Guild Wars 2

I can’t find where Anet said this, but I remember them giving a reason why they decided to rework Firebrand and core Mesmer mantras using the ammo system.

I remember the reasoning being because the stock system they used previously resulting in mantras with only 1 charge left at the end of a battle leaving the player with a choice of either going into the next fight underloaded, or just blowing the last charge on nothing, waiting out the cooldown, and then reloading.

They said they didn’t like this, so thats why they gave them recovering ammo, so if you didnt spend your whole mantra, the charge would regenerate.

Now my point is, don’t the Firebrand tomes use the exact same mechanic as old mantras? The one they got rid of because they didnt like how they worked?

Granted the tomes are suped up mantras, with 5 to 8 charges and 5 different activated effects, but the core function is identical, and so that same problem exists. I finish a battle with 2 pages left in my courage tome, I can just waste them by stowing the tome, or I can go into next battle with only 2 courage pages left (that I must use prior to any weapon skills) and risk the tome being on CD when I need it.

Many people have gone back and forth, saying tomes are clunky, or that they are fine, or that they are underpowered or balanced, and we just need to git gud.

But the core of the issue is that Arenanet has already said they dislike this mechanic and have already removed it once. Makes me wonder if the inclusion in Firebrand tomes might just be an oversight…

Anyhow, just food for thought.

For the record, I’m in camp “use thief initiative”

Hello!

As with many, I am super excited for Firebrand to come out. It may actually make a support Guardian viable!

However there is one issue I wanted to bring up, since I hadn’t seen it be mentioned anywhere else, and it has to do with the targeting of the mantra skills.

I play primarily with the action camera on, but I even turned it off for a while and still ran into the same problem, even with action camera off.

The problem is this: The cone AoEs for mantras always emit from your character’s facing, not your camera’s facing.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Action Camera allows you to simply point and aim with your skills, giving the game a very similar feel to Smite, or akin to over the shoulder shooters. However, when using this mode, you can keep your camera pointed in one direction, and your character will change their facing to whatever direction they are moving. This is great since characters move slower when strafing, and especially when backpedaling. this allows me to keep my camera on the action, while retreating from it or strafing past it, and I don’t have to worry about slowing myself since my character is always running forward.

As you can see, however, this causes a problem with mantras. I can have my Camera reticle on someone’s face and fire off a mantra, but the cone of the mantra fires off in whatever direction I’m moving in, NOT toward the direction of my reticle. Essentially this means I have to be running DIRECTLY AT my target to be able to hit them with a mantra, I can’t just be strafing past.

The way I see it, there are 3 ways to fix this problem,

1.) Chance Action Camera so that the character is always facing the same direction the camera is. This would basically mean that I would always have to be looking the way I’m moving or risk slowing myself down with backpedal penalties. This is the way Smite plays, so I’d be used to that, but the GW2 community at large may not like it.

2.) Probably the best solution, without altering the mantra effects to compensate, would be to simply add some programming to make your character face the same way the camera does just for a split second while activating the mantra. Alternatively, the mantra will always face the camera, meaning that the cone could originate from any side of the character, but the effect is always forward-facing. (That might mean my mantras come out of my butt. XD)

3.) Wooden Potatoes sugested that the mantras be changed to a small PBAoE instead of a cone. If that happened, facing would no longer matter. They’d basically be really short range shouts. The problem with this is how powerful the mantras really are. An in crease in AoE size may mean nerfs elsewhere. No nerfs please! I like being strong!

Anyhow. Some action needs to be taken because my ability to aim those cones was severely hampered by the character facing. It was a pain. Please make some changes to these awesome skills!

-Shadowshear

Tman.6349:

I’m thinking about it and I think Dire (and maybe Soldier’s) would be completely broken. […] Also, Anet is adamantly opposed to having pure Healers. This is a slippery slope your asking to introduce.

A change like this would necessitate some re-evaluations of certain stat combos for sure, but particularly the two that you mentioned wouldn’t fit the issue you describe of people becoming pure healers.

Dire
+condi damage
-toughness
-vita

Soldier’s
+power
-toughness
-vita

Both of these sets have main stats that are offensive.

I actually think Nomad’s would be at greater risk of becoming 100% support. But then again the HP on that set would change to some other stat, so maybe power or precision? Give it some offensive stat as its new 3rd and boom! not pure defense anymore.

Hello all!

I have seen many topics regarding healing power, but none that I feel the need to use life transfer on to rez it. (NERD)

Healing power is underwhelming as a stat, and is, in near all cases, better dumped for any other stat. I realize that healing in GW2 is in a good place and doesn’t generally need nerfs or buffs anywhere, but this all comes from base values. Healing Power adds minimal gain for the investment.

As a main Guardian in PvE I can say that my ability to heal is awesome. I have so many heals and HoTs, its great! I tried running a HP build for a long time, classic SuppTank role. And it sorta worked. I healed a lot, did low damage absorbed dps for days.

What threw me off of this build, however, is that I learned I could dump my over 1500 HP and still be a boss healer, but I dealt damage too.

What I’m getting at is that (and its been discussed to death in other forum topics) HP need not be a stat. Its kind of a trap.

Now, healing values should not be static, and I’d still love to build that cleric Guardian that’s a heal-tank support role extraordinaire, so we’d need a new stat to replace HP that increases your healing numbers right?

I don’t think so. So here’s the crazy idea.

Vitality.

Bonus vitality. I’m not that insane.

Think about it! It makes sense, as the more health you have, the more health you need to heal for to get the same healing effectiveness (in terms of % total health). Also, since healing is strong in base values right now and the proliferation of active defenses, (blocking, dodging, blinding, etc.) defensive stats already take a back seat.

Vita does so especially as effective health doesn’t care much about your TOTAL health, but rather how much you’ll have overall, after all the healing you get.

A person with 15k total hp and 15k worth of heals has more health than a person with 25k health.

If we combined the two stats it would give both the buff they need to be truly considered as a buildable stat.

How this would work would be that HP is no longer a buildable stat, but shows up on the stat panel. The value would be your vita minus base vita.

Think about it!

yeah all it is is PvE, and I might be asking a bit much.

I apologize for posting in suggestions, it was after midnight and I was too tired to think of the obvious place to post.

So i’m getting my ele up to level 80, just hit 60 today. I want her to be a supportive healer but also deal damage through conditions. The obvious way to do this is to focus on Earth and Water trait lines.

My problem is that I can’t really find armor, runes, or a weapon set that would facilitate doing these two specs together, Staff is great support, but D/D is way better for conditions, (or even scepter) Staff has its fair share of bleeds, and a skill to cause burning, but nothing compared to what scepter and dagger can pump out. However, scepter and dagger builds lack the healing and supportiveness that the staff provides.

I’m a bit torn on how to achieve this build. What other stats can I sacrifice? I need rune suggestions, armor prefix suggestions, and weapon set suggestions, and perhaps traits too, but those seem to be a bit easier to figure. Or you could alternatively tell me that this combination of specs can’t be achieved and the build will suck no matter what.

I guess ultimately I have no idea what I’m doing with ele, and i need help for that.

Thanks!