(edited by Zwets.3785)
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I understand you can quickly stack up to 25, but can you maintain it through out?
Since your main way of applying vuln is Death Reaper Shroud, using either Rending Shroud or Unyielding Shroud (both is kinda overkill, but maybe with condition cleanse you might encounter a situation where you need that much vuln stacking)
Maintaining the vuln is just a question of building lifeforce quickly enough to not be outside of shroud for longer than 10 seconds. You could put a sigil on your weapon that increases vuln duration so you have more than 10 seconds to generate life force, or you could use a dagger in your other weapon set to quickly generate lifeforce.
The Devs listened!
SPLOOSH
I don’t get why everyone wants to turn Axe 1 into an AoE ability, the staff should be our ranged AoE option. If staff is too weak an AoE weapon buff it by making staff 1 bounce between enemies rather than pierce in a straight line, that way it hits multiple targets more reliably.
Necros need a ranged Power weapon that does good/decent single target damage, If the axe becomes AoE that just makes it’s poor damage justified. Someone explain why that would be a good thing, why do you want 2 underperforming ranged AoE options?
All that needs to change is axe 1 needs to be changed from 2 hits to 3 hits, while keeping the same damage and vulnerability duration per hit. This makes it stack vuln faster, deal damage faster, crit more often, and trigger on hit and on crit effects more often, exactly what the axe needs to be a better power weapon.
Also raising axe range to 900 would be appreciated but might not be necessary.
- Plague and signet of undeath’s active become shadowsteps! 120s+ cooldowns rarely used turned into REAL panic buttons.
That is an awesome idea! I really like it.
So what’s the Necro counterplay for leaps?
Spectral Grasp.
Technically also GS 5 pull, but that is 600 range and we won’t have it till fall.
I kinda like to see axe as the single-target power option for necros. Might be not everyone agrees, but I do think we need a ranged weapon that isn’t as easily dodged as the staff, but is less than 1200 range to balance that.
My main problem with it is, that it doesn’t stack vulnerability fast enough to make up for the poor DPS all Axe attacks have.
I assume the DPS is low because an Axe is assumed to be hitting a target with several stacks of vulnerability. Though the warrior greatsword which also stacks vulnerability at the same rate of 2.6666 stacks per second does not have that kind of DPS limitation.
Vapor Blade on elementalist has the same range, but stacks 4 vulnerability per second, due to hitting on the way through the target and again on the way back. (it is avoidable by moving though)
Single target power weapons on other classes usually have the vulnerability on a non-auto-attack than can inflict 5 or more stacks quickly with through a single cast.
Proposed Fix
Without changing the base DPS or casting time on Rending Claws. Spread the damage of Rending Claws into a greater number smaller hits than the current 2. Let’s say 3 hits, maybe 4.
Each hit inflicts 1 stack of vulnerability and can crit separately to proc on hit/on crit effects.
The increase in vulnerability stacking as well as increased on hit/on crit effects (like the upcoming vampiric aura) should do enough to make the Axe from an overlooked weapon into a useful tool with a purpose of it’s own.
Maybe make each of those hits a 20% projectile finisher. Which would also mean they become projectiles, which are avoidable; Adding increased counterplay to the necro Axe’s vulnerability stacking that is currently only countered by cleansing.
Especially because the Axe Training trait seems to be getting nerfed in the HoT trait lines, the extra vulnerability stacking speed will be needed to keep the Axe useful. If Rending Claws is upgraded to 4 hits, the cooldown reduction per hit in the new trait should make up for the nerfing it received.
Also mostly as a flavor change to match with the necro’s supposed theme of converting boons, it would be nice if Unholy Feast converted boons, instead of just removing them, or if the cripple duration was doubled on foes from which a boon was removed.
On a mostly unrelated note, why is the Axe Training trait not named Aatxe Training?
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Will be totally OP but nobody will care because metal. :p
O.o Charr Death Metal band, do want!
Kills by
earbleedface melting.
Warrior specialisation will probably feature several options for applying and synergising the new ‘Taunt’ condition.
Staff warrior might be a kind of future specialisation, but I don’t see that happening for the taunt focussed one. Also it was revealed the Ranger Specialisation will be getting a staff, they might double dip the same weapon, but I figure they’d try to avoid doing so. Because of trade post supply and demand economy I guess.
My wild stab in the dark is the specialisation for warrior will be something rowdy and crude, gaining taunt powers by being able to insult anyone and anything through pure weaponised offensiveness and lack of manners. Something like Buccaneer or Brawler.
If anything, melee staff seems like it belongs in a Thief specialisation named Acrobat. But that too will have to wait for a later set of Specs to roll in, because of the weapon market.
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Plague Form using Plague of Darkness, with Deathly Chill + Chilling Darkness. Gives lots of chill in Plague form.
You also have, Target the Weak + Chilling Nova + Barbed Precision, for fancy exploding critical hits on everyone inside your plague for even more conditions.
And Parasitic Contagion will heal you while you are in Plague Form doing all this.
Then you either add:
Chilling Force + Putrid Defenses + Cold Shoulder for a 25% damage reduction, blinding, and getting lots of might. Very fitting on Bruiser builds that start off a fight with Plague Form
or
Bitter Chill + Decimate Defenses + Death’s Embrace + Chill of Death + Siphoned Power + Close to Death for a bazillion extra damage to and crits on foes that are below 33% health. Which fits well with a high damage builds that use Plague form as a way to finish off foes after they built up a bunch of conditions and spread them with Epidemic.
I’d like to see Shambling horrors.
I very much agree, Jagged Horrors are too weak for that cooldown, but a higher health version of the jagged horror that summons a jagged horror when it dies is a perfect solution.
Twice the Death Nova, twice the duration/survivability for the minions. Without it being a type of minions that normally has an active skill you would miss out on.
Even if you improve the pet AI, it will never be perfect, because it will never be as smart as a human. I would prefer pet design is changed to make AI less of a deciding factor. So AI should be eliminated as a problem as much possible.
- Allow pets to be summoned with a ground target area so they don’t need to path to the enemy, they will already be where they are needed and instantly start to attack enemies in their area. Less reliance on the pets following the Necro or the enemy.
No more problems with minions being too aggressive or not aggressive enough. Simply mark all targets in an area and the minion will keep chasing and attacking near that area until all foes it can reach are dead or you leash the minion to a new area. - All minion active skills should be ground targeted and cause the pet to leap, burrow or teleport to the new target area. On arrival they use their special ability or they simply explode on arrival.
If ranged minions run out of targets in their area, they should try to attack their master’s target without walking too far out of their ‘designated’ area.
Pet active skill casting times and recharges need to be adjusted to incentivise constant re-leashing at a better location. Like when the enemy jumps down a ledge, or a ranged pet needs to move out of AoE. - A reclaim mechanic that allows necros to reclaim pets that are not in a useful position anymore, to reduce cooldowns on summoning/active skilling them to a better position.
Maybe instead of destroying the pets(like engineer reclaim), this would call the pets back to the Necro and make them not attack anything, while improving the recharge on their active skill. Only when you use the active skill to designate a new area do the pets start attacking again.
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So one of the traits revealed for Heart of Thorns was Putrid Defense: “Necromancers take 10% less damage from poisoned foes” in Death Magic.
Alongside the Reaper trait Cold Shoulder: “Take 15% less damage from chilled foes” (assuming these stack) This seems like a very handy combination for bunker builds.
My question is, what is the easiest way for an pvp bunker necro to poison every enemy that is attacking them? And to refresh the poison if the enemy condi-cleanses. Considering it already requires Death Magic, the Reaper trait line and a Greatsword.
That leaves only 1 trait line, 1 weapon set and runes/sigils to figure out how to perma-poison as many foes as possible, without taking away the minimum time needed for spamming GS attacks needed to chill multiple foes all as well.
Chilblains into a whirl finisher was my first guess, this also applies a chill which is synergy, and because the Death Magic line is already required you can get greater marks, which will help chilblains hit more targets.
But the Death Nova trait is also in Death Magic, combined with the new ‘Rise’ Shout maybe that can provide a decent duration poison, while leaving the choice for the other weapon set open. Seems potentially unreliable though…
Maybe scepter 1 for 9 hits into Epidemic would work as a maintainable mass poison. But that might take away too much time from applying chill, also Parasitic Contagion might synergise pretty well with a bunker build.
- Any obvious sources of sustainable AoE poison that I missed?
- Which mass poison ability do you think is most viable?
With Heart of Thorns Anet is planning to make changes to how conditions stack to a cap, to allow condition builds to cooperate instead of overwrite each other’s conditions.
Currently just more of the same
The direction for the condition rework seems to indicate raising/removing the 25 bleeding stack cap, and theories are poison and burning will receive similar treatment. But I would like to suggest an alternative to how condition stacking is handled. That affects all conditions, not just the stacking damage ones.
Depending on the person that applied them, 1 stack of bleeding can already differentiate itself from another stack applied by someone else. Because those 2 players might have different amounts of condition damage. Considering might stacks, 2 stacks of bleeding applied shortly after one another by the same player might even differ from each other because the player could have gained or lost several stacks of might in between the applications.
- What if we take these differences further?
- What if condition builds improved quality instead of quantity of conditions?
- What if ‘applying a generic condition’ became ‘applying your superior condition’
There are already motions in this direction, Guardians have the Amplified Wrath trait, Elementalists have the Serrated Stones trait, Necromancers have Terror and are getting a new trait that causes them to take 10% less damage from foes affected by poison. These traits all function to turn ‘a default condition’ into ‘your personalized condition’ and I think we should shift the focus of condition builds away from +duration traits all over the place, and instead towards improving conditions with traits to make them personalised.
Personalised Conditions
So instead of a 25 stack cap shared by everyone, maybe a power build can only stack up to 5 average dps bleeds, while a condi build can have their cap upgraded to 15 stacks through traits and their bleeds also deal significantly more damage and have additional effects.
These would be personal stacks, that do not interfere with each other. Each player has their unique stack that uses their condition damage and applies their additional effects.
But simply replacing ‘duration bonus’ traits with ‘increased stacking’ traits isn’t what will really make the difference to a player saying:
“That is your what conditions do. Here’s what MY conditions can do!”
It is enhancing conditions with additional effects that will really let condition builds differentiate themselves, and adapt to the task at hand (WvW, PvP, World Bosses).
Having to make choices between ‘increased max poison stacks’ or ‘your poisons cause foes to take 50% more damage from all bleeds’ seems like it would really be an interesting decision for condition builds.
Other effects that trigger when a condition was cleansed, when it expired, when the target suffering the conditions died. Not just damaging conditions, you would also be able to add additional effects to vulnerability, weakness or blindness. All depending on how you wanted to focus your build.
What do you think?
It could really let classes emphasise that they are better with certain condition than other classes. I would like to see what people think would be good modifiers to personalize certain conditions to the class that inflicted them.
Here are a few examples of possible class specific enhancements for conditions.
- Elementalists could cause burning that will spread to nearby targets if traited.
- Warrior cripples could reduce endurance regeneration if traited.
- Engineer vulnerability could retain half the stacks when cleansed, if traited.
- Necromancer weakness could reduce received and outgoing healing, if traited.
What condition improvements fit with what class, do you think?
Would you prefer this over the generic +duration and ‘<condition> on crit’ traits all classes seem to share?
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The main thing I like about necromancers is the bunker builds, getting lots of toughness and regen and being a pain in the kitten to get rid of. Sure other classes have better access to stability or protection, or regen more. But with Necro most of the traits are terrible, so I feel much less locked into a any particular bunker build, and can vary it up for a more diversified range of builds to annoy people with.
Bunker Necro isn’t nearly as effective/fun in dungeons though.
Another part of what makes me love my Necromancer is I suspect my time in GW1 as a Necromancer. While I play the other classes in GW2 and accept them as they are, my Necromancer feels like there is more to him, that if I just improve 1 more thing about his build he’ll suddenly become amazing, I don’t know where that feeling comes from, I don’t really get it with other classes.
You know, an easy fix for much of our “deathshroud is a poor alternative to actual escapes” complaints, would be Deathshroud coming with its own endurance bar for 2 additional dodges that refil separately from the non-DS endurance bar.
Possibly with a kind of ‘spectral dash’ animation to emphasise it was an extra dodge.
Even if you don’t want that in core necromancer, it could be part of a specialisation later, add in some traits that trigger effects when dodge rolling in DS as the traits for it and you’d have happy Necros.
While other games regularly have necromancers and the like shout blasphemies to create some form of unholy damage effects, it does not really fit with guild wars lore, because we need Grenth for our magic, so kittening him off would be counter productive.
In the upcoming rebalance the trait that allows ranger spirits to move will be removed.
There is a chance that moving spirits as timed pets will be a new necromancer thing, now that pulling dead people out of the mists is apparently a lore thing.
I’m sure there will be many people that don’t like the prospect of yet more AI (poorly) controlled pets. But reversed ranger spirits with a passive aura that debuffs foes and an active skill that is a point blank buff area would work for necros thematically.
Thematically Venom skills would also be dark-magic-ish enough to fit, but I’m not sure how it would make sense for all our non-phsysical ranged attacks to apply poisons… Dagger, Spear and Greatsword would make sense, but even those have several non-contact skills.
tl;dr Resistance + Lifesteal + weakness = Necro’s support skills.
This gives me an idea, what if Lifesteal, was a boon. That Necros could buff their allies with. It gives a bit of extra damage and a sliver of healing everyone would like to be buffed with that.
We already have Sigil of Blood and Rune of Vampirism that can basically buff any class with temporary lifesteal. I see no reason allowing Necros to be an additional source of that effect would be unbalancing.
To keep the functionality of Sigil of Blood and Rune of Vampirism the same, as currently:
1 stack of the Vampirism boon applies to the next 1 hit and deals extra damage (based on the power stat of the source of the boon) and heals for 80-100% of that damage (based on the healing power of the source of the boon).
It should work out to pretty much the same amount as health steal works for now.
What changes now that it is a boon is that the Vampiric Boon can stack intensity, increasing the extra damage and the healing on the next hit with each stack.
Give the necro a few skills that let them gain extra stacks of the Vampiric Boon themselves as well as skills that grant it to allies.
The Deadly Feast harpoon skill for example could be changed to not heal per pulse but instead grant 2 stacks of Vampirism before every pulse, keeping the healing the same and if the base damage is lowered slightly, the damage would be the same as well, but now it would be using the unified lifesteal on hit mechanic.
The Vampiric Precision blood magic trait would be changed to give you an extra stack of Vampirism every time you critically hit. Vampiric Rituals would give you an extra stack of Vampirism every time a well pulses, and it also buffs all allies in the well with 1 stack.
The minor trait Vampirism would be changed to give you 1 stack of Vampirism that refreshes every time it runs out, is used or is removed.
With the preview HoT changes, the minor trait would also give it to minions I guess. In fact make it so that when this boon is applied to a summoned creature from any class, it doubles the damage bonus and the healing goes to the creature’s master.
I know what you mean
What are you talking about, the power of heart is the best one, it is mind control that works on animals and humans.
Every time that wuss gets kidnapped he could just order the bad guys to go jump off a cliff or shoot themselves, it isn’t the power that is useless it is the person that was given the power.
There, I fixed it to bypass the lore. Doesn’t need a dead target anymore.
Could technically work as a Mesmer skill now.
To be a necro minion it would need to have an activatable ability.
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Now don’t let me or anyone else in this thread dissuade you from having and sharing creative input, creativity is an important part of the fun of GW in it’s own right. But I’m going to harp about necromancer lore to you for a bit.
lore wise it is supposed to receive it’s animation from Grenth, who owns all necro minions and only lets us borrow his pets.
Which means you have to drain some kind of spectre energy from a target to create a dead minion, mail that minion to Grenth, wait for however long it takes to post something to the Underworld. Grenth animates the dead minion and then you can summon it in the normal way, once. If it dies, you’ll need to mail him a fresh one.
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To emphasise my point that GW related creativity is fun. I’m gonna come up with a lore friendly version of a skill with the proposed effects just because I find that sort of thing fun to do.
For the lore to work, we would need a load of the minion in question sitting around in the Underworld, ready to be summoned. So we need to use a generic type of minion which there could conceivably be a large supply of.
So, lets name the minion Formless Spectre. (model looks like a ghostly Ooze)
In it’s basic form the Formless Spectre has a ranged attack (less range and damage than the Bone Fiend, but slightly higher attack speed)
The active skill for the Formless Spectre minion, would be called Ghastly Doppelganger it requires a hostile target and causes the Formless Spectre to transform into a ghost version of the target creature/player (or a small version of the target, if the target is larger than a flesh golem)
Once transformed it will use the auto attack chain of the target to attack enemies and its toughness will be based on if the target was wearing light, medium or heavy armor (for mobs this is calculated by comparing their toughness stat to that of other mobs of the same level & rank) it’s health stays the same regardless of it’s form.
The damage once transformed is based off the power scaling of the skill copied applied to the power stat of the Necromancer that owns the minion, but instead of scaling based on weapon damage it uses the base damage of the minion in it’s Ooze form. (which is somewhere between 30% and 50% of the damage player weapons show in their stats)
Even after that reduced damage many possible auto attack chains to copy are significantly more effective than the auto attacks of most of our minions due to their additional effects or applied conditions(guardian hammer chain for example), but I recon the cripple on hit of the Flesh Golem is about the right ballpark. So the Formless Spectre skill would be an elite minion for balance reasons. That means we can up the power of the active effect a bit too and still claim that it is balanced.
When using the Ghastly Doppelganger active skill, the target that the Formless Spectre transforms into is feared for 2 seconds. The Ghastly Doppelganger skill has a recharge of 30 or 40 seconds and can be used to chose a new target even when the Formless Spectre is already transformed, you could even hit the same target again just to get the fear.
Formless Spectre 1½ A 60 R
Elite Minion. Summon a formless spectre to attack foes from a distance by spitting globules of harmful ectoplasm.
Damage: 512
Range: 600
Ghastly Doppelganger 1 A 40 R
Command your formless spectre to take on the appearance of target foe, causing fear and giving your minion a different attack based on the weapon your foe is wielding and giving your minion armor based on the armor type of that foe.
Fear(2 sec): Flee
Range: 600
Letting any class have a way to use attacks that belong other classes is going to cause balance gripes and issues regardless of how you implement it though. But the ability is cool from a possibilities perspective. I mean if you Ghastly Doppelganger a scepter mesmer, your minion will start to make clones, or the ranger sword chain, would a pet giving might to it’s pet mean it gives might to it’s master instead? hilarity would ensue.
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Well this is the necro section of the forum so this is definitely a biased answer towards wanting my Necro to be invited to teams, but…
When I run fractals with my friends, who main Ele and Engie, I don’t want to feel like a liability. The role I focus on is making sure bosses have 25 stacks of vulnerability as well as stacking might to deal damage and throwing in weakness and blinds besides that.
To keep doing my job while in Death Shroud I use Unyielding Blast, which has also become my main way of hitting groups of adds.
When in the swamp fractal I switch out a skill for Flesh Worm because it can be used as a discount portal to get 1 of the Wisps into the tree stumps without having to worry about walls popping up and blocking you in the Swamp fractal. It is a definitely a discount portal, because sometimes Mossman decides to pop up and kill the worm when nobody is near it.
If only Unyielding Blast turned Life Blast into a piercing channeled beam that could crit multiple times over it’s 1 sec cast time. That would make it a decent group killing tool, 1 sec cast time is just sooo slow.
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I have 2 lvl 80’s a banner warrior and a necro, I find myself constantly trying to ‘drop’ Death Shroud with the change weapon button. Then I unintentionally get stuck with the wrong weapon out for 9 seconds.
I think it is a very un-intuitive setup, where engineer kits, warrior banners, ele summoned weapons and whatever else that change your skillbar, can be dropped using the change weapon key, but that Death Shroud has to be turned off by pressing it’s associated key.
The defining mechanics of these GW1 classes have been rehashed and distributed between the GW2 classes by the way of skills or traits.
Though I often feel that the thing that made the classes fun did not transfer successfully to the new owner.
In other cases it was the look or lore of certain classes and abilities that players liked.
I feel the ideas the OP has can all be added to existing classes as new traits and utility/elite skills, to recapture the fun gameplay offered in GW1. Because that was another feature from GW1 that I would like to see in GW2, the huge amount of options you had in filling your skillbar.
Reading the title of this topic I was expecting some random suggestions for new critters to have juvenile versions of. Might consider changing the title to “3 Ranger Pet (Behavior Improvement) Suggestions” because you do make good points. I agree with all of these.
Especially 2+3 as the behavior for an “Assist” combat stance for the pet would be useful.
Double Sword
Ranger, Thief, Mesmer
Double Axe
Warrior, Ranger
Double Scythe
Guardian, Necromancer
Tallon (Armguard Katar Variant)
Thief, Warrior(offhand).
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Here are the utility skills I still cannot find any use for.
Blood is Power
10 Stacks of might 50% of the time isn’t bad.
But what do I do with 2 stacks of bleeding for 36 seconds? When would those ever reach their full duration? I’d rather have 25 stacks for 2 seconds.
And yes I can send my 2 12 second stacks to the enemy too, but why would I waste a cooldown of condition removal on only 2 stacks of bleeding?
Corrupt Boon
I hate poisoning myself, I rely on my regeneration too much, and I want to save my condition removals to remove poison and burning others apply to me.
Signet of Spite
Huge cooldown for some short duration conditions. And the passive doesn’t even help a condition build. The passive’s effect on a power build is only 1 stack of might.
Signet of the Locust
I was using this underwater for a long while, but now I’m not even sure if the speed boost works underwater…
The active effect has such short range, its very hard to find a situation where it can be fully utilized. It should cripple instead IM(H)O.
Signet of Undeath
I’m probably spoiled due to Battle Standard and Spirit of Nature that I use on my alts, but I find the area too small.
Spectral Armor
Huge cooldown for a tiny effect. Even with the cooldown reduction trait.
otherwise sword is to hard to control to rely on dodging so i use GS (with its block and natural chain dodge). even if it is extremely low dmg.
Ah, thanks good to know its not just me having the problem, I’ve swapped my sword for an axe because axe bleed is stronger than GS bleed.
The rifle only seems sub par due to the high effectiveness of other warrior weapons.
Compared to our Warrior Longbow or engineer rifle, it is actually very good.
I’ve seen glass canon build warriors that focus using signet of fury to instantly fill their adrenaline and do Killshot>>Volley>>Killshot for great burst damage. This tactic does very well in WvW and PvE(in places where 100 blades is hard to use).
I’ve been told that it also works in sPvP, but when I tried it for a couple of hours in tPvP with some guildies, I did not get the damage out of it I had seen others achieve and kept switching to my axes so I could actually get kills…
Still the Rifle Butt skill with the 20% cooldown is the shortest cooldown CC skill in the game, as a package rifle is very strong.
I agree that Brutal shot is pretty useless, but getting it replaced with something stronger will probably lead to rifle being nerfed farther down the road.
Hi, I’m having a problem that makes 1h Swords almost unusable on my ranger.
Am I the only one or is this somehow a ranger mechanic?
For over 50% of the time hitting the dodge roll key does nothing.
When using the Sword I have skill 1 set to autocast, however it’s combo is two 0.25 of a second normal animations, during which dodging is allowed, but then a 0.75 of a second uninterruptable animation + 0.05 to 0.3 of a second airtime, so possibly a full second of being unable to dodge.
Skills get delayed until after the leap + airtime has finished, then they activate.
Dodge simply gets ignored if you use it while the ‘Pounce’ skill is executing. Do you other rangers have trouble dodging while using a 1h Sword, or should I just be spamming my dodge key as fast as I can until it finally registers?
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You say, class roles are unclear. I say classes should not have roles, players should have roles.
I’m not sure what you mean by that. Could you elaborate?
I used the example of the 4 elementalist team in GW1.
Instead of the game designers deciding that class X has role Y, and can only do that role well. In GW1 designers allowed you to mix and match. I want that freedom again, instead of the designers deciding what the role for my class should be, I want the player to be able to decide he will make a thief that can tank and succeed.
The player chooses the role and the class can adapt to fill it, by becoming weaker in one area in order to gain strength in another.
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I like this a lot, having fun pubs with activities at centralized locations, instead of the norn keg brawl and asuran polymok arena that players seem to have a hard time finding.
Heck, lets have drunkard and party animal titles available from doing the events in said bars.
Yup add 2 additional jump/tumble utility skills to the melee ranger and you would have something good there. (ranger utility skills are pretty bland anyway)
Maybe add it as an alternative primary, I hear there a number of rangers that would prefer not to have their pet on the field and as a swashbuckler any pet that is not a hilarious enemy taunting parrot is not a good pet.
Combat:
You say, class roles are unclear. I say classes should not have roles, players should have roles. It is something that was awesome about GW1, you had dozens of skills to chose from, going into hundreds when combining them with the others in your team.
At one point I had a GW1 team of 4 elementalists, 1 of them was a tank 2 others with 2 different builds filling roles that were a combination of healer/buffer and another was a DPS/Debuffer.
And it was highly effective, even in Eye of the North hardmode. And you could do something similar with most of the classes, with the odd one out.
When I heard GW2 was doing away with the healer role; I expected, in GW2 I would be completely free to mix and match my skills to turn a caster into a rolling melee fortress and a warrior into a ranged nuker.
And you can… kind of. But for some reason the devs designed each class with a particular direction in mind, instead of having them free to fill any role like they promised.
When I played in the beta and saw the number of skills and elites available, I assumed only half of the skills where in the game yet, or that there would be a lot more of the traits that modify the way your skills behave.
But what it comes down to, is that where GW1 had attributes that contained skills and the skills for each attribute where designed with a role you could chose for your class to fill. And at any time a character had 8 attributes to chose from, so they had multiple roles they could mix and match between.
GW2 boasted how it is not supposed to have the traditional roles of the trinity, but instead they focused on making, ‘the guy that applies might/protection/regen/fury to his team when they need it’ and ‘the guy that applies weakness/chill/blindness/cripple to the foes that suffer most from it’ into different roles. You pick 2 from the boons/conditions and add damage and you have your role, keeping your assigned effects active while dealing as much damage as possible. In a way I suppose they succeeded on what they set out to do, but the choice of what boons/conditions you have to work with comes down to 1 choice.
What I miss most of all in that is variety, where previously your choice was which attributes to raise and which 8 skills to bring, now it is down to which boons/conditions you will sustain and weather to deal your damage with Power/Power&Precision/Condition Damage/Power&Condition Damage (a third attribute is present on gear, but unless you go pure power or pure condition damage, you do not have a lot of choice remaining over what that 3rd attribute will be)
GW2 offers lots of little choices, utility skills, traits, signets, mixed gear bonuses and even the mutually exclusive consumable effects will factor into your success rate. But the impact of these little choices pales in comparison to the choice of weapon(s) everything else is just a nice little extra, often pigeonholed into what works well with that weapon choice.
What I suggest is a significant revamp of how traits work.
Instead of unlocking major and minor traits in lines with global effects you unlock trait slots to apply to skills.
Instead of having 1 trait that reduces the recharge of all skills for a weapon, you can select 1 skill on the weapon and add a trait that reduces it recharge by 33%. Another skill on the same weapon can be traited with a trait that causes it to cripple for 3 seconds on top of that skill’s normal effects. Or you could select 1 skill on the weapon and add 3 traits to it, to completely modify the way it behaves. Turning a ‘quick single target direct damage attack’ into a ‘slow telegraphed AoE dealing condition damage’ or the other way around.
You would still be limited to the number of traits you can spend (14) and you could only use a maximum of 3 or 4 traits on a single skill. For balance reasons the devs would select what traits can be applied to a skill on a per skill basis. But the end result it that you can modify the way your weapon, utility, healing and elite skills function by a great deal.
As a result you can redefine your role in combat, you are no longer pigeon holed into what weapon/trait combination for your class applies the boons/conditions your team needs, you can now truly step away from predefined class roles and reshape yourself into a puzzle piece to fit into the hole presented by the challenge you are presented with.
Designing a number of traits that modify skill behavior can be done pretty quickly, figuring out which traits work well with what skills takes some balancing.
Wow, I spent waaaaaaaaaaay too much time writing this all out.
(edited by Zwets.3785)
I partially agree with you, and would like to share my thoughts.
Story:
GW2 tells quite the story, but it lacks much in the way of plot twists.
There are large global arcs, right at the start of the arc it is already clear where it is going, your character sets out to do something, there is some struggle and then they succeed and move on to the next thing.
A good story should have something called the ‘yes, but’ or a ‘no, and’ where nothing is really ever over, each completed arc adds a layer of consequences to the rest of the story that your carries along.
That is actually very difficult to do in a game, because you cannot force the player to learn from what has happened in previous arcs, but it is not impossible.
You can use a recurring cast of side characters to demonstrate this. Traherne Fits the bill for this, but does not really carry the role well. I feel he already had superpowers, and lacked only self confidence, my character helps him a little gaining more self confidence, but mostly he’s doing it on his own, unaffected by my actions.
What would work as a story is tagging more characters onto yours, most races get a friend/colleague that is important in the starting missions. After a while they are written out of the story, don’t do that! That NPC is a reflection of the player’s origins. They should grow with the story, either becoming wise and capable or bitter and hateful; Most memorable would be if they could betray the player joining an opposing faction.
When the great tree asks you what your greatest fear is and Zaiten somehow finds out it should not be some pact NPC you just met that suffers through it with you, it should be a character you’ve gotten to know well over your career. Add onto that a new character for each arc, like the replacement ‘story buddies’ you already bet, but have them follow and grow to constantly remind the player of how his story is affecting the world those ‘story buddies’ live in.
You say you remember no moments of the story, I do remember several moments, though I doubt they are the moments Anet wanted me to remember.
On my necromancer, when you are trapped and cornered with Traherne and he basically says 'I am a necromancer, so this is no biggy for me' then he activates 5 elites and 1 utility at the same time and proceeds storm out from between the rock and the hard place. Especially as a necromancer this kitten me off, I don't get to use greatswords and I don't even have 6 skillslots to put minions in, let alone 5 elite minions! How is this 'well within a necromancer's power'?
I chose the 'fear of failure' face your fears quest arc. And it was good, after some build up the quest actually had me doubting whether what I saw in quest instances was real or not. And then just when it was starting to get actually frightening and intriguing as to what is real or not the arc was already over and respolved.
In the battle at fort trinity, there are several risen giants coming, and you are fighting outside. You are told to rush in and close the gates. I saw a whole bunch of pact members still fighting the undead outside, I waited for them to retreat back inside, but they didn't. So I got swarmed went down and used escape skills to retreat back inside and close the gate. I felt really bad for leaving them to die like that, but the game just ignores their sacrifice.
Why does Tibbalt love apples so much? While I was doing hearts to reach the level I needed to survive the next story quest it got into my head that the most obvious reason was that the last thing his wife/son gave him was an apple. Since hearts are not that engaging I mused on that train of taught and came up with the following: "but Tibbalt did not eat the apple his wife/son gave him, because he did not like the taste of apples. When his wife/son died x days later and he still had the apple he convinced himself that he loved apples as much as he loved his whive/son because they reminded him of them. Then eating a stale brown apple, tears ran down his face knowing he would never eat something as good as this again." It was a really sappy explanation that would have given the cheerful Tibbalt a lot more depth, showing he has more sides to him than his good sense of humor. Then in the next quest Tibbalt died and I never found out why he likes apples, they just didn't bother putting that much depth into what could be the basis of some really cool characters.
But that said, for an MMO GW2 had great story, there are goals and the story has direction. You are doing stuff and while there is little surprise and intrigue there is also no padding or quests purely for having an extra quest in there.
(edited by Zwets.3785)
I like this idea, provided it includes the functionality of the Challenge Mode Missions from GW1.
Having records keepers with Leaderboards for different levels of fractals, with completion times and highscores for each separate fractal as well as combined scores of the 3 fractals in a run.
The freedom to have a different set of traits and maybe free trait resets in the Fractals staging area, would probably help me a lot seeing how different dungeon mobs are from normal PvE mobs.
C. It should have its own gear, much like sPVP now, only you don’t get an end gear like in sPVP but gain it in the manner of normal PVE world. Vendors still can sell a white Fractal gear of different tiers. In normal world you wear your normal gear. when you travel to fractal system, you gear is replaced by a fractal gear you gained this far. Unlike sPVP, a fractal gear can break and needs to be fixed or replaced. It could also have its own skins which can be transferred to a normal PVE gear. Fractal gear cannot be used outside of the Fractals system.
Took me a few reads to actually see what you mean here, but if I understand correctly.
You enter fractals with your normal PvE gear and can use that for your first fractals. While doing fractals you can buy (with tokens) or loot (with a quality based on the current fractal level) special fractal items that you can wear only while doing fractal dungeons. When you leave the fractals the gear you have equipped would be returned to how it was when you entered. So you could add agony resistance sigils to your PvE gear in fractals, then when you exit to do WvW or Arah the sigils would be returned to what they where before. Then if you went back to fractals later the agony resistance would magically reappear in the sigil slot you put it in.
Instead of equipping the fractal gear you gain you could also salvage the skins from it and use those for your PvE gear. (maybe add a skin transfer item for 1 token, that works only on fractal items, so I don’t have to use up the few lvl 80 skin swappers I gained from monthly rewards)
Did I get that about right?
D. It should have its own levels much like now, only you see those in the place of a normal levels in a lower left corner. The “xp bar” is replaced by a fractal progression, every completed map fills up this bar and winning over the final boss “dings” you.
This level is an account wide, so no matter which character are you playing, you should be able to just go there and continue your fractal progression where you had left off.
While I agree that if you can do level 10 fractals with 1 toon, you are probably good enough to do them with another toon. But if the gear you need to do so is earned slowly, like the agony resistance I mentioned earlier would not be present on that different toon… unless fractal tokens are account wide too, so you could earn some extra tokens on your main, then enter fractals with brand new lvl 2 and use the tokens to gear him up for whatever fractals level your main has achieved.
It kinda sounds like the effort I’d spent gearing up my Koss and Ogden and all the other Hero-Henchies in the correct runes and sigils in GW1. It worked there and it was a pretty big gold sink, so I suppose there is nothing wrong with something similar in GW2, special fractals armor with scaling armor values but you have to buy/find stat bonus gems and sigils for it yourself.
I noticed Forcefull Greatsword not granting might stacks on Spear Criticals, I /bug reported it and the next patch it was fixed.
Combat, Dynamic Events... what's the point if they're easy mode?
in Suggestions
Posted by: Zwets.3785
Wow, a very well thought out and worded post.
I like your suggestion 2 a lot, creating 2 events that compete for ‘the zerg’s attention, by both being equally important would add lots of interesting gameplay.
I also like suggestion 3, though, just adding ‘fake’ players to increase the enemy’s health or number of adds that spawn seems a little flat.
To take up the example of centaurs, instead of simply spawning more of them, replace a few of the regular ones with ‘Veteran Desperate Centaur Shaman’ that have special skills to make the event harder, like a buff that causes other centaurs to grow larger, so their trample skill charges a greater distance and has a wider AoE so it knocks down more people. Maybe they have another skill that grants quickness to their allies.
Basically take the hardest thing about that particular event and make it harder.
Suggestion 1 seems more like separate things to be the objective of new dynamic events to be created, than things to just be tacked onto existing dynamic events.
(edited by Zwets.3785)
anet is owned by ncsoft
Thank god that is not true.
Arena net is Partner to NCsoft, they have to work with them, but thankfully they do not have to do everything NCsoft says.
Otherwise the no subscription and free content updates would have been out the door faster than you can say ‘performing below expected revenue’.
all short range ‘teleport’ skills, like blink, necrotic traversal and shadowstep behave the same way currently, that is you cannot cross gap or go up cliffs with them.
Not true, engineer: Jump Shot, ranger: Swoop and warrior: Whirlwind Attack will take you off of cliffs, and they travel exactly as far as a normal jump from the edge of that cliff would (even if the distance it dashes on solid ground is normally longer).
Jump shot is the only one that works for jumping to a higher spot though.
Whirlwind Attack being able to pass through the target and continue on, has caused me to fall to my death a few times.
That said I do enjoy the jumping puzzles and a super easy wait to beat them would not be fun, though there was one time I used Necrotic Traversal to pass a bit of hill that was to steep to walk on, but to long to jump over. So in the rare case there is unwalkable ground between you and the worm, but no height difference, you can teleport to it even if it was normally unreachable.
(edited by Zwets.3785)
The blood magic 10 point trait Mark of Evasion, can be used while in DS, and applies an extra 2 bleed stacks for your combo.
(should be 3 stacks, but the trait is bugged, at the moment, instead of the extra bleed stack it is a blast finisher for some reason)
I had a good run with a well build getting me a few ranks in sPvP, but a few ranks up the matchmaking put me with better players and no one was standing in my wells anymore. Even having a toughness build and standing in them hoping someone will melee me does not work anymore.
Still a well timed Well of Power (see what I did there?) is useful for making the enemy condition builds screw themselves over.
I’m knowingly at risk, by placing a serious reply in a thread where the power suggestions are silly/overpowered enough to be considered a joke/troll thread.
However I do want more weapon choices, because I do feel very limited in my options. So I guess this is a decent enough place to put my 2 cents.
I think hammers (and maces) are under used, only 2 classes have access to them.
While I think the animations with a greatsword would end up somewhat un-necro-like(that is now a word). As you would either swing it or point it at people and shoot from it.
A hammer however could have a big black-green skull form around the head, as the necro raises it above their head and gestures and chants wildly, similar to how Hollywood likes to portray Hoodoo rituals.
A mace could be animated in a similar way, only smaller.
What I feel necro’s truly lacking in weapon options is the following; could be spread across hammer and mace however, works best.
- Long range combo (boss fighting) weapon
- Limited range, AoE weapon.
- Single target 1200 range auto attack split over multiple hits in quick succession, like Stone Shards or Dual Shot.
- Auto attack that can apply weakness or blind for defensive purposes.
- Cone AoE attack, on a short cooldown, meant to improve power builds.
- A ground targeted exploding skull, dealing damage and a blast finisher where it lands, can instead be detonated in the air to not deal damage, but cause a condition(cripple? Bleed?) in a larger area
- A mobility skill, like a teleport, because we have no evasion other than dodges, and no vigor skill to supplement our dodges.