons:
Mace is the only revenant weapon to inflict damaging conditions. Other weapons revolve around power builds (axe works with both). This forces you to stay on mace in order to reliably apply condition damage. In addition, there is no trait for mace or axe (or hammer to throw that in), in comparison to sword vicious lacerations , staff tranquil benediction , and shield soothing bastion.

Minor Traits:
These are in a good place, revolve around torment application, tho opportune extraction is redundant with spontaneous destruction and should be merged (leaving room for maybe a weapon trait?)

Adept Traits:
Venom enhancement is also in a good spot, a solid dps increase.
Replenishing despair is almost useless with the cooldown, and should be reworked without cooldown smaller numbers or merged all together with Demonic defiance because it is hands down the superior choice in dealing with conditions (as both contend for the same purpose). This further causes problems with pain absorption (energy cost) which will be discussed later.

Master Traits:
Bolstered Anguish problems with pain absorption and the lack of self inflicted conditions Mallyx once had.
Frigid Precision is just a copy of Glacial heart with an added cooldown and no weapon support. May see some use in spvp or wvw but the cooldown is too long and spontaneous destruction is almost always the better choice.
Spontaneous destruction see above.

Grandmaster Traits:
diabolic inferno the cooldown and the high cost of other elites in legends makes this skill ridiculous to try and reliably use. The burn is small/too low and it does not work well with other legends. An easy fix for this would be to change this skill to cause periodic burning (3 second interval?) while you have an upkeep skill channeled (or negative energy/going below 50 energy to prevent Glint abuse). This would cope well with other legends as they all have upkeep skills that could then more easily utilize this trait.
Maniacal Persistance at the most this trait gives you 10-20% crit while you are consistently hitting things in combat. If anything, this trait should change to be similar to warrior Furious to better support condition damage.
Pulsating Pestilence frankly, this is just leftovers from what Mallyx used to be. As it is (it is bugged and does not work) the cooldown is too high and the %chance is too low to be reliable. This doesn’t work anymore without the self inflicted conditions. Something simple such as adding poison to Embrace the Darkness effect would work, or adding back Embrace the Darkness original effect (inflict torment, self inflict torment, copy conditions).

Skills:
Pain absorption cost too much, is useless compared to demonic defiance which is a better option to deal with being conditioned bombed as bonus resistance is not applied to yourself for conditions already on you (only those pulled). This skill needs to be reworked, only really seen it use with Glint and Facet of Nature in very situational instances to GIVE resistance to others. There is almost always a better use of your energy.
Banish enchantment this can hit multiple foes (pierce beam) not sure if intended, but taking the trait again makes this skill redundant and a misuse of energy unless facing heavy boon setups (used to apply bonus confusion, now sadly does not and the damage is very mediocre).
Unyielding Anguish is good what usually everyone uses energy on (does pulsing critable dmg, applying bonus torment). More energy efficient than Embrace the Darkness for condition damage, and it creates a dark field.

Embrace the Darkness this use to be great. You use to feel like demon running around using this. The state of decay is appalling. This is superior to unyielding anguish if you are running around constantly having to move (even tho unyielding anguish is arguably a leap). This could be changed to create a mobile poison field/dark field to give it some utility comparable to unyielding anguish, the main contender for energy use. The plus stats mostly supports power builds which is not part of this discussion.

I feel like the rework was shoveled in under the other legends and was not addressed before release. What are your experiences and opinions of using Mallyx?

I agree with this so much, and Mallyx is the one part of rev i was looking forward to the most. It has (had) such unique gameplay but not it falls flat on it’s face. I think it needs energy management rolled into some traits or skill (I prefer it on the heal), and it needs better ways to sustainably manipulate the conditions, not just “smat here, smat there….watch them chain cleanse……run….run…try to heal…CC…die”. And now half the traits don’t really do…well anything like you mentioned. And the worst thing is, even if people don’t plan on using Mallyx, it’s one of the few underwater legends available, so….yeha

Competitively I’d say no, it won’t work and I doubt they will do much about it for a while. But I disagree with you about pve. This setup is crazy strong and making enemies move is not a problem unless you just do dungeon corner stacking, in which case, idk why you’re running condi anyway. The new zones have enemies that quite literally never stop moving. Torment is one of the best condis to have there because you can upkeep really high dps without having to constantly eat hits to the face to continue the dps and can stay highly mobile. I think other than the fact the weapon set is so slow and the condi skills far too heavy on energy management, the fact that the game is absolutely spewing over with condi clears makes this not viable in pvp. Rev just doesn’t have required energy management or durations to maintain condi pressure and not enough unique applications to do hard spikes.

Narth.6094:

I’ll probably get a lot of crap for this, but I think that the heal for Glint should be reduced by 33% while all the healing skills for the other legends should be buffed by about 33%.

I feel like I’m forced into Herald, especially in pvp, because a 5k heal, even two in a row is underwhelming compared to the instant heal of Glint on the same cd. The base of Jalis and Mallyx should be around 7k hp. Shiro is in a decent place right now due to the extra damage it provides.

If you’ve even tried playing sPvP right now without being a herald then you’re going to struggle. Yes, you can use two heals in a row, but the chances of you getting both casts off in a row when you’re being burst down is unlikely. Meanwhile, the Herald just has to switch over to glint and pop their heal, which has like no cast time at all, and take that burst dps and convert it into a full bar of health.

I would just enjoy not feeling pinholed into playing Herald just because the heal is too good while the other heals are lackluster in comparison.

^ This is pretty much how i feel right now, and I should clarify when I said they were underwhelming I mainly meant pvp/wvw. In PvE none of them are a real issue. Even after playing it more and not sucking as much as I did when I originally posted, I still feel this way. Every heal is too situational. If they don’t meet those situations, they fall flat on their face. Glint’s is the only one with some sustain and can hold out against being focused. The others aside from maybe dwarf feel like afterthoughts, tossed in to cover some stray aoe dmg. And to the people saying “just block/evade moar” that’s only gonna carry you so far. And by that I mean like 3 hits and a good player will wait out for you to blow all your endurance and blocks, plus by now most people know that if they force us to blow evades early in the fight we haven’t had enough time to build up sufficient energy and thus won’t be able to pop another right away.

That’s where heals are supposed to come in, to cover those gaps but currently only glint and loosely, jalis (if you have several non-damaging condis). To fix the others I think you either need to do what Narth suggested here, or add better conditional effects to the others. Ventari needs a small heal on yourself regardless of where the tablet is, mallyx needs to return some energy on heal, as much as I would love energy return based on number of condis, I can see that being stupidly op so it would most likely be a set amount. Shiro isnt bad, but that kitten ICD needs removing. When I’m counting on those siphons to sustain, I don’t wanna be hamstringed by ICD’s. Tbh Jalis is prob fine unless the cd could be tweaked some. Vengeful hammers do a good job of adding the much needed sustain to that.

Am I the only one finding heal skills on all legends except glint to be massively underwhelming? Even Shiro heal, while decent, falls so far below glint heal that it’s ridiculous. I think the fact that revs only have one reliable strong heal out of all the heal skills should say all that needs to be said right there…

Still not sure why mistfire wolf is considered a “racial” skill, but w/e…this will forever remain the highest disappointment to me on rev

spoj.9672:

Anyone had issues actually procing it? I tried geomancy sigil +mark of blood from dodge and I could never get it to trigger. Only worked when i used scepter to get over 5 stacks of bleed.

works fine for me, you know it has an icd right?

to be honest I haven’t used this trait since I realized a nerf was coming, I found better ways to sustain so this doesn’t affect me. It’s not the “reaper killer” like some people are whining about. it does suck though, because it was a good trait. Ah well

I managed to fix it by going back from win 10 to win 7 and using LAA (large address aware) application. Google it, give it a try. I also got the same reply from Anet that you did trueanimus.4085 and nothing they offered helped. Give LAA a try, so far I have eliminated about 95% of my crashes due to memory errors.

The only thing that seems to work for me is using a LAA program (large address aware). it forces windows to use more than 2gb for a single program instead of throttling memory back to make sure more “core” processes get priority first. This causes issues with GW2 since there are lots of memory leaks and windows will dump the process if it sees the game using too much. When you use LAA it prevents that dump (most of the time, I’d say about 95% success so far). However, you cannot do this on windows 10, only win 8 or lower. Just google for large address aware programs. Good luck, hope it helps you!

For the past 2 months I haven’t had a single OOM crash, then WA-LA! After this last patch I can’t log in for more than 30 seconds before an OOM error. So I suppose it’s my hardware’s problem this time too? It magically started acting up after 2 months of good behavior and by chance directly after a patch. GG… I wish I had never dropped money on this Expack especially since I can’t even play it. This has gone on long enough, fix those memory leaks!!!

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

New targeting system makes Druid CAF a lot better.

Nike.2631:

Kitty.1502:

Warscythes.9307:

Then go complain about pet AI, you are making comparisons that aren’t even there.

No, I am making comparisons about the fact that they have said they won’t work on AI because they don’t have the time to do it, yet they are working on stuff like this.

Link? I’d love to see where they said that.

Yeah, same, since they never have.

actually they are working on AI, but they outsourced it to a 3rd party client. So it’s really on the timetable of that company, not Anet. There was a video on the AI workshop where a few Anet devs were there for classes to learn some new AI tricks. The company running those classes is the one reworking our AI. It’s just going to be a while before we see any changes.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building
http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IANews/category/ai-consulting/

Wondrouswall.7169:

I’d hold off until the 23rd. If Irenio adds any conditions to the Druid, Apothecary would be a nice alternative to Cleric’s. If it remains direct damage & healing, then opt for Cleric’s, unless you have the coin, then invest into Zealot recipes if you haven’t already unlocked them from the Marionette event way back when.

^ this

umm…swap out the trait? Nothing forcing you to take it. Swap it back right before a boss, since really you’re only in a dungeon to fight a boss anyway. You don’t need it on trash skips so don’t take it.

Alpha.1308:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Only change I would do to Mark of Evasion is to remove the ICD. At bare minimum, reduce its cooldown to match the actual Mark of Blood.

PLIS

warriors get like 3k+ hits off of theirs which has no cooldown
ours does less than 500, 2 stacks of bleed, and a five second regeneration on a class where healing power is laughable and a game where condition damage is horrifyingly underperforming if not used in massive bursts

i also never noticed the twice-as-long-cooldown….

i hate comparing classes, but, plis doe

(edited for weird language filter proc on “five seconds”)

Plus this^^^^

I’m failing to see how this would make staff uncounterable. I can already juke out opponents about my cast location by simply looking another way and rotating the camera. This is not new for staff, so why all of a sudden are we saying this will make staff imbalanced? It’s a mediocre weapon at best, you really don’t need any more crutches to help out the already op spambot classes like mesmers and engis. Plus, if you make red circles, how do you expect to snare up stealthed enemies? Exactly… you won’t

I would say it really depends on how many chill applications you have. If you plan on relying more on the GS chill, go for chilling sigil because the GS attack chill is really low duration. If you have plenty of other chill sources, hydro would almost always be the better option imo. You know when to expect it.

Genesis.7693:

I think people are underestimating what a debuff of “defenseless” to one target will do for coordinated teams. It doesn’t matter if its a small window of 3 seconds. That’s plenty. NCSY is 5 seconds for a single target and it was enough for me to shred guardians on Reaper. The reason why I’m also bringing guardians up so much is because their most abundant defence and coincidentally the defence they rely on the most are blocks. A well timed Shelter can negate coordinated teambursts because its a well timed shelter. That is counterplay. Guardians need such mechanics to stay alive. 13k hp on a bunker is not a lot people. Removing their active defense as “party wide support” will make them useless. Blocks are what keeps them alive. They have no other “counterplay” because there is no counterplay to unblockable. If one person has unblockable they can be kited and that’s fine; but give access to unblockable to your entire team through the form of a debuff and that’s a guaranteed kill for you especially since its a debuff and not some raidius bound aura or buff. Meaning you can apply it to the enemy and now a ranger from 1500 range can just unload for free on anyone. Dodges are limited, they have 1 invuln and using that means they lose the point. A change such as this I have to admit I want and is super cool just won’t be healthy for the game from a pvp perspective because it homes in on guardians too much.

Just look at it from the opposite perspective. Imagine if guards got an ability that was cheesily named “True Light” and it gave the guard’s allies the ability to ignore death shroud.

If that’s too much for you then just limit it to “Does not give necro Life force when hitting through Spectral Effects”.

This is all hypothetical of course but its to show that implementing a mechanic that overfocuses on a specific class’ defensive mechanic will not be healthy nor fun to play against. If necro’s shroud is ignored they have no other way to soak up damage (since they don’t really mitigate it) and they die.

If guard can’t block attacks they CAN’T soak up damage cause of their low hp pools and then they die. There just is no viable counterplay to unblockable because it goes through the last line of defense.

I’m all for making necros more unique and giving them some cool new mechanics but an unblockable debuff on a target will just be out of control. This will just cause people to hate facing necros even more and I’d rather avoid that considering right now necro is on the radar for nerfs for some people ever since Ele got toned down slightly.

So by your requirements, a single class (read: single player )should be able to tank a whole team with little counterplay and that is what you call balance? Yet a small window of counterplay to that breaks the game? The maths are not adding up here….

Pompeia.5483:

I smell trolling of fire fields during a Tequatl burn phase. Just sayin’

There are enemy fire fields being thrown during pve world events? Hmm never knew that
/end sarcasm

I like this idea, finally a hard counter for water field spamming!

This would be a good direction to take corruptions using MoC, since ya know MoC really doesn’t power up corruptions at all. Taking MoC could add support effects like this to each type of corruption (and not always a damage one, could be other types of debuffs too) so that a corruption build becomes one of necro’s go-to support options. If anyone remembers Mark of Pain from GW1? Yeah that could be a great debuff! Things like that would be game changing for the currently undesired corruptions

Genesis.7693:

Lily.1935:

Genesis.7693:

Sounds amazing in my opinion, however I can’t help but be concerned that this single ability/trait or however else its implemented into the game would be single handedly responsible for wiping out guardians from the PvP meta. It might be too strong in that gamemode.

I don’t think so. Necromancers already have a ton of ways to strike through defenses without a problem. This just turns the tables. It could also make Shelter less popular in PvP. This isn’t enough to remove Guardians from the meta. Trust me on that one.

Considering PvP is what I do exclusively its really hard for me to trust you on this simply cause your proposed change was PvE focused. Yes, necros have ways to hit through unblockable but not with direct damage.

We have an unblockable #4 and a set of staff marks that can cancel shelter sometimes but the guardian still has counter play through stability. During the BWE3 I tried NCSY against guardians and every guardian simply melted. Bunker Guard or not, being able to ignore the defence they most rely on to stay alive considering their small hp pool will absolutely break them.

Corrupt boon is also unblockable which also adds more pressure on the guardian. Simply put a well played necro is already able to put great pressure on a guardian through their defences and that’s without being able to deal direct damage to them.

With Nothing Can Save You I was walking all over them and thats an unblockable buff only on me. Giving that to your party members through a debuff means a guard is just going to be paper thin with their measly hp pools and completely invalidate the role they’re trying to do.
It will also apply to any aegis or blocks they give to their allies. It just completely negates ANYTHING a guardian will try to do and is simply too large of a counter. It will most definitely take them out of the meta.

This is not including the other classes that have access to block such as warrior or engi, soon to be mesmer with chronomancer and Revenant/Herald and Scrapper. It will just be too much unblockable access in PvP.

you’re talking like this would be some insane permanent debuff that would negate guards. I don’t think that was the intention. A few seconds of unblockable would not break the game, in fact it would force some more skilled play for lazy classes like guard who rely far too heavily on that kind of defense and can pretty much ignore positioning, watching for the proper skill chains/attacks, and generally just not being spambots. To be fair though, eles and engis are more guilty of spammy than guards, but there is still a very low skill requirement because of the availability and really low cd of blocks available. 3 second unblockable every 40-60 seconds would spice things up pretty nice.

spoj.9672:

MoC and CPC gives you weakness + cripple. Not double weakness.

You’re right, I was thinking of epidemic. I still stand by my other point though, MoC needs to actually do something not just lower cd’s and self nuke you.

The only problem I have with the self condi is that if you take MoC you simply get double weakness…the condi needs changed when traited (I still maintain MoC needs a total overhaul to actually make the corruptions more powerful, not just self nuke us and reduce cooldowns, but that’s a discussion for another time)

mistsim.2748:

reaper has way too much stab. incredible sustain and damage, hard to punish mistakes.

Looks like you’ve just been having high success with your druid, judging by your recent posts, and ran into a reaper than chopped you up and sprinkled you over his dinner. Don’t be salty about that and come here saying reaper is too powerful. it is balanced…FINALLY balanced. Druid has several interrupts (not counting any pets with interrupts or knockdown/back) and reaper has lots of slow skills and cannot upkeep stab indefinitely (only 2 reliable sources of stab, 1 on a 90 second cd and is situational at best). Ample time to interrupt it if you play skillfully and not just smashing buttons in panic mode. Take some time to learn the tells. Necro is overflowing with long tells and slow skills.

I think they are a blight, kitten on the community. They are nothing short of extortionists, some are even scam artists. Yet as long as people are too lazy to actually play the game they will remain.

There’s some serious issues with the combo field not working properly. It seems the hitbox area for the field to proc is impossibly small. You have to be standing in just the right spot. I don’t know how many times I have use putrid mark or another blast finisher while I was standing directly on top of the wall and got no effect whatsoever. Same thing with projectile finishers, they are unreliable when passing through the wall. This can be easily duplicated by simply attempting finishers in the manner I described while either behind or on top of the wall area.

Varonth.5830:

Raziel.8072:

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

So your point is, if you hit more than 3 targets with the greatsword it becomes worse? Why because you dealt AoE damage? Also the range part… at 300-600 range with equal equipment the Mesmer Greatsword #1 deals 3% less damage than Axe #1. At 600+ it will outdamage it by 16% and 900+ it is 35% stronger per attack.

Scepter Fire #1 is really strong now due to burning stacking, as you said yourself

Scepter Air #1 is weaker over the 3s of damage duration (+ another 0.5s ramp up) as it does even less DPS. But still it is AoE.

Guardian Staff #1 deals just slightly less damage per hit than Axe #1 but on 5 targets with half the casttime. DPS is almost twice of Axe #1. That’s why it is so good at tagging mobs… it deals almost twice as much damage as a single target skill… just on AoE.

Sword #3… wouldn’t call 600 range melee.

Mesmer Scepter #3 deals a surprising amount of condition damage even without any might or condition damage. Even a berserker build scepter #3 will deal comparable damage to Necro Axe #2. With might stacks it far outdamages Axe #2.
Your idea that those thing can be terrain blocked… so can necro axe skills.

Why bring up the phantasms? Because report said that the axe mechanic is fairly unique. It just shows that it isn’t as unique. And there are plenty of good and mechanical unique skills using the same targeting mechanism. That mechanism should therefor not be an argument to keep a skill terrible.

You’re still comparing apples to oranges though. None of those things work like axe beyond scepter so even bringing them into the discussion is pointless. And none of what you have said so far convinces me axe sucks. I used axe before the change, I use it now. I see nothing wrong with it other than #2 being a little low still on both dmg (or channel time too long, either adjustment would work) and LF generation but overall it’s not bad. It lets me hit mesmers hiding behind clones, reflect spamming mesmers and guardians, hell I can even hit players inside siege defense bubbles. While not 100% unique in this way, it does factor in to balancing axe and you can’t simply discount that and cry for more dps on it. Range increase was a significant buff on it, and helps move us farther from cleave range which is always good. It will now provide reaper with a suitable ranged option other than stale ol staff. Does this mean I think it’s perfect as is? Of course not. But saying axe sucks then comparing it to other class mechanics is pointless. You could spend all day doing that between necro and other classes, still doesn’t mean necro sucks overall. Take this buff for the gift it is and stop contrast-crafting with other classes.

I’ve always wondered why it was so expensive to craft even trash runes, so I agree. Remove them from drops. Frees clutter, makes salvaging less painful, and gives a reason to craft them. Might wanna change it so you have a small chance of salvaging them back to the materials used to craft them though or rare mat prices will blow up out of control…as if they weren’t already.

Varonth.5830:

Robert Gee.9246:

One of the reasons we are more conservative about axe when it comes to balance is because axe uses a unique attack action in our game that cannot be avoided using positioning. Normal melee attacks have an attack arc and normal ranged attacks use projectiles. Enemy players can use positioning and movement to avoid these attacks. Axe 1 and 2 by contrast just hit you when you are in range regardless of your positioning. While some utility skills (like Corrupt Boon) also use this targeting method, it’s rare on weapon skills and thus we are wary of buffing it too much.

Mesmer Greatsword #1 (also line AoE)
Ele Scepter Fire #1
Ele Scepter Air #1 (also line AoE)
Arguably Guardian Staff #1 (also massive AoE)
Mesmer Sword #3
Mesmer Scepter #3 (again line AoE)
Every single mesmer phantasm summon…

There are quite a few using the same, and basically all of them are better on multiple points compared to necro axe #1 and #2. Axe 3 is in a fairly good position now.

1.- does no damage if too many targets are in the way, requires range restrictions to reach max dmg, no additional built-in effects
2. The only competitor here and doesn’t “outshine” necro axe, just has burning which is op in itself
3. same target limitations as mesmer GS, and requires to line up targets for max dmg potential. Single target it sucks and hitbox for the electric beam is small
4. Better for loot tagging than killing anything, plus it has no other effects like vuln, burning (without virtue of justice) ect.
5. melee…not sure why this is even being compared here. Not the same thing at all. It does no massive damage, the clone can be buggy and not spawn, and it has a cooldown.
6. same as GS1, can be body blocked or terrain blocked easily
7. Phantasma attack slow, easily dodge or destroyed. Most serious mesmer builds don’t rely heavily on phantasms. The GS phant is about the best one they have and if you can distance yourself enough you can even sidestep it when it attacks from 1200 range away….

My point being your comparisons aren’t telling me that axe is bad and the changes don’t help it. In fact the only example you gave of a weapon that performs like axe is ele scepter 1, and it’s only good because burn spam and that is courtesy of the burn condition itself.

spoj.9672:

I was hoping for some address to the corruption and Master of Corruption issues. CPC change is nice and all. But 6 seconds of self weakness holds it back so much. Especially now that the duration of the field is lower so the self condi is almost fully neutering you for the fields full duration. The corruption concept needs a drastic overhaul and i really hope it happens before HoT.

I think the main problem with master of corruption is that it should juice up base stats of the skills, not make us even weaker with only the reward of small cooldowns. That was the big trade off for corruption skills in GW1. They had very high base effects at the cost of hurting yourself (and by-proxy sacrifice skills too, which got turned into more corruption skills in GW2). That model for them worked great because it gave the skills much more skilled play instead of “spam all teh thingz and get off that transfer before you self-nuke”. But this is a discussion for another thread, one I will weigh in on if we can keep the talk constructive and not "zomg weak crap…buff more like <insert random op class here> "

Zenith.7301:

It’s not “for now” in PvE.

Unless you design most mobs to carry high uptimes of reflect, the axe will be an inferior weapon in PvE by far.

I mean, this is ludicrous. A staff elementalist is chucking fireballs for 6k damage on top of 5k lava font ticks and both of them hit THREE TARGETS, and yet our SINGLE TARGET axe autoattack is an issue?

You people are living in some fantasy land if you think they will ever design mobs that make projectiles weak so axe/mesmer greatsword can shine in encounters. That would involve making mobs that make rifle/pistol/staff/longbow/shortbow/hammer for thief/warrior/ele/ranger/revenant weaker just to benefit two classes who have lower DPS weapons.

Stop sabotaging our PvE with PvP.

If you want cleave, use wells, or epi for a condi build. That’s how the class was designed. Axe is a strong single target weapon, that is how it is deigned. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you find yourself in a situation that needs more cleave…use something else. Being stagnant in your builds is what is holding you back, not the weapon. And please don’t use the tired excuse of “wells are dark fields, no one wants dark fields”…I have yet to run into a team setup in pve where that was a problem because I simply was not a spambot. The whole team coordinated ahead of time and everyone knew what to watch for and when to put out fields. Fire goes first, then dark…not rocket science. And yes those are with pugs. If your pug can’t be bothered to coordinate ahead of time you prob need to find another one anyway

Looking good so far. Despite what the cry babies are saying, axe got a pretty significant buff. It’s just that no one is taking into account the mechanics of how the axe attacks. I would have liked to see more LF generation on both axe and scepter though, especially scepter since that was it’s biggest weakness. The changes it did receive are good so I won’t complain there. CPC….Yes, yes, and oh yeah- YES. Ty. I was initially against putting projectile block on it, but I think it’s time we got some decent ranged defense. Bug fixes are always welcome, so ty for that.

I would ask the amazing Robert Gee to discuss some life force issues with us though, mainly pertaining to condi builds since that is where they struggle the most.

Also was a little disappointed that parasitic contagion still does not work in shroud along with signet passives. Those too can be future discussions though since we’re starting to get in a good place overall.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, the wiki isn’t updated yet.

Currently the axe does 238 damage every 0.95 seconds. With a 10% buff, this amounts to 262 per hit, or 267 DPS. At 2 × 7 vulnerability per hit, this comes to 14.7 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

Life Blast does 345 damage within 600 range, and hits every 1.4 seconds. This comes to about 246 DPS. With unyielding blast, this comes to 14.3 stacks of vulnerability sustained.

This is… interesting. Rending claws now does more damage than life blast at any range. Unyielding Blast pierces, but Rending Claws basically bypasses any defense that isn’t a straight up block.

If anything, I’d say that axe is actually a decent weapon now.

I agree. I’ve never found axe to be a terrible weapon per-se but getting the range increase definitely helps a lot and the damage buff will make a big difference too. People get way too stuck on the raw damage numbers and fail completely when it comes to understanding the actual mechanics of the axe itself. Reflects have no affect on it, you can’t hide behind clones or summons, and the longer it hits you the more potential damage your enemy can take (with vuln stacking). Other than scepter auto I don’t know of any other ranged weapon that can completely ignore positioning like this and I’ve run into many occasions where this played heavily into my favor. This is speaking purely from a pvp/wvw perspective of course. I know why the pve people whine about the damage numbers. Right now highest damage is best damage to that game mode.

when they added the los changes they pretty much killed the creative uses for wurm. only in PvP is it still viable. Pve and wvw its mostly useless now. Can’t put it on walls to break siege, can’t use it as a reliable teleport because sometimes it acts like there’s no viable path even if you could physically walk to where you placed it without even jumping, and in pve you can’t place it out of reach of bosses as a safety escape (such as lupi where you could put it on the far back wall where it never got hit or spawned grubs) . the fact its teleported still work reasonably well in PvP shows me it was an intentional (but unwarranted nerf) and is the reason it never makes it on my skill bar anymore in any game mode

I disagree. I would not run zerk for wvw unless you do solely roaming and dueling. not certain if we can do ascended cavalier yet though, but if you can do that. Fill in your crit rate with fury or runes or trinkets. you want that extra toughness in wvw otherwise you’re just a rallybot

This is getting blown waaaay out of proportion. Racial skills are, and always will remain so, weak. Just because this one skill found a small niche gimmick does not break the class or game. Stop making mountains out of molehills. If you have them nerf this skill, they will knee jerk nerf (or possibly even remove) racial skills because that’s how they balance these kinds of things. It’s not available in PvP and any necro running it in wvw will suffer the same fate as popping a lich form, so again, stop creating problems where none exist…

Regardless of how we suggest buffs/changes I think many of us agree scepter needs torment. Necro was initially promised ample access to torment when the condition was first released but we only have 1 skill on a long cooldown….mesmer gets it on an auto (multiple times if clones attack too), and Revenant has the most torment available in the entire game-which is fine, that’s their niche- but necro (slowest of all classes) should also have fair access to it and I think scepter would be a great carrier for the condi.