Guild Wars 2

Deniara Devious.3948:

This is yet another lame excuse. They could very easily introduce some delay e.g. 2 weeks before one can buy the new hero points using existing currencies, such as proof of heroics. Thus NOBODY can unlock all the new stuff immediately. Either you wait 2 weeks and unlock them with proof of heroics or go to pve and unlock them there. Problem solved.

A new currency is a NOT solution, it is a PROBLEM.

Genuinely worse solution to the issue than the currency rollover.

Seriously just play for the Diamond box on reset week you’ll have enough of the new Proofs to get the espec.

DeceiverX.8361:

What are you talking about? Procs are the worst trait designs out there. They trivialize fights so much with unpredictability and high-impact with no tells.

The others may not be super strong, but their design is way better than most of the others.

I’m afraid I disagree.

A tree that isn’t on the map because it’s filled with garbage isn’t a choice. Build strategy is based around making choices between trees.

If Death Magic is so garbage that it isn’t taken, it doesn’t matter how much you say “it’s well designed because it doesn’t have procs!”, it’s still not taken. It’s not a choice. It’s not good for the build strategy layer.

I would rather have a Death Magic tree that is designed like absolute garbage, but presents a meaningful alternative to Soul Reaping as a defensive line, than an immaculately designed Death Magic tree which never sees play.

For what it’s worth, if you really want to play Scourge day 1, you could put all your Ascended gear in the bank, delete your Reaper, use Tomes of Knowledge to rush back to 80, use your stockpile of Proofs of Heroics to buy Central Tyria and Heart of Maguuma Notaries, and you’ll have 580 hero points, which you’ll almost certainly be able to fill Scourge with.

Don’t lose anything but the stack of Proof of Heroics (which you were spending anyway) your tradeskills (kind of a bummer, but you’ll keep your patterns) and Tomes (which you probably already have millions of).

Or since Ascended gear is account-wide, you could just buy another character slot and make a Scourge out of that, or clear out an unused character and reroll it. Spend tomes, spend proofs, instant espec.

Or you could just clear a week’s worth of WvWing and you’ll probably have enough of the new skirmish chests and rankup chests to buy the espec completely anyway.

Viper’s will no doubt be your best option for DPS. I’d have to run the exact numbers on how much +Might Duration and Alacrity you need, but I’m fairly confident you can 100% 25might with Aristocracy runes in Viper’s gear with a decent smattering of Alacrity.

I think Seraph’s is something that should be looked at, but I am not sure if it will be the ‘best’ healer/mightstack set.

The new ++power+conc+healing statspread is amazing for power heal scourge, but it’s not available yet, so you can’t plan for it yet.

Problems:
1. Soul Comprehension is garbage.
2. Spending 3 traits on minions does not even make you good when you have a full bar of minions.
3. Many traits are passive, do very little, or both. Putrid Defense and Deadly Strength have no active effect or active play. Shrouded Removal is okay but does not have throughput.

Gold star to Corruptor’s Fervor and Reaper’s Protection, you guys are actually good traits. Beyond the Veil isn’t horrible either.

Fixes:
1. Beyond the Veil eats Soul Comprehension and becomes the new Master Minor.
2. Jam MM effects into one trait or baseline:
Minion damage and health increase baseline.
New trait; minions grant their master increased Toughness and explode when they die. Probably an Adept trait.
3. Add some active goodies to effects:
Putrid Defense creates a 4-second CPC with 40 second CD at your feet when you’re critically struck.
Delete Deadly Strength.
Buff Shrouded Removal to 2/3s or 1/2s.

This leaves you 2 Master Majors, a GM Minor, and a GM Major. Take this with salt, because it doesn’t actually matter, so long as they get something in there:
“When the number of conditions on you exceed the threshold, lay a Well of Power at your feet.” 5 conditions, 60 seconds
“Retaliation causes Bleeding. Beyond the Veil applies when you enter and leave Shroud, and also grants Retaliation.” 1 bleed 3 seconds, 1 retaliation 3 seconds
“Toughness and Protection reduce the damage you take from conditions.” 1%/100toughness, 15%
“Share boons, stunbreaks and condition clears you gain from entering Shroud with nearby allies.”

Balance it the way they balance necromancer; nerf them to encourage diversity. Reduce Fast Hands from 5s to 2s CD reduction

Crinn.7864:

The primary cause of death for necromancers in PvP is getting spiked while shroud is on cooldown. old Speed of Shadows meant that necromancer had a lower vulnerability window.

If this is what Soul Reaping was doing for you, why not switch into Death Magic and take Unholy Sanctuary? Death Shroud is never on cooldown when you need it to protect you from a spike, with US.

If it stays at full 24/7 then the problem basically solves itself over time. BG players could get really screwed over when the expansion rolls out and they can’t play because their maps are permanently full because way more players.

I agree it’s a problem but I haven’t really heard any solution that doesn’t either just reproduce the problem with a different server or just nuke the playerbase of BG.

You could probably offer free transfers to selected link servers with very sensitive transfer caps and needle down the population cap for host servers? Idk.

Ulion.5476:

Oh forgot to add Unravel Hexes is broken. When I saw the trait I thought it would give us an option of not taking water for condition removal but it does not work at all. If you run into any condition spec you die before you have time to swap to water.

Supposedly it’ll only strip the conditions listed on the tooltip, which isn’t at all implied by the text.

Deadeye’s fun.

Anet should make it so that moving forward autobreaks Kneel.

Zefiris.8297:

You have a huge two second window where no decay can even happen! The design is clearly intended for predicive, skillful usage of barrier.

It decays waaaaay faster than every two seconds. It’s like half a second. That doesn’t detract from the point though, you can still use a healing power build and send out a lot of Barrier to protect your allies from incoming attacks as they happen.

So it’s just +1 pip for everyone.

But they just gave everyone +2 pips in the last patch. :?

I’m gonna cut right to the chase

You don’t have the LF generation tools to be an effective support in any capacity. You have Ghastly Claws and that’s it. You can’t rely on being able to enter melee without getting eaten with dagger&warhorn, and you can’t rely on being struck with double Spectral Armor. The second Spectral Armor is kinda ehhh because the entire idea is to use Barriers to never let your health actually get touched in the first place.

Dump Unyielding Blast and the daggers, take Staff and Soul Marks, take Blood Bond. Staff is boring, you’ve been playing with it for years, but you will have so much more access to your F-row skills it’ll be crazy. If you can’t slam your F-row skills you’ve got no pressure because no Dhuumfire and you’ve got no survivability because you’ve got no condi cleanse and no barrier and no hard CC other than Warhorn 4.

If you want to stick with Dagger, think very strongly about Spectral Grasp and Dessicate. These skills generate exceptional amounts of Life Force. Getting people into your Sand Savant range is going to be so important and Spectral Grasp does that. There’s always boons to strip on melee players and you can always use Cripple on them, and Dessicate does that.

I bought 10. I managed to pull a mini molten firestorm. I don’t care about minis but that’ll go well for the account value.

Got 30 tickets and put them all into Scarlet’s armor pieces so that’s nice too.

I’m optimistic about Weaver and Mirage.

Cerby.1069:

And YOU are wrong on a part here. You lose all ur pips regardless of if your outnumberd or not. Changing maps excludes you from pips for 1 tick.

??

No it doesn’t. You won’t get pips if the tick happens while you are changing maps but this is because while you are changing maps your character isn’t technically on a map.

I’m confused by the question because I have no idea what you’re talking about. What is “WXP rating”? Why do you say it’s related to dying, when dying has no impact on your WXP? Responding to EWPs doesn’t cause you to lose WXP nor does it cause you to skip a tick’s worth of pips? The only thing you ‘lose’ is participation when you die, WP to another map, or whatever, but that’s not because you’re doing those actions; it’s because you’re not continuing to do activities that maintain your participation.

Well of power’s pretty good tbh.

Spectral Wall is weird but it’s good, because it’s a Wall it will affect units which are trying to dodge or teleport through it. If you can get a bunch of cascade effects on the Fear and you can possibly pull someone through it with Spectral Grasp or Grasping Darkness, it’s pretty good, and you can obviously use your other Fears to send people into the Wall to get more Feared.

OriOri.8724:

Are we getting another balance patch before PoF releases? WP mentioned on his stream that core ele was getting barrier on some skills and that power reaper was going to be buffed, yet those changes weren’t seen in the last balance patch.

My thoughts exactly, would love to find out.

Cerby.1069:

1. When you transfer wvsw maps does the system reset your wxp rating? So its the same as if you died? So responding to ewp and other map attacks decreases ur wxp as well as destroying a full batch of ticks?

No. I am not sure what you are talking about, but no, you shouldn’t lose any kind of WXP when you transfer maps. The only thing in the game that would do this is if you move from an Outmanned map to another map.

Cerby.1069:

2. The laurel booster seems to apply the extra 50% wxp correctly. However it states +50% reward track progress, and during my playtime I noticed no differences in the amounts given for sentry/camp caps. Is it not working? Does +50% reward track progress refer to the total points given at the end of each tick, or does it refer to helping you fill your +195 bar to full so you hit full rewards faster? AKA if I’m full +195, and I equip the rewrd track progress +50%, I’m not earning +390 or whatever right?

The points at the end of each tick. If you are +195 and you have WXP booster you’ll get +292. It doesn’t affect your participation gain.

Hexalot.8194:

The buying of XP or Rank boosters from Laurel merchants was discontinued after the release of HoT.

No, you can still buy XP boosters.

Reading the description of the skill heavily implies that it fires projectiles at targets in the area.

Snake throw is a weird skill and it is difficult to peg where it might be good. WvW maybe.

Dagger already has an issue in that it’s trying to do too much, it’s trying to be power damage and condi send and sustain at the same time. I don’t think trying to foist more roles onto the weapon is going to make it good or interesting.

biofrog.1568:

These, correct? https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experience_Booster_

Seems the Communial Boost bonfires are dead now (really ANet they were good & fun for everyone.. make them more available!) so I might start burning laurels

Yep, those are the right ones.

Also communal boost bonfires give you the old xp buff, not the new one, so you don’t get +wxp from it.

biofrog.1568:

I’ve been using Celebration Boosts, Guild tavern 10% WXP boost and the occasional field XP banner but at best, even with putting in the hours (both before and after patch) to reach the diamond pip chests I’m still only netting around 200 ranks per month.

I’m around 3450

I’ve been playing WvW since launch and bought a ton of extra character slots over the years, I’m sitting at 51 at the moment and have a strong enough bday booster income to effectively run 100% birthday booster uptime. I also use +wxp guildflask and the occasional +xp booster. Mind that the field XP flag doesn’t actually increase your WXP.

Really it’s just over the timescale of the 4-5 years that the game has been out, people have put in a ton of time. You say 200 ranks a month; if you had been playing for four years, you’d already be near the rank cap.

There were some other things you could do in the past that would get you solid ranks. You could farm EotM previously and get good ranks out of it, but that’s not really the case nowadays (and obviously if you’re after pips, this is a waste of time). You could also buy WvW ranks directly using laurels (mind you can still do this by buying XP laurel boosters).

Basically, elite specs and the balance patch. That’s about it.

That’s a bonus that comes from clearing Wood. It doesn’t care if you got beyond that; just make sure you get your Wood box every week and you’ll keep getting that bonus pip.

Malice Wonder.6713:

we were told that there wouldn’t be legendary armor coming to WvW.

Where’d you read this?

I’m actually really trying to work out whether 3 shades in a triangle covers more area than Shade Savant now.

I did the math and it looks like the area of the Shade Savant is bigger than the 3 shades, including the gap in the middle.

I don’t think sand shades will ‘stack’. If you have 3 sand shades in the same area and fire off Garish Pillar it won’t hit them 3 times with the fear and it won’t hit them 3 times with the torment/cripple.

I like-ish it. I think the system has potential, but I don’t think it’s really lived up to that potential in many places.

It might just be because I’ve already got everything in PvE and I’ve got about 2.3k spare points in WvW so any new mastery isn’t really something to work towards but it’s ehh.

Mastery points are fine IMO, they give you a content target.

Tiresias.6473:

Hey, that’s a FANTASTIC POINT about the damage being low. Lower than Dagger auto-attack even.

Since the changes were made to promote, in ArenaNet’s own words, “Build diversity”, I think they should put some time and attention into Reaper Shroud — you know: the big, shiny, new attraction for Heart of Thorns — to make the Shroud-focused build competitive with other power builds.

In the name of Build diversity, of course.

Then it would be more than just aesthetically pleasing; it would be yet another diverse build that Necromancers could use in all aspects of the game. No more delusions, no more low damage, more diversity!

Fantastic suggestion, guys. Brilliant!

?

It has nothing to do with build diversity.
It has to do with bad play.
You are playing badly.

I get that you’re trying to be funny/ironic but you’re just completely off base.

Tiresias.6473:

I mean, Reaper Shroud is a build that received ZERO attention, despite all its flaws and middling damage, until it was heavily nerfed two days ago. I struggled to find even a single recent thread about it.

I don’t understand why ANet should stress about keeping a build that isn’t very good intact.

Double tapping is actually something you want to do especially with new Speed of Shadows giving you 100% swiftness uptime. If you double tap you don’t lose any LF.

Just learn not to double tap when you don’t need it.

I think Scourge’s only saving grace is that you won’t be dependent on Curses or Spite to do your job. You’ll be able to play support with some combo of Blood/Death/SR and still be able to contribute.

Spectral Mastery seems to have inconsistent behaviour.

Last Gasp and Spectral Armor will cause 6s of protection, but 9s traited (+50%)
Spectral Walk, Wall, Grasp have no changes for their boons or conditions. I’m pretty sure at least Walk benefited from increased duration before.

I guess you could trait Spiteful Signets and then use Signet of Undeath and then you still have half the benefit of Vital Persistence?…

I don’t run VP but it’s a super popular trait for a reason. I had hoped this patch would come with buffs for Death Magic so we might have had an actual choice for defensive traitlines. Is Death Magic now the best option for survival even with an effectively nonexistent Master Minor?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Hm. I feel like I already know the answer but, what happens if you cast it point blank on something? They won’t all hit the same target, will they?

If every single target is in a line in front of you I believe the hands will hit the same target five times. I’m not sure how this would work precisely irt chill application.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I disagree because I go into wvw with a hybrid spvp build, modified sometimes for zvz if I’m in the zerg. Using full ascended pve zerker stats and I’m usually able to kill or run from 70-80% of most pro roamers. I play like this as dragonhunter, hammer rev, druid and necro. When I do kill them it’s because my bursts catches them off guard, because they are using Maurader or sometimes celestial stats. I time my dodge rolls from spvp training so there attacks don’t hit me and I kill them faster then they kill me.

The ones I run from and don’t bother with are the ones in full soldier/sentinel stats where I do zero damage to them and they wait for me to run out of skills to use before they very slowly kill me (of course by using overpowered stats that stack vit + tough. The reason I play like this is because I’m too cheap to change all my pve gear from zerk to maurader for roaming, and if you’re good, zerk is better for backline zvz play. I also find that zerk gear is more then enough to deal with most roamers.

This reads like something DSP would say.

Whenever you kill someone, it’s fair and balanced and honorable. Whenever someone else kills you it’s ‘unfair tactics! that’d never work in spvp!’

I’m not ingame yet so I’m not sure about any of this:

1. Does it strike targets in stealth
2. Does it grant life force for each target struck

Both of these put it in a really weird position.

For what it’s worth, I’m not sure I like it on paper. I think I may have preferred it if they kept it as it was, but added ammo to it.

Concentration affecting the decay times of Barrier would be an interesting mechanic but we have heard nothing about the specifics of how it works so nobody knows.

I don’t know how I feel about this.

PvE automated defenses are of middling use. While they aren’t bad they aren’t especially useful, and I expect they will not compete at all with other runesets.

sPvP I am not sure who this is good for. The cooldown is painful for a lot of classes. I can see it having merit for Elementalists if the numbers are high enough, but this means you’d be forgoing Trooper’s runes as a tempest. As a Weaver you’ll be able to constantly reset your Barrier timer enough to turn this into real health!… If that’s how the Barrier mechanics actually work.

WvW, it doesn’t look horrible for Necro group play. Stats are good. Proc ain’t bad. Probably solid for frontline. But is it better than Durability?

I’m sure once we get more details we will have a much better idea. How big does the barrier need to be to be ‘good’? If the barrier is effective mitigation for every point, being a 3k barrier is exceptional- you just got an effective 300 Vitality from the runeset.

Maybe I’m optimistic.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Or would PvE Reward Tracks cause population issues just like WvW and PvP have?

They most definitely would. That’s why PvE areas have unique rewards, rotating map reward tracks, unique currencies…

Dadnir.5038:

Well, from the look of it sarrs, it will be excruatingly difficult to apply barriers every 2 seconds on scourge (which lead to a constant decay of the “healing” component of the spec). Yes don’t forget that there are cool down on skills.

Barriers don’t need to be permanent to be good. You just need to be able to squeeze out out a bunch of Barrier when a damage spike is about to happen- which you can.

Mazreal Blackknight.1564:

I don’t understand why WvW and PvP get the option when FOTM players also use marks and currency to get ascended gear.

The reason WvWers and PvPers need to get top level rewards is a matter of retention and the fundamentally different nature of WvWers/PvPers and PvEers. A WvWer and a PvPer are both actively providing content for other people to complete – themselves – while PvEers are not.

Vyriis.6258:

What I’m actually asking for is “Fractal and Raid tracks”, but can’t say that because then I’d have to argue, because people wouldn’t read, that I’m not asking for a fractal or raid track for WvW and PvP, but rather tracks for Fractals and Raids that work the same as PvP and WvW tracks.

Currencies are basically the Fractal and Raid reward tracks. They do the same job. You get a fixed amount of PvP reward track per game depending on win or loss, you get a fixed amount of magnetite shards from a raid boss depending on win or loss, you get a fixed amount of fractal/pristine fractal relics from fractals per win.

From a design perspective, they do the same job, other than the filler loot from the in-between boxes- but do you really want your inventory filled with crappy boxes?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, by dumpstering your DPS, you can almost get there Yes, almost, because you can’t get to 25 stacks by staggering the skills as you describe.

If you invest that much into Boon Duration, you don’t have the condition duration or condition damage to be competitive.

I think you might actually be able to do it with Sigil of Concentration and Runes of Aristocracy. That gets you to 178% Might duration after the swap; 14.24s duration on a13.3s CD with a 3/4 cast time on Oppressive Collapse, and BiP has better duration so it’s ezpz. That should get you to 100% uptime of 25 Might with 100% Alacrity. This is the same investment as condi PS (runes and sigil) and almost the same as power PS (runes), with the caveat of not taking a tree that’s dreadful for personal DPS.

Ventari’s Herald needs drastically less Alacrity if they maintain Facet of Nature.

I dunno I guess we’ll see. The might is doable and I don’t think you’ll lose that much overall damage over a damage-focused Scourge. If Scourge DPS sucks, scourge DPS sucks, but at least you are sending Barriers frequently.

Also sharpening stone nerfs in the pipeline for Tuesday. Idk how much they impact them. Looks like power PS loses a chunk of power. Condi PS loses a chunk of condi duration but that’s true of all condi classes.

Trakarg.2095:

Bull. A high rank plays for 10 hours and maxes their pips. A new player plays for 10 hours and doesn’t even get half way.

Veteran players should NOT earn more pips per hour simply because they played back when pips were not a thing. They should just be grateful they already meet the rank requirements to purchase any gear or items.

This kind of shortsighted favoritism isn’t going to encourage ANY new players to stay in the game mode.

There is nothing preventing you from reaching the pip rate of a veteran player than the amount of time that you invest in the mode.

God forbid the players who kept the game mode alive get some kind of reward for it. And it’s not even an exclusive reward- you can rank up as well.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Look again on the uptimes for Might. You’re not going to keep 25 Might on allies for long.

Completely ungeared, you will send quite a few stacks of might without effort.

Torch with solo conditions sends 18(bleed,poison,cripple,torment,burning,fear,weakness,fear(garish pillar is instant),vuln(assuming unyielding blast will trigger from shade AA with garish pillar)) stacks of might every 20 seconds for 8 seconds.
BiP sends 10m for 10s on 20s.

Solo, as a DPS build, with absolutely no investment other than skills you were already using and the only assumption being Unyielding Blast functionality which isn’t even necessary, you’re at 40% uptime. This is before Concentration, before Aristocracy runes, before Alacrity.

Aristocracy runes are a 45% uptime increase. 58% uptime.
Alacrity is a 50% uptime increase. 87% uptime.
15% boon duration should carry you across the finish line.

You can maintain 100% 25-might uptime for your party with 225 Concentration, Aristocracy runes and 100% alacrity uptime.

Not gonna try to work out how easy it’ll be for you to hit 100% uptime as a curses/blood/scourge heal/barrier build.

Your might generation will be enough to fill your party with 25 might 100% uptime and to send some might cross-party through multi-target Shade Savant.

Barriers are an insanely strong mechanic and Scourges will have the best access to Barriers.

I don’t think Scourge will be amazing in raids, I know they will.

So you don’t get to personally use the beast’s f2 skill?

So you can’t breathe lightning after you have eaten your riverdrake pal?