Is that enough to make this an easy choice? It depends on the power-to-condi damage ratio in your rotation. The more damage tips toward physical, the more beneficial Grieving will be. The more damage tips toward condi, the more beneficial Sinister will be.
I calculated the difference in crit chance. I am not sure I understand what you’re trying to say here. Your final number of a 4.6% advantage for Grieving to power based damage is correct, but earlier you cite a .08% advantage. What is that supposed to represent? Are you saying it is only a 4.6% advantage with the raid buffs? That would be entirely incorrect.
Here is the setup you described. It’s off by only one power and two condition damage from the one I linked, so it’s another way of getting to pretty much exactly the same thing.
With Sinister, your setup has 2262 power, 39.29% crit chance, 150% crit damage, and 1610 condition damage.
Swap that to Griever, and you will have 2323 power, 34.14% crit chance, 163.8% crit damage, and 1543 condition damage.
With Sinister, the effective power is 2262*.39*1.5+2262*.61 = 2703
With Griever, the effective power is 2323*.34*1.638+2323*.66 = 2826
2826/2703=1.045 or a 4.5% advantage.
WITH raid buffs, you would have:
Spotter+Banner of Discipline+Fury=35.2% crit chance
Banner of Discipline=11.3% crit damage
Empower Allies + Banner of Strength + Pinpoint Distribution + 25 Might = 1070 Power/Condition Damage
Frost Spirit + 5 GOTL = 17.5% damage bonus or 10% condition damage bonus
Altogether, that gives:
Sinister = 3332 power, 74.5% crit chance, 161.3% crit damage, and 2680 condition damage.
Grieving = 3393 Power, 69.3% Crit chance, 175.1% crit damage, and 2613 condition damage
Altogether, Sinister gives an effective power of: (3332*.745*1.613+3332*.255)*1.175 = 4385.6
Altogether, Grieving gives and effective power of: (3393*.693*1.751+3393*.303)*1.175 =6045.7
It’s an enormous difference: a 38% boost to power based damage over Sinister, and remember that in either rotation, about 50% of the pre-stat damage is power based AND that this is BEFORE factoring in Weaver’s 7% extra crit chance and ferocity bonus from the grandmaster trait.
What bonus to condition damage do we get from taking Sinister instead? It’s a bit easier to calculate because of the way condition damage works. Factoring in the 10% bonus from Weaver’s Prowess, we’d be getting 73.7 extra condition damage, which is worth 4.4 per bleed and 11.4 per burn or 4.84 per bleed and 12.54 per burn after GOTL. Does it add up? Yes. Fennec had the better condition uptime than me (obviously) and at the height of it there were about 27 burns and 20 bleeds. That was when he had Arcane Power pumping out burns to other players. The rest of the time, he was averaging around 12 burns and 40 bleeds (this is actually being generous, I think).
So at the peaks the Sinister gear would be giving 435 extra DPS (27 * 12.54 + 20 * 4.84) and on the average would be closer to 344 extra DPS (12 * 12.54 + 40 * 4.84). (This is factoring in Weaver’s 10% condition damage bonus). The question is, what’s better? 435 DPS (which is higher than reality as that is the peak, not average, value), or the DPS you gain from the extra 1660 effective power (which is NOT factoring in Weaver’s extra power damage bonuses)?
Ahh, well guess what: the wiki now has the damage coefficients: lucky us! We’ll use Fennec’s rotation since he’s much better than me. One trip through his rotation takes 16 seconds. In that time, he uses:
Signet of Fire
Earth AA parts 1+2+3+1+2
Earth 2
Earth/Earth 3
Fire 2
Fire/Earth 3
Fire AA parts 1+2+3+1+2+1+2+3
Fire/Fire 4
Fire/Fire 3
Fire 2
Earth AA parts 1+2+1+2+3
Signet of Fire: coef = .5
Fire AA1: coef = .2
Fire AA2: coef = .2
Fire AA3: coef = 1.25
Fire 2: coef = .25 hit and .14 per 2x pulses
Fire 3: coef = 1.75
Earth AA1: coef = .66
Earth AA2: coef = .19
Earth AA3: coef = .25
Earth 2: coef = .25
Earth 3: coef = .64
Fire/Earth 3: coef = .08
In the rotation, that works out to a total of 13.88*1660 = 23,040.8*1000 (Weapon Strength) / 2597 (heavy raid boss armor) / 16 seconds = 554.5 DPS.
It looks like Griever’s is the clear winner. We can see for sure come September, but for now this is the best I can do with the raw numbers and videos from this weekend.
_
By the way, if we did want to factor in the extra 20% condition damage from Weave Self, which nobody really used this weekend because it makes the rotations weird but may prove useful with alacrity, then you’d be getting a 10% bonus 100% of the time and a 30% bonus 18.2% of the time. On average, your total gained condition damage from sinister then would be (67*1.3*.182)+(67*1.1*.818) = 76.14, which is an extra .37 per burn with GOTL and an extra .16 per bleed with GOTL. Needless to say, this doesn’t change the result.
(edited by Skolops.2604)
I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.
I constantly use dagger off-hand on t4 fotm to help with breakbars (updraft and earthquake does a lot of breakbar dmg) and I combo it with firegrab for up to 25k crits on bosses. This is using the usual FA tempest build.
With a griever stat (powe/condi > fero/prec) and taking tempest defense instead of FA (due to quicker att swaps between fire and air) it could make for a great dps. BttH or FA can be good options, with tempest defense for more dmg when you break the boss bars.
Btw, keep in mind that primordial stance seemed to be broken during beta, and was doing 3 stacks of burn instead of 1
Why don’t you use focus then, it has more breakbar dmg Comet 200 + Gale 400 to the Updraft 332 and Earthquake 200, also some chilled and quick cripple for a bit added. Helps a lot on 100cm second boss cc phase.
Any star gear that does not have condi duration, even on ele that gets so much free one, is pretty much of waste for condi dmg. Especially if you also want to get some bleed dmg in on weaver, you’d probably need to drop Balth runes. Condi ele right now does 20% power dmg, I can’t imagine any kind of hybrid build being comparable to either side of the spectre. Maybe for engie.
Right now you go Viper’s until 100% then fill in the rest with Sinister. It is possible that Griever will be what you fill in the rest with come PoF. Remember that part of the reason that Tempest does only about 20% of it’s damage from power is that it has no ferocity. In PoF, PvE Weavers will be taking the Elements of Rage Grandmaster, which gives a 10% damage boost along with extra ferocity, so even without any stat changes the power damage ration is going to go up. If it turns out that for the Adept Trait the’re taking Superior Elements, that’s even more of a boost to the power damage.
I made a spreadsheet during the weekend to refer back to, so I can estimate that a naked (no stats, no traits) character would do about 48.5% power damage using the Fire/Earth/Air Sw/dagger rotation I posted or about 49.5% power damage using the Earth/Fire only Sw/Focus rotation that Fennec and a few others have thrown around. (This is calculated by adding up the total damage values for every skill used in each rotation).
So if we go with something like this (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAoYA1MsIAYuIIAUAOAFbym4ZA-TRSAQBR7EAER1cAwDAwaqGIN9AhU5362B4mKB9yyDkCYRlVA-e) we will get 80% bleed and burn duration and then Weaver’s Prowess will give us the other 20% putting us at 100% for both with room for, from Griever, about another 207 ferocity (~14% crit damage).
It would be almost impossible to figure out a direct comparison here without having the damage coefficients from all of these skills, but if we ignore the Power and condition Damage stats for now, that would put the Sword/Dagger rotation at around 36% power damage and the Sword/Focus rotation at around 37% power damage.
The tradeoff to go Sinister in these slots over Griever would be a loss of 14% ferocity for 66 extra condition damage and 5% extra crit chance.
Basically, using Griever to complete the gear is giving around 134 effective power over Sinister, while Sinister is giving 10 damage more per burn and 4 damage more per bleed. I don’t think that’s even a close decision.
I think air is totally not worth going into as condi from what I’ve tested. I could get decent condi dmg out by just rotating fire and earth around, but alas, it still feels very weak compared to the other specs. Also I used focus, dagger is not really a good condi off-hand. Maybe for some kinda hybrid build that would probably just not be as good anyway.
The focus has been the go-to offhand for condi Tempest because it has the strongest condition skill of all of the offhands in Fire #4. However here’s the thing: it’s also the ONLY condition damage skill on the entire weapon, and in fact it’s almost the only DPS skill at ALL on the weapon. Water #4 and #5 and Earth #4 do very, very small direct damage, but otherwise the rest of the skills do no damage at all.
This worked very well for condition Tempest, which never attunes out of fire, but with the Weaver,you need to be swapping attunements and the way that they cycle from left to right makes the offhand skills very important. While Dagger’s offhand skills are not as strong as Focus Fire #4, they are still strong options to use while you’re stuck waiting for the next attunement swap.
I think “focus is a better condition weapon” is thinking in the old Elementalist/Tempest box and we need to step out of it. Like I said, other than fire #4, focus isn’t really a “weapon” at all, but a bunch of zero-damage defensives.
As for Air or just Earth/Fire, Fennec actually posted a video of the condition rotation he came up with (it’s unlisted but linked under his Staff Weaver video) and it is Earth/Fire. I couldn’t compare directly to his because he had other people on the golem with him boosting his numbers from Arcane Power, but I tried doing his myself and comparing it to the one where I go into Air. His was putting out about 3% more condition damage than mine, but I am pretty sure that mine was putting out a good bit more direct damage than his – definitely enough more to outpace that 3% difference, even just on Viper gear. With Griever, it would be even more.
The thing about Air is that the Fire/Air #3 skill is the Weaver’s highest damage sword skill, and second only to either Earth #5 on Dagger of Fire #4 on focus. Excluding direct damage numbers, it’s actually tied for the strongest condition damage skill with Fire/Fire #3 and Fire/Water #3.
From what I have seen, the staff looks like it will work for Power Weaver. Fennec put out a video showing a rotation very similar to the current staff rotation, but taking advantage of all of Weaver’s damage and stat bonus traits.
As for gear, I think it will be Viper’s to the duration cap (also including food/utility/runes/sigils/traits) and then fill in the rest with Griever’s. The thing is that there definitely are some skills that have a very nice direct damage component to them (like Earth/Earth #3) and when you are using the AA waiting for the attunement to come off CD, all of the AA are more power based than condition.
As Solori said, the sword definitely seems to be a condition-centered weapon. Without knowing the actual damage coefficients and so forth it’s hard to answer the question definitively, but this weekend I went ahead and charted out what the damage looked like from each sword skill with all stats stripped (no amulet, no runes, no traits that give stat bonuses) and in many cases the condition damage for the sword skills was already higher than the direct damage skills. This was true especially of the #3 skills, which is important because they are the ones with the most variation and so which are off cooldown the most.
In fact, most of the highest base damage values on the sword are condition damage. In other words, even if there are some cases like Air #2 or Fire #2 where the direct damage number is higher than the condition damage number, these direct damage numbers are still lower than condition damage numbers available on other skills.
The long and the short of it: if you put together a rotation that uses the highest damage skills as frequently as possible, it’s going to be condition skills.
If I had to guess I’d say no, at least not yet. Elementalist has for many years been considered the best at everything, and even if that’s not necessarily true I think they are probably a bit worried about overtuning the spec from day one. Truth be told, without the ability to properly test it’s hard for us to know exactly where Weaver is at. Many people think it’s weak, but others feel differently. Once more time is available in September and extensive testing is able to be done – for both PvE and PvP – then the community will either embrace or reject it and hopefully they’ll buff if necessary then.
Can somebody please explain what the deal is with the Gazelle? What is it about it that is so strong or broken?
What is it’s connection to Greatsword Maul hitting harder?
I spent most of this weekend trying to see what a Weaver rotation would actually look like (in PvE). I spent much of the weekend, like many, feeling that it just did not flow well at all, but after a lot of work I finally have a rotation that I think actually works. I have no idea how this would compare to current builds in terms of DPS – that will have to wait for September, and chances are very high that there is a better rotation than this. This is at least something to look at, though!
The traits: http://imgur.com/a/pM8Ag
The weapons: Sword/Dagger. Focus has the highest DPS skill, but it has no other DPS skills and offhand skills are very important because of the way the attunements cycle.
The Gear: I suspect this will use Food/Traits/Runes+Viper gear to max out on condition duration and filling in remaining gear slots with the new Griever’s gear.
The sword seems to favor condition damage as even before adding any stats, the conditions are generally even with and in many cases stronger than the power damage.
The Utilities: Arcane Power, Primordial Stance, Signet of Fire.
For the elite, I’m not sure if Weave Self will actually prove to be useful for PvE. The two benefits are:
1) Increased Condi damage. This is obviously good, but I don’t know if it will manage to work because the second “benefit” may hurt more than help? Hard to say. It is:
2) Attunement recharge reduction. This also seems very good, but it actually seems to make the rotations MORE clunky because there just don’t seem to be enough skills worth using that are off cooldown faster than you can swap. Under rotations, I’ll list the best Weave-Self rotation I’ve been able to come up with, but it really gets rough toward the end. This Elite MAY be useful for quick bursty phases. Otherwise, Firey Greatsword or the Fire Elemental may prove to be the way to go.
The Rotation:
Without Weave self:
Start in Fire/Air
2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Air – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – - Signet – 4 – Fire $$ – 3 – 4 – 5 – 2 – Earth – 3 – AA – Air – 3 – AA – Fire – Repeat
https://youtu.be/_oUASmBWWGI (Note: I’m far from perfect)
Use Arcane Power and Primordial stance off cooldown when in or just before attuning to Fire or Earth. Always swap to the next attunement ASAP while casting Earth 5.
This rotation took a lot of work and even if it feels ever so slightly rough in a place or two, it’s by far the smoothest thing I’ve found out of testing this nonstop all weekend.
As I said above, I don’t know if Weave Self will be used as it feels clunky. The best I have for it is:
With Weave Self:
From Fire/Air:
2 – 3 – Signet – 4 – Fire – 3 – 4 – 5 – Earth – 3 – 2 – Earth – 3 – 5 – Water – 3 – Fire – 2 – 3 – Air – Tailored Victory – 3 – AA – Fire – 2 Signet – 4 – Fire – Pick up at $$ in regular rotation
(edited by Skolops.2604)
I’ve been working extremely hard the past two days to figure out some rotations for the Weaver and I agree both that the cooldown should be there and also that it’s slightly too long. If instead of 3.5 seconds it were 3 seconds when traited through Arcane, I think so much would fit into place much better. As it is, it’s a bit clunky. Going to 2 seconds is perhaps too much of a buff, but just taking .5 seconds off of it would keep the sacrifice of swapping easily in place but make it actually work. Right now it just doesn’t work very well.
One of the key problems with the cooldown being slightly too long is that it really promotes or even forces a sort of “smash all the buttons” type of gameplay. As I said above, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of a cooldown like this, but it’s just long enough that after attuning you sortof have no choice but to hit all of your abilities while you wait before attuning again. It just promotes a sortof thoughtless playstyle.
I’ve been trying to work out a rotation and the entire thing is just slightly too clunky with the attunement cooldown. I think that the idea of having a single cooldown for all attunement swapping is okay, but it’s just ever so slightly too high. Right now its about 3.3 seconds with the arcane traitline, and it makes things very clunky. I think if it were 3 seconds when traited it would probably be something that we could work with.
Since the Login Screen was changed to the PoF character select screen with the start of the first demo on Friday, 8/11, the game will on a cycle (every 20 – 30 seconds or so) freeze my entire system. The character select screen freezes, my second monitor freezes, and the entire system will be unresponsive for several seconds.
Often, my graphics driver will crash and reload at this time.
The game runs perfectly after logging in to a character.
System:
64 Bit Windows 10
Intel i5-2400 @3.1GHz
16 GB RAM
Nvidia GTX 750 (latest drivers 38494)
Prior to today, I was running an older graphics driver. Since updating to the latest drivers (38494) the problem happens less frequently (the interval between crashes is longer), but it still happens.
I think that this is good, but it may call for some re-balancing of classes (if they haven’t already taken care of this in the balance update).
Some classes were already able to waaay overcap on Condition duration – e.g., Elementalist – while others couldn’t reach the cap even with the most expensive food and utility and being forced to choose from a more limited selection of runes/sigils. If the class balance isn’t specifically adapted to account for this change, then some classes are going to take a more moderate hit to their condition damage DPS from this change while others will be buried.
I have been playing with this a bit more and found much, much more success with the power build by using the signet of might to make sure the burst is not blocked, which had been a big problem before.
Have a look at vaanss videos on YouTube. He uses GS/ax, shield power build. But you won’t find his build on metabattle.
His build is in the description.
Thanks. I have seen this kind of build before and messed with it. It is a bit better than the mace version, as the axe F2 does add burst, but I guess the hangup I have is this:
Even when you are working on a target that just sits there and lets you beat on it to your heart’s content, the highest peak of its burst DPS is still lower than the bottom out point on the condition build – and that’s with me running pretty good gear for the GS/Axe build and pretty mediocre gear for the condition one. When all of a sudden the target is moving and you’re chasing around and only hitting on a fraction of your attacks, its even worse.
Now don’t misunderstand: WvW is not a raid. I completely understand and embrace the need to make tradeoffs for the sake of survivability and utility and the fact that a PvE build is not going to hit the same sorts of numbers against live players in the field, but the difference we’re talking about is not small or even moderate – it’s massive. Moreover, I find the condi build more survivable at that, which makes sense. It does have more condition cleanses and as much as 50% more effective HP.
So the question I’m really trying to figure out here is how I can understand any of these GS builds to be anything other than significantly worse than a burning Sw/T build that seems to have little trouble doing 4 – 5x the DPS against moving targets that the GS one does against stationary ones, has more total defense, and has more condition removal.
You can cleanse a condition before it really hurts, but you can’t cleanse a 10k crit from arc divider.
Power is for Manly Men who like big beefy numbers and dunking nerds by outplaying them.
Condi is for Wimps. And there’s nothing better than dumpster-ing them after they were sure they had every advantage in the world.
Keepin it real, run whatever you want. Power is more fun/mobile.
I don’t know, I’ve never seen even Decapitate crit for more than 8.5k or so in any of the videos from any of these roamers, and Arc Divider hits for less.
From having spent a few hours hours testing both of these against real people, I definitely like the GS style more in terms of fun, but I’m getting destroyed whereas the Condi style is taking a beating and proving hard to kill, while nuking most other players in a few seconds, with the exception of Guardians – who don’t take much damage from it – and Condition Necros – who are just generally hard with this build.
The problem I’m having with the power build is that, apart from just taking a ton of damage, all of it’s attacks are so strongly telegraphed that I’m rarely hitting any of the big ones.
Hello !
Thanks for the thread and brainstorming. One question about your build : why sinister armor ? I’m not sure I understood what you wrote… Is it just because you only had that available ? Are you aiming for a full trailblazer build ?
ThomasC,
Its because the build is already maxed out on condition duration for burning and bleeding, the two most important conditions in the build (the poison and torment and confusion the build applies pare out at only a percent or two of the damage and their real purpose is not to do damage as much as to eat condition removals).
Adding more Trailblazer or Viper is a waste because the expertise from them will do nothing while the other three stats are lower than on 3 stat gear, so you fill those slots with Sinister (for full offense), Carrion or Rabid (for middle ground between offense and defense), or Dire (for full defense).
By the way, if you’re curious the build is almost exactly the same as the one in this video, except that this guy is running Perplexity runes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAQC583WeqQ
Have a look at vaanss videos on YouTube. He uses GS/ax, shield power build. But you won’t find his build on metabattle.
His build is in the description.
Thanks. I have seen this kind of build before and messed with it. It is a bit better than the mace version, as the axe F2 does add burst, but I guess the hangup I have is this:
Even when you are working on a target that just sits there and lets you beat on it to your heart’s content, the highest peak of its burst DPS is still lower than the bottom out point on the condition build – and that’s with me running pretty good gear for the GS/Axe build and pretty mediocre gear for the condition one. When all of a sudden the target is moving and you’re chasing around and only hitting on a fraction of your attacks, its even worse.
Now don’t misunderstand: WvW is not a raid. I completely understand and embrace the need to make tradeoffs for the sake of survivability and utility and the fact that a PvE build is not going to hit the same sorts of numbers against live players in the field, but the difference we’re talking about is not small or even moderate – it’s massive. Moreover, I find the condi build more survivable at that, which makes sense. It does have more condition cleanses and as much as 50% more effective HP.
So the question I’m really trying to figure out here is how I can understand any of these GS builds to be anything other than significantly worse than a burning Sw/T build that seems to have little trouble doing 4 – 5x the DPS against moving targets that the GS one does against stationary ones, has more total defense, and has more condition removal.
Thanks for the reply, perko.
Smash Brawler is one of the things I’ve been testing and will continue to. It’s definitely a consideration. I think I was just in the phase of testing Last Blaze when I copied my build for the link.
Sundering leap is a skill that I know is not “standard” on this sort of build, and I’ve taken it off the bar many times but keep coming back to it. One of the things that the condi build does sacrifice from the GS build is mobility, and it’s one more mobility/immob breaking skill, which is good. It seems like it should be very useful as a gap closer, as this is a build which if there is a weakness it’s probably got to be sticking on the target.
Moreover, I love it as an opener. Typically you’d open with Torch 5 and leap to the target with sword 2, making and then breaking a fire aura. Sundering leap does exactly the same thing, same range, it cripples just like sword 2, but it ALSO applies 10 stacks of vulnerability which helps ramp up the damage on the target right from the get go, AND it keeps sword 2 ready to jump back to the target if/when he tries to get some distance on you as a melee character.
As for the runes, why do you urge against Perplexity? I’ve been thinking, crunching numbers, and watching videos of people using them and I am definitely not sold, but I do see the point and why they can be good. What is your reasoning against them?
a defensive, or burning rune is going to be far better for the build. you do a lot of burns, so balth runes will give you a big damage boost. perplex is not a good rune after nerfs.
also zerker stance > sundering leap. it’s not even a contest.
The build is easily capped on burning duration without really trying, so Balthazar runes are a waste. They’re a good option if you’re doing the budget version with Dire gear over Trailblazer or Viper, but if you have the Expertise they’re wasted.
I understand the value in 11 seconds of resistance, but a condi berserker already has a lot of condition cleanses and what it really lacks in is mobility.
Thanks for the reply, perko.
Smash Brawler is one of the things I’ve been testing and will continue to. It’s definitely a consideration. I think I was just in the phase of testing Last Blaze when I copied my build for the link.
Sundering leap is a skill that I know is not “standard” on this sort of build, and I’ve taken it off the bar many times but keep coming back to it. One of the things that the condi build does sacrifice from the GS build is mobility, and it’s one more mobility/immob breaking skill, which is good. It seems like it should be very useful as a gap closer, as this is a build which if there is a weakness it’s probably got to be sticking on the target.
Moreover, I love it as an opener. Typically you’d open with Torch 5 and leap to the target with sword 2, making and then breaking a fire aura. Sundering leap does exactly the same thing, same range, it cripples just like sword 2, but it ALSO applies 10 stacks of vulnerability which helps ramp up the damage on the target right from the get go, AND it keeps sword 2 ready to jump back to the target if/when he tries to get some distance on you as a melee character.
As for the runes, why do you urge against Perplexity? I’ve been thinking, crunching numbers, and watching videos of people using them and I am definitely not sold, but I do see the point and why they can be good. What is your reasoning against them?
I’ve been getting ready to gear my Warrior for WvW roaming and trying to decide between power and condition damage. (FYI, I very rarely post here but have been playing since early access and done a lot of roaming on other classes, so while my post history might not tell the story, I’m hardly new at this).
While there are a few roamers who post videos of their condition Berserker, by and large the GS/Mace or GS/Axe build is far and away the most common, and for example it’s the only one that’s found on metabattle.
I really think I like the playstyle of this build. It’s got a flavor to it that I just really like. However, I can’t help but find it to be very lackluster and have a hard time understanding why it’s so popular. Meanwhile, the Sw/T + M/Sh condition build that shows up here and there so far seems more survivable and to have MUCH more DPS potential to the point that I’m not sure why it’s not the norm.
Some may scoff at this, but I’ve spent 10 hours or so testing out different variations on these builds against Veteran Stoneheads and Bristlebacks in Auric Basin because, while it’s better to test on people, they respawn quickly and work a lot better for doing extensive testing of variations than the one roamer you see every 5+ minutes out in the field. Bristlebacks are nice because they do an okay job of approximating the kind of pressure a good ranged player can put on, while Stoneheads are excellent at moving around a lot and applying lots of CC, so they especially do a decent job of “imitating” another player.
In any case, I’m testing with something similar to this for the condi build (http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vJAQRAsf5enMdAdhgtkC2kCElilqA7t0uajtIFgGQAQpHE7yBA-TFSHQB26kAoL1fCx+DA4IAYRlgjT/QweAADU5HpAgZZF-w) [some people prefer perplexity runes, but I’m still debating and in any case would not splurge on them until I am sure they’re what I want) and the standard GS/Mace build for Power.
My power gear is pretty close to what you want for the build. My condition gear is not – I don’t have any of the sigils and have TB gear only on the trinkets. I’m using Dire exotic weapons and my armor is actually just the Berserker stuff. I’m using no food – much more important for condition builds. Still, and here’s why I’m asking:
The power build is doing around 1000 DPS against the Stoneheads, and around 1500 against the Bristlebacks. The condition build is doing 3500 against the Stoneheads and over 5000 against the Bristlebacks – and I don’t even have the full gear yet. On top of this, I have to work hard to stay alive with the power build, but survival is easy with the condition stuff.
So my question/topic here is: why the GS build? It just seems terrible in comparison.
“The Last Time the GW2 Client Launched it Detected Problems with the Data.”
I had never seen this message until today, when I saw it twice – on two different computers.
The first time was after the 3rd 5/16 patch when I logged off and back on to update the client. This was on my laptop when I was having WiFi connection issues and before logging off I had just had a problem loading into the guild hall. After ignoring the message and logging in and playing successfully, I brushed it off as having been the result of the client getting “confused” by some of the connection problems.
However today, I just got it on my wired desktop when trying to log in for the first time. I have not played on the Desktop in a few days, and had no problems the last time, however I DID download the patches on 5/16 without actually launching the game.
I am letting my desktop run a repair now, but am posting in the event that somebody has some information about this.
There seems to be pretty widespread reports of problems with Level3 the past few days: http://downdetector.com/status/level3
I’m in southern NH. Comcast.
I ran it three times, each time the hop after the level3.net timed out, which looks consistent with other users.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net
Tracing route to cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net [64.25.40.110]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Linksys13113 [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 10 ms 9 ms 96.120.69.17
3 8 ms 16 ms 9 ms ge-1-42-ur02.lowell.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.155.173]
4 13 ms 14 ms 14 ms be-160-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.69.245]
5 * * 10 ms lag-9.bear1.Boston1.Level3.net [4.68.71.217]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 50 ms 49 ms 50 ms 4.59.197.34
8 79 ms 80 ms 80 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
9 80 ms 78 ms 79 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
10 80 ms 83 ms 81 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
11 79 ms 79 ms 80 ms 64.25.40-110.ncsoft.com [64.25.40.110]
Trace complete.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net
Tracing route to cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net [64.25.40.110]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Linksys13113 [192.168.1.1]
2 9 ms 8 ms 9 ms 96.120.69.17
3 8 ms 9 ms 9 ms ge-1-42-ur02.lowell.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.155.173]
4 15 ms 14 ms 15 ms be-160-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.69.245]
5 * 11 ms 11 ms lag-9.bear1.Boston1.Level3.net [4.68.71.217]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 56 ms 49 ms 51 ms 4.59.197.34
8 79 ms 79 ms 80 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
9 79 ms 80 ms 80 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
10 83 ms 81 ms 79 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
11 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms 64.25.40-110.ncsoft.com [64.25.40.110]
Trace complete.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>tracert cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net
Tracing route to cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net [64.25.40.110]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Linksys13113 [192.168.1.1]
2 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms 96.120.69.17
3 15 ms 9 ms 11 ms ge-1-42-ur02.lowell.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.87.155.173]
4 22 ms 14 ms 14 ms be-160-ar01.needham.ma.boston.comcast.net [68.85.69.245]
5 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms lag-9.bear1.Boston1.Level3.net [4.68.71.217]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 48 ms 52 ms 49 ms 4.59.197.34
8 78 ms 78 ms 79 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
9 79 ms 80 ms 79 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
10 81 ms 82 ms 82 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
11 80 ms 79 ms 80 ms 64.25.40-110.ncsoft.com [64.25.40.110]
FWIW, I also had a crash to desktop yesterday while looting Auric Basin. I wouldn’t normally note this in a post that may be unrelated like this, but I’ve literally never had a crash in the game before in 5 years, so it strikes me as worth noting.
This is an important topic, and it’s important to try to cut through a lot of the misunderstandings and confusion about what a story mode would necessarily mean.
1) It would NOT mean taking away the challenging content.
2) It would NOT mean taking away the notoriety or honor involved with completing the “hard mode” raids, or even in one sense the exclusivity of the story itself. I am a veteran of another AAA MMO which always released the raids in three stages: first a standard mode, then later on a story mode and a nightmare mode.
The standard mode took some skill to complete, so only regular raiders could complete it on release. The story mode came out making it accessible to (mostly) everyone, but when the nightmare came out it was well known that only the best of the best could complete it. In fact, it even created more content and more prestige for this top tier of players, who had to work very hard to beat the nightmare mode.
Nobody was under any illusion that those who beat the story mode had accomplished anything of any real value, much less that they’d done anything comparable to the top tier players.
3) It would NOT necessarily mean earning the raid exclusive rewards. This is, I think, the point that has been most concerning to many. Ultimately, a story mode raid need not offer any of the raid specific rewards. Let it be for the STORY and the story alone.
I really can’t conceive of any reason to reject creating a story mode version of the raids if it’s clear that they are just for the story rather than rewards, prestige, etc.
Please note: this is NOT an anniversary update problem. It has been going on since upgrading to Windows 10 back in August. It does not appear to happen with any other games or applications.
The game will run fine, but every now and then – sometimes with an hour or so in between, but normally much more frequently – the entire game screen will freeze. When this happens, if I alt-tab to any other program (even one on my second monitor which leaves GW2 displayed on monitor 1) it will unfreeze and all will be well until the next freeze. If I do not alt-tab immediately, it will remain frozen until I do alt-tab, at which time it will give a network error and crash to character select.
I have already:
- Run GW2 with the repair tag
- Run MemTest86 to verify there are no problems
- Updated to every NVidia driver release since August
- Reverted GPU overclocking (although it ran fine with this on Win7)
- Run the client in Compatibility mode for Windows 8, 7, and Vista
- Verified that link state power management is nor active
- Verified that the client is excluded from the Windows firewall.
The game had run fine on my Windows 7 system since launch through several hardware upgrades. It is only since upgrading to Windows 10 in August that I have had this problem. My system: Intel Core i5-2400, NVidia GTX 750, 16 GB RAM, plenty of HD space.
The CPU and GPU temperatures are all around 60C and are not spiking during the freeze. I am running the 64 bit client and have 8 – 10 GB of RAM still free when this happens. The only unusual thing I have observed around the same time as the freeze was a large spike in network activity and a precipitous drop in CPU load, although the CPU load seems likely to be more a side effect than a cause. I wonder whether the network is being overloaded somehow and causing the freeze/DC, but I have not yet had the chance to watch for this happening again – it may have simply happened the one time.
Copied from in-game bug report.
After the 7/26 Patch the Elementalist Lava Font skill lasts 4 seconds and tick 4 times when not traited with Persisting flames. It is supposed to last 6 seconds with the trait. With the change to Pyromancer’s Training, it should have a cooldown of 6.5 seconds.
It does tick 4 times untraited and 6 times traited, but it does not provide a fire field for the full duration. With cooldown text showing, the field disappears at 4 seconds untraited and 2 seconds traited. It should disappear at 6.5 – 4 = 2.5 seconds remaining untraited. Traited, it should disappear at 6.5 – 6 = 0.5 seconds remaining. It also does not allow blast finishers to trigger might/fury past these shorter times.
It appears as though the fire field is ending around 1.5 seconds too early, although I am not sure if it is consistent. I have provided a video to demonstrate the problem. https://youtu.be/ay-K5a2C2hg
Of COURSE nobody is suggesting that the easy modes have the same or even similar rewards. In other games, the easy mode often provides NO raid rewards but only trash loot, the normal mode provides some raid rewards, and the hard mode provides special rewards that are ONLY available in the hard mode.
Anyway, you laid out the counter argument for your proposal in what you wrote:
The fact is that raids accomplished a great deal for the game that was truly needed. They introduced content that genuinely requires intelligent play and sticking to mechanics in a game in which, other than the two large world boss events, no mechanics really mattered and autoattacking was good enough to clear anything. They took the control and support roles, which had never actually had any value for the life of the game, and made them useful, rewarding, and heck, worth running. They introduced a reason to actually make use of some of the enormous variety of stat sets that have long been in the game but for just as long had no purpose beyond leveling crafting. They did a lot more, too.
You see, raid did all those great things exactly because they’re hard and there’s no easy mode. If it’s easy, why bother doing anything other than autoattacking? If it’s easy, why bother using cc or healer? If it’s easy, why bother thinking about stat sets like condi armor or healing armor?
It shouldn’t be that easy. I’m thinking something along the lines of Tequatl difficulty, but for 8 rather than 80. Autoattacking would be too little, and players would have to follow some basic mechanics.
So a slightly hyped dungeon?
Something more engaging than dungeons (autoattacking should not be good enough) but approachable by the average player.
The biggest keys that I’m really thinking about are twofold:
1) It means everyone gets to experience the content. There are a lot of people who are upset that they don’t get to experience the content/story of the raids. They are under no delusions that they are of the same skill as players who are actually playing the raids as currently constituted, but they feel like this is a part of the game that is totally shut off from them. No other part of the game does this. Even the worst players can still participate in a low level experience of dungeons, fractals, PvP, WvW, and open world content, but they can’t set foot inside a raid.
2) The kinds of resources needed to tone a difficult raid down to be more approachable by the average player is very, very minimal compared to producing new dungeons or fractals. 99% of the thing would be done with the standard mode. Easy modes in most cases mainly involve different ability tables, having a phase turned off, and things like that. If they made even only one “easy” mode for each raid, we’d actually SEE this stuff being pushed out with a similar frequency to what we have seen from raids.
Anyway, you laid out the counter argument for your proposal in what you wrote:
The fact is that raids accomplished a great deal for the game that was truly needed. They introduced content that genuinely requires intelligent play and sticking to mechanics in a game in which, other than the two large world boss events, no mechanics really mattered and autoattacking was good enough to clear anything. They took the control and support roles, which had never actually had any value for the life of the game, and made them useful, rewarding, and heck, worth running. They introduced a reason to actually make use of some of the enormous variety of stat sets that have long been in the game but for just as long had no purpose beyond leveling crafting. They did a lot more, too.
You see, raid did all those great things exactly because they’re hard and there’s no easy mode. If it’s easy, why bother doing anything other than autoattacking? If it’s easy, why bother using cc or healer? If it’s easy, why bother thinking about stat sets like condi armor or healing armor?
It shouldn’t be that easy. I’m thinking something along the lines of Tequatl difficulty, but for 8 rather than 80. Autoattacking would be too little, and players would have to follow some basic mechanics.
A recent informal survey on Reddit nicely summarizes many complaints about the game that have become more and more prevalent in the community since the release of HoT. Although not everybody agrees with all of these gripes, the unfortunate reality is that just about everyone does agree with at least some of them.
Without intending to overstate the case, it’s fair to say that in a certain way all of these come down to a lack of content and a lack of meaningful and achievable rewards to pursue. There is also an undercurrent across these of the disconnect that has long existed between the very hardcore players and average players. (For the record, I’m somewhere in between. In most games, I have been a hardcore player focused on the most difficult content and that is still what’s “in my heart,” but in this game I’ve played more casually primarily because I’m now married with kids).
Often, all of these coalesce around one issue: raids. Raids have been divisive in that one portion of the community avidly supports them, while another views them bitterly as content that betrays the spirit of the game. The hardcore players sees them as new content that is more in the spirit of what they’ve always wanted, while most or many others see them only as something that has taken all of the developers’ time to provide content for a select group while leaving the rest of the playerbase in a months’ long drought.
The fact is that raids accomplished a great deal for the game that was truly needed. They introduced content that genuinely requires intelligent play and sticking to mechanics in a game in which, other than the two large world boss events, no mechanics really mattered and autoattacking was good enough to clear anything. They took the control and support roles, which had never actually had any value for the life of the game, and made them useful, rewarding, and heck, worth running. They introduced a reason to actually make use of some of the enormous variety of stat sets that have long been in the game but for just as long had no purpose beyond leveling crafting. They did a lot more, too.
In short, raids made the game so much more complete than it ever was – but only for a small group of players. For the rest, it’s unchanged.
So while it’s clear that raids have been an enormous success, there has been one enormous failure in the midst of that: the failure to provide different difficulty tiers. Every MMO I have ever played has difficulty tiers for their raid content. Typically, there is a normal mode, an easy mode, and a difficult mode. For example, SWtOR typically releases it’s Operations (what they call raids) first in a normal mode, and then later in story mode (an easy run through with only basic mechanics which lets more casual players experience the story and play the content) and a nightmare mode (a much more difficult mode with more demanding mechanics and more punishing foes which experienced guilds still take some time to clear).
There is absolutely no reason that GW2 should not have this in their raids. In games which have tiered difficulty, the hard/nightmare modes provide an engaging experience and prestigious titles/rewards for the most hardcore players, while the normal and easy modes provide content for others to play through, to earn some rewards in, and to give them the chance not to feel left out.
Tiered difficulty gives something for everybody:
- More content for the entire playerbase
- More rewards for the entire playerbase
- Something to “work towards” for everyone, even if only cosmetic
-Prestige for top tier players
- A sense that all players are getting new content with raid releases
- The opportunity for all players to experience the story/lore
- A reasonable “next step” of difficulty for players to attempt rather than only a giant leap to go from casual to raiding.
What’s more, it even adds reasonable efficiency to developers’ workflow. In many cases, the difference between modes is as simple as removing a particular ability from an enemies table, skipping a phase, or turning off a certain condition application for a given encounter.
All in all, providing tiers of raid difficulty moving forward could add a great deal more contentment to the player base of this game for comparatively very little overhead and social costs. It could literally turn the community’s attitude around overnight.
Reddit mirror: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rioou/different_raid_difficulties_would_alleviate_a/
Your title is a spoiler.
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Skolops.2604
I was extremely unhappy with the way that the content has been gated behind “grind,” until someone reminded me of one thing: masteries are account wide. It’s the masteries that are very long term goals and which require a lot of play-time to get into, and the thought of having to do each on every character was extremely off-putting.
The reality, though, is that I don’t. Using only the jungle maps, I’ve gotten about 2/3 of the way through my first elite specialization on a character that had very little world completion outside of the new maps – and that in two days. TWO. DAYS. Other characters which I may play later will get through it even more quickly, as they will already have more hero points from the core maps and will have access to most of the hero points in the new maps immediately, already having the masteries.
In other MMOs, expansions add a higher level cap and additional skills to existing classes, which requires playing through the new maps and gaining experience to unlock the new skills and traits. Often, they add new classes altogether, which require leveling through the entire game in order to earn through experience points.
This expansion has added elite specializations, which are in truth somewhere between a “higher level cap” and a new class altogether. Either way that you look at it, the idea that players should have to earn their new skills and traits through playing isnot unreasonable, and is lot easier and far less grindy than the way it works in these other games.
The thing is, these other games also have progression at max level in the form of gear “treadmills” – something which the playerbase of this game is beyond adamantly opposed to. This game does not have such treadmills, but – and this is key – IT. MUST. HAVE. SOME. KIND. OF. PROGRESSION. It must have something to shoot for, something to keep people playing. Things like Legendaries and cosmetics are well and good, but they only go so far and do not appeal to everyone or, I would argue, even most. Yes, Elite Specializations have been introduced as something of a goal to shoot for in this expansion, and rightly so.
Where other games fulfill the need for a type of progression to keep people playing with gear treadmills, this expansion, not wanting to introduce a gear treadmill, has introduced some small, faint, shadow of a “leveling” experience to gaining their new elite specializations, an experience that absolutely pales in comparison to what players of other MMOs which are adding expansions are required to go through.
Frankly, I can’t rationally look at the complaints about elite specializations as anything other than entitled whining, and I am not quick to use the term. I can absolutely cut slack to those who haven’t recognized the impact of masteries being account wide. However, the truth is that the kinds of changes people are asking for about elite specialization unlocking come from a place of wanting everything for free, up front.
Such complaints are also not coming from a place that is really good for the game. I remember in the first year of GW2, before the game – while never coming close to matching the traditional model of other MMOs – finally did start to come back at least in small ways towards some of the qualities of traditional MMOs. Those were the days when I logged in each day, stared at the screen for 20 minutes admiring the gorgeous world and wishing that I could once more experience that world, before ultimately realizing that there was literally nothing to actually do in the game and logging out to play other MMOs which had more goals to shoot for to keep me playing. I don’t want those days back. I am thrilled and happy with the current model, which causes me to log in with some goal in mind to work towards, even if that work is still nothing compared to what other games demand.
My advice: don’t change a thing. The system as is, is good for the game. More than that – it’s vital for the game. Try to reach out to players that don’t understand this and help to explain.
When I came back from work and tried again, it made me do the whole mission over so I chose Canach and won that way.
I managed it on the 3rd or 4th try. First try took what seemed like forever, but I got him very close, then got hit by a rock on a gliding phase so fell and died. 2nd and 3rd attempts I didn’t get far. Fourth attempt I had totally broken gear, but beat him – and it was much, much shorter than the first attempt.
Here is what I did on my winning effort:
I got much more concerned with doing damage and focused LESS on surviving in the first stage. I decided to go all out realizing that many of his first phase attacks are easily dodgable. When the blighteds started coming, I similarly decided to go more all in on damage to get them down quickly. I am not sure exactly how, but at one point his breakbar went all the way down and he was stunned and took hugely amplified damage, so that the phase when you get all of the adds to kill happened BEFORE the last blighted had been turned good. After killing the adds, Mordremoth’s breakbar was dropped again and he was stunned, and I nuked him to death.
Ultimately, I think the biggest key was getting those breakbars down, but I honestly don’t know how I did it.
Op,
It’s your error mate, hate to say it, if you let her stack to over 5 she will heal up, she stacks up by absorbing firstborn, so your job is to kill the firstborn asap as they spawn. Save your big aoe’s, they die really fast but you need to focus them with aoe. If she doesn’t stack up to firstborn stacks to high, she won’t heal. Really just any aoe on them and they drop like flies.
I’m very willing to accept that I’m making a mistake, but I’m not sure if this is it. First, when she gets the stacks, they are to a damage bonus. She doesn’t gain any health.
Second, there are so many adds at the end that it is simply not possible to kill them all.
Nope, it did not provide such an option.
During the story mission “Hearts and Minds” I chose Caithe and so had to fight the pale tree. Every time I get it down to 0%, it shouts something about the dream and heals up to 10%. Is this a bug, or am I missing some mechanic that I need to do in order to finish this fight?
There are a lot of posts here going into many of the specifics of the event, and these contain some valuable points which ought certainly be applied for future events. However, the biggest problem with this event is actual much, much simpler:
It’s got FAR too large a time investment for FAR too little reward.
Different players will like different kinds of events, different formats, mechanics, etc. Some like zergy events, others like more mechanics oriented events, etc. etc. etc. Some like events based heavily on rewards, while others even like events where the rewards are less important or even an afterthought.
However, nobody is going to like an event that takes a full half hour of time and produces so little. Even people who don’t mind rewards being an afterthought aren’t going to like that much time commitment for an afterthought. Events that take a great deal of time are okay, but you need to come away feeling like the time was well spent.
I think that the question many Rangers would like to ask of those who insist that the ICD is fair or that it would be too strong without it or that it is otherwise a good “change”/fix, is really, “what did Rangers gain in the patch which compares favorably with the very strong improvements that other classes gained with the specialization patch?” or, “How are Rangers any different than they were before the patch?”
It not having a 30s CD was a bug, obviously, since it displayed a 30s CD since they 1st showed it.
If Call of the Wild was a 16s CD skill, then it would be OP as that would be perma fury/swiftness right there. Same goes here.
If you combine Clarion Bond and Call of the Wild with Windborne Notes, you get 150% uptime of Fury and Swiftness with 100% uptime of Regeneration. Using two traits and a weapon. That is pretty awesome.
Some people going on like it is ’nerfed into uselessness"… By that logic, it was already half useless previously with a 16s CD.
I do not believe that most people are upset about the nerf because of the impact on fury or swiftness uptime. Rather, the concern is over the place of Clarion call in builds centered around Remorseless.
It would be a bit of an understatement to say that Rangers were left feeling fairly underwhelmed at the Ranger core specialization changes, especially in comparison to many other classes which almost all got extremely powerful buffs and synergies. When things went live and the synergies of the Remorseless/Opening Strike builds were fully recognized, we felt as though our class at least had something to make us competitive – and this nerf goes a long way towards making those builds no longer viable.
You suggest going in to Nature Magic in order to get Windborne Notes, but Beastmastery is essential for Opening Strike builds and any sacrificing it is simply not an option. What would be gained in the cooldown reduction would not make up for a fraction of what was lost.
What it comes down to is that with this nerf, many Rangers are feeling like their class is still the old pre-patch version, whilst other classes are running about with their new, stronger toys.
Since some are now reporting that the server is making a difference, I will add my own because it is not one of the servers listed so far:
Server: Magumma
Region: Ne Mass
ISP: Comcast
Zone: Multiple Zones, including DIessa Plateau, Metrica Province
NO LUCK with having the signal refreshed, still getting the same issue
Sending a refresh signal just means that they send a signal to your modem to tell it to pay attention again. It’s one of the few things that ISP tech support have in their scripts to do. They are very rarely going to actually help resolve a problem.
In this case, the problem is not with your modem. It is with a datacenter somewhere in Texas that is along the path of lines connecting Comcast’s MA network to the ANet servers. It isn’t necessarily even run by Comcast. We just have to wait until whoever it is gets their equipment working properly.
Bear in mind that this may get very frustrating, as it’s not something that ANet can fix, and it may not be something that Comcast can fix, either. It could be taken care of tonight, or we could all be waiting days.
Unfortunately, when it is a problem with a node like this there is nothing ANet can do. The problem is with part of the backbone of the internet somewhere between your house and ANet’s servers, and the company which runs that particular stop needs to get it fixed.
I ran a traceroute to the GW2 server I am on, and found 2 consecutive hops with 95-97% packet loss. I took a screenshot (image below). I continued to run the traceroute for 15 minutes, just to make sure it was consistent, and it was.
There was a period of a week or so sometime last year where I could not log into another MMO and as I recall, it was also one or two nodes in the Texas area which were giving the problem. Nevertheless and oddly enough, I am currently able to connect to a game with servers in that immediate area with no trouble right now!
Looks like many of us in MA are having a problem. I myself have been D/Ced every time I try to change zones this evening. It seems to work alright while in a zone, but when I try to waypoint elsewhere I get the DC.
Could this be a breakaway from berserker only meta?
I sure hope so
Unfortunately no.
Optimal group zerker builds at maxxed at ~13k dps
Optimal condition builds with no stat cap are at ~9k dps
Additionally they have a longer build up time, frequently have their damage cleansed off bosses, and most importantly only scale off of 1 stat instead of 4.
Upgrading from exotic to ascended zerker gives you a ~20% dmg increase. Upgrading from exotic to ascended rampagers is ~7% dmg increase.
If you use a hybrid build with sinister you can get ~12-15% increase, but still not the scaling of zerker and at that point you are no longer using a condition build anyway.
However I will say that this change is very exciting. It makes condition builds at least viable for open world content, and gives them a chance to actually use their potential instead of being less than useless.
I’m very curious as to how you got these figures. How do you calculate 13K vs. 9K DPS? Is there some source for this that we can look at?
In particular, I am skeptical regarding the numbers for ascended gear. A 20% damage increase from exotic to ascended seems incredibly high, especially given that ascended is generally regarded as having about a 5% increase. Further, with the stat spread being consistent across all sets, a difference between a 7% and a 20% gain just seems very out of whack.
I’d love to take a look at some numbers and get a better grasp on where you are coming from.
FOV (Field of View) Changes Beta Test - Feedback Thread
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Skolops.2604
This game just got twice as good. Keep up the good work.
I wouldn’t consider my self casual – I play a great deal, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be able to stumble across every fact about a weeklong event before its over.
For instance, I now know that you can somehow enter haunted doors, but having tried several times I am not sure how.
As long as it’s not something that’s already out and I just have no idea what it is.