Guild Wars 2

Agent Noun.7350:

DarkForcE.9210:

Sounds interest to me. What if I go Marauder armor and zerker accessories + weapon

I know dps will loss , but gain more survivability while maintain dps from zerker gears

You’ll basically get a midpoint between Marauder and Berserker. Which is perfectly fine.

Here’s the thing: you do 0 DPS if you’re dead. If you need to lower your offensive stats to get some more Health so you don’t die, that’s a DPS gain for you, because you’ll spend less time on the floor.

This is true, but this is not good advice for raid environments, in which the damage multipliers will really help with full Berserker’s for a base to multiply. Also, you rely on your team for survival in raid settings.

For open world, going more vitality and some healing power for barriers is totally fine if going for self sufficiency.

Hey all, bit of a cross post from Raiding section but figured it might be more relevant here.

We have a Raid Training Discord that is in more need of Trainers so we can expand to provide training runs to a larger audience.

Here is the link:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/NA-GW2-Raid-Training-Discord-Server/first#post6733767

TL:DR low stress, non-judgmental learning environment for new, experienced, and seasoned raiders in which players progress in experience gained with individual bosses that have been sorted into difficulty tiers.

Once we get more trainers we will broaden it out to the general public even further! Right now we are over 650 members at this time.

Thanks We definitely want to open it up to everyone to join in the near future!

Trainer Rules

We have a few ground rules for our trainers, and if these agree with your personal ethics on leading raids, please PM me or reply to this post:

Experience is Helpful, Not Required – While being able to already complete a full clear is nice, we are very fine with “newer” Trainers who are very familiar with the lower difficulty Tiered bosses running training runs on them! Or perhaps you are a very experienced raider who is less experienced at leading others? Don’t worry, our Trainers will help Train you to Train and will provide support and assistance!

No Public Shaming for Low Damage/Poor Builds – Keep it to private messages or receive consent from the person before discussing it openly. Always approach these situations as opportunities to improve, never to shame.

Calling Out Mechanic Mistakes can be OK – Calling out mechanic mistakes mid-fight is perfectly fine in Training runs so players can learn, but be polite and non-judgmental about it. E.G. “See how he was teleported? That is because he stood in Cairn’s Red Circles/VG’s Blue Circles.”

We Encourage Trainers to … Train! – We strongly desire to see our trainers run at least one Training run per week to maintain their Trainer status.

Encourage Good Play and Smart Builds, but Don’t Meta-Harp – It is fine to explain why roles/professions are META, and it is fine to encourage others to improve their damage and role mechanics, and help them improve their builds, but we do not enforce META builds as a requirement of our raids. A kill is a kill.

Encourage Role-Flexibility – Please have at least two or three professions and distinct roles you can bring as the Trainer. Part of training is to stress the importance of having role flexibility to those you train so that compositions can be more fluid and adjustable, particularly for the harder fights. Again, we don’t enforce the meta, but you also don’t want to have 7 Healers and 1 Tank and 2 DPS roles!

Consult Discord Staff in Emergencies – If you have any incidents, please address them with staff. We will support you and help you work through any issues you find while training!

If you would like to help others learn fights and work towards their Legendary Armor, we would love to have you! Please reply below, send a PM, or find me in-game (Swiftwynd.1685) and we will contact you as soon as possible to invite you to the server and show you around.

For everyone else, as soon as we have more trainers up and running, we will open this up to anyone on Reddit / the Forums.

Thank you all!

- Swiftwynd.1685

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6xir8j/introducing_guild_wars_2_raid_training_a_discord/

Hello everyone!

Guild Wars 2 Raid Training [NA Only] is a Discord server that has been operating since June to help provide a space for players who are new to raiding to have a jumping off point, and for experienced players to be able to share their knowledge and find other equally experienced players.

We believe we fill a spot somewhere between the toxic LFG “link 150+ LI Exp Only” mess and those who are already lucky enough to have a static group to run with. Instead, we aim to provide a network for players of varying degrees of experience to form up and become more experienced in a low stress learning environment. We are Guild-Agnostic, meaning anyone from anywhere can join us without having to formally join a guild and “rep” with us, so feel free to bring your guild members along for the ride.

Size and Scope: The TL:DR

We currently have over 600 members in our discord server and expect to grow larger in the near future. We conduct our runs every day of the week, often running two or three runs simultaneously if the demand is there and trainers are available. While we would love to expand faster, we are in need of more trainers to accommodate our growing population. Read more on this down below if you are interested!

Tier System – Experienced Based Progression

We use a “Tier” structure to track learning progress with each member that is based off of “your personal experience with each boss encounter.” We have a spreadsheet that we use to help players and Trainers keep track of each player’s “progress” in learning each individual boss. Each Raid boss or encounter has been sorted into one of four difficulty Tiers based on our interpretations of the mechanical difficulties and damage thresholds required to successfully complete the fight consistently. Once a player finds “all of the bosses within a Tier” as trivial, easy, and can clear them with very high consistency, we graduate that player into that Tier so that anyone who is looking for someone to bring to a raid knows that this person “knows their stuff” for any boss “At or Below” their Tier and so trainers will know that this person likely would benefit from training runs for bosses “One Tier Above” their current Tier.

The Two Types of Runs

Training Run – This is a run in which we expect to spend time explaining mechanics and helping players learn the encounter. The goal is not to achieve a quick, easy kill, but rather to get a first kill or at least learn the mechanics! Training Runs are generally conducted on content that is “One Tier Above your Tier” to give players a chance to learn the bosses and encounters that are “a bit” harder than what they are already proficient at killing each week. These can be conducted every day of the week, but generally occur more frequently from Wednesday to Sunday.

Clear Run – This is a run in which we expect to spend minimal time sorting out mechanic roles, and we expect everyone present to “know what to do” and to clear the fight in as few pulls as realistically possible. Clear Runs require that you be “In or Above This Tier” to participate. This is especially useful for players simply looking to get their quick kills completed early during the week to save more time to progress on Training Runs for bosses they are less experienced with. These can be conducted every day of the week, but generally occur on Monday reset and Tuesday to complete anything remaining from Monday reset.

Trainers Needed!

With all of the above said, the primary issue we have run into is that the ratio of Trainers to Trainees is out of sync: we have a lot of people interested in joining our runs, but this has exceeded our current supply of available trainers!
We have been hesitant about posting on the official forums and Reddit due to our relative lack of trainers, so for the time being we would prefer to hold off on linking the Discord directly (also, hello potential Reddit Hug-of-Death!) until we can build up our roster of trainers so that we can provide training to a larger community.

Dude op doesnt know what he’s talking about… i had plenty of 40k+ DJs.

Had one point on the legendary bounty that i got off 3 djs in a single Signet pop by using roll for initiative after two Djs. Its extremely potent damage, and you dont have to camp ridle while building charges.

Mantra of Command has a nice ring to it. Mainly wanted a Phantasm how ever to Synergize with existing traits a little and to have a neat visual but a Mantra could also work just as well:

Mantra of Command: Channel your mantra, refreshing all of your Phantasm abilities and fully Healing your Phantasms. While Charged, your phantasms will not dissipate for 10 seconds after they lose their target.

Phantasmal Command: Command your phantasms to interrupt their current action and attack the target. This now becomes their target.

Visually, this would look like a phantasm carrying a phantasmal banner, who would point at foes when executing illusory command.

Hey all. Brainstormed a new elite idea for core mesmer to fianlly fill in one of their gaps, the lack of an elite skill for their illusions utility line.

Below is an example of how power mesmer and condi mesmer could function outside of Mirage at the cost of taking this elite. It would really have strong implications for general PVE and fractals, and some good raid usage as well.

Phantasmal Commander

Elite Illusion

1s cast time, 30 seconds recharge on death.

Summon a permanent phantasm that follows you and commands your phantasms. While active, phantasms you summon will persist for 10 seconds after their original target is destroyed, and your maximum number of illusions is increased to 4 (commander taking this slot), and you cannot generate clones.

Flip skill:

Illusory Command

Instant cast
3 second recharge.
3 ammo, 15 second ammo recharge
1,200 range, unblockable, unobstructable.

Order your Phantasmal Commander to command your phantasms to strike the target, interrupting their current action, resetting their internal cool down, and forcing them to attack the target, which is now their assigned target

Justine.6351:

But what is the decay rate math stuff?

Instant decay?
Slight delayed decay window?
Refreshing delayed decay window on reapplication of barrier?

Linear decay?
Exponential decay?

%based decay?
Static based decay?

Idk if anyone has looked into this yet. Idk if it’s going to be obvious enough to matter regardless of build.

Barrier begins to decay 2 seconds after the last barrier was applied.

It rapidly drains at a rate that, 6 seconds after the last barrier was applied, a full barrier at 50% of your health will have fully depleted.

Think of it as an inverse of the out of combat healing basically.

Professor Sprout.1560:

Back when I was following the info on https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/ I remember coming across comments from persons with supposed insider info which suggested that the Renegade was initially very strong, but was left in a state which the testers found unsatisfactory after some nerfs. It is very likely that converting Kalla’s Fervour from a group to a personal buff was one of these nerfs. At the risk of being infracted I won’t provide you a direct link, but if you search around for long enough I’m sure you’ll find some leakozorus or other giving these remarks.

As such even if Anet were to admit that the core mechanic of the class is in need of review (and I’m of the opinion that it does https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Citadel-Order-Suggestions/) I suspect that reverting the change and allowing the class to share Fervour is something that they have decided via their playtesting not to do.

This is what i was arraid of as well.

It would be painfully easy to balance by locking it behind a grandmaster and sharing less than we personally can stack.

10% condi and crit damage would be “good but not broken” and would allow you to run druid or renegade.

You would likely never run both because there are diminishing returns if you stack too many supports with too few dps to actually benefit from the buffs.

E.g. if you have a healer druid, chrono, Renegade, and a might stacker, that leaves 1 spot for a dps.

Unless the entire group is contributing really good damage, you would g3t more total dps out of swapping the druid or renegade out for another dps, unless 1 person stacking 25 might over the whole raid becomes a thing and warriors get to bring banners as a dps slot, or unless kalla can be the might stacker as well.

They really just need to revert it and deal more with the druid problem. Id say nerf GotL to 1%, reduce druid healing outside of pvp by 20%, and make druid heals target 10 players and spirits passive target 10 players (but not their boon share.)

That would give the druid a better niche of the raidwide healer and damage buffer with making room fo4 other healers and offensive supports.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Just a short reminder here – alacrity does not stack in duration. If you overcast alacrit at start you’ll end up running on empty and without alacrity real fast.

Mostly wrong.

From the wiki

Alacrity cannot be applied to characters that already have over 40 seconds of Alacrity applied to them. This limit increases to 60 seconds for mesmers with the Improved Alacrity Improved Alacrity trait. Additionally there is an application cap of 9 alacrity applications.

messiah.1908:

Swiftwynd.1685:

messiah.1908:

Swiftwynd.1685:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I don’t know about removal, but trimming it would definitely be advised, especially for Citadel Bombardment and orders from above.

Bombardment already has a 15s cooldown and lack of any physical damage component holding it back. 40 energy is just too much especially since we need that same energy for weapon skills and utilities.

Orders from above are basically 4s alacrity on 20s cooldown. 6 if traited.
Now let’s remove the magic and look under the hood.
4s “alacrity” = 1.33s shorter cooldowns for those affected. Once every 20s. Would you pay 30 energy for that? I wouldn’t.

Well, not saying its perfect, but my ventari healer rev will love the alacrity. Using Orders allowed me to maintain permanent alacrity from range, something a chronomancer cannit do due to shield phantasms.

While this isnt extremely relevent now, this might be super important in new raids and give ventari revs a new niche, along with kalas elite to use up the rest of the energy before swapping back to Ventari.

It will absolutely have a place on my raid support for some fights.

2 sec every 20 sec which cost 30 nrg. no ty

Wrong.

You build up alacrity in ventari, and shift to off legend, get 6 seconds of alacrity to last you just enough time to swap back into ventari to continue to receive alacrity.

You then swap back to off legend after ventari heal spam and continue the chain. Gives you a bit extra energy to, for example, summon kallas elite or heal.

This can all be done at range, something chronos cannot replicate easily.

ok ventari you say – every 2 sec i get 3 sec alacrity. which means every 1 sec i get 3 sec alacrity. build it up with the cost of 20 nrg. swap to gain 50 nrg and waste 30 nrg which give 6 sec alacrity. than w8 about 9 sec to swap back and only with 20 nrg left to do nothing but w8 for more nrg to use kalla skills .

its better to stay in ventari and heal mean while. to gain 2 sec more alacrity which means 0.66 cd. common

the skills should enhance our nrg abilities not alacrity like gives back 50% nrg with 40 sec cd.

Nope

Plenty of situations where the heal from Kalla + her elite would actually be worth weaving in. It does maintain the Alacrity just fine, and you also arent considering that you actually have 100 total energy to use over the duration of being in Kalla’s stance for the 10 seconds, 50 of which is front loaded on swapping.

We consume 30 Energy with Orders From Above, and 10 with the Heal.

This leaves us with a spare 60 energy to use before we have to swap. Kalla’s elite draws -9 energy per second, so as long as we pause for a brief moment, you can upkeep Kalla’s elite after the Heal and OFA for the remainder of your time in Kalla until you shift back into Ventari.

Assuming the Heal spirit isnt interrupted, its not bad heal over time + the elite’s life steal and additional damage.

then its back to Ventari to resume.

Ravezaar.4951:

Yea this is an issue, cause I believe Scourge,Firebrand,Spellbreaker and Holosmith will be nerfed pre-release and I also think Deadeye wont. And there is my biggest concern cause Deadeye wrecks Scourge, its not even a contest and tho deadeye may be worse then Daredevil for.ex when it comes to taking out Scourge it does so without breaking a sweat…

this really concerns me

I’m actually exceptionally happy that this counter exists.

If Scourge didnt have Deadeye in the picture to keep them in check, it could get extremely messy.

I hope the keep Scourge as potent as it currently is, while maintaing deadeye and power longbow ranger as its natural counter.

I want a Healing power version of Trailblazer. If we get a Healing Power / Condi Damage + Expertise / Vitality set, my Raid build for my Scourge supportive damage dealer hybrid will be completely perfected

Vitality is actually incredibly important for Scourge to be able to pump out their Shade abilities off of cooldown, which vastly improves their ability to sustain their shrouds against big hits that they predict.

Hello fellow Scourges-to-be.

I’ve been mathing out what I want for my Scourge’s “damaging as much as possible while still supporting with barriers” build idea.

This got me thinking, there isnt really a 3 or 4 stat combination in game that exactly matches what I’d desire.

The following is an example of the “best” stat combination I could come up with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQFA2CV3Y3NwfDjuha+AbcAQ/gR4QB-TRyXABUrEEBlYBr8IUdAAsPwcXAgGXYIW1fo7BAEAABYmzMAMexLexLexzMn5Mn5MnZpAgZnG-e

If my math is correct, that combination allows me to hit 100% condition duration.

Now, with that said, if we had an alternative to Trailblazer to equip, I’d love to have:

New stat combination:

Mystic – Condition Damage and Healing Power, Vitality and Expertise.

With the above combination, I would be able to trade off that excessive Toughness for some much desired Healing Power to pump out stronger barriers. If my theoretical “Mystic” stat combination existed, my build would have 1356 Healing Power, with the same stats more or less on that sheet minus the toughness. The condition damage would be slightly lower due to the loss of toughness for the crystal’s conversion.

With the above stats, my trait for Scourge would be:

Fell Beacon – This would give me the remaining condition duration along with the 15% from the shades’ minor trait to achieve 100% condition duration.

Desert Empowerment + Sand Savant – The primary traits for the entire build. This would allow me to pulse out 2669.35 Barriers across 10 members of my raid each time I use Manifest Sand Shade at no cost every 6.6 seconds with Alacrity.

This also, at a very low realistic cost due to my vitality, would allow for me to use Sand Swell on all 10 members for 3141 additional barriers, with a 6.4 second recharge, or 4.2 second recharge, at a meager cost of only 2487 Life Force per use, which is literally nothing with my vitality.

3141 + 2669 = 5810 barrier easily applied across the entire raid of 10 people.

Want an interesting number to compare that to? 5822.5 is the minimum “max” barrier a base health Elementalist, Thief, and Guardian can receive.

So to put that into context, every 6 seconds with Alacrity, I can keep the entire raid’s worth of “squishiest” possible people completely max barrier for any incoming spike.

On top of this, I would be able to heal 5 allies around me with Transfusion (which will be spammed off of cool-down, which is 8 seconds in this build with Alacrity) for a continuous 700 damage each pulse, or 6289.2 healing per use to 5 targets, myself included. Bonus effect: I would be able to pull Downed allies to me every 8 seconds, and quickly revive them with my Blood Well trait.

Additionally, each time I use and then complete Desert Shroud, I would heal everyone around me for 2748 and partially revive them for 10% if downed. I can use Desert Shroud every 10.5 seconds, and it ends after 6 seconds, so once its rolling I will do this heal every 10.5 seconds.

As for the offensive portion of the build, every single time I use any of my Sand Shade abilities, I will apply a 10 target area Burn for 6 seconds and a Torment for 4 seconds. My Desert Shroud will apply 7 Burns for 6 seconds each every 10.5 seconds.

All of the above Shroud skills are instant cast, with the exception of Manefest Sand Shade.

This means that in addition to the above, I’m doing my normal necromancer condition damage applications, admittedly weaker than they could be due to not taking Curses, but they still are not insignificant damage applications.

With all that taken into account, I could easily see my build functioning as a mass enemy condi murder machine that also supports its raid with a mass barrier application machine. And this isnt even considering the Utilities or Boon Corruption effects that can apply more torment. I still have a strong Epidemic option as well in addition to the above.

This build would do amazingly well on encounters with a significant number of adds that you want to burn down while sustaining your group’s defenses

Here are some raid situations I’m looking to use this on:

Xera: Easiest thing in the world to cleave down her crystals and adds while still protecting allies and contributing to boss damage.

Bandit Trio: So much aoe to make cleaving down the adds that much faster.

Sloth: Slublings mass genocide and avoiding his Shake damage in case mesmer flubs the distort

Gorseval: cleaving all of his spirits to avoid entangle being eatten by one, and also hitting all four of the split phase spirits for great aoe damage + Epidemic to make quick work of that phase or any orbs in the area. Also, during the ground pound, I can keep the entire raid topped off with barrier spam to allow the dps to have less retaliation damage coming in.

Sabatha: easily dealing with any of her adds so they don’t accidentally kick someone into the flame wall, and also Epidemicing her underlings to spread those condis to her once she comes back in. Barriers can let us ignore a few bad aoe time bombs as well.

Vale Guardian: Laughing at all greens and just eating the damage and healing right back up thanks to barriers.

Mathias: Assuming I can prevent a potential one shot from his big nuke, the barrier uptime might prove useful. The constant area healing and condi cleanse on entire raid will help a lot with ice phase. The entire fight is just a slow burn survival fest, and the ability to revive people almost instantly and pull them out of kitten with Transfusion will be godly.

Cairn + MO = Complete easy mode with this build + the in combat portal (if they fix its duration) will be invaluable in letting people get to where they need to go with minimal dps loss.

messiah.1908:

Swiftwynd.1685:

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I don’t know about removal, but trimming it would definitely be advised, especially for Citadel Bombardment and orders from above.

Bombardment already has a 15s cooldown and lack of any physical damage component holding it back. 40 energy is just too much especially since we need that same energy for weapon skills and utilities.

Orders from above are basically 4s alacrity on 20s cooldown. 6 if traited.
Now let’s remove the magic and look under the hood.
4s “alacrity” = 1.33s shorter cooldowns for those affected. Once every 20s. Would you pay 30 energy for that? I wouldn’t.

Well, not saying its perfect, but my ventari healer rev will love the alacrity. Using Orders allowed me to maintain permanent alacrity from range, something a chronomancer cannit do due to shield phantasms.

While this isnt extremely relevent now, this might be super important in new raids and give ventari revs a new niche, along with kalas elite to use up the rest of the energy before swapping back to Ventari.

It will absolutely have a place on my raid support for some fights.

2 sec every 20 sec which cost 30 nrg. no ty

Wrong.

You build up alacrity in ventari, and shift to off legend, get 6 seconds of alacrity to last you just enough time to swap back into ventari to continue to receive alacrity.

You then swap back to off legend after ventari heal spam and continue the chain. Gives you a bit extra energy to, for example, summon kallas elite or heal.

This can all be done at range, something chronos cannot replicate easily.

But Scourge can 25 might stack rather easily.

Renegade would need 100% might duration blasting mace 2 and 3 with Heroic command off cooldown to maintain.

As far as power creep, they should take away the condi damage buffing of grace of the land and make it purely for power. That would create more design space for Renegades

Id propose the following:

Grandmaster: Lasting Legacy

Kalla’s Fervor you inspire lasts longer. When you gain Kalla’s Ferver, share it with up to 4 additional allies in 900 radius. Increase your personal maximum potential stacks of Kalla’s Fervor. Might you apply lasts 50% longer.

50% duration increase.
Personal stacks 10.
Allied stacks 5.
Might duration +50%.

Additionally, it has the exact same icon design and color pallet of Alacrity … there is literally 0% chance this wasn’t originally designed to be shared to others.

If this was intented to be self only it could have just been a trait looking icon like Berserkers Power for warrior…

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kalla%27s_Fervor

Its very clear from the marketing video for the renegade and from the skill descriptions that the original design intent for Kallas Fervor was to be a group supporting offensive stacking unique effect.

“Boost allies with her fervor” https://youtu.be/bAjVtBlRfAk

Directly lifted quote from the introduction video.

This also help explain the very awkwardly worded F2 skill enhancing trait:

“Kalla’s Fervor you inspire lasts longer. Increase your maximum potential stacks of Kalla’s Fervor.”

Clearly, one does not inspire themselves, meaning the original use for the wording on this trait was to improve your ability to inspire others with Kallas Fervor.

Is there any reason why our clearly very offensive supportive specialization cannot buff their allies extremely well at the cost of taking a grandmaster trait?

Even if we could share a 10 stack of Kallas Fervor, we would still have issues being taken over a Druid due yo how overloaded they are on offensive enhancement.

If we could heavily pump up critical hit damage and condi damage, Renegades would actually be highly sought after for raids and other content.

Id be fine with keeping the ferocity buff just as high as it is, and lower the condi damage buff a bit, at least on our shared Fervor. This might bring some power builds, such as Reaper, Soul Beast, and Power Mesmer a bit more into the meta, and would strongly synergize with Power Rev as well with how easy it is to get crit chance with Kalla.

What fo you guys think about this?

Id even be fine if we had to use our F2 to actually share our stacks.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I don’t know about removal, but trimming it would definitely be advised, especially for Citadel Bombardment and orders from above.

Bombardment already has a 15s cooldown and lack of any physical damage component holding it back. 40 energy is just too much especially since we need that same energy for weapon skills and utilities.

Orders from above are basically 4s alacrity on 20s cooldown. 6 if traited.
Now let’s remove the magic and look under the hood.
4s “alacrity” = 1.33s shorter cooldowns for those affected. Once every 20s. Would you pay 30 energy for that? I wouldn’t.

Well, not saying its perfect, but my ventari healer rev will love the alacrity. Using Orders allowed me to maintain permanent alacrity from range, something a chronomancer cannit do due to shield phantasms.

While this isnt extremely relevent now, this might be super important in new raids and give ventari revs a new niche, along with kalas elite to use up the rest of the energy before swapping back to Ventari.

It will absolutely have a place on my raid support for some fights.

It will absolutely have presence in raids. 25 might stacking, perma fury, and other steal boons tossed in, on top of potentially doing all that might across 10 targets. Hot kitten .

Also, everyone is viewing deadeye with the current content. The moment the devs start creating new raid encounters that provide incentives for, or require, ranged combat, the better specs like deadeye will fare.

We never needed a ranged ps warrior before, or a ranged alacrity stacker, but now deadeye and renegade can perform both while warrior and chronomancer cannot.

I will be absolutely shocked if the raid team doesnt incorporate this into new raids, given the diversity we saw in raid wing 4.

apharma.3741:

Swiftwynd.1685:

Feanor.2358:

Piercing Shards and Bolt to the Heart at the same time? Yeah right, seems legit.

You do realize you can already do this right? On base elementalist?

Water attuned – use Conjured Lightning hammer with Piercing Shards + Bolt to the Heart is any attunement.

This would expand that to potentially any attunement ability, which certainly is an improvement, but its not like this doesn’t already exist in some form lol.

Yeah he’s a bit mis informed but you are also not thinking entirely of what the OP is asking. If the OP had his way you would get double Piercing Shards for being fully attuned and bolt to the heart for a 73% damage modifier in total. Which is a 29% damage boost, something ele doesn’t need.

I don’t think thats remotely what he was asking, unless i read it wrong.

I think he was asking to receive all of the “effects” of being attuned (minor traits, major traits etc) when you have an attunement on your off-hand as if it was in your main hand.

That is to say, having Air on your off hand would still give the precision but from the mastery, where as currently it will not.

Feanor.2358:

Piercing Shards and Bolt to the Heart at the same time? Yeah right, seems legit.

You do realize you can already do this right? On base elementalist?

Water attuned – use Conjured Lightning hammer with Piercing Shards + Bolt to the Heart is any attunement.

This would expand that to potentially any attunement ability, which certainly is an improvement, but its not like this doesn’t already exist in some form lol.

Anyone else have any success with the staff during the preview weekend?

Neither for me, I’m still super in love with Staff Weaver If I do a more sustainy sword build for pvp, I’ll likely go Focus though. It has a lot of lightning rod synergy.

If you thought scepter burst worked well with lighting rod and tempests defense, you should have tried staff with an arcane air build.

Starting in earth/air, you fire an arcane blast to immobilize then start channeling pile driver and swap to air earth during cast.

This triigers: air minor bolt, pile driver hits, dazes 2 seconds, procs lighting rod, and you have 2 seconds to follow up with arcane wave arcane blast and lighting surge from staff 2 to get 20% more damage from tempests defense.

The initial arcane blast also gives Ferocity, and with berserkers amulet i was hotting almost 270% crit damage. Oh, we also get fury mid swap for bett3r crit chance on the burst..

I call this the Railgun combo.

This is the new king of range burst combos

Abysmal, Absolutely Needs Improvements

Good, Modest Improvements would be nice

Mediocre – Needs Improvement

Hello,

I played a combined total of about 16 hours of Staff Weaver during the preview, specifically in PvP.

In working with the skill set, I wanted to provide some specific feedback of what is “working well” and what could perhaps need some modest tweaks, and in the case of most of the Water/X combinations, need some very significant value adjustments or additional functionality to be useful for damage or support builds.

If needed, these could be PVP/PVE split, but I feel like the suggested numbers are very “fair” and are compromises between existing skills, such as comparing healing numbers to Geyser or Water Globe for similar skills. I hope some of the more “conceptual” changes are liked for the additional utility and functionality.

Each additional utility/suggestion is designed to provide better combo potential and “flow” of the play style. Other suggestions are to add Fields or Finishers where appropriately needed, which often also synergize with build options.

For example “What would benefit Fire/Air and Air/Fire kits if we werent to add something to Plasma Blast?”

Answer: adding a short area “Pull” to Plasma Blast after it explodes, allowing it to collapse enemies inward to either Lava Font / Static Filed combo them, or to Lightning Surge + Meteor Shower them. Also, its totally in need of a Blast finisher to combo with Lava Font and Static Field.

Now, on to specific skills and combinations that were extremely fun and rewarding:

The Really Good! No changes needed.

cursE.1794:

Good look planning 4-7 seconds ahead like “yeah in 5.6 seconds that ranger is gonna shoot me, better prepare my focus earth skills.”

obligatory get good? Use Unravel or, seeing a ranger in the distance, prep earth first so you will have it soon.

I do this on my staff build. If i know im going to enter a ranged dangerous zone soon, i prep earth, use earth again, shield, then swap air and prepare my counter ranged assault.

Its GLORIOUS to see a ranger get merced by this.

Nyx.6532:

Swiftwynd.1685:

The Rainbow Railgun:

Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.

Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)

Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)

Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health

Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:

Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.

Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.

Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.

For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.

Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.

The bonus crit damage gets unreal.

you tried this in practice?

tempest won’t activated as it is an immob which isn’t covered by it (unless you get the stun down, then see them stand stupid for 2 seconds).

ferocity from arcane skills trait doesn’t stack (only the largest apply).

you are putting all your eggs in one basket, and it all depends on the enemy being 100% glass without a single defensive trait, skill or stats (any of these will negated this attempt to snipe.
or him just moving away as you are rooted while casting, and there is no “range indicator” so guess the distance).

one of the big issues for staff is that the range, while long, is no longer than so many other classes and lower than rangers which will try and snipe you out. (while being slower to attack than any other class, and not having the ability to keep people at distance)
the majority of the staff skills are not very good alone and require you to land full combo’s which is something you will rarely have the possibility to stack up in a close fight.

ps: and imo other classes will do this a lot better

I used this for over 10 hours so far.

Its exceptionally fun and I feel like im growing better with it the more I practice, learning good fall backs for when the burst is negated. The main issue, as always with staff, is learning how to counter melee engage by thief et all.

Worst is the new warrior spec as they have the invulnerability + sustain + stickiness that makes them very hard to shake with traditional means.

That said, I’ve been annihilating melee thief/guardians/Deadeye snipers.

Rangers/warriors/engineers with excessive blocks/reflects/autoinvulnerability are always the bane of huge spike builds, but it excells at taking out Necromancers, Mesmers, other Eles, guardians, Revenants, and plenty of other builds if you get the jump on them.

Best part is Weaver staff does tempests “dps” cleaving downed foes job way better thanks to the ranged cleave options + 270% bonus crit damage. This 5k lavafonts and 4K meteors are deadly if you are super duper ignored.

The thing is, the Railgun combo is very, very subtle. I dropped a warrior from full health with it because he thought he could just “take” an Air staff 2 and just follow up and get on me, because the change up animation is identical. He dropped. We messaged each other and had a good laugh about that one later, as he was trying a more offensive/sustain version of Spellbreaker.

Retreating away once people start to come for you is the peeeerfect way to set up either the Earth staff 4 or Air 5 to catch people to either start the combo or make them waste stun breakers. Staff 4 Fire, though harder to get into than base burst staff Elementalist, is also great for evade + luring in foes into a soon to be available earth wall or lightning cage, which is great if you are channeling meteor storm and start to get focused.

I’ve had soooo many matches in the past 6 hours in which i was either top damage or top kills, with only 1 or 2 deaths, while still keeping mid secure most of the match. It works even better with an ally in voice chat, if they get downed and someone is going for the stomp or is low, you can 80% of the time just nuke combo the enemy to “ranged revive” them as I like to call it.

A downed foe is a wonnnnderful set up to land your burst as well, as it baits in foes. You have your normal fire staff cleave, but you can also land a ring + earth/air burst combo to interrupt a revive + kill the second foe usually, unless they prepped a bunch of reflects/absorbs/invulns.

The Rainbow Railgun:

Step 1: Obtain Bifrost.

Step 2: Traits
Arcane (1 or 2 / 3 / 2)
Air (3 /3 /3)
Weaver (1 / 2 /1)

Step 3: Take Arcane Brilliance, Sig. Fire, Arcane Wave, Arcane Blast, whateverelite you want (air elemental has some extra stun)

Step 4: Beserker’s Amulet, Scholar Runes, Sigils +5% to distant, +5% to low health

Step 5: Obliterate anyone with less than 20k health and auto invulnerabilities with this combo:

Start in Air Earth. See someone in the distance who is a high priority target.

Swap to Air / Air as you approach, granting yourself swiftness with Air 4. Attempt to cage them if needed with Air 5, OR go into your combo shortly after having switched.

Combo:
Swap Earth / Air, launch an Arcane Blast to Immobilize, RIGHT as its about to hit, you start to cast Pile Driver. Mid cast, and right as Arcane Blast lanes while Earth is still your primary attunment, you swap to Air/Earth, which grants fury and your lightning stike for the Pile Driver to hit hard.

For the follow up burst, use Lightning Surge + Arcane Blast + Arcane Wave spam immediately after Pile Driver hits to benefit from Tempest’s Defense’s 20% bonus damage.

Once you have this down, you can deliver this huuuuuuuge spike of ranged damage from 1,200 range with very little visual “tell” that its coming. You have various fall-backs when this spike misses, but its exceptionally good for bursting down Scourges, Guardians/mesmers/elementalists, but obviously fails against people with auto-defenses unless your burst lands simultaneously.

The bonus crit damage gets unreal.

One thing I think a lot of people are overlooking when they mention the cast times on a lot of the Firebrand’s abilities is that they have loads of self-access to Quickness, so in realistic situations, those cast times are going to be significantly lower in practice.

Additionally, they have extremely easy access to Stability, able to maintain plenty of stability on demand with their Elite Mantra (especially if only using the first two charges and letting them reset) and through Stand Your Ground even if they want, and plenty baked into Tome of Courage.

Although I didn’t check all of their mantras, I believe they all have “instant” uses with no cast times, meaning they can be woven into your rotation while using those “longer” cast time skills.

Combining the above, I think the rest of the kit that we’ve seen so far makes sense. Equipping a Tome automatically gives Quickness, meaning you would use your “longer” cast time abilities first in most cases, and pop off some Mantra charges as needed.

We’ll know more when we actually get our hands on it, but I could easily imagine a rather fluid play style developing from the specialization.

I really want to see those traits I’m hoping it has more Alacrity up time and ability to buff condi subgroups in raids. That would cement it, along with a Firebrand, as a great combination alternative to bringing a second chronomancer, especially if each can support while bringing respectable self dps to their group.

I would do it like this: Spear 2 hand weapon is new weapon.

F1 – Command of Wrath – Grant burning and Might on every attack for 5 seconds to every ally in 900 range, max 10 targets.
F2 – Command of Resolve – Grant Regeneration and condition removal on attacks to every ally in 900 range, max 10 targets.
F3 – Command of Courage – Grant Protection and Resistance on attacks to every ally in 900 range, max 10 targets.

Basically, these Commands would buff you and 9 other allies (10 total) in 900 range for 5 seconds to give them different “effects” used when they attack.

For the spear, it would be:

Melee/Range flexible weapon, automatically adjusting its skills based on the distance of your target.

1. Melee Range chain skill. If foe is beyond 200 units, becomes a ranged spear throw for up to 1200 units. Both stack Vulnerability very well, with melee applying more and longer lasting Vulnerability with 3 target cleave.
2. Melee attack and Evade backwards skill, becomes a ranged Evade Leap in skill if foe is beyond 200 units. Cripples and Slows on hit. Low cool down, allowing easy access to melee OR ranged.
3. Symbol skill, grants Quickness. Ranged ground target. Activate flip skill to teleport to Symbol.
4. Melee: Channeled effect that “Pins” a foe in place, continuously Stunning them while channeled / Ranged: Pull a foe to you if further than 200 units and Immobilize (3s).
5. Dueling Arena: Drop several spears of light in a large ground target area that creates a Ward between each spear, making an arena. Allies in the arena deal 10% more damage, foes deal 10% less damage. 10 second duration, 45 second recharge.

To me, this feels very paragony. You support a large troup of allies, and have a weapon that is perfect for “offensive support” with flexible range, to allow you to enable your allies to wreck people you single out.

Suggestion: Shrouding Mists (Grandmaster Major Trait): In addition to current effects, also has “Maintain your current Energy when switching Legends if you have greater than 50 Energy.”

One unique problem I’ve noticed, and admittedly its in rarely an issue for most Revenant builds, is the problem of Energy resetting to 50% after swapping when you already had efficiently saved up a lot of Energy past 50%.

This is most noticeable on a Ventari healing build in hardcore content. There are plenty of times you have a lot of energy stored because you are trying to be efficient and reserve your energy for burst healing situations, but then you need to swap to Glint or another Legend for a mechanical reason for a fight, or just to provide some boons for a lull in a fight.

What sucks is you still get reverted back to 50% Energy on swap.

I really feel like “storing” your energy between swaps (if above 50%) would be a wonderful change (at the cost of having to run Invocation and use that GM trait) and could open up some build combinations and combos. This could, for instance, allow for a Ventari/Jalis combination in which you can heal efficiently as Ventari, save up extra energy, then swap to Jalis with high energy to have good up-time on the elite, have plenty of energy to break bars with the taunt, and energy to maintain the hammers if you really are under pressure (super good for pvp).

Sure, you COULD always just burst away all your energy super fast before swapping, but it just feels … off. I’d love to have that flexibility of bringing in all that stored energy to switch gears when needed. It could really have some fun PvP and WvW implications for builds as well.

Thoughts?

I’ve been armchair designing what I would love from the Firebrand. I’ll share it once its in a more complete state, but I think I really like where I’m at with its healing aspects and how it plays / builds differently than other traditional healers in GW2 thus far:

The minor traits impact the tomes and the stats you effectively have while using a tome. The tome’s abilities calculate their stats by converting some of your other stats to usable stats:

Tome of Wrath abilities Convert Healing Power into Condition Duration.
Tome of Perseverance abilities Convert Condition Damage into Healing Power.
Tome of Will abilities Convert Condition Damage into Power.

This would allow for the Seraph’s Condi/Crit primary, Healing / Boon Duration secondary, be very usable for all three tomes.

My “kit” loadouts for each Tome are very distinct play styles, each functioning well at 1200 range if needed. I’ve called the initiative-like pip mechanic “Conviction” and you gain Convictions passively at a rate of 1 per second while a Tome is equipped, and you can gain additional conviction for performing specific trait triggers or by channeling some Mantras while traited. This gates the class a bit so it cant easily switch from “full on” healing to “full on” offensive support super easily. That said, the “Elite” Mantra’s active effect is to gain “full Conviction” on use, but thats at the cost of using your Elite of course!

One last thing on Tomes: Each Tome’s 4th skill is a VERY large area skill that is a new class of skill called a “Circle.” Circle spells must be channeled to maintain them (think the casting time of Meteor Shower stretched out to a 5 second cast), but the effect a massive area (think like an area of 900 radius!) and effect up to 10 total allies and 10 total enemies at a time. These are among the most high Conviction costing abilities on the Tomes, but allow a single Firebrand to strongly effect their entire raid/a lot of their warband at the cost of a very high amount of Conviction and the opportunity cost of having to maintain the channeled effect to get the benefit of this extremely large symbol (but not a Symbol for trait interactions as this would be broken as kitten).

for the specifics on the Tomes

Wrath is all about Condi damage and offensive damage support in the form of a new profession specific damage enhancement called Zeal. Zeal is short duration but very powerful damage enhancement that you really have to work to maintain. Traits interact with it a bit as well, but basically it is a 10 stack effect that increases all damage by 2% per stack. Maintaining high Zeal uptime will be hard while just healing, but some traits could make it work. Additionally, the “very high quickness uptime” is built into this tome.

Tome of Perseverance is all about healing, condi removal, and protection and resistance. Unique to the Firebrand, they have a minor trait which allows Precision and Ferocity to effect your healing abilities, allowing them to crit and receive critical multiplies. This can allow for the base guardian’s otherwise lacking heal power ratios to be upscale to quite nice numbers if crit chance can be increased.

Tome of Will is all about control and raw power damage, and “hard light” type spells. It has a wall of light spell that can launch tall-but-not-super-wide moving Ward light field forward that continuously Knocks Back foes along its path and destroys projectiles, and can be reactivated to become stationary Ward at its current location during its flight. It also super focuses on being able to grant large amounts of stability, and to stun foes. Basically, a crowd control dream with moderate power damage potential, which can be supported as a decent control-power build full on with traits.

I haven’t finished all the Mantras yet but they are shaping up nicely.

They could add an additional bonus for running Jalis with the Hammer out:

“Major Adept Trait: Close Quarters: Enemies beyond range threshold deal reduced damage to you. Enemies within ranged threshold receive increased damage. While activating Vengeful Hammers, Hammer Bolt will release two additional smaller hammers.”

This would make the Hammer at least have some direct synergy with Jalis: They either take more damage closing the distance, and get hit by aoe revolving hammers, or they fight you from range and deal less damage while still receiving some bonus damage from the extra thrown hammers.

Honestly? I’d be satisfied as heck with:

Auto: Keep it as is but increase cleave to 5 foes. This is a “siege” weapon.

2: Keep as is, but maybe remove a little of the burst and give it a pulsing delay damage for more total damage and add some Cripple or Slow?

3: Keep as is, maybe with the addition of leaving an ice field for 3 seconds to combo through? If so, reduce initial chill and add a small patch of ice to pulse chill. should be long enough to combo with 5th skill to blast frost aura on allies!

4: I’d LOVE to see this become much faster cast, like 1/4 second. kitten impossible to react to any incoming ranged damage with its current 1 second (!!!!) cast time. I’d LOVE it if this became a chained skill with the option of “launching” the field forward to Blind and Stun (1s) foes it passes through. Imagine swinging the hammer around to slam it into the wall, that then goes flying forward. Bonus: make it do additional damage or a longer Stun based on the number of projectiles blocked!

5: Slightly reduce its cast time and the delay before hitting. Its way too large of a delay and tell right now to EVER be used in any serious encounter.

I feel that these changes would really add more interesting weapon combos and would cement the weapon as an area “siege” weapon meant for area damage and denial, bit like Elementalist’s staff.

This would be great as currently none of the Heavy classes have that role, except ever so slightly the warrior’s longbow.

Ryou.2398:

Hmmm impossible odds does need a cost reduction for sure, or they should change how it works and turn it into a group buff.

I still prefer it as a selfish skill honestly, but I do feel it either needs a cost reduction or some additional effects.

Power Rev in all game modes is very Meh at the moment. And the next Elite spec will likely be condi based, but if that doesn’t have any traits or benefits for Power rev, then I agree that base Rev needs some definite improvements.

Ideas:

Impossible Odds: “All Current effects, same cost” + While active, Vulnerability increases damage by an additional 1%. Your attacks inflict Vulnerability (1 stack, 10 seconds).

Impossible Odds “Reduced cost to 5, very slight increase to Quickness” + While active, all damage you deal (including condi) is increased by 10%.

Personally, I love the first idea best. Really fits the “assassin” theme of doing up to 50% more damage to a highly vulnerable target.

Honestly, here are a a lot of changes I’d love to see for Shiro:

Healing

Enchanted Daggers
½ 5 30
Summon enchanted daggers that will attack as you attack, siphoning life from targets hit.

I’d like to just remove the awkward cast time. Just feels weird and doesn’t seem balanced in PvP to have such a weak and delayed heal also be interrupt-able.

Utility

Phase Traversal
½ 35 5 Step through the Mists to your target. Your next few attacks can’t be blocked.

I’d reduce cost to 25 or 30 and add an interrupt effect, and reduce cast time to 1/4th a second. Its not nearly “snappy” enough to be of any use in PVP currently. This would then be quite good for busting bunkers who are in a block animation.

Riposting Shadows
30 Evade back quickly though the Mists, removing debilitating conditions.

The duration of the Evade feels like a really long animation but it simply just ends up taking too long and the travel time is too short to really feel like you are getting away from someone. I’d like to see the Evade time cut in half and the time it takes to travel the current distance cut in half as well, so it really feels like you are escaping. I’d also shave it down to 25 cost as well, to bring it into parity with Phase Traversal.

Impossible Odds
10 / -10 Empower yourself with Shiro’s speed and quickness to quickly take out enemies.

As noted above, I’d love to see this keep its very high cost but also add the double effectiveness for Vulnerability, and have it apply a bit of vulnerability on each hit while active. This would really boost up the Revenant’s ability to maintain Vulnerability stacks and deal damage for raiding and grouping purposes, adding one more “tool kit” available if the group is missing Vulnerability.

Elite

Jade Winds.png
Jade Winds
1 50 5 Call upon the Jade Wind to turn nearby enemies into jade, stunning them for a short duration.

Only addition I would like to see is a SUPER brief duration, high Vulnerability stack, like “25 Vulnerability for 5 seconds.” This would allow for a Shiro spec, who has saved up enough Energy in PvP attempting to burst a bunker, to:

Phase Travel (25 energy cost) into an Unblock-able Jade Winds (50 energy cost) into a few seconds of very high damage from using Impossible Odds with that short but high stack of Vulnerability.

This could allow Power Rev in PvP to have some strong anti bunker potential without really effecting much else, since waiting for 100 Energy against any normal offensive build would be suicide.

I’m really hoping that the Deadeye elite spec has a minor or major trait that “Increases the Range of Projectiles by +300.”

This could bring P/P up to 1,200 range and would help a lot with the “spacing” and defensive concerns.

There is also some speculation that we will be getting a “single” dodge, but that its very potent at re-positioning. If true, that would really boost up the “gunslinger” style to hopefully have good synergy with the “Sniper” style we’re most certainly getting.

Esquilax.3491:

Which is why I’m thinking any spike ability should have a very obvious tell on it, as shown with the laser sight and delayed-fire/crosshair-warning. I don’t do much PvP in GW2 (at least not successfully), but having playing numerous other PvP games, I know that the most infuriating thing to go against is a sniper, as there’s typically no counterplay whatsoever. That’s what I was hoping to prevent with how I offered up the spike damage ability here; obvious warnings and indicators of an incoming shot that tell you exactly when to dodge or take cover (and where to take cover from as well), and take an acceptable amount of setup and/or teamwork to be able to hit with.

Here is how I manage making Snipe VERY powerful but has tons of counterplay:

• It is a Stealth 1 attack for the Rifle.
• Stealth is modified on the Minor traits of Deadeye to have “lower max duration, and higher time on Revealed debuff” to make it less accessible. (Stealth does auto refresh itself while remaining stationary though and can stack back up though!)
• The actual Snipe attack uses no Initiative, but it has a long channeled time with different “stages” like some abilities used to have back in Beta.
• The final Stage has: over 2000 range, high damage base, 1 second Stun, and will instantly Defeat a Downed foe, but this is after 4 or 5 seconds of charging it, and it is a stationary ability. The final 2 seconds of holding it inflicts Revealed on you and it draws a laser sightline between you and the foe, meaning it can be body blocked ala Caitlin from LOL.

One nice benefit of my Rifle skills though, is that for a generous initiative cost, you can reposition to a ground targeted area with a “combat leap roll” and then continue to Channel Snipe from where you left off, giving you some counter play to either change the “angle” of your sight line for the shot to land OR to avoid some ranged attack or a person getting up in your grill trying to stun you or block the shot.

Snipe is also Unreflectable but can be blocked with anti projectile skills, but you can trait to have Rifle skills penetrate Reflects/Blocks at 50% reduced damage.

All of these combine to make a very tactical “line up that perfect shot” game play, with the 50% longer Revealed debuff, less access to long-duration Stealth, and the limitation of only have 1 dodge bar (with some other changes to this single, but powerful dodge), it makes the class play a lot different from base thief.

It would be the only class to “out range” a ranger long bow, but only with the Snipe skill, and only after it has reached its last or second to last stage.

I also use Gadget skills in a very effective way to function as an “off the point” fighter in PVP. You have Decoy Beacon which will contest points even if you are not on them by spawning a Clone of yourself with your total health that will sit on point and apply Vulnerability to foes it attacks. In PvE, it also applies Taunt periodically to NPCs.

This, along with doing 50% increased damage against Downed foes or instantly Defeating a Downed foe on a fully charged Snipe, allows the less-mobile, less stealthy, but longer range Daredevil to assist a capture point from a far, similar to a glassy staff elementalist with more effective range, but single target more so than area damage on point.

In PVE, it would function as a strong ranged dps build that, while still lower than base Thief / Daredevil, has the ability to reliably maintain their damage and enhance the damage of everyone else. Killing adds, if traited, can extend the boons and heal the entire raid for 25% health, and they will increase the damage that the raid can do to the boss by 10% by “adding” those additional vulnerability stacks.

They also had a trait option to add +300 range to any projectile based attack, bringing P/P unload spam to a 1,200 range, as well as some short bow abilities and some dual wield pistol skills. This gives a lot of build variety in how they can play with various pistol combinations.

Definitely designed as more of a power-spec kind of Elite, but it also has several raw supportive options if you want to play more of the “Special Ops” type role with its new stealth mechanics.

I designed a Grand Master that “shares” your minor trait passive with up to 9 other allies in range of you if you are remaining stationary. It can let you and an ally set up an ambush, and also allows allies to “contribute to capture points” while stealthed. You passively gain might stacks while in stealth and not moving, so this shares to your allies, as well as any other “passive traits” you have while personally in stealth also apply to your allies.

Allows for a PVP or WvW “recon leader” type role if you want to set up ambush points

Ok here is a sharable link to the google doc, with commenting enabled! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LRORYwRBWQ5AxAUVwtugn1YGAGL6bNh9Jjl9-E9VnbI/edit?usp=sharing

To address your concerns about support coming from kills: My hopes are that raid content moving forward, as well as a lot of the events, move away from a “single big bad” and involve more interesting mechanics with additional foes spawning, as some raids already do, and that the Deadeye will be among if not the best elite specs at focusing down those targets from any range, since they can snipe from afar without having to worry as much about their mobility to get to the foe.

Also, even in purely single target fights, my traits include options to increase the entire raid’s damage by basically having a unique professional mechanic to “Add” an effective additional 10 vulnerability to raid bosses that the Deadeye is maintaining their focus on.

Also, much like the Scrapper’s Functional Gyro, while raid content doesn’t currently make exceptionally great use of it, I hope they add more “Downed” enemy mechanics in future raids so that Finishing is used more outside of just in PVP and WVW, and finishing off Downed foes is the Deadeye’s absolute best specialty to bring to an encounter from a design stand point! The ability to charge up a ranged Snipe to automatically Finish a foe/player from up to 2,000 range (if fully charged, which takes forever) is a huge asset in PVP/WVW and could be very beneficial if content supports it in new raids.

I think you will love my headcannon Deadeye spec im putting together. Ill share you the google doc in a PM later when i get time after work. Interestingly we have similar ideas on several of the rifle skills, but my minor traits and major traits are where the actual healing and supportive elements of the spec are found. Basically, a bounty hunter mechanic of healing allies and granting boons on a successful kill. Also 50% bonus damage on Downed foes, making it an excellent elite spec to assist with killing people in PVP and WVW from a distance rather than traditional stomping, and against Downed foes in PVE if they ever revusut that mechanic.

Yashuoa.9527:

Tomiyou.3790:

I don’t think Anet is willing to give Ele stats in the specializations or will ever make a mechanic for it either. It is a very good idea, but one problem I see is having more power than ever. For instance: you use marauder amulet and have 2,2k power and then use fire traitline and suddenly you have 2,7k permanent power which is incredibly strong.

Maybe that trait could be made into,
that it will not stack with gear? That would solve the problem that you brought in right?

That, or my suggestion, in which you only maintain the extra stats while meeting X condition, and they fall off if not maintaining them or if swapped to another attunement.

Laraley.7695:

I mean what’s the point? First of all, it’s a trait made for dps, the fact it doesn’t work is another thing, but why would any burst spec want this? The bit of healing power they get will be pretty meaningless for them since stuff doesn’t scale that well and they do not have that much access to healing anyways. Adding more healing as defense is not really that great either, since what ele needs is more active defense, not running around in circles and healing.

Second of all, why would any support spec take this? They would be forced into traits that apply vulnerability, which would colide with other support traits. Makes no sense for me. Or just depend on the few vuln stacks from skills and imo that’s not worth it. LIke really, the worst thing you can do is to camp water on DD and spam AA. We need less camping, not more.

Tldr, Soothing Ice still would be better.

TLDR reply: I’d personally find it very useful for many builds over using Soothing Ice or SDR.

The point if it is to provide sufficient healing power for the Elementalist to provide at least a moderate amount of healing with any build if they “build up” to it, rather than simply having a passive trait that just gives the stats.

As the profession with the absolute “least” amount of passive baked in “toughness” and “vitality” in the form of base armor and health values, it stands to reason we need more options available in our traits to help cover these innately lower defenses.

With this trait suggestion, there is the potential to add 500 Healing Power to a build if you are good at maintaining the condition of applying Vulnerability before dropping the heal skills. If Anet ever decides to make Healing Power more valuable by lowering the base healing of skills and making the HP scaling better across the board, a trait like this will be incredibly useful, but even with current values, 500 HP isn’t really that bad, especially in fights where your healing skills are able to hit multiple allies.

While I agree that Eles need good active defenses, I think healing is, and should remain, a core part of their survivability, and its a role that they should be able to embrace to at least a moderate amount while using Water Attunement with any build that is equipping it as a trait line, regardless of if their amulet has healing power on it.

Henrik.7560:

Sounds powerful, but not too powerful considering our loss. You have my support

If only scepter auto water would have vulnerability on it or number 2 applied more

Agreed! I really hope they consider the suggestions for adding Vulnerability to it and making it a bit more “interacting” with the rest of the kit from Water Attunement weapons.

I seriously hope it gains some benefit when hitting Chilled foes, like additional damage or Vulnerability. I’d love to see Water Scepter all about setting up and exploiting burst options after a bit of a build up.

My idea on the other post is to have Scepter and Focus pair really well in Water Attunement for consistent damage with some burst periods, while still providing sustain, so that Glassy builds like Berserker and Marauder would still have a reason to use Water attunement for more than a quick fly-by, and some dedicated builds could be designed for more supportive builds that camp water a bit, much like how there is a viable option to currently do so with Staff’s auto.

I use it on my Tempest E/W/Temp support Staff build.

I stack up on condition cleansing with auras, and utilize the Toughness + Stoneheart to “nope” away all physical damage while in Earth if I’m focused, and condi cleanse with Auras and water swap if needed for Healing Rain (wish this had a reduce cast time).

The build absolutely laughs at physical damage but obviously has issues with sustained condition pressure. Will be very useful if Thief actually becomes a consistent threat to the condition damage builds, as this build is very anti Power thief.