Guild Wars 2

Also, having played a good few games last night, this build seems to struggle with dual pistol thieves (or the two I fought were exceptional).

Well this is embarrassing.

Spectral Mastery is the lynchpin of the build, and when setting it up on gw2skills my necro muscle memory selected Vital Persistence.

Oh, the shame.

Have also switched reaper to Chilling Nova, as an experiment. Fury is the only source of crits in this build so the miserable 10s cool down isn’t too big of a deal.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWnc0A92g12AG3A0bilgBLuIuEjiUXhvwvKKBEAaAA-TphHwACOEADeAAB3fAwJA4YZgAHBAA

Combos:

Drop marks, drop wall. Activate armour and walk for 10% RS per secind and prot. Enter RS. RS2 across wall for chaos armour. Spin on wall for confusion and poison, with fear and chill if someone crosses it. Also remember to pop Infusing Terror for more lulzy damage.

Optional: swalk back to start point and continue to spam.

Alternatively, you might be able to RS2 over the wall as second time…

Wall lasts for 7.5 seconds, so cross it again to get another prot stack.

Sigils do not share a cool down. Flash DS then switch for weakness, bleeds, chill, leech and energy.

Pros:

Wonderfully diverse selection of conditions
Very few boons to corrupt (I.e. good vs sigil necros)
3 sources of fear
Mobile
2 cond transfers (recommend Marjory dagger to disguise dagger 4)
High vit plus high LF gen and up to 19s prot makes this build v tanky
Good at any range

Cons:

No might stacking
Swalk is often worse than wurm for escapes.
No boon corruption

CPC is my absolute go to ability currently.

I tend to open engagements by dropping it on a team fight or on myself directly. 8s of projectile destruction is worth it long before we factor in the 9k poison damage or weakness.

SoS or CB to burst condi, then follow up with sceptre 3 for absurd torment stacks.

Rune wise, Nightmare or Krait. Tried Grenth for a while but missed the cond duration of Nightmare and the hilarious ult buff of Krait.

OK, so did a little test in the mists just now.

1 Sigil of Doom
1 Sigil of Hydro

Paired with:

1 Sigil of Battle
1 Sigil of Geo

Flash DS -> weapon swap, both procced.

Weapon swap -> flash DS, only weapon swap procced.

Have reversed sigil setup, and also swapped which weapons were in each slot.

So if you’re going with on swap, then bear in mind that the weapon swap cooldown seems to block the DS proc.

K.

#15charactersis13morethanineededtoexpresssupport

BB with Chromonamncer runes and RS1 AA?

Sustainy burst or just lame?

Does charge proc the cond transfer trait?

This is what I wish to know. Has there been a change? Out is it just a marketing effort to make it seem like devs engage with the player base?

Engaged devs are a major selling point. I hope it lasts.

Is the recent surge in communication and outright honesty a flash in the pan to boost player engagement (and in turn HoT sales) or a change in policy/strategy?

I ask because post-BWE3 communication dried up to a trickle for the better part of three years.

This new wave is spectacular, and long may it continue. However, if it’s just a surge to get sales then that’s just sad.

Interesting.

I’ve found sceptre to still be underwhelming compared to axe/mm/lich, but I’ve yet to find a condi build I really enjoy.

Anyone got any good condi builds going?

Wait, what fraction of the bleed/torment stacks are you allowing to tick before you dump it?

With MoC, only use BiP when you have Putrid Mark up, plague signet is ready, or dagger 4 is in flight at Max range.

Without MoC, use it whenever, but you won’t be putting 2×10s torment on your opponent.

Not sure what’s hard to grasp. MoC differs from other traits in that it requires forethought and tactical play to maximise the benefit. If that isn’t your style, the other two traits are very, very powerful indeed.

I’m all for MoC. Will I use itnin every build? Nope. Is it suitable at all times? Nope. Does it provide a 20s heal and interesting tactical tradeoffs? Yes.

If it’s 61% of your healthbar, it’s 61% of someone else’s too.

Yeah, we need to transfer or consume conds to mitigate MoC. So what? That’s a valid playstyle, and not one which we struggle with. MoC adds depth. It requires thought and planning. I like it.

If you use BiP with a transfer, that’s 2 cond types the opponent has to cleanse rather than one.

It’s not like it’s rare to have traits that enforce or require a playstyle, and there are two traits at the same level which work with almost any build.

I say keep it. In fact, I’d like to see the self conditions become even more severe. That 2s cripple on CPC is pathetic. Would like 5×10s poison.

I think MoC is fine. I’m experimenting with it now.

BiP is 2 bleed plus 2 torment. Getting that onto the enemy, or feeding on it with CC, makes a big difference. The 2s cripple on CPC is inconsequential, so MoC adds complexity which is welcome.

I think we need to take some more time to chew over how we handle MoC and let the meta settle now CPC is worth a kitten .

Trying to fit in CPC, but need the blast finishers and damage from Bone Minions. Wurm has saved me too many times. Might give up Bone Fiend but his finisher AA is amazing. Double weakness procs.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAndWjc0QTN2VD+1AHOOwFEZvd3onb/FOIwBA-TZBFABC8IAEvMQJ7PswRAAgTAAA

This has been very good fun.

Conditions roll off you. Damage is solid, kite potential is huge, and the poison and poison fields from dead jagged horrors is hilarious. Reasonably tanky.

Jagged Horrors from Lich Form will poison everything. With might stacks, it becomes a lot of damage. With projectile finisher from Bone Fiend, it becomes a lot of weakness. Conditions? Not with your little buddies eating them.

Axe is pretty good, and double Unholy Feast can really change a team fight. Focus 4 has plenty of friendly to bounce off so you can cast from Max range and get the full damage in.

Spinal shivers with spinal shivers proc under 50% health can end a boon heavy opponent in a single cast.

Oh, flash DS liberally. Stability, prot and Unholy Feast. Especially before Lich form. Use DS to stomp where required, and as a spare stjnbreak.

I’m glad we have a counter. I don’t want to become the next elementalist, picked by scrubs and saturating tournaments, all the while waiting for the nerfhammer.

No thanks. That sucks. I’m happier being part of the rock paper scissors design, rather than sat outside it with 25 might stacks and water fields.

trlent.9607:

Reaper is so overpowered, especially condition reaper. It needs a hard nerf… my pu mesmer had a hard time vs a reaper necro running a condi build and fire spam in shroud. With duelist traits, a mesmer should effectively duel and defeat ANY class or player 1 on 1 with ease. Please fix reaper before launch because its not even close to fair now. It is borderline like stealth trapper condi thieves which kill you without ever being seen accept you can see them and they simply have 2 hp bars and burst you down with extreme damage

What? Why should you win every 1v1?!

Where is it written that you always winning a 1v1 is an indicator of balance or good design? What the actual kitten?

Hoping this is a troll post. If not, my god man.

Axe sucks.

Sceptre and warhorn with carrion in reaper is fine.

Right, so, on a 6 or 5 second cooldown we have:

• Leap Finisher (FINALLY FFS)
• Blind
• Several small hits
• Projectile destruction (basically invuln vs certain opponents/weapons)
• Chill (if traited)
• Boon corruption (if traited)
• Vuln (if traited chill on blind and vuln on chill)
• Decent damage (again, not great, but you’ve destroyed ranged opponent projectiles so you’ve delivered it while effectively partially invulnerable)

Every 5 or 6 seconds, depending on your traits.

You want to remove the one thing (i.e. dodging the final hit) which means this isn’t hilariously overpowered?!

I was wrecking face with this. Absolutely going to town on chumps left and right. It needs nothing. It needs a valid counter, it has a valid counter, and even when countered we still get the leap and the projectile destruction and the other hits.

I’m bored to heck and back of Spite/Reaping/Soul Reaper. BOOORING.

I’ve been mucking about with off-meta builds this BWE.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZ6kjGocTszGw2GgeTsANYSvsAwyKOF2CnhU5geQoC-TJxBwAc3f4ypAAwTAwbZAA

I’ve never tried poison as the primary source of damage before, nor Orrian runes. However, this seems to be very effective.

The reason I like this one is the sting in the proverbial tail – while Spite is a go-to for many builds, adding in Death Magic allows a reaper to enter DS at the same time as quickness procs.

This results in hilarity.

For larks, try:

Mark of Blood > Chillblains > RS2 (combo weakness, 8s base) > RS5 > RS4 (for AoE chill, though if poison field is still up that’s fun too). It’s good fun, and obvious other combos exist (Staff 4 for AoE weakness in teamfights).

However, the real fun starts when you’ve nearly lost. Either you proc quickness while healthyish, or the killing blow procs Unholy Sanctuary. If that happens, you can hit high burning stacks hilariously quickly. It’s like being a class that ANet cares about (i.e. guard or ele)

Pros:

• -10% damage from chilled
• -10% from poisoned
• Everyone is poisoned or chilled
• Last Gasp + 5s quickness = lolz
• Not dependent on might stacking

Cons:

• No might stacking (boooo)
• No escapes (as per)

I have tried the build with Spite instead of DM, and had roughly approximate results – the might stacking boosts burning and poison damage to high levels, which is effective. However, Unholy Sanctuary and quickness has caught a surprising number of players out.

What are your off-meta builds? The weird stuff that works?

Hmm.

So I wonder if they’ll align DS1 with RS1 (item rarity) or sigil proc in RS with DS or vice versa.

Or, knowing ANet, RS will suddenly change 6 months after we’ve gotten used to it

Could’ve sworn it was 900 in the first beta. Feels so limited.

From last BWE:

Hoelbrak for WvW
Strength for PvE
Aristocracy for condi builds

Experimented with Ice, found it interesting but ultimately chill has little to no impact in PvE, even with the +7% damage buff. It simply can’t compete with might stacking. This may change if planned changes to chill on PvE mobs goes live.

Svabir was worse than useless. Has the same problem as vamp runes in DS.

Toughness and vitality should be present in a 1:1 ratio for Max EHP vs white damage.

Personally I would use cavalier gear but as it’s not PTF I don’t bother; I’m going pure Valkyrie for reaper; with s few pieces of soldier for some toughness. I’m just not going to wear any great without power as the primary stat.

If cavalier was PTF instead of TPF I’d mix it with Valkyrie, but as it is right now I won’t bother.

I think it’s too early to tell.

Not many skills do much when interrupted.

There’s a time and place for every skill, especially this one. I like to tag thieves/mes with it when I think they’re gonna stealth.

Life siphon is 360 degrees, resumes after evade, shifts 1v1 5khp in your favour, 8k if you have SoV on your target. It also tracks through stealth.

Dunno what else you want from a skill.

There are three things:

PvE is currently predicated around offence and using invuln frames to bypass mob damage. In the new content, I’m hoping HP tanking is as viable.

Break bars aren’t understood. A dev mentioned reworking chill/blind for bosses, which combined with the new break bars could give us something to do in PvE. This would make sense, as the thief elite spec seems to use blind a lot too.

Our vuln stacking is off the frigging hook as reaper, and we can self stack might to 25 very easily, plus we have finishers and an axe/sceptre rework coming. We also have a fair amount of other utility now which may see a purpose in the new content we’re not prepared for; spawning 5 pets, having unlockable attacks etc.

So as Ljusa said, get out there and prove us worthy of the new meta.

Yup. Surprised more people aren’t reaching the point where the inanity isn’t obvious.

So I wanted to get some stuff off’f my chest about the UI and game design in general.

The overriding sentiment (again repeated in the raid announcements) is that we’re to play the game, not the UI. That’s fine, to a point. However, ANet have taken several steps (or failed to take certain other steps) which makes something of a mockery of this design philosophy.

a) Cosmetics/legendary combinations which prevent the player from seeing much of anything, much less animations. 2 or 3 players with large character models, wings and trail weapons (especially Twilight) completely obfuscate any animations/visual prompts as to condition states etc

b) There are key visual indicators entirely absent, or almost impossible to see. Putting floating healthbars above players might “ruin the immersion” and encourage “playing the UI”, but the current system makes it impossible to work out when your teammates need heals. I know, this isn’t a holy trinity game, but still… it’s important information which is absent from GW2 but present in other MMOs.

c) ANet sell cosmetics which mean visual identification of classes requires examination of the GUI. The recent royal guard outfit (which btw is odd on Asura – looks like I’ve got a window on my forehead) and other outfits force a player to either look at player character ability use or the icon next to the player’s name to work out what’s going on.

So, given that ANet’s commitment to “play the game, not the UI” is patchy at best, could we please have the basic MMO UI functions such as healthbars so we can play better? We can of course use VOIP (and do in WvW) to work out when heals are required, but this information shouldn’t be hidden because some designer has a kitten for not having a visible UI.

Also, can we please cut cosmetic crap like wings from “competitive” game modes? As it is, in a WvW situation 4-5 players with large models and wings blocks the view to the extent that you’re reduced to counting name badges to work out zerg size. If we’re supposed to be able to play without referring to the UI, at least make it possible for us to see the kittening thing.

Fire proc can’t crit? Did not know that.

So Blood + Force? Even with valk + crit traits? I’m thinking the focus trait for PvE DPS, plus Close to Death, plus Force, plus Strength or Scholar…

Since we’ve got a lot of maths people in here, how does GS RS1 compare to staff RS1?

guildabd.6529:

My suggestion to improve scepter AA:

1# chain: 2 stacks of bleeding.
2# chain: 2 stacks of poison.
3# chain: corrupt a boon.

Hahahahahahahah

Oh my word. No. Just no. Never. Not in this or any other lifetime. No with a side of nope, on a salad of not with a garnish of now way. This is the single most absurdly OP suggestion I’ve seen since the very first beta weekend.

OK so.

Assuming valk + 50% crit (be that either of our crit traits) + scholar + bloodlust on one weapon, is adding a sigil or fire or a sigil of force going to add more damager over time?

I’m guessing sof will do more damage, but with close to death and crit modifiers I’m not so sure.

Huh. Guess the addition of forge pets finally motivated ANet.

AFTER THREE KITTENING YEARS

With respect, you’re asking the wrong question.

It follows that if the devs were capable of fixing this, they would. Furthermore, it follows that if the minion behaviour was reliable and explainable, then they would explain it.

Given that neither of the above have happened, we must move to the third and final option; the skills must be redesigned to take into account the poor pathing and logic.

What this means is unclear, but it is the only remaining option.

2 vuln and 1-3 might on hit with cleave and LF gen (plus heal if BB).

My god.

Plus we’ll have a leap on a 6s CD… So we’re nin a better place than we’ve ever been.

And as to sustain in 1vN, SA with trait is 9s of near invincibility in DS.

Life leeching won’t give us the escape options.

What it will do is completely break NvN team fights.

We suck at escaping. I can live with that given how outrageous we are in 1v1 and NvN.

In WvW or sPVP with allies, it makes us a monster. That’s when we struggle – in focus situations. The boonspam from guards etc mean we can start PvP with enough LF for shroud.

I’ve had 20% LF from just being near 2 guards in sPvP, and while this doesn’t help solo 1v1, we don’t struggle as a class in 1v1 anyway. Much less so in RS. Plus we can take the HP/LF from being near friendlies into 1v1 matches.

We need to see how BB pans out. It might not be much when it’s just from our own might stacking, but it adds up fast when you’re near other players.

We’re fine in 1v1 and have been given the tools to be useful in NvN. We can survive for a while in 1vN, and in melee 1vN encounters our cleave combined with BB/LF on hit makes us formidable.

Let’s wait and see. I have e a feeling BB will be mandatory for WvW/sPvP, and very powerful outside it with even just might stacking.

Hang on – we have insane sustain from Blighters Boon and 2 new finishers/1 new combo field in RS alone (never mind GS finishers/fields) and there are people whining that we don’t also get life leech in RS?

My word. Let’s see how this pans out – as a power necro with might stacks and whirl finisher in poison field I got 3.5k ticks from poison alone. Life leech isn’t required here, we’re currently monstrous as it is.

RS whirl can be used with our new ice field or a poison field to stack conds quite nicely.

With 25 might stacks I was getting absurd poison damage from the 11 poison plus poison bolts stack; alternatively, in an ice field it can be used to spam chills around you for soft CC against many players.

I don’t think it’s meant for 1vN as much as it’s meant to apply either poison or chill and poison to our enemies.

Look, I get it’s not able to heal us in DS, but it does give us a potent finisher which increases the options open to us. We should be very grateful for this.

Remove cool down please.

Cherry Red MX keyboard user here, and I’m fine with flashing.

So how does one aim it currently, allowing for whatever shoddy system it’s using at the moment?

Here’s to another 3 years of a summonable elite that can’t swim, watches you die and is never mentioned by developers.

If anything typifies ANet’s utter disdain for us and inability to code in their own engine, it’s Stompy The Brick.

I thought geomancy and Doom were incompatible.

Not too hard to test. Go into the mists, take off your amulet and runes, cast signet of suffering and see if you crit at 20% or 5%.

ANet aren’t interested.

They ignore suggestion threads, whine threads and everything in between. They have their own balance agenda (as witnessed by the years in which necro is useless in PvE) and will make decisions without explanation or apparently sense (chilling darkness).

I’m not trying to kitten post here, or make you feel bad. It’s just that ANet have repeatedly demonstrated that they do not read these forums, that they do not care for our opinion, and that they will act without communicating with the community or taking on feedback.

At this point, if you’ve not realised that then there’s something deeply wrong.

That’s not to say discussing it with other players isn’t a fun distraction, but suggestions threads like this won’t change a thing. Time better spent working out if you can discover a meta build or something.

That condition cleaned you keep using at the end of each fight is seriously OP.