Guild Wars 2

I can confirm the passive effects of signets and opening strike take ~8 sec to become active upon pet swap.
This is a huge issue particularly for builds using remorseless or druids relying on signet of renewal passive effect to build up astral force.

Plz have the devs do another bug pass, do not let these issues linger on until the next major patch .

The main purpose of this trait was to fuel celestial avatar, and now post patch it no longer does that by any significant measure.

There was no reason to change it to tick every 3 sec, if this is a soul beast change then it is a bad one since it nerfs druid for no good reason.
The only thing this achieved (literally since it heals for the same amount) is reduce build diversity as now you are forced to ether use traited shouts + staff or traited shouts + signet of renewal when before you could use traited shouts + n.healing.

Plz revert it back, if the issue was the sustain it gave to the pet then just reduce the numbers on it. (it would be a better trait if it literally healed for 1 hp/sec than what it is now)

Since we will be able to assimilate pets what will this mean for some traits?

On first glance this, in a sense, buffs some traits such as empathetic bond and shared anguish assuming that while the pet is non existent the conditions and cc do not transfer but disappear.
But what does this mean for nature magic & boon swapping which is a core part of that trait line? Since the pet is not there, we can assume the boon swapping from fortifying bond and we heal as one will not work at all.
What about the marksmanship gm trait ‘predators onslaught’ that boosts your and the pets damage by 15% against crippled targets? Since the pet is not there the trait goes for a 30% modifier to a 15%.
What about beast mastery and all its minor traits that give the pet more stats? with no pet around they are literally useless traits.

Now i know that you are not forced to keep the pet assimilate all the time, but still this whole deal seams kinda poorly thought out unless allot of core ranger traits get a overhaul.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNBhYD7kSFoWQshFwiVgrFsMLYPBg603yJqd1yaw/zC6DNlfctHWB-TFjFQBoT3gAPIAD4IAwgHAAAuAAHU5DCVCFJVKcz+D3TVF8pGAFVCGAABIsZbGc0je0je0j2RP6RP6RPapAEdkF-w

you need to be in a sub squad with people who can clear conditions, but other wise this is solid. Save your avatar for when your zerg starts to withdraw, after a push in. Use it to recover some hp, clear condis and cloak yourself and your sub squad.

Biggest reason why rangers are weak in zerg fights is the pets die too quickly.

time for community to tell me how bad my builds are.
So since i detest the healbot role i made 2 variants of a marksman build, one of which can fulfill the support/far point assaulter role very well.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA1CiNsAWsActgl/AD+s2WvrLvuFQA4JN8DOalI80A-TpQWABAs/AvlBAA
This is a offensive version of the build, the idea is to forego healing power for toughness so that you heal less but since your hp pool is smaller and you take less power dmg you heal a larger % of your total hp pool, which is not good enough to support allies BUT is enough to sustain yourself.
Has good sustained damage and superb burst (can do 20k rather easily and on a short cd). On this variant you should only ever cast rejuvenating tides when you can swap pets to gain quickness, most of the time avatar is used by going in casting lunar impact and exiting avatar, or if you are not under much pressure lunar impact followed by a full channel of natural convergence (this deals a lot of dmg with demo amulet).
sigils are cleansing and separation on longbow, energy battle on gs.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJAWRnUqA1CiNsAWsActgl/AD+s2WvrPphfwRb51tACAlI80A-TpgNABAs/w2lBAA
This is more of a standard support build, difference to the previous go to metas is you have much more mobility and a much better burst that is harder to avoid (projectile deflection does not stop the 8k tiger hit)
Sigils are energy and cleansing on staff, escape and cleansing on gs. This build is somewhat weaker to conditions, but a good build none the less.

Astral force comes from regen effects that are not the boon so both builds are more resistant to corruption (especially the mender one).
Remorseless is mainly proced by tiger f2 and used to burst with it, but keep in mind that your heal will also almost always proc it due to your pets having high fury uptime. (also if you can get a buddy who is good with revenant the amount of damage you can dish out thanks to him pulsing fury is hilarious).

The basic burst combo is: start to attack from range with smoke scale → swap weapons to gs → swoop → as you get in to melee swap pets to tiger → f2 & maul (using maul slightly before f2 such that you land the hit before the tiger but early enough that you still get the fury from the f2 and thus get a remorseless proc on maul and apply 10 vuln as well as buff the tiger wit attack of opportunity for 50% more dmg on next hit…which is furious pounce) → hilt bash and maul again.
One interesting defensive option you can do is jump while channeling the gs block. Since skills and actions cannot be preformed while in mid-air if you block melee attacks while jumping you will not counter attack and continue to block for up to 3 sec depending on how good your timing is (it is super easy to get a full 3 sec block vs melee attacks when you are fighting 1 person).
Lastly both builds can self blast rejuvenating tides by swapping pets due to clarion bond which is a blast finisher (look for the icon on next to the boons to see if it is off cd), which gives more aoe healing.

They fixed infusing terror tool tip within a day but refuse to fix spiteful spirit…..
I guess we will be stuck with a joke of a gm trait forever now: ‘’when entering shroud deal miniscule dmg and corrupt ONE boon, also some cripple lol’’

They need to make it pulls fury like it used to for remorseless builds to work.
This feels like a haphazardly thought out change where they wanted to remove pulsing stab and decided to just reuse the code from the original version of the skill because it was less work

Spiteful spirit is buggy as all hell now. Not only is the tool tip completely wrong, it now only corrupts 1 boon! For a grand master trait that is absurd, it is garbage.
I hope it does not take 6 bloody months to get this fixed/changed

With the removal of sigils of hydromancy and ice reaper, the master of chill, has very few ways to inflict chill. This reduced chill output with the increased icd of chilling victory makes the whole ‘chill-o-mancer’ play style very awkward now, for both power and condi builds.
Would be nice if we got more chill application on some more weapon skills (also chill on gs aa is still stupid).

So they updated the tool tip to show that this trait no longer casts unholy feast as it lacks the new 25% proc of it but they refused to properly fix the tool tip of the trait…

It no longer gives retal but says it does and still does not specify that it corrupts 2 boons. Can this get updated properly plz.
Also while at it buff the trait slightly since it, as a grand master trait, is sort of underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong it is superb at removing boons now, but it would be nice if it did something additionally, for example making your attacks inflict cripple for a few sec on a ~10 sec icd to mimic weakening shroud (they are both essentially the same trait but one is made with power builds in mind the other for condi builds)

This is what i see coming:
Wraith shroud – based upon the icon for the 1st minor trait we saw which shows a fear looking icon with jagged teeth

-life blast becomes a 3 chain 600 ranged aa similar how scepter works. The chain deals low power dmg and is super fast, taking 1 sec to complete, the 1st and 2nd chain skills apply cripple and the 3rd a short burn and torment.

-dark pact becomes a 600 range inverse rush (like ele has on staff in fire attunement) that evades for 0.5 sec and leaves a trail which causes blindness and torment to enemies who cross it.

-doom becomes a two part skill (like reaper s. 3 is), on 1st activation you gain a buff for 5 sec which causes all enemies who hit you in melee range to get weakness and torment. You can detonate this skill (again like reaper) to place a aoe smoke field on top of you that pulses blindness and burning. this can last for ~3 sec.

-file transfer becomes a channeling skill that makes you unable to move (like churning earth for ele) and pulses conditions in a large aoe around you(larger than life transfer). the closer the enemy is to you the more conditions he gets: enemies that are 300 or less units of you get burning blindness and torment with each pulls, 300-600 get burning and torment, 600-750 get torment(the range is just to give an idea of how it would work do not take the numbers literally).

-tainted shackles become a single target ranged debuff you place on 1 enemy. When ever this enemy misses an attack due to the blind condition he gets feared for 1 sec. the debuff has an icd of 2 sec (so the enemy cannot fear himself more than once ever 2 sec) and lasts for 8 seconds or until the enemy moves 600 units away from you.

Trait would involve augmenting blindness (for example ‘blindness deals dmg when it causes an attack to miss – scales of your condition damage stat’),traits that help you stay mobile and survive soft cc (cripple, chill, ect), as well as traits that are to do with condition damage.

Utility skills would have something to do with touching enemies (basically melee ranged touch spells, a call back to gw1 and also cos lots of leaked icons have skeletal hands in them).
Think something like ‘touch a target enemy and mark him for 4 sec, causing all critical hits against him to apply torment for 2 sec’ or ‘touch a target foe, blind him and heal yourself, gaining additional health for each unique condition that is on him’ or maybe something like this for the elite ’ touch a foe to mark him for 3 sec, apply x stack of burning, and deal y damage for each burn stack that is on him. If he gets downed while he is marked he instantly dies’ and call it touch of death.

Idk about torch, you poke enemies with it and light them on fire?

I gotta commend you on your dedication yo write all of this down, i mean really how long did it take you?

There are some changes i find strange, hard to agree with even:
In the redesign is you almost completely removed boon application from any traits and by doing that made blighter’s boon much worst, especially while shroud is up the trait would prock much too seldom for the amount of health it gives per boon.

Also why turn spite and axe / focus in to a condi / hybrid line, doubly so since the next elite spec is rumored to be pure condi? This would also leave necro without a single handed offensive power weapon (pure power).

Lastly i really thing deathly chill should scale of your power stat since reaper is suppose to be a power/bruiser line especially since the next elite is supposedly condi focused. Making the 2 elite lines compete in functionality could be an issue.

Since this weapon is used exactly nowhere (i will not except open world pve as a justification) it could stand to see some improvements, so here is my bucket of ideas:

-faster auto attack chain but with reduced damage (for pve maybe leave the damage the same since power necro is garbage in pve). Simply put you will never get to auto attack with gs in wvw or pvp since players will just walk away from you or interrupt you (while killing you in case of thief). I am thinking something akin to the ranger gs auto attack speed (1/2 – 1/2 – 3/4)
-reduce the cast time of death spiral to 1/2 sec: This would make the skill a defensive one since it generates life force and enough of it to enable shroud even if you have 0 lf.
-reduce the cast time of nightfall to 1/4 sec: Again this is a defensive skill so make it actually effective at defending you by making it faster, allowing the player to do a reflex blind when he sees a singular hard hit coming.
-change grasping darkness to function the same way ranger’s offhand axe skill 4 works.
You get to ground target it and decide how far it travels before it starts to pull on the way back, it would still do 1 hit when the claws return and pull but this way you could instantly pull/interrupt a enemy that is in full melee by casting the skill just behind him such that the pull is immediate. (just take a ranger to the pvp lobby and try off hand axe skill 4 vs a golem to get the gist of it).
-Change the great sword trait to: gs skills recharge 20% faster and you take reduced damage (~15%) while casting grave digger.

With these changes the only slow skill left would be grave digger but that’s ok since ppl would now actually use gs.

Zero Solstice.9754:

Power doesn’t need more buffs

Actually power necro (reaper) is the worst dps class for pve when compared to other pure dps’ers.
And in pvp the power builds we encounter have very little to do with what reaper offers, they all use axe warhorn and staff, sometimes they forgo all shout skills (sometimes ppl take plague when they know they will get focused all the time).

So yes power reaper does need buffs, just not flat dmg ones. Great sword NEEDS faster auto attacks, with reduced dmg in pvp perhaps , but it needs it since you will never auto attack in pvp with a gs and it is much to slow for pve. Further grave digger needs to be re-designed since in its current state it seams like a skill made for wow or another slower paced mmo, at the moment you will barely ever land it on a non-downstate player (also its trait is shait).

In regards to deathly chill i agree that it could stand to change to better fit a power themed line although this will screw over many condi builds. But it would mean that anet could make a new pure condi based elite spec next time, one focused on sustain through better healing (since reaper is suppose to be based on power dmg and ‘sustain’ through face tanking as evident by skills such as rise, you are all weaklings and stability in shroud, though how effective it is at these things is another subject entirely).

Now as to what deathly chill could be changed to is up for debate, personally i would love to see something like:
-chill deals damage over time and more damage while you are in shroud. Scales based on your ferocity.
So basically revert it back to what it was but make it a power dot and since power builds don’t have access to other dots it should’t be a issue like last time (especially since you can’t ramp the chill dmg up with might with this version). Of course other suggestions might be better this was just the most interesting one i had.

On the build page you linked there are armor pieces missing so what is the complete build? Also this is a tanky set up but you seam to have low toughness (or perhaps not idk since there are 5 gear slots left empty)

Talking about pvp here, used to be that this skill was always picked up by every build ever since it is the only panic button necro has, the only way you can escape a cc train or re-position yourself quickly.
I saw exactly 0 wurms this past week, what gives??

Sigmoid.7082:

The only problem with the idea is the bit in bold since it directly overlaps with signet of vampirisms active effect, essentially being the same thing.

Like i said the numbers are up for adjustment, so the well could offer smaller siphons but without any icd while the signet offers larger siphons (when it comes to health gained) that are restricted by icd.
Further one is single target and allows players to move while leaching health the other can enable single target as well as aoe siphon but restricts movement as anyone who wants to make use of the well needs to stay in it.

It is true that both skills would have similar effect i think it will be different enough. And let us be honest here signet of vampirisam itself could use a re-design being one of the worst healing skills in the game (the trait version of it is ok tho).

as far as wells go this one is terribly outdated.

I would like for it to change to a dark field to allow siphoning via whirl finishers, and its pulls effect to change from a ghetto regen (that does not work in shroud bdw) to this:
heal yourself and conjure a well of blood that enables allies standing within it to siphon health from foes.

Basically make it pulls out a buff (similarly to how well of power works) each second that last for 1 second which gives allies life siphon, numbers are up for debate but something akin to what vampiric rituals trait gives except without any icd (so it would work the same way the vampiric trait works).

this would make it in to a healing skill that can actually support allies and increase their damage a bit as well as combo well with any rapid attacks which reaper has plenty of. And since we are talking life siphon it would be able to heal you while in shroud as long as you stand withing the well and land attacks.

Finally this stupid glorified marketing gimmick has come to an end. Perhaps now anet will spend the resources on better balance or more fun game modes akin to random arenas from gw1.
They cannot use the excuse of splitting the player base anymore since there is no player base at all at this point for pvp, and they cannot use the excuse of not balancing the game due to some up an comming pro league, so now they can make more than 3 balance patches per year

sigil of draining probably needs an icd to keep it from being broken, just a reminder life steal damage ignores armor and weakness and can go through effect like endure pain.

There is a joke build by woe for wvw that uses this sigil with pressure striking and impacting destruction traits on carrion gear (condi power vit). The result is interrupts that deal ~7k dmg each that can be spammed with impunity on a build with 20k hp.
This is something that can get replicated in pvp post sigil change and it leans heavily towards the annoying side.
Effectiveness aside i don’t thing enabling yet another one button build for thief is a good idea no matter how viable it may be.

EDIT: nvm the sigil i was thinking of is not listed, i got it mixed up with sigil of absorption

This is a question to anet: will this armor set get added back to the gem store anytime soon?
Both the heavy rampart, medium strider and phoenix light armors are available in the store so why not the krytan medium set? It is one of the few medium trench coats that actually look decent.

How about this for a sigil:

sigil of exhaustion (or something): when you swap weapons while in combat your next attack will disable dodging from your target for 1 sec

If immobilise hate sigils are allowed to exist then why not one to counter the brainless dodge spamming of a certain class. Would only effect natural dodges not weapon ones.

1050 power
1050 precision
560 toughness
560 healing p.

I know toughness and healing power were a issue in the past but perhaps they could work fine as lesser stats without being op?
Classes that could make use of it would be ranger, warrior, engineer and perhaps mesmer as others are to squishy and 560 armor and healing is not enough to be able to sustain a 11k hp pool like you could with cleric (900 armor 1200 healing).

This could allow for more of a bruiser archetype instead of a full on healbot like menders and since it gives no vit you would be vulnerable to condition builds.

Imo the meta for the last 2 years has always been polarizing to the point the game resembles a moba where every class has exactly 1 build with (very) small variations akin to item builds in mobas.
This is terrible for the game and it shows, every season the queue time increases and we always see the same kittening builds all the time even during off season where it literally does not matter if you win or loose.
Also the mentality of ‘shaking things up’ is stupid, that is not what patches should be. They should not nerf or buff kitten just to shake things up, again to call on the moba allegory it reminds me of the hero rotations where one weak you have a certain roster of characters that then changes. This is not how balance patches are suppose to work in an mmo, rotating what is the one thing everyone plays. This is the reason why when you see a class you know exactly what traits and skills adn everything else he has.

Tldr: they need to treat the game like a mmo and patch things more often and push for true build diversity and not patch things so that there is 1 clear build for each class. Otherwise the game will slowly die off at least in the pvp scene.

This was considered the worst pet for pvp pre patch, its auto attack could never hit a moving target and the pet was generally slow. But now it is one of the most reliable melee damage pets, having a ridiculously sticky auto attack (seriously the thing is so good the only way it could be better is if the pet teleported with each swing).
Who ever made the pet changes deserves a cookie and a gold star and maybe a piece of cake, seriously this is one of the best changes (when it comes to rebalancing/redesigning) since the game came out.

Aaaand now the parts that are still in need of tweaks, namely the lightning assault and the wing buffet skills.
Lightning assault is strange as it will not hit the target if the pet is in melee range (pet phases through the target), and often times the pet gets stuck in place (on flat terrain) when you use the f2. Perhaps it would be best if the skill gets changed to work like the revenant staff 5 (it already works similarly, it just feels like a drunk surge of the mists)

The wing buffet has a slow cast time often leaving the pet flapping its wings at nothing and a 1 sec after cast where the pet gets back in his ‘sitting’ animation. This is simple to fix decrease the cast time and remove the horrid aftercast (seriously it is necessary why does the pet need to swap back to his ‘afk’ animation before it becomes able to move and attack again?)

other than that gj to whoever did the pet changes as now most of the core pets can attack reliably, so now the ranger will no longer be pigeon holded in to smokescale and bristilback

Shaogin.2679:

What was it that made them so viable then and what happened that destroyed them?

There once was a trait that made spirits move and follow the ranger much like the pet does called ‘spirits unbound’. On top of that spirits did not kill themselves when you used their flip skills, so you could maintain the buffs even after you spammed out all of their active effects.
There was also a trait that gave them more hp and made spirits auto cast their flip skills when they died. This trait is still in the game but it does something totally different now, it is ‘natures vengeance’ (the name made more sense in the context of the previous version of it).
You can imagine having 3 spirits up and casting all 3 of their flip skills only for them to cast them again after they get cleaved down, the screen looked like a disco floor. Also the fact that spirits could move made the elite one borderline op (and the fact that it had a larger effect radius), you could have a battle standard that flowed you around and then a on demand rez (which you could use to self rez) and another one when the spirit died (this was harder to make use of but you could always just walk the spirit on top of aoe’s if you knew allies were going to die).

There are other minor things but the 2 traits that got deleted are the biggest reasons why spirit ranger got the shaft, at least spirits are still useful in pve.

had a similar match recently where the enemy team had 2 duo q’s vs 1 on our side. That is fine and all except one of the duos on the other team was sindrener and vaanss, who are rank rank 2 and 50(?) on the ladder meanwhile i struggle to remain in plat t1. There is ~500 difference in rating between me and them.

This matchmaking feels unfair to the nth degree, ether you get a match that you for sure loose or win by 400 points. It is not fun to play ether way especially when you know you lost within the 1st min.

Crinn.7864:

What article are you pulling that imagine from? Those numbers seem irregular. WoW at the very least should have exceeded gw2 in revenue if nothing else.

for some reason it will not let me link the article itself so here is the website, you gonna have to do some searching to find it. Filter it by ‘revenue’, it was posted 22 days ago i think.
https://pvplive.net/m/news/

Idk how valid the info is but at least it gives you a number that you can reference to other sources. If it matches up then chances are it is accurate.

DeceiverX.8361:

And in ANet’s delusional mind they think everyone with the expansion wants to play the elites and that it’ll incite the free players to buy power via the expansion.

How are those profit margins working? Not well.

About those profit margins……https://articles.pvplive.net/article_images/OverwatchRev.JPG

It might surprise you but the main players of gw2 are not pvp’ers but ppl who enjoy raids and idk pve i guess? Anyway these players do not have much concern about class balance or build diversity or whatnot.
So yea as long as the numbers are good no reason to majorly change anything, just pump out the next expansion.

Lucentfir.7430:

The funny thing about E=Spec balance is that, we’re using a base class as the measure of balancing here, when really it’s going to be balanced around having other Especs in the game and having to choose, If you bring current e-specs in line with core profession, we’re just going to have the same exact problem again when they release another expansion with a new set of elite specs. If anything core profession class mechanics should really be improved so there’s a difference when slotting a elite spec or rolling base.

If they balance elite specs according to other elites specs then yes things should end up ok-ish, but if they make the new batch even more absurd to push sales of the next expansion then goodbye guild wars.

coro.3176:

you can’t even play base ranger any more it’s so bad)

Be honest, you can’t play any class base anymore in pvp above gold. Almost all elite specs are straight up upgrades:
berzerker is warrior+, tempest is water magic on steroids, chronomancer straight up gives you another shatter that is stronger than anything core mesmer has, daredevil is pre-nerf acrobatics on steroids, scrapper gives you ludicrous passives, druid gives ranger a purpose otherwise you fulfill no role others cannot do better, dragon hunter supercharges your virtues, reaper gives you stability, mobility, and better synergy with shroud 1 traits.
Only class that is debatable is necromancer since you give up range and this is mostly a debate for wvw.

This topic has been discussed to hell and back, everything from possible rebalancing to making one of the core lines a ‘vanila elite’.

Anyway i think the way anet intends to go about this is make elite specializations equal in power, and make each cater to a play style or role, and release a new batch with each expansion. This way every build will be 1 elite spec and 2 core ones.
In this way to be able to actually play pvp (and not get obliterated) you have to purchase at least 1 expansion, you cannot be f2p and play pvp to any meaningful extent unless you like getting yelled at by teammates for playing a core build and dragging the team down and ect.

Now given the standard mmo practices of having to buy each new expansion or becoming totally obsolete this should not be that big a deal, however anet marketed HoT and elite specs as ‘a way to enable different playstyles for existing classes’ and not as more powerful mandatory trait lines which was the end result. Maybe they intentionally lied or changed their plan during development but that statement is the major reason why so many ppl were and still are adamant about nerfing elites (also because elites introduced a metric kittenton of aoe and passives but that is a different topic).

Tbh if the future waves of elite specs end up as alterations to playstyles/roles for classes and not straight up upgrades aka you can play pvp with HoT and no future expansion and not be kitten i will not complain. If we get a repeat of HoT then there will be issues.

@cynz if the entire class is dependent on a single trait to function then the class itself is the issue,i realize allot of classes have a trait they more or less need depending on the meta but thief is also tied to a weapon set which makes it double bad. I don’t want to nerf pi or whatnot just because lul nerf teef i genuinely think the trait design as is now is not fun to play against.
Also i used to main a thief so i know all the ins and outs of the class but gave it up since it became boring and stagnate.

This is off topic but what will happen when we get another elite spec next expansion? Core thief still has strong mobility so if the new elite line ends up as a support line that will pose an issue, same if it ends up as a bunker line of some sort. I bring this up because anet might nerf core thief again (like they did to acro) in order to justify the next elite spec.

The issue is not impact damage in a vacuum, the problem is when you slap the 3k impact on top of all the other damage sources thief has. After a thief opens on someone and drops them below 50% he can keep his distance and kill with timing headshots. The design is not fun to play against especially if you are on a class with poor stability access.
The most elegant solution would be to add a ~5 sec cd to the trait and go from there, also make it unable to proc on auto attacks.

@cynz: why are you adamant about defending this one trait? thief will do fine if it gets nerfed, the class role will stay the same it will simply mean you actually have to be more involved in a fight to win it rather than haphazardly using headshot.

how about no!! it would be a nerf to pvp as you loose the ability to force enemies off the nodes.

I have a much better idea how to fix this so hear me out: instead of changing perfectly fine skills to cater to the lowest common denominator, in this case drooling idiots, people actually learn game mechanics and how to play their class??? Sounds good?

It would be too much of a power creep if they made the current version of fb baseline, i mean the pet would have 25 might all the time. The game needs less boon spamming in general as it is.
The only reasonable way to make fb baseline without breaking things is if it changes to ‘boons you apply to yourself are shared with your pet’ so that it is self contained so if you make a build about self stacking might or fury your pet inherits that quirk, and having a ele or rev next to you would not make things stupid.

No disrespect to anyone but most of these suggestion are not very well thought out for several reasons.
Giving remorseless a cd would destroy any synergy with rapid fury application and thus reduce the burst intervals (at the moment while under sotp you can push out a uber maul every 3 sec, not to mention synergy with other classes such as revenant), all gone. Not to mention remorseless refreshes on your pet as well when it does on the player (this is why tiger is the best pet choice for it) so not only do you cripple the player burst but the pet burst as well.
Then we have making remorseless a blend of swiftness and steady focus, just why? it’s not like ranger has a lack of swiftness and making another version of steady focus (and predator’s onslaught to some degree) is redundant.
The fact that big bursts can be blocked is a good thing, counterplay is a good thing that this game needs more of not less which is why an almost passive unblockable effect is a bad idea especially when it removes counterplay to a 5-8k maul and 8-10k furious pounce, imagine if elementalist fresh air combo was unblockable.

Remorseless is a burst trait and it needs to remain as such, the only thing that needs to change is the rest of the marksmanship line which is lackluster and the unreliable pet(s) that have synergy with it.
Make the ‘fury recharges opening strike’ part a minor trait so that the minors are self sufficient and leaving remorseless as just a 25% damage increase on opening strike. The only thing that makes sense adding to it would be ‘opening strike also inflicts cripple for x seconds’ or another debilitating effect so that you and your pet can stick on the target more easily, you know be remorseless with your offence.

what needs to happen is they need to put an icd on impairing destruction, put an icd on unhindered combatant condition removal and remove/reduce the swiftness it gives (immunity to imobilize is absurd, idk who thought it would be a good idea and swiftness undermines acrobatics and in general the other gm dd traits) ~5 sec on both of them and they need to nerf d/p probably shadow shot.
Then we can talk about buffing kitten, especially the 3 unused traitlines and all other weapon sets. Thief needs more build diversity and having d/p be so dominant is not good and this is largely to the utility it gives but also because it has synergy with broken traits (again impairing destruction).
Lots of utility skills need an update as well, to make them less clunky / actually usable, but none of this maters if d/p remains the way it is now.

Here is the qol i would like above all else: the ability to instantly leave celestial avatar like you can death shroud.
At the moment there is a 0.5 sec cd on the leave ca button when you enter and more than half the time all i want out of ca is to flash it for stealth or condi removal and none of the skills.

idk about staff & gs but i have been using this since the patch: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARTnUqA1CiNsAWsActgl/AD+s2WvrPphfwRb51lBCAlI80A-TpRBQBP4IAQl9HmwhAAAPAAIWGQDXAAA

It has enough sources of regen to get cele avatar on cd (4 in total if solo 2 from shouts and 2 from sotw so cele avatar charges in 16.6 sec, so all you need is a couple of hits to be on cd if you start from 0 af).
And because of the stats you are nowhere near squishy and hit like a truck and poop out cc and vulnerability like no tomorrow. It is not uncommon to get a 8k furious pounce or a 6k maul or more depending on the situation and if your setup goes well.

maybe use natural stride in place of shadow since you have no good access to swiftness and perhaps shared anguish in place of ambidexterity since you have no stability. Also consider using giver weapons since they give the most condition duration per gear slot, so the build would look like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsYVjEqQLL2uCerAVLWMEMmAworB00BOBtA4s6YNtWiKPD-TVyCQBFU9HFcEAszhAYCnAAVoPAAPAgxoEELK/C3+DkC4u1AA-w

this allows you to use tuning crystals in place of the precision buff so you don’t loose too much condi damage.
Life steal helps you with astral force generation since it is a healing tick and you lack any source of regeneration to build af other than the heal skill so stick with the food you have.

keep the initial on cast self heal but replace the healing tics with ‘’allies that are standing in this well siphon health equal to 20% damage they deal but deal 20% less damage’’ reduce cd to 30 seconds.
This plays more in to the whole vampire health siphon side of necromancer and makes the well unique compared to the mesmer heal well which your suggestion turns it in to.

If you are bored of the boring meta staff build try this one, it is fun and effective:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJARTnUqA1CiNsAWsActgl/AD+s2WvrLvuMQA4JN8DOalMtwA-TpRBQBT4IAohLAAAeAAxY/hHcIAgYZAA
(note the editor is not up to date yet)

There are a few ways to set it up but i prefer this, you could use marauder for more hp (this is recommended if there are lots of condi builds on the other team) and you could change the rune to trooper for more condi removal or any power rune (pact and hoelbrak work best).
The reason for dolyak is because it, the double regen from shouts and sotw (on you and your pet) gives you 5 individual ticks of regeneration which means that you charge cele form in 13.5 seconds. This is shorter than the cd of cele avatar but you have to keep in mind that you are not always going to have regen up on your pet or sotw off cd, it just makes thing smoother.

The most burst you can pull of is swap to tiger (in combat) hilt bast (does not have to hit) to give your pet 50% dmg f2 maul. Maul hits from 4k to 5k and furious pounce from 6k to 9k and is unblockable. You can also use sotw for more dmg but generally save it for when your target is below 50% and has used some defensive cd’s to finish them, or for when you need more stability.
Another consideration is to rake brutish seals over moment of clarity for shorter cd on signets, which is a totally valid option but moc has good synergy with other things and has lots of way to proc for more dmg. Besides the 2 signet are not there to be used all the time since their passives are good (especially sotw since it enables the op druid traits more frequently), and you should not be reliant on stone if you use great sword and cele avatar well since they give lots of defensive potential.

Some neat combos you can pull off is lunar impact or swoop in to smokescale f2 for stealth
pet swap (in combat) while channeling rejuvenating tides to self blast it with clarion bond
jumping while channeling counter attack to continue to block (because skills cannot activate in mid air so if you block a melee attack while in mid air because you are jumping the counter attack does not happen and you just block for up to 3 sec if you time it right)
and intentionally swinging at nothing with the last skill of the gsword aa chain to get a 2 sec evade (because when you use auto attack skills and they do not hit you can use the same aa chain skill again in a short interval so this means you can use 2 power stabs back to back for evading).

The biggest weakness of the build are condi builds that put out bursts in short intervals, so something like the mesmer condi build (you have to abuse range and pet pressure to win this match up) or a d/d condi thief, oddly not so much necro because you have range and good cc.
Like i said swap to marauder if there are more than 2 condi builds, though i generally prefer demolisher.

Happy mauling

it seams maul did not get a damage buff. I am comparing the new in game maul at 2050 power and no modifiers to the maul on the gw2skills.net editor which is still under the old patch.

EDIT: it seams the gs trait is bugged and lowers the damage of maul if you slot it, or maybe the tool tip is bugged and shows lower damage numbers when you have the gs trait on. Something is definitely bugged here

Pets that are not bristilback and smoke scale need a rework period.
Not only do they have issues hitting moving targets but they also die in 2 seconds. I am fine with a glassy pet such as a tiger dying easily if it gets focused (compared to bb or ss) what i am not ok with is it dying because it gets cleaved down by random aoe not targeted at it. In this situation (teamfight) you are playing without a class mechanic, and if you have 1 pet that can participate in a team fight (basically only bb or ss) you are forced to not swap from it because the other one will die instantly.

I don’t expect every pet to be able to blink to a target or to have the same survivability as smoke scale but i am not fine with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIQZb-iuLmk&feature=youtu.be
the wyverns are the worst offenders when it comes to actually hitting moving targets but all other pets suffer from this in some capacity. The only pets that come close to being useful are the feline and birds (they are not free from this issue, they also end up running in circles after targets not hitting anything) but like mentioned they die in 2 sec.

A easy solution to this would be to give pets the pve buff which makes them take 90% less dmg if they are not targeted by the source of damage (this way they will never die to aoe unless the opponent locks on to the pet while the aoe is ticking), and making the 30% increased movement speed trait from bm baseline while replacing it with supper speed (so it reads your pet gains supper speed when you swap it ~5sec and increased ferocity). This way non smokescale melee pets would be able to actually participate in fights.

If none of these changes happen (or similar changes) then every ranger in the game will always use smoke scale and bristilback in pvp (and wvw) no matter what you do to them, you could nerf their damage by 70% and they will still be the only ones used because they are the only FUNCTIONAL pets.

roamzero.9486:

CA self healing: should CA be allowed to be beneficial selfishly? I would consider nerfing the CA self heals a lot, but at the same time tweak the Live Vicariously minor trait to return a % of outgoing heals back to the Druid, making it so that the Druid gets the same self heals if he’s supporting other players.

This is such a dangerous line, because if you mess too much with it druid becomes a heal bot that is useless if he is alone or i f he does not use an amulet with healing power. Remember there are other ways to play druid not just support and i feel this would make druid completely locked in to a support role.

Also i would argue that live vicariously and natural mender should not be minor traits but combined and added to the staff trait and 2 new ones introduced in their place. Reason is theese 2 are tailored to staff and if you play without it (which bdw is a valid way to play) you are effectivly doing so without 2 minor trait. Your change would make the entire line useless without staff not just the minors
I mean no other elite spec is forced to use their weapon to take advantage of the minors (or the elite mechanic which your suggestion would do), the closest one is dragon hunter who gets half a minor which is still something but otherwise completely fine without a bow.

Shadelang.3012:

(maybe just make it so that truly passive regen (like runes) don’t affect AF generation)

this would make signet of the wild not generate af which would not be a good change for it. Right now its weak passive is only redeemed by the fact it is a good af generator, the active is good on its own tho. Maybe just exclude all passive regeneration from runes/sigils from generating af but leave the boon signets and traits?

The core pets need to be looked at regardless if they would die in a team fight or not. It is embarrassing that after 4 years core pets still act as if they are random pve mobs, where they stop in place do a 3 sec animation which swings at air because the target moved. What is even worse is HoT wyvern pets, just pick the blue one at set him at the moving target golem in hotm (no using of f2 and no utility skills) and see how long it takes him to kill it.

increase cele avatar cd to 15 sec.

This is probably the best way to nerf druids without destroying any builds be it support mender or power druid.
It would also let players use non dolyak runes since there would be no point to building for so much regeneration ticks with the longer cd, just my 2 cent.

Also as Shadelang said almost every ranger build uses the same 3 trait lines no matter if it is support offense or whatever. Maybe it would be a good idea to rework skirmishing and marksmenship lines to be more attractive than nature magic to an offensive build?

Also rework core pets while at it would be nice if they could hit something, having every ranger use bristilback and smokescale speaks volumes about pet design.

i suggested something similar more than 6? months ago

foste.3098:

What if the trait line that enhances your profession mechanic was turned in to a elite specialization (discipline, trickery, soul reaping, beast mastery, illusions, tools, invocation, virtues, arcane). This way they can giving us some build diversity (before another expansion), you ether stick with the vanila elite specs (and therefor the base class name) and 2 other core ones or the HoT elite spec (and change to the different class name) and 2 other core ones.
Of course there would have to be some rebalancing done to make the ‘new’ vanila elite competitive in power to the HoT elite, but we can all agree that the game is in need of balance as is so it woild not be a big deal.

The reason i bring this idea up is because thees specializations are used in almost every build anyway (most warrior builds take discipline, every thief pick trickery, every guardian build pick up virtues, infact only mesmer, engineer and ele do not pick theirs currently) and by making them elite the players would be forced in to a choice, and non HoT players will have access to a competitive build. This is assuming they balance them according to the power level of HoT elite specs, and every future elite spec.

this idea makes too much sense not to do, which is why it will never happen. Because the sole reason for making elites op is to push HoT sales and this would make it so you can do pvp just fine without HoT.
Just face it core classes are dead in the water, the situation is go elite or gtfo and will always be like that. I just hope the next expansion does not introduce even more op bs elites in order to push its sales.

KrHome.1920:

And just to mention it: (not that we had something like that in the current metagame, but:) This would significantly reduce build variety.

what build variety? every one uses the exact same builds, the ones that are braindead and have lots of aoe and passives. If anything this cahnge would force some build diversity given the right balance because every class will have 2 builds at least.

I noticed today that death shroud skills no longer seam to use the weapon dmg of the weapon you have out when entering shroud. Is this a bug or was there some change that i’m not aware of?
This is in hearth of the mists

dmndbcK.3425:

Good player’s can counter the current guardian meta, stop complaining and learn 2 play.

why is it every time a issue is brought up the main go to defense is l2p. Something is op l2p, that class is facerole l2p, this thing is to rewarding and easy for the risk learn 2 kittening play.

It is not even about whether or not guardian is too strong, it is about how unfun and frustrating it is to play against them and the design of traps in a conquest mode where they cover the entire point. This is pronounced when facing a team with multiple ones.

A good comparison is the turret engy of old, it was good at bunkering but lacked mobility and stun breaks yet it was called op and mindless by a majority of players, even so it was defended by the l2p crowd. We all know how that ended up, now i am not calling dh a turret engi with a different skin or anything but their playstyle similarly is not fun to play against as a whole.

Also i reached legend with a ranger with core pets and no elite spec in s3, i know how to play so your l2p shield holds no weight. (like the glorified reward track that is the ladder means much)