Guild Wars 2

I wish I’d made an ele instead of a necro (minion master to help break the server, which we did, successfully >.>) to test this. I’d stored all of my legendary gear and trinkets in my bank and could have easily tested damage. If there’s another weekend or test before launch, I’ll be sure to do it again and post actual numbers with real gear.

I posted this to reddit a couple of days ago, but I’ve since refined it a bit -

Tracer Cosplay! (p/p Thief)

Link to the GW2Style page

Armor pieces used:

• Determination Headband
• Magitech Shoulderpads
• Strider’s Tunic
• Strider’s Armguards
• Strider’s Leggings
• Duelist Boots

…and two Cavalier Pistols

Hope you like it!

I posted this to reddit a couple of days ago, but I’ve since refined it a bit -

Tracer Cosplay! (p/p Thief)

Link to the GW2Style page

Armor pieces used:

• Determination Headband
• Magitech Shoulderpads
• Strider’s Tunic
• Strider’s Armguards
• Strider’s Leggings
• Duelist Boots

…and two Cavalier Pistols

Hope you like it!

Ithilwen.1529:

I think it may be time to quit. I love the game… but I don’t need to be this angry all the time… working on a 15 game losing streak tonight. It makes me crazy and mean.

When you lose 3 in a row take a break. Forcing yourself to play will only make you play worse and make bad decisions. It’s called tilt, and you should stop when it happens. A 15 game loss streak is entirely on you.

People who think thief will be nerfed shouldn’t be commenting on balance at all. As it stands, Thief is still a B tier class with niche uses and only pulled off well by excellent players (which none of you are, unless you’ve been part of a sponsored team and have your name out there and others have commented on your superb mechanical skill) in organized team comps.

Engineer, Revenant, and Druid are top tier at the moment. I’m not saying everything shouldn’t be nerfed, but those three in particular are part of the problem.

Please, before you bring up Dragonhunter you should learn to counter them, or reroll Engineer, Ele, or Druid.

Offhand sword revenant.

Use the Action Camera. Have an accessable keybind (mine is T) to turn it off for calling targets or selecting a target around a corner. You lose the ability to control the length of heartseekers, but gain greater character control and camera control. You’ll never miss a bp+4hs stealth combo and can quickly swap in and out of action cam for team stealth and skill utilities/manual targeting.

Given Berserker’s heavy focus on fire, it would make perfect sense (and give warrior actual teeth in PvP) to remove a condition every ~3 seconds while standing in a fire field with the aforementioned trait. Thoughts?

I understand reducing scribing costs, but as someone who got to 400 on their own in the current market well before any news of scribing costs being reduced, I can’t help but hold some disdain for that switch and feel somewhat cheated. Level 400 scribes prior to reducing will have had no advantage or benefit to being said level, outside of having spent an exorbitant amount of money (I and many others who achieved 400 spent thousands in real life $$$ to do so) for the satisfaction alone of having achieved something that not many were capable of at the time.

This change both makes me jealous that future scribes will enjoy significantly lowered costs of entry and irritated that I wasted literally thousands of real life dollars on what amounted to a few chairs and a collection item that no one cares to fund building.

Razor.9872:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Hax.8701:

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

anduriell.6280:

Yeh practically it’s all said.

If you are using grace of the land, the bet is to stay as long as possible within CAF.
Otherwise don’t bother, using CAF will make you to miss rewards as you are healing and not tagging.

Wouldn’t blasting out some heals on allies for grace of the land and jumping out of CAF as soon as possible to dps again be more practical?

No, because the staff is pure power and the damage is really bad.
The boon doesn’t last very long and if you don’t use staff building up the AF is hard.

Isnt that why people are running aoe regen and the numerous small tic heals? And ofcoarse Astral wisp continues even after weapon swapping.

Last time i checked regen didn’t fill up the bar, but this class has got so may changes that i can’t say what is working and what is not anymore…

I just checked because I thought the same and the healing from regen is based off your healing power and counts towards AF when put on other people.

Regeneration along with heals from blast finishers, secondary effects, and Fern Hound and traited pet f2 skills all count toward Astral Force generation.

Secondary effects?

The traited post-heal AoE heal, Lingering Light — pretty much anything that appears as green numbers without you actually healing your allies.

Hax.8701:

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

anduriell.6280:

Justine.6351:

anduriell.6280:

Yeh practically it’s all said.

If you are using grace of the land, the bet is to stay as long as possible within CAF.
Otherwise don’t bother, using CAF will make you to miss rewards as you are healing and not tagging.

Wouldn’t blasting out some heals on allies for grace of the land and jumping out of CAF as soon as possible to dps again be more practical?

No, because the staff is pure power and the damage is really bad.
The boon doesn’t last very long and if you don’t use staff building up the AF is hard.

Isnt that why people are running aoe regen and the numerous small tic heals? And ofcoarse Astral wisp continues even after weapon swapping.

Last time i checked regen didn’t fill up the bar, but this class has got so may changes that i can’t say what is working and what is not anymore…

I just checked because I thought the same and the healing from regen is based off your healing power and counts towards AF when put on other people.

Regeneration along with heals from blast finishers, secondary effects, and Fern Hound and traited pet f2 skills all count toward Astral Force generation.

If you’re looking to maximize your outgoing heals in raids or General PvE, CA 2-5 are arbitrary and unneeded. Take “We Heal As One!”, Quickening Zephyr, and the Zephyr’s Speed BM trait. Once your Astral Force is full, pet swap for Quickness, use Quickening Zephyr, then “We Heal As One!”, enter Celestial Avatar simultaneously and begin spamming Cosmic Ray on your target. You’ll be able to pump out 30 Cosmic Rays over the course of your Celestial Avatar with quickness at 100% of the duration of CA, and even in full Berserker will have fully healed your entire raid group.

Outside of CA, you should be DPSing rather than camping staff as I see most Druids do. You should be running Fern Hound for healing outside of Staff and blasting water fields. I know many Rangers hate the weapon, but Sword has one of the highest damage modifiers in the game, and the auto attack can be canceled through movement (if you know what’s coming ahead of time and can anticipate in order to break your auto), or immediately canceled through weapon swapping.

EDIT: Cosmic Ray, not Lunar Impact.

Core necro is clearly meant to be the best stomp denier/support bunker with Transfusion and Mercy runes.

Skills that are unevadable like Guardian Walls will still trip or apply their CC to the Revenant – so a hammer or staff guardian should be able to use positioning to counter the evade frame on Sword 3, same as necro.

hackks.3687:

It’s definitely a lot of fun, but it’s still over tuned

I think you misclicked the Chronomancer forum.

Video

The gear I used for this:

http://gw2efficiency.com/c/Sarphe

I’m positive had I not used Executioner’s Scythe or Death’s Charge, my DPS would have been higher. Gravedigger didn’t seem to out-DPS Shroud Auto, and suffered heavily from occasional missed crits. Using Soul Spiral as a whirl finisher inside of the dark fields of my wells for the leeching bolts yields 36 Leeching Bolts (3x per whirl, 12 whirls total – all hit while inside of an enemy), dramatically increases initial DPS.

The class feels great. Locust Swarm, Well of Corruption+Suffering, and Necrocopter inside of the fields for leeching bolts inside of an enemy is crazy for AoE burst. I’m extremely happy I transferred all of my ascended berserker gear for this beta weekend.

My feeling is that drones will replace the tool belt and have different activatable effects depending on your equipped skills (but are, however, more drone themed)

Right now Berserker Mode doesn’t feel any different than normal warrior, outside of the fact that – when traited – you have a stun break and brief quickness, and are locked out of your burst skills. 33% increased damage while in Berserker Mode as a baseline would greatly incentivize actually using it, and fix the shortcomings of every berserker skill (which do less damage than a tier 1 burst). Giving warrior a break bar during the 15 seconds might also incentivize using it while also giving a high-risk/high-reward feel to the specialization — though you’d have to give a baseline damage increase or something of the like to incentivize putting yourself at such a high risk to begin with.

While I was testing it out, the constant adrenaline decline immediately out of combat was extremely annoying. Perhaps it’s time to bring back adrenaline upkeep out of combat?

It hits for more than Backstab, sure, but the windup animation is also one of the biggest tells in the game. I think the damage is appropriate – there isn’t even an evade frame on the leap, which leaves you vulnerable. Any thief running offhand pistol or Distracting Daggers will have the ability to shut you down mid-vault, and a necro can flash Shroud and instantly fear you out of it – that’s just one example among many, many other class options to counter it. With Backstab, the counterplay is much lower. Vault is a higher risk skill mid-combat and the damage should scale accordingly.

If you preview the Reaper’s Scythe chat code it’s considered a hammer

As far as scaling defenses, I found Reaper to be a quite powerful frontline WvW class, camping shroud and relying on Blighter’s Boon (as your defense which scales in larger groups) to keep your health full while in Shroud and your Shroud full when out of it. In the testing I’ve done in an organized guild setting, the Reaper’s Shroud 2 skill and Flesh Wurm are both great initiation/escape tools, and my Reaper was most always the last frontline to go down when the boons from Guardians and Warriors stopped sustaining its health and shroud after they’d go down. Combined with the number of enemies dying outside of Shroud to sustain my Life Force and Unholy Sanctuary to keep my health up, I almost never had anything but full health or full Life Force. I advise everyone to try out frontline reaper.

Necro isn’t a bunker, but as a class – no matter how tanks or bursty you go, we’re constantly playing a game of attrition by building life force and mitigating damage out of shroud through short bursts of Protection and more prominently high weakness application, and damage output with boon hate both in and out of shroud. The class focus overall isn’t to bunker, but to last long enough to out-bunker most bunkers while being generally weak against burst and CC, which most bunkers don’t have.

Captain Unusual.9163:

Donari.5237:

She did! Her answer to everything HoT related is “banana scythe.” She said so in Twitch chat. “Release date? … banana scythe.”

It’s a clue. “Banana Scythe” has 12 letters, and 2 words. This gives us a possible release date of 12/2 or 2/12. Since we know that it’s being released this year, and it’s after February now, the release date must be December 2nd.

But each word is 6 letters and there are 2 words, therefor we can assume the next Beta Weekend will be in 2 weeks with launch in 6.

Hey Rubi – as a 3D character artist I’d be ecstatic to create assets for a contest under strict conditions for a chance to have said items in-game. For example, if your in-house weapon design requirements limit models to 3k triangles, 512×512 texture maps in .png format, or the same resolution but in a .jpg format with a separate transparency map. As well, a separate Normal Map and Specular Map for the weapon in 512×512 (or whatever your weapon standard is). This would essentially create strict guidelines on entry and completely eliminate the need to create assets based on fan art (and make freelance and hobby 3D artists very happy >.>)

I’d like it to work exactly like Burning Speed, however the skill flips over as a second skill (the blast portion) at which point you can activate the blast early or decide to use it for the mobility to cross large distances or gap close fleeing enemies.

and one thing that i’m really looking forward to is: boon stacking pre matchstart will give you life force

That’s interesting. Where did you hear this? If it’s true that would be phenomenal!

I think one of the biggest things people are underestimating about Reaper is the shear damage mitigation potential it has. -20% damage from chilled and poisoned foes (10% each), Protection from trained Wells, and high access to AoE weakness (which makes 50% of hits do 50% damage and prevents critical hits) – so against a foe with Weakness, camping your wells while applying weakness, chilled, and poison, you take damage 33.75% of what you would have taken (-66.25% damage reduction) and an extra 50% innate physical damage reduction while in Shroud. Since damage reduction from Shroud takes place after all other calculations, you’d mitigate a total of 83.1% damage, taking only 16.9% of the damage that would have been dealt to you without your opponent being able to crit, further decreasing your damage taken.

In a frontline situation, you could easily rely on the protection buff from Guardians in the Frontline of a zerg while applying your three important conditions out to enemies. You could also very easily call out to place down light fields (or use Well of Blood) and use the Reaper’s Shroud 4 for a massive AoE condi clear on your allies. The frontline tanking capabilities of Reaper, in theorycraft, could be terrifying in an organized role.

I don’t get the “Necro has no damage” argument anymore. It competes solo with an ele’s combo (who can’t sustain damage after Fire Grab) and while stacking Vampiric Aura with other life siphon sources, your DPS and sustain skyrocket. On an average high tier Fractal comp, Vampiric Aura adds 45 damage to each hit each ally does – including all hits from Ice Bow, rapid attacks such as Hundred Blades, Life Transfer, Guardian Symbols, Wells (which should be trained to siphon already adding to the damage), fire fields, and all other damaging fields. My fractal group calculated that Vampriric Aura alone adds a 14% average full-party DPS boost, and the front loaded damage of wells combined with Signet of Vampirism (which adds nearly 8k damage by itself to a target) competes with that of an extra Ice Bow, and you can attack with 11.8k auto attack chains during that time (your wells combo should be doing upwards of 41k over 5 seconds).

Yet, every day I find elitists who write off necro as “unusable” in PvE, despite our damage being superior to Mesmer in PvE (though we lack the utility Mesmer brings).

I fully plan on running Dagger/Warhorn+Greatsword for PvE content. Greatsword doesn’t have the rapid attacks or attack speed to compete with stacking Life Siphon in PvE, which adds an incredible amount to your front loaded DPS. I’d then swap to Greatsword for cleaving and big hits while my wells and Signet of Vampirism are on cooldown, blow those cool downs, swap to Reaper’s Shroud go through the rotation, swap back to Dagger/Warhorn, and repeat.

Kidel.2057:

You know what else would be nice? Another Revenant beta weekend

Considering as of today my beta character no longer exists without my express permission to delete itself, we may soon be seeing another!

I feel like Unyielding Anguish, unless nerfed, is such a big utility for most PvP situations that you’d be insane not to take Malyx. In PvP it works as a decap mechanism, and in GvG/WvW it works to break up the enemy frontline or displace the backline and give breathing room for both you and your allies. With multiple revenants running Malyx, it might get crazy.

Just something to note – just 2 months ago Sword skills were datamined for the Tempest. If the thief elite specialization is further out than anticipated, it may or may not still get staff.

“Ventaren” is also an anagram for Revenant, so that’s an option that should still be up for grabs.

Waveguider.6271:

Hvaran.6327:

Walking in and out of Ring of Fire stacks too much (and too long) burn stacks.
Stop walking in and out of it. -Grouch

build is good, though rompage is so stronk.

Thanks, I know rampage is insanely strong but i feel signet has more synergy with the build and rampage is a guaranteed fight win every 150 seconds which is a bit long

Rampage isn’t anywhere near a guaranteed win every 150 seconds – especially with fewer or more coordinated opponents. A single thief can shut down rampage in its entirety with carefully timed blinds which the warrior has no way of removing outside of wasting a skill or attempting to hit a moving player with the painfully slow autoattack Rampage has to offer. In team fights it’s a bit easier to down opponents, especially when your team is coordinated enough to focus down the same opponents you’re shutting down with CC. Outside of that, though, Rampage is really not as great as people make it out to be.

I really appreciate the numbers here. Hopefully someone with some influence on class design will see this and give us some proper damage reduction.

Mine will be Ayanad. :x

Apparently nobody wants to read my last post. ._."

I’ll post this here since it didn’t seem to gather much traction in another thread, but the revenant DOES have access to “perma-swiftness”, of sorts, and can actually be faster overall out of combat than a class with perma-swiftness (not counting mobility skills).

So I’m not sure if this is intended design, but if you trait for Resistance upon using a Malyx utility skill and to remove a condition on legend swap, you can use Unyielding Anguish at max target length, swap to a separate legend (this will refill your energy level – and with Shiro you could use Impossible Odds until you run out of that energy – making this mobility option even faster. It also removes the Cripple from Unyielding Anguish before the Resistance from the Demonic Defiance trait runs out), swap back to Malyx, refilling your energy to 50 again, and repeat this rotation to essentially leap constantly – which is slightly (but noticeably) faster than someone with 100% swiftness uptime, though it requires much more work to keep doing – so long as you stay out of combat.

For those that need a more visual representation, here’s what you need:

• Legendary Demon Stance
• Demonic Defiance from the Corruption trait line
• Cleansing Channel from the Invocation trait line

The rotation is as follows:
Unyielding Anguish > Swap Legends > (optional use of a reverse Riposting Shadows or Impossible Odds) > Swap Legends > Repeat

Hope that helps some of you with your mobility woes. It’s certainly a lot more work than simply having ample swiftness uptime, but it’s definitely an option for out-of-combat mobility.

You can also do this rotation twice when escaping combat before triggering a cooldown on legend swap, making it an escape option in-combat while also making it very hard for most classes to follow you as you escape – especially through choke points like the stairs leading away from mid in Legacy of the Foefire.

EDIT: As a bonus, it looks hilarious.

So I’m not sure if this is intended design, but if you trait for Resistance upon using a Malyx utility skill and to remove a condition on legend swap, you can use Unyielding Anguish at max target length, swap to a separate legend (this will refill your energy level – and with Shiro you could use Impossible Odds until you run out of that energy – making this mobility option even faster. It also removes the Cripple from Unyielding Anguish before the Resistance from the Demonic Defiance trait runs out), swap back to Malyx, refilling your energy to 50 again, and repeat this rotation to essentially leap constantly – which is slightly (but noticeably) faster than someone with 100% swiftness uptime, though it requires much more work to keep doing – so long as you stay out of combat.

For those that need a more visual representation, here’s what you need:

• Legendary Demon Stance
• Demonic Defiance from the Corruption trait line
• Cleansing Channel from the Invocation trait line

The rotation is as follows:
Unyielding Anguish > Swap Legends > (optional use of a reverse Riposting Shadows or Impossible Odds) > Swap Legends > Repeat

Hope that helps some of you with your mobility woes. It’s certainly a lot more work than simply having ample swiftness uptime, but it’s definitely an option for out-of-combat mobility.

EDIT: You can also do this rotation twice when escaping combat before triggering a cooldown on legend swap, making it an escape option in-combat while also making it very hard for most classes to follow you as you escape – especially through choke points like the stairs leading away from mid in Legacy of the Foefire.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been trying to get back into PvP and have participated in 20 or more ranked arena games, however my account still does not appear on the leaderboards for tPvP. Any ideas?

Shiro reveal this week seems a bit late. I’m getting blog post withdrawals!

If anyone recalls this article, it was stated that the Revenant features mobility in-combat similar to the thief out of combat. While I can see this in off-hand axe, I don’t see this anywhere else in the class. Staff 5’s cooldown is far too long to be a reliable gap closer, and axe 4 doesn’t have the shortest cooldown to reliably stick to an enemy either. Could Roy have possibly been referring to the mobility of the elite specialization, or did the direction of the Revenant change in a later iteration of the class post-interview?

Unyielding Anguish is fine as is. It definitely upsets the current meta of all-in melee, but the few games I had against ranged opponents really screwed me up. Another Revenant can also jump on your field to knock you out of it, and the duration isn’t very long at all. The few skills that the Revenant do have going for them are more L2P issues on the part of other classes.

I think Staff 2’s “on-time” bonus attack should be an AoE knockdown with the current weakness application to further promote the pacifist feel to the weapon. It’s a great initiator weapon for commanders in WvW, but outside of just knocking people about in WvW while using Jalis and relying on your team to do the actual damage, there isn’t much going for it.

Vesuvius.9874:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Xenon.4537:

Whats the average burn damage? WP posted a video where he got 19k for about 2-3 seconds using every burn duration and proc he could. How is 19k burn different from a 19k backstab or 100blades?

Because you can’t do a 19K backstab or 100-blades every second while actively avoiding being hit? Burning SHOULD hit hard, but not that hard.

You know, just like you can’t do 19K burn every second. Not sure how ONE tick of 19K burn equates to “zomg!!11! 19K burn every second!!QQ!11!”

Because you can’t land a single backstab for that much, let alone land a backstab for that much and still have copious amounts of survivability.

Something tells me the datamined image might have just been an option for the Acrobatics trait line. Concept art has never been canon to lore or game mechanics (see: capes and polearms), and the supposed Druid specialization datamined image is actually just the Beastmastery trait line concept art.

I still use warhorn in competitive PvP ;-;

Make sure you have melee assist unchecked in the options menu. Simply walking through a Necro will cancel their life blast channel.